Anne Bonny, Pirate

I attended the September session of Aaron Miller's Figurative Illustration Workshop last night, and the model this month was dressed as Anne Bonny, the Pirate Queen. She wore a great costume with a ton of accessories, like sashes and pistols and swords. It was an overwhelming amount of detail; seriously, I could have spent days upon days trying to capture it all. As it was, I constantly had to fight with the tendency to linger on every little area, and instead concentrate on capturing the gesture and form. Hopefully there'll be good photorefs made available so I can go back in and give the paintings some more polish.

It's been a while since I've been to one of these workshops, and it was pretty evident to me how out-of-practice I was. I definitely felt very rusty, and slow. Still, it was a nice opportunity to use Colors!3D on the 3DS XL, and for the most part it worked out fairly well... I have to adjust to the XL's larger footprint; my hand cramped a couple times while holding it. But it sure was nice being able to paint on a (relatively) bigger touchscreen.

Overall, it was a great figure drawing/painting session, as per usual.

Supergirl - Figurative Illustration Workshop, April session

As a nod to next week's comic book convention C2E2 (Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo), this month's Figurative Illustration Workshop was held a little early, with the model dressed as the DC Comics heroine Supergirl.

The model alternated between two poses, at five-minute intervals with breaks from time to time. This was done to give the model an action pose and a rest pose. Because of the switching back and forth, I found it a little hard to pin down the likeness; still, I think the resting pose one turned out decent:

Another fun life drawing workshop under my belt!

L5 Astronaut - Figurative Illustration Workshop, March session

Last night I attended the Figurative Illustration Workshop, where this month's model was "Astronaut Rodney Lewis" from the crowd-funded sci fi miniseries "L5". The model, who is also L5's production designer and "action wrangler" Chad Burns, had on some really nice gear; as I understand it he built the spacesuit himself from things he picked up at places like Home Depot and American Science & Surplus. So awesome.

L5's director Stanley Von Medvey and production designer Chad Burns

The life drawing session was a great opportunity to test out Colors! 3D "in the wild" and it worked out really well. Having the compact form factor of the 3DS allowed me to paint from what would normally be a problematic angle. Also, the built-in camera allowed me to take reference pics on the fly, which I could then import into Colors! 3D without pause. And being able to paint using layers offered a lot of flexibility in terms of workflow. I built the painting up primarily as a 2D image; doing it in 3D would have required a bit more forethought, and I wanted to concentrate more on just painting.

Astronaut Rodney Lewis of L5

Just for kicks I tried converting it into a 3D image afterwards. It actually adapted to 3D pretty well, and didn't involve much if any blending. Check out the .MPO file if you have a 3DS (or some other compatible way to view 3D) and let me know what you think.

Thanks again go to Aaron Miller for running the whole shindig, it's always a good time.

Toy Huntress

After far too long, I attended Aaron Miller's Figurative Illustration Workshop last night. This month's model was dressed up as a "Toy Huntress", adorned with the furs of plush toy animals. A neat costume, it made for an interesting and challenging figure drawing subject. We started with some quick 5-15 minute poses, which I sketched out with Sharpie pen and gray markers:

... and then moved on to longer poses, which I painted using Colors! for DS:

As always, a pleasant time. It felt good to be drawing again, I've been soooo out of practice lately.

Matador

The model at last night's Figurative Illustration Workshop wore a matador's costume:

Drawn with blue pencil, brush marker, and Sharpie pen

Drawn with blue pencil, brush marker, and Sharpie pen

Painted with Colors! for DS on the Nintendo DS Lite

For the next session, our host Aaron Miller said he'd try to get a big poofy Renaissance costume for the model to wear. Fantastic!

Figurative Illustration Workshop

Last night I attended the Figurative Illustration Workshop, hosted by illustrator/designer Aaron Miller at Platform Studios Chicago. (Thanks go to my friend Bleu for inviting me!) I had a good time, realizing in the process how rusty I was at dedicated figure drawing. I definitely intend to participate in future sessions, and highly recommend the workshop to other artists, it's fun!