Regent's Park

Sorry for the shoddy scans!

Posemaniacs Figures

I've been doing quite a bit of Posemaniacs sketching lately. 30 and 90 seconds.

 

Train

Bones

I decided a few months ago that I really needed to properly re-learn my human anatomy, from the bones up. I haven't gotten as far with it as I should have really, but here are a few of my sketchbook pages. Effectively all of the images are copied from Stephen Rogers Peck's Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist and Sir Alfred Fripp and Ralph Thompson's Human Anatomy for Art Students, which are both very good books. The Peck particularly has got to be one of those essential books for anatomy learnin'. The latter, being an unabridged reproduction of a 1911 edition, has some fantastically entertaining snippets of text too:

'Sometimes the nostrils are much narrower than is usual or natural; in such cases the subject will be found to breathe almost entirely through his mouth, which he keeps constantly open.'

And:

'It may interest the student to consider the association of a small chin and weak character. If he will take the trouble to notice a man who has recently passed through a great physical struggle, he will find that the jaw is dropped...He is not in a position now to force home arguments, even to a child.'

Worth buying just for those, methinks.

Something

I've been very slack with the posting this past few weeks, so apologies for that. This is partly due to me wanting to keep some new work in reserve for when I launch my new website, and partly due to me being busy making that site and working on a few promotional bits. The site's almost finished though and will be live quite soon. In the meantime, a few sketchbook sketches.

Museum

I went to the British Museum for a wander and a sketch today. Two Indian sculptures from Tamil Nadu, and a couple of classical sculptures from somewhere I've forgotten.

Exeter Sketch

Some location sketches in Exeter from the past couple of days. I'd hoped to do a lot more, but kept getting thwarted by the rain. Something I haven't been doing nearly enough of recently. Need to take the paints out with me. The foreground building in the bottom image was a bit of a mess, so I erased the detail on good ol' PS.

Tiny things

Fighter

Had a go at drawing my sister's Siamese Fighting Fish today. Quite difficult, as the little git wouldn't sit still, and the tail and fins flow around ceaselessly and shapelessly. He is a pretty gent though. These are ink & watercolour.

Hamsters & Cattens

I seem to have had a bit of a pet theme going on recently, so thought I may as well continue with it. Girlfriend's cattens Loki and Neko, and sis' boyfriend's hamsters, who I believe are called Colin and Emile, after the rats in Ratatouie.

A few more goalies

Okay there hasn't actually been any football recently due to the white stuff and a bit of classic British hysteria, but here are the last few keepers worth salvaging from my sketchbooks.

The rest are on the old Flickr again.

Goalkeepers

With the new year, it's time to crack on with a bunch of projects and bits I've had floating around for a while. Good intentions and all that.

This is a little series of goalkeeper sketches I started a while back, largely to keep me busy while watching Match of the Day.
My rules, I guess, are to only draw from moving footage and not to 'fix' the sketches afterwards. It's a good challenge to try to capture the movement & essence of poses & actions that can flash past, unexpectedly, in a very short space of time.
I think they're working pretty well as a set, hopefully expressing something of the ups and downs and actions of a keeper.

This blog isn't really the ideal place for large sets of images, so you can see the whole set on Flickr. I should be adding more every couple of weeks, so keep checking back.