170-175 Strictly Sketches

I thought it would be a good exercise to do a group picture of some of the Strictly Dancing cast so these are 'the start' of my trying to get a likeness sketches. I'm a big fan of the 'Mad' comics and artists like Mort Drucker and Tom Richmond and would love to do a picture in a similar style. 

154-169 Drawing the figure

Following along with Charles Bernard videos + Loomis and Jack Hamm books. 

151-154 Drawing the figure

The above sketches were drawn digitally with Sketchbook Pro following along with some of the exercises in Charles Bernard's Figure Trek video (part 7). The top sketch started off as a simple proportion drawing 8 heads high using Andrew Loomis's 'Drawing for all it's Worth' book which is widely available on the internet in a pdf format. I drew the basic figure first then added a more muscle definition before finally adding the costume on top. 

It's an approach that Charles Bernard uses to great effect and I'm looking forward to using it with more expressive poses.

150 - Eight Bells progress shots

I didn't take a whole lot of screenshots as I painted this picture in fact, just these three plus the final image, but I thought I would post them anyway. 

150 - 'Eight Bells'

I have become a big fan of Winslow Homer's work and just love this painting so after downloading a trial version of Photoshop CS6, i thought it would make a good subject to test the software. I have to say that I was impressed with the brushes and how fast they work on my ageing iMac. They seem to perform better than CS5.5, presumably down to the new mercury engine or whatever. Definitely tempted to upgrade.

149 - Fisherman with Telescope

Sticking with the Fisherman theme and SBPro 6 for the moment.

148- Old Fisherman

I downloaded a trial version of Sketchbook Pro 6 yesterday and used it to draw this picture. I really like the new brushes and well, the whole package actually. My version of Sketchbook is about 3 year old so I think it's time for an upgrade.