New mugs

I hadn't done any pottery works for a while so I decided to check what I had left behind. Found 4 mugs, 2 tea pots, and 2 rice bowls that were before and after green wear firing. I wanted to try drawing something using slips, so I tried cats on the mugs. Here is how they turned out.

I'm basically happy about them. Colour became lighter, but still visually OK. I'll think about other design to draw for new works.

These mugs are on sale for $20 each (+shipping).

Red chalk Gustavo

Last month was quite busy. I was in Italy (holiday) for 2 weeks. I love Italy, not only Italian fine art works, but also weather, food, and atomosphere. This time I was in South, especially Sicily driving around country side. So refreshing, inspiring..., I didn't want to come back at all...

This is red chalky pencil work. Compared to the one http://mkchart.blogspot.ca/2010/10/country-bumpkin-conte-work.html I did few years ago, I think this is more sophisticated.... Ha-ha...!

How academic drawing proceed...

Here is my 30+ hour drawing (unfinished). This was a parts study, and I was hoping to do serious rendering for legs. Each works represent 5 hours of work. I used charcoal pencils with toned 300 lb Arches paper.

finishing the 1st painting

My ipod camera is a horrible quality of the resolution, but anyway, here is my work finished 1st painting stage. One of the instructors always picks up the wrong value and hard/sharp edges like drives me crazy, so I was extra conscious about these points not him to say that again (yeah, he was that annoying).  In the end, it became sort of nature of my painting style, so I can't say bad about him, tho. Ha-ha. I started to 2nd painting stage and so far so good. Just take more time to refine the detail more softer and as accurate as possible to complete this project. I have no idea when I can be done... Still long way to go.

Colour pencils

I love charcoal/conte works. Recently, I'm in love with Trios crayons works. I also like to use toned paper, especially the process of toning the papers brings my mood warming up. :-)

This one, I toned the paper with Acrylic paint, blue grey with a bit of orange. Then I used Stabilo's blue, brown, General's charcoal pencil, and Wolfits' white pencil. The image was borrowed from here; http://ewoud57.deviantart.com/art/Statue-199811619

get your pencil sharpen to be ready...

 This morning, the model was lilly, who is one of scarce asian feature model. I like her, she pose very well so not make me bored.

I'm especially happy with 10 minutes poses, somehow look like three grace to me, one has no face tho... Ha-ha.

Afternoon model was Simon. He's a great model for foreshortening, 'caz he often poses like yoga or some sort. And today's title, be ready thing, the reason why. I used an unsharpened black (conte?) pencil for afternoon switching from Prisma colour pencils, and it was very difficult to control... look below.

 The lead part of the pencil is about 4 mm diameter, this drawing was done on about 12' x 18' size. So 4 mm discrepancy is huge enough to make my drawing not resemble to the model.  In the end, took longer to articulate the contour line... This was a good lesson for myself to remind me to make my weapons sharp all the time... 

Parts study

These days, I am trying to review human/animal anatomy to improve my drawing. I used my 6 inch muscle man to do some back muscle study, but he is not good enough.

http://www.famemaster.com/show.asp?id=100&nid=0&listid=168055&i=

'caz when I look at an anatomy book, his muscle and tendon(?) don't agree with the book. It confused me.

I am seriously thinking to buy this;

http://d-anatomystore.com/human-anatomy-human-skull-highly-detailed-and-accurate-ecorche-male/

or this;

http://www.anatomyed.com/Male1_Figure_Cawrse.htm

It is not so realistic to get these dream items right now. Too bad.., so all I can do is just copy some anatomical drawing plates.... Ha-ha...