ILLUS 5040: Wild Life Drawing

We started off the week with another task where we drew each other on call, which was a very interesting experience! I have never felt so simultaneously comfortable in my own space and uncomfortable that everyone was watching me and drawing me. Perhaps under the pressure of time constraints and the pressure people were drawing me I was almost panic drawing. The first few of these drawings are quite messy when it comes to tonal shading and I believe over the course of the last four weeks I've gotten good at fine liner shading then lost it again immediately. Perhaps I need to return to looking at Alphonso Dunn and study his book a bit more. I have definitely found that over the last four weeks of drawing that fine liners and gel pens are definitely my preferred way to draw. I use a thicker gel pen for a majority of the line work and go in with the shading details later with a smaller fine liner, it seems to be a technique I am exploring more and more and perhaps need to refine. 

The three drawings above were done during the week when perhaps I was racking my brain out of doing urban sketching and perhaps should have lost the focus on the buildings behind particularly in the second one where I got a bit fascinated with the turret(?) in Carlisle city centre. I was also trying to refine how I was drawing people and also trying to use just pens or just a pen brush and not use a sketch underneath. I feel like these drawings feel a lot more fluid than my previous ones and there's a lot less stress behind them. I have always enjoyed drawing people and I still love drawing them, there is something fascinating about them and I wish sometimes that I could be a hovering ghost just observing people while they had no idea I was watching and drawing (is that? weird? I feel like that's weird. It's late) 

And then I was forced into Isolation

I did the first three drawings thinking I would go back into Carlisle in the weekend and draw some more, I was starting to get into it when suddenly one of my housemates went home and started developing symptoms for you-know-what. I'm on the same floor as her and we share a bathroom so I thought it best to isolate myself from the others just in case she does have it. Currently I feel fine, just a bit mentally down from it all. 

In comes Liv! My friend from America! We were just so happening to be doing continents apart homework together when I was as per usual stressing over work, so she offered to turn on her camera and much like the first task we did I drew her for a few hours as we sat and talked on call. Overall a very nice experience and I had some fun doing some gestured drawings of her. 

I still felt like my drawings were maybe a little too stiff and formal? So i tried loosening up some more and drawing Liv in various different poses as she moved to talk or think or whatever she happened to be doing while we were sat talking. I believe these are perhaps my most favourite drawings of the week as a compilation, perhaps because I've never thought of drawing my friend from America before and she rarely shows me her face in the first place so it was nice to be able to draw her.