Week 3- 'Wild Life Drawing'

Wild life drawing, not to be confused with wildlife drawing (as in tigers and exotic things like that) I actually got quite excited for this brief, as I really enjoy drawing people. I think this will be a great challenge to help improve my skills in 'life drawing' as I usually work comfortably from photographs; it's a lot harder when your subject moves! 

As always, here's a Pinterest board with some pieces that have caught my eye. 

For this task I had planned on going into the city center to draw people, but unfortunately, the Rona has hit our household thus meaning I've had to isolate for the past week. It's pretty boring, I'm feeling pretty shitty and work is a bit of a struggle right now...I've had to force myself to create things which is a shame because I was genuinely looking forward for this brief. 

However, all hope is not lost! I'm a big fan of watching live music, I kinda miss going to gigs and the atmosphere that comes with being in a massive arena watching your favourite singer/band. So I watch a lot of live performances on YouTube and suddenly the idea came to me...Why not draw the people in the videos I'm watching!? So, that's what I've done so far...I appreciate it's not the best work, they're quite messy and scribble like but I wanted to challenge myself with fast paced drawing, e.g. giving myself 3 minutes to draw a specific 'frame' of the video. 

I think it's worked OK, again I'm not overly thrilled with the outcome, but it's a starting point and has given me the feel for fast paced drawing of people in different settings. This week has been a bit of a struggle, but I'm glad I've managed to produce a few pieces to get me started. ​

Judge my music taste and my drawings...

This is the first video I watched. I absolutely adore David Byrne, I think he's an absolute genius and I love his eccentricity (might have a very small crush on him)   One of my biggest regrets of last year was not going to see him live, I seriously missed out on a great tour, and with Covid-19 and all it's shenanigans, I don't see myself being able to go to a gig anytime soon...However, we're rambling again!! 

If you like David Byrne,  then you'll know that he does some weird dancing (if you can call it that) so that was great for me as I had a range of different poses to pick and chose from for my drawing. However, my favourite bit in that video is at the end where they're all sat around the table with their palms flat on the surface, before sliding them in to the center. It's slightly ominous, I don't really understand what's going on, but that's what makes it so great and I think that it was a great 'scene' to try and draw.

I gave myself, probably just under 10 minutes for this one. I tried the technique where I don't lift the pen up from the paper. I can see now that it's gotten a bit messy, and a bit too scribbly, but the idea behind these isn't to be perfect, but to create quick drawings to get a feel for things. 

Second video, is actually a video I've just recently discovered. I found this the other night as I was  having a good old look through the depths of my YouTube recommendations. I really like this band, I only discovered them last year, they've got some great songs and they're slightly eccentric too (there's a theme going on here, isn't there?) 

This time I gave myself approximately 3 minutes to complete a drawing, I found these rather difficult as I'm pretty rubbish at drawing instruments accurately (and I've decided to draw from live music videos, I know.) However, I got a few in, and they're slightly less scribbly than the first drawing. Also I tried using a dip pen, and it left a big splodge of ink on my page, so I resorted back to the trusty fine liner for these, and brushed in a bit of black ink into the background for some depth. 

Video three, and my eyes are stinging and a bit blurry...but we soldier on.

I love Florence, I think she's amazing. There's something so ethereal about her, I often think she's something out of a renaissance painting. I've been fortunate enough to see her live twice now, I love how she twirls and dances about on the stage, so obviously I had to draw her as there's so many different poses to chose from when it comes to her.

I spent a little more time on this one, than the previous few, I didn't want it to be as 'messy' or 'scribbly' as the others. However, I can see that the marks have been rushed in some areas but it was the one I enjoyed doing the most. Again, I added a brush of black ink into the background with the idea of trying to add more depth to the drawing, however I think I might have gone a bit overboard with the ink...it adds something to it though (hopefully!) I prefer it with, rather than without!