Watercolor Faces

Here are some more practice faces. This time, some are from photoes of Afghan refugees (taken from the internet) and others are from photoes I took in Pakistan in 2005. These are drawn straight in ink and then painted.

Peshawari Faces

So, I'm back to working on faces again. Here are a few Peshawari faces from some great photoes I found on flickr. I prefer to work from life, but capturing a likeness is going to require some stillness. See if you can figure out who's who. These are all really quick and straight pen sketches. I want to bring more looseness into faces while still capturing the essense of the person I am drawing.

Knossos at Club Fais Do Do

After a day of animation stuff at home, I head over to Club Fais Do Do to check out Knossos. It's so much fun to see amazing musicians like that in such an intimate setting.

Wednesday Figure Drawing

Here are this weeks Figure Drawings. The last for this year! If you look at the first two sketches, you can see that they are the same pose. Some of my previous posts have examples of this too. Often, after finishing a sketch, if there's time left on that pose, I'll do another quick sketch before time runs out. It is easier to bring out the pose in simple lines. When I put detail in, it quickly reduces the overall energy. Of course, you can't get that energy in detail without being able to do so with very little line either. That's one of the things I'm working on here.

Wednesday Figure Drawing

Here are this week's figure drawings. Wish I had time to go out and do some costumed figures as well...trying to simplify complex clothing would be a great thing to work on. Also, it would be interesting to see how much of the underlying movement I could bring out in the clothes..hmm.

Rashmi the Madwoman!

Okay...I guess it would have been more exciting if I'd painted some of the actors...but I was busy watching. This is a part of the set for Madwoman of Chaillot. My friend Rashmi was one of the very talented actors (and mad women) in this fun play.

Wednesday Figures

Here are today's figure drawings. I tried a few with more line. It's really tricky drawing a complete figure in ink straight away, but it helped that the two closeups were 10 minutes instead of 5. It takes me at least double the time to think out these lines if I start caring about making it a little more "refined". I've got to start moving somewhere new with this stuff...too busy with animation stuff lately, but eventually I'll do some more watercolors with a clear mind, hopefully for a few hours straight and things will start going somewhere from here. That's why I have no shame about stuffing my pockets with art supplies wherever I go...I've got too much to do and too little time to do it! Don't we all...

Saddle Ranch and Backstage Cafe

Two Birthdays. One night. Tons of new faces. The Saddle Ranch sketch kind of became a mess of color. I lost the structure and depth of it. I got too caught up in the details. The second sketch, from inside the Backstage Cafe turned out a bit better. I'll have to keep working out how to simplify all that detail into something that gets the idea across. Either way, it's fun, and people are always asking where all that stuff (art supplies) came from. My pockets are always full :).

Wednesday Figure Drawing

Here are this weeks figure drawings. Why so much green this time? Well there are many deep philosphical reasons for the use of this particular shade of green...but mostly it is the color I've used the least in my slowly diminishing watercolor set. I lay down the ink for these by drawing as if I really don't care what it looks like. Kind of like when you were a kid and your teacher forced you to write or draw something you didn't want to do and you made that pouty face and scribbled some stuff out of spite. Aww yeah. Except I'm not all pouty about it. I just don't care too much whether it looks good or not. I look at the figure, and make quick mental notes about where all the parts are, but when I lay down the line, I just let it be messy and don't try too hard to make it clean or correct. Then I add the color in much the same way. I put an almost random color down and then push a bit of contrast with some more colors, check out the shadows and light on the figure and finish it up. I think it's time to start reaching for that next step.

Kahani

I've put a lot of time into my personal animation work these days, so not much in the way of new paintings. I did however do 4 illustrations for the Fall 2006 issue of Kahani. It is a quarterly short story magazine for children.

If you'd like to see the work of other talented artists as well as the rest of my illustrations, you can order this issue. Visit the site for details about the current issue as well as contributer bios.

It was a lot of fun to work on, and nice to see the results in print.

Wednesday Life Drawing

Here are a few sketches from today's life drawing session.

Mozart Concertos

Thanks to my friends Dan and Andrea for inviting me to enjoy the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's performance of several Mozart Concertos last night! Here's a watercolor of a portion of the orchestra.

Black and White

Black and White

The Platform at the Gig

Went to a show at the Gig in a series called the Platform. Here are two of the musicians who performed that night; Scott Tang and Kiyoshi Graves.

The Throws at the Hotel Cafe

Saw the Throws perform at the Hotel Cafe last night. What a cool band, and a great venue to see them. Here are a few sketches made with the support of a fun group of friends.

PTV and Puppets 2

A few more puppets from the book and various musicians and actors from some more PTV shows. These are the last two pages to finish out the artwork from my vacation in Ohio from last week. The ink drawings helped me a great deal with these pages. These are all straight watercolors without laying down any kind of line. Thinking out the shapes, and modelling the forms with color is challenging and fun. I painted the details with a fine brush. It takes longer than inking, but if I have time, I think it adds a lot.

Ptv and Puppets

More faces from PTV programs and some puppets from a book on the Paul McPharlin Puppetry Collection I picked up at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.

Sufi Soul

My mom had video taped a show off of Pakistan Television called Sufi Soul which features sufi musicians from all over Pakistan (including Qawwals like Meher and Seher Ali as well as other singers of the verses of saints like Saeen Zahoor) who perform live in an intimate setting. I can watch that show for hours. Here are some sketches I threw together while I did just that. The watercolor is from a skit comedy show.

LAX Faces

Here are some sketches of faces I saw at the terminal in LAX while waiting for my flight to Ohio last week.

Wednesday Figure Experimentation More Lines

Here are today's 3 and 5 minute figure drawing experiments. I loosened the ink line and used a lot more of it this time around. As usual, I like the later ones more than the earlier ones from the session so they are up on top.