Sketch Diary: Bunch of heads

Face, face, who's gotta face! Just some iterative drawing practice. Same girl, 9 different faces. I think my fav is...bottom row, middle.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Iterative drawing heads

What the in the blue blazes is 'iterative drawing'? Check out Sycra's video

According to Wikipedia: Iterative design is a design methodology based on a cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining a product or process. Based on the results of testing the most recent iteration of a design, changes and refinements are made.

So when you draw with this concept in mind, you can take it many different ways. In this collection of head sketches, I stuck to profile heads, all facing the same way, all mildly feminine looking. I worked at altering the placement of the nose, the eye, the hair, the chin. I could get even more specific and keep all those things the same and only change the ear or eyebrows. The point is to get your hand used to these moments in rapid succession thereby speeding up the practice/learning process.

Now, for these I was only drawing out of my head. No reference. When a reference gets involved, there's another step for your brain to tackle so, while it is an increased learning experience on it's own, you will likely slow down. For me, this is because I look at the reference and analyze placement and shadow etc., then I sketch what I'm processing on what I'm seeing instead of just putting pen to paper and experimenting in a more free form way. Both methods have their place.

I felt like I got a lot out of Sycra's video and out of this practice. Definitely something I would like to do more often. It's helpful when I'm feeling stuck without inspiration. It makes me churn my own mind a bit instead of looking outward.

My favorite is the top middle head. I liked the way the protruding chin looked in combination with the nose and bangs.

Give it a try!

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Lips and floating heads

As an art student, I got really drilled about making sure I stayed away from just drawing floating heads. I had a pretty cool illustration professor (looking at you Mr. Rea) who had us keep a real sketch book for class. We had to draw A LOT. More than I was used to, for sure, at the time. I think we had to draw a sketch a day and each week we'd have to hand over our sketch books to be checked as part of our overall grade for the class. He rarely critiqued the sketch books heavily, that wasn't the point of them, but he did have a particular grudge against floating heads. It's a common issue with many artists - incomplete drawings.

Thanks to his light pushing to stop doing that, I started to finish the sketches as much as I could. Heads always had at least shoulders attached to it, backgrounds started to happen, though very primitive and simple. One of my dreams has always been to illustrate for books. But I know that's not going to happen without at least a basic understanding of backgrounds and landscapes. So whenever you see a sketch of mine that has a background of some kind, get excited with me because it's a big deal!

Note: it is ABSOLUTELY ok to have sketches like the one above. That's why it's a sketch. If you want to just draw eyes or lips or hands or whatever from here till the end of time, have at it! Just remember your teachers want you to grow and try different things so they're going to pressure you to constantly step outside of your comfort zone in your creations. Don't be upset at them, that's their job. Your job is to learn from them and decide for yourself what practices you want to keep or discard. There are bad teachers out there so don't take it all as gospel. Use your head.

With love - M