Picked up a couple of test prints today. Not so sure about the tartan plate. Will have a think about another way of approaching the tone. The other plate is the first etching I made live at life class. I wasn’t going to print from it, but it may be just the image I’m looking for to fill a personal commission.
Click thumbs for full size images, Have a great weekend!
Phew. So very tired. No print session tonight… but popped over to collect the prints that I rushed out last week. Very happy with a couple of them.
I’ve included one scan that messed up for fun – reminds of the promo for shlock horror nasty ‘human centipede’. Click thumbs below for larger images.
back again! Very rusty tonight as expected, haven’t really drawn anything by hand for about a month (Can’t call Adobe Creative suite ‘drawing’…) so it was good to get back in the game again. The sketchbook drawings are all just warm-ups as I’m focusing on the plates, so they’re just prep work, happy with 2 of the plates so looking forward to printing them next week :D
Thumbnail + click = supersize! pip pip…
It begins! :D
Had a really weak session (IMO anyways…) on the standard drawing front this week – but I think that’s in no small part due to the fact that I was itching to get on and try my hand at dry-point etching live at Life Class! :D – Its exactly how I hoped it would be, I’ve already caught the bug… Here’s my very first ever proper etching from life:
Apparently Aluminium plates are the thing to use for dry-point etching, not copper plates like I expected. Maybe its cost, maybe its an easier material to work with, who knows does the job tho! I was very pleased with how the 2nd one also turned out:
Cool beans! I’m going to enjoy this etching lark :D I couldn’t resist having a little play in photoshop to give an idea of what a print from the image will look like, so I tweaked the levels for contrast, reversed it out to a negative image and flipped horizontally:
Cool! Its always a bit odd looking at the mirror image of something that was drawn ‘the right way round’, but heh ho, there’s no way round that if you are etching from life and straight to print. I’ll be using some of the images that I have been previously testing to see what happens over the weekend when I try to etch plates from drawings that are pre-reversed out so the final print is the right way round.
So, I’d say that was a successful first run – all systems go for project print the shit out of everything! Here’s the other sketchbook images from tonight for posterity:
And as usual click the images for full screen versions and use the arrows top and bottom of the screen to navigate (apologies for repetition of the prints, not sure how to selectively display images in slideshows and galleries…) – til next time… :D
No more Life Class until the new year, so here’s a selection of classique Life Drawing from ages past. I’m working slowly backwards through my sketchbooks so its all in reverse order…
There’s a story to tell with one of the images which I will devote and entire post to… at the moment its still too sad to write about :( *sniff. Sigh. Anyway, as always, to see the images in full screen-o-vision just click one of the thumbnails below and navigate using the arrows at the top and bottom of the screen. pip pip!
Interesting… I went into tonights session with an agenda in mind – draw the most stupid, silly drawings I could muster. Turns out that going into a session with an agenda doesn’t work! Ended up with some straight, some a bit weird, some I’m happy with and some not… take a look:
As always, to view the pics in glorious full screen-o-rama, just click one of the images below and navigate using the arrows at the top left and bottom right of the screen. Enjoy!
A friend of mine Dave V once described me as ‘The M C Escher of Life Drawing’ – I kinda like that! Tonight I’m posting a selection of life drawings from Sketchbook_Black_11 to make up for the lack of life class this evening. You can see how I got that title below…
I create these images by shmushing together 2,3 or 4 short poses into one picture. Its not entirely random, though it may seem like that. I draw sections of the model that most interest me in a particular pose until time runs out, then map a section or line that roughly fits an area of negative space or nice curve, line or shape in the new pose and carry on regardless. It sometimes gives a kind of fractured, Dave-style Marcel Duchamp ‘Nude descending a Staircase‘ type feel which I really like. Anyways, read on for a nice selection of artwork past. I’m very fond of these drawings, I hope you enjoy them too – click ‘continue reading’ to view the selection -> Continue reading Classic Life Drawing 21_10_10
Blimey, that’s a bit of a surprise… almost entirely straight drawings from this evening’s Life Class. Not a head worm in sight, and only one slightly meaty hunchback.
I wonder why that was? Perhaps it was because today was a new sketchbook day, or I’m using a pencil that’s not entirely worn down to the nubbin. Who knows. I’m beginning to think about using inks and some sort of nibbed pen instead of the old faithful karismacolor Black pencil crayon. I’ve been in a bit of a quandry as Karismacolor no longer exists (and hasn’t done for some time…) with what to replace my trusted medium with. I’ve just realised that Berol made Karismacolor pencils, so that explains why they disappeared, but I digress. I love dip pen and ink, but its inconvenient and messy unless you are at a drawing board – so what to use for life class? Its a joyous world of discovery! I must get colour into my work somehow, but that’s a longer term goal. I’m circling round the idea of using inks to make tracing vector shapes from the drawings in Illustrator an easier process and colouring digitally, but digital colour? …its just, not right. hmmm… Anyways, read on to see tonights’ selection of images, lower volume this week as I stuck to 15 minute poses to get a more finished picture -> Continue reading Life Drawing 14_10_10
What a fantastic evening for head worms! 2 Extraordinary events, one never before captured on paper. We have a revelatory sighting of a rare spiral head worm, and a world first glimpse of a leatherback marine head worm returning to the sea from its spawning grounds.
To top off an already landmark evening, we also see the return of spaghetti tendroligy. Noodley appendages once again point to the heavens in memory of his noodley goodness. Full spaghetti radiology still appears to be a distant hope, but in these rapidly changing times who can tell whether the durum wheat radio waves will remain silent. Again, good volume of images tonight, lots of 5 min poses. Read on for a collection of very silly pictures…
2 Head worms and a full body worm! That’s a good haul for a Thursday evening. What better way to wind down after a long hard day at the digital coalface than drawing poor unsuspecting life models mashed up in a Dave’s eye view.
Lots of 5 minute poses this session so the volume is quite large this week. I’m going to keep posting up every single drawing, good bad or/and ugly for the time being, so read on for more sillyness…
Dave Cropley 
