A busy week! - Looking for new ideas in perspectives & Life Drawing - Millennium Gallery

It's been a busy week since I last blogged!  - I've spent a fair amount of time building up my drawing practice through continuing the exercises in Betty Edwards book, Drawing on the right side of the brain.

I've also done my first truly commercial piece of work too, whichI'm glad to say my customer was delighted with! - This was a project to re-design and bring up to date a set of company logos and banners for a local motor engineering and car sales firm, the Managing Director of which is an old school chum from some 40+ years ago, with whom I have recently got reaquainted with in the last couple of years.

I had earlier mentioned in conversation at a few social events, that I was studying contemporary art and illustration as a potential career change, and I think as a result of this he telephoned me last week and asked me pretty much outright, - accepting "that it may not be my bag", and he wouldn't be offended at all if I said no, but if I would be interested in giving his 20 year old business branding a bit of a make-over.  Whilst this wasn't ever a direct "sales" pitch or approach from me, per se, I still jumped at the chance; I arranged a short meeting with him to discuss what he was looking for, and set some very basic commercial framework for us to work with.  He accepted my proposal and I took about a day and a half to provide him with a new logo, yet retaining the existing brand image he had built over the last 20 years.
The following day after emailing him some .pdf samples, he actually took the time out of his schedule to call me and thank me for my designs, - he went on to say that over the last 20 years he's tried a number of graphic designers to come up with new logos, but none of them matched up to me in the fact that I had been the "first to actually listen and deliver exactly what he wanted!" - I was delighted!  He didn't need to have said this, it was sincere and humbling praise which means a huge amount to me!...  So I have been on cloud nine for a couple of days since then!

I've also taken another slight excursion into something new to experiment with too, and that is the drawing of pets and animals.
My first serious attempt has proved reasonably successful, having taken on the ideas of focussing on light & shade to find patterns of forms rather than trying to capture the whole (the Gestalt) in one interpretation, - object patterns or shapes that are unfamiliar seem to be so much more easier to capture.  It's more transcendent almost, to capture the independent shapes that make up a whole object, and render them (almost like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle), rather than attempt to render the whole object or subject in one artistic flourish.

My continued exploration of using these negative space 'queues', are making, quite simply, for better drawing outcomes.  The following examples are my lead up to the latest pieces of work...



So, on to the life drawing that I did this Friday (13th June visit)...  Well, I was a bit taken aback by the model, "Patrick" today, he must have been 6 foot 2" and very, well, normal! - He was certainly not a bloke you might have expected to be a male model (unlike the previous David, who's physique was not unlike Michelangelo's boy David!)...  No, I'd have expected to see Patrick down the boozer propping up a bar, so he made for a much more interesting study.

 We started off with six very quick, 5 minute sketches to just get the general flow of things.

Followed by  a more detailed 15 minute study

I'm trying tounderstand the secret to finding negative spaces here, and also trying to apply a more angular expression to my drawings.



The next drawing (Below left) had a foreshortened knee pointing towards the viewer, I hadn't got this right at all...

  

But then it seemed to click after a conversation with the tutor, he was extremely helpful and pointed out that the initial feel of a drowing is always about straight lines and angles and angular relationships when drawing males, - however, this straight line form is changed to curves when drawing females.