Scribal selections

This is a mezuzah I wrote. It's actual size is about 3 x 3 inches. Below are sections of two mezuzot that are magnified for detail.
Sometime soon I'll elaborate on the creation of these really small scrolls.

Now on Fox: Antelopes Gone Graphite!

Yes, that's right: a Giant Sable and an Addax, everyone's favorite antelopes. I drew these from mounts at the American Museum of Natural History, or, as I like to call it, Heaven on Earth.

Masiakasaurus sketch

I just wanted to put up this old sketch of Masiakasaurus knopfleri. I've had second thoughts about the raised second toe, but when I drew this - a long time ago - I went for what I thought would be a noasaurid look. Oh well.

Velociraptor sketch

Just a Velociraptor mongoliensis. I sketched this extemporaneously with no skeletal references, so please forgive innacuracies.

Look Ma, No Arms or Legs!

These two torsos are from the same sketching session at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both were done using 2B mechanical pencil lead in a .5mm Pilot mechanical pencil on Fabriano paper, and the amount of time for each was not too relatively disparate. However, the difference in the results is clearly huge.

Two main differences I noticed in the process were the lighting and my use of a tortillon. The top sculpture was much better lit; the second sculpture was lit by various sources including skylights, which made the resulting shadows muddy. Concerning the tortillon, the Fabriano paper I used is highly textured yet does not hold the graphite strongly, which makes it, ironically, and excellent paper for the use of a stomp or tortillon. The paper + graphite really beg for smoothing.

I have done many drawings without a stomp or tortillon but I felt unable to work without it in this case. I didn't want to resort to it for some reason; I wanted to achieve every effect with just my fingers and a pencil. I didn't use a stomp or eraser on the lower drawing, but by the time I got to the point you see above, I just felt it wasn't worth finishing. So I moved on to the other sculpture, and I like the results.

But I'm still not satisfied. I will post a drawing of the second sculpture and it will be finished and we'll see how it works. Maybe it will be on different paper so I don't feel as required to stomp. Any thoughts from you all out there?

Statuesque Two: Electric Boogaloo

More statues. This bronze was from the American Wing at the Met museum, but unfortunately after I drew this the wing closed for renovation. Since the drawing is already a year old, I probably won't finish it when I get back to that sculpture gallery.

Here's a torso that I'm not too happy with. I tried tinted paper with white highlights to capture the gleam of the marble but my shading came out too chimeric. Capturing the intricacies of the chipped marble didn't help the piece, though I thought it would add interest.

Statuesque

These are sketches from statues found in the awesome Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Greeks certainly loved portraying naked dudes, but this sculpture happens to be female and clothed. As I will discuss in an upcoming post, I have been struck down by the astute criticism of an artistic superior, which opened my eyes to certain subtle drawing practices that have already improved my sketches. I have been trying to learn these new techniques, which are in some ways entire paradigm shifts in artistic methodology. I was feeling pretty successful with this clothed female Greek, until I was forced to eschew one basic and important aspect: completeness. If it were up to me, the Met would be open evenings until very very late, so I could go and draw whenever. Also, the museum would switch its lighting around so that the statues are all lit in such a way that makes drawing them most fulfilling. But alas, the world does not revolve around me. So the Met kicked me out and closed its doors before I could finish this drawing. I may finish this sketch soon, though, because I think it was going well.

I often take a lot of time to remove all lines form my drawing, for lines are unnatural. Line in nature is determined by shape and contrast, rather than contour. In sketching, line is a basic and useful tool. So a sketch may be made by increasingly tightening lines to form the desired object. If the drawing will be taken to completion, these lines would be applied in such a way as to be easily subsumed into the shading. In the clothed woman sketch above, I didn't even get as far as planning to subsume the lines.

This next sketch of a robed Roman man was another aborted artistic process, but this wasn't the Met's fault. This was to be a chiaroscuro drawing, because if I remember correctly this sculpture is metallic and I thought the ability to highlight would be beneficial to the sketch. I skipped any outlines entirely and started applying values in a haphazard way. I became impatient and stopped after some minutes. It is really worth noting that the full process of taking each artistic step to completion is the best way to achieve finished, quality, realistic drawings. That is in fact true of almost every human endeavor. While there are valid drawing techniques that don't rely on line, but rather on the application of dark and light forms and values, this evidently wasn't suitable for my mind and the piece at the time.
I didn't end up finishing this drawing, or even spending more than the few minutes required for this sketch. I went back to it the same day with a different technique and instead focused on line to make a preparatory sketch with more success:
It's interesting how some techniques fit certain subjects sometimes but not others. Tell me what you think and what works for you! I'll be posting more statuary soon...

Surrealism and Sci-Fi

I rarely like surrealist art, except for a few notable exceptions. I appreciate many of the amazing works of art by notables like Dali, but they're not works that I choose to view or surround myself with. One surrealist, however, has been quite influential on my art: the art and creature design of H. R. Giger. He was a very successful designer and artist, and his work has a unity and consitency without being monotonous. Check out this website dedicated to his art. The image above is a prominent example of his work from that same site.

Many of his works are oddities of biomechanical and sexual themes. The alien monster itself from the movie is basically a large spiky phallus that goes around eating people. The pseudo-Freudian nature of Giger's imagery both distracts from and contributes to the elements that intrigue me: the anatomical basis, the use of transparency, and the play on familiarity and alienation.

All those facets of his art are manifest in the Alien creature. The anatomical basis transcends the sexual inspiration that defines the eggs, face-hugger, and Alien's head. The endo- and exoskeletal nature of the creature itself is both human and something more. You can see in some of Giger's work that the Alien cranium, though lacking eyes, is based on a human skull:
Here's the same sculpture (I don't know who made these) topped with the cranial covering:
The pretty tansparencies aren't limited to the cranium, depending on the artist and, moreover, the movie designers' choices. Which brings me to the cool full effect of the anatomy and transparency, and that's the humanness of these aliens. Sure, that's not hard to pull off, we're used to seeing and creating humanoid things. In the case of Giger's designs, the Aliens are just humanoid enough to be accessible to the imagination, but so . . . alien that they make the viewer uncomfortable with their familiar elements rather than comforted by them.

You'll see more artwork posted here based on Giger's Alien designs, but here are two sketches to start with: