Drawing Post: September 2015

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Rovina Cai [feedly]

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Rovina Cai
// lines and colors

Rovina Cai, illustration
Australian illustrator Rovina Cai works primarily in graphite, defining her forms in curving linear textures that also sweep through atmospheric backgrounds.

Her frequently gothic-themed illustrations also can have color — sparingly applied either digitally or in watercolor, but with an eye to allowing the gestural qualities of her graphite drawing to come through.

The portfolio on her website is more extensive than it looks; many of the pieces are accompanied by multiple images that are large enough to appreciate her marvelous textural approach.

You can also find additional pieces on her Behance portfolio and deviantART gallery, as well as a selection of giclée prints on inPrint.

[Via Spectrum Fantastic]

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Perfect Passage: Schoenherr [feedly]

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Perfect Passage: Schoenherr
// Muddy Colors

Greg Manchess

John Schoenherr's compositions are among the very best in illustration. His command of picture space allowed for large open areas to give his elements breathing room, and yet never feel empty. He positioned his subjects to control space without taking up space.

Schoenherr's paintings for DUNE were perhaps the first visualizations of the book that captured the imaginative story with the right amount of description. His design for the sandworm mouth is so simple and classic that no one has improved it.

In the depiction above, of the sandworm battle with the Sardukar, the entire painting hinges on the way the light has sliced through a break in the clouds, just capturing the lips and illuminating the soldiers with differing levels of value, showing how many are pulled into the maul of the worm while others are still firing away. The contrast is both exquisite and dramatic.

The grouping of the figures is as important and intentional a design element as the bits of sand clumped and blowing through the scene.

Another masterful depiction, achieving a grand sense of scale and beautiful night light...

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Marion Barraud Creates Big Personalities with Simple Brush Strokes [feedly]

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Marion Barraud Creates Big Personalities with Simple Brush Strokes
// Brown Paper Bag

Marion Barraud

Isn't it incredible the effect that a simple brush stroke can have? Illustrator Marion Barraud creates an entire world with just some watercolor pigment and cleverly drawn lines. There isn't a lot of details—there doesn't need to be—but it's just enough to give us an idea of who a character is and what their personality is like.

Marion sells her work on Etsy. Check it out for prints, badges, and postcards.

Marion Barraud

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Looking for more? Check out these related posts:

The post Marion Barraud Creates Big Personalities with Simple Brush Strokes appeared first on Brown Paper Bag.

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Marion Barraud Creates Big Personalities with Simple Brush Strokes [feedly]

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Marion Barraud Creates Big Personalities with Simple Brush Strokes
// Brown Paper Bag

Marion Barraud

Marion sells her work on Etsy. Check it out for prints, badges, and postcards.

Marion Barraud

marion-14

marion-12

marion-3

marion-2

marion-7

marion-16

marion-17

marion-6

Looking for more? Check out these related posts:

The post Marion Barraud Creates Big Personalities with Simple Brush Strokes appeared first on Brown Paper Bag.

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New Hand-Sculpted Clay Portraits and Illustrations by Irma Gruenholz [feedly]

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New Hand-Sculpted Clay Portraits and Illustrations by Irma Gruenholz
// Colossal

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In a fine balance of sculpting, painting, lighting, and photography, Madrid-based artist Irma Gruenholz (previously) creates portraits and still-lifes that could easily be mistaken for 2D images found in storybooks. Gruenholz refers to her pieces as clay illustrations, and works with a variety of materials including modeling clay and plasticine to achieve different effects. Her work appears in advertisements, books, posters, and magazines around the world, and three of her portraits were selected for the Society of Illustrators 57th Exhibition in New York earlier this year.

Gruenholz just shared a new series of illustrations over on Behance, and you can read a recent interview about her process on Brown Paper Bag.

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Sunday, September 27, 2015

Approaching Strangers for a Portrait [feedly]

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Approaching Strangers for a Portrait
// Gurney Journey

Visual journalist Richard Johnson wanted to do portraits of the homeless in Washington, DC, but it took a while to figure out how to approach them.

As he describes in an article for the Washington Post, at first he sketched them from a distance without asking. Then he approached them and asked permission, but he was usually rebuffed. They just wanted to be left alone. He offered them money, but that didn't work either.

Eventually he made a connection with the organization and newspaper, Street Sense, and he found people there who would let him draw their portraits and hear their very individual stories.

His sketches include written notes alongside the portrait drawings. He says, "drawing and listening at the same time was a not entirely new challenge for me – I recently covered the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber."

Once people began to open up, he realized that drawing was a trust-building exercise. He says, "Something about the quiet process of studying and drawing I think allows even the naturally wary to gradually let their guard down and open up."

But it was often an intense encounter, and "staring right into their eyes is one of the hardest things I think for an artist to do. There is a whole world of pain in there."

Brandon Stanton is the photographer who created the wildly popular "Humans of New York" blog, which documents the extraordinary stories of ordinary people. He has successfully approached thousands of strangers on the streets of New York, Iran, and other places, and has elicited not only their permission to photograph them—and even their young children — but also has documented some of the most personal and challenging stories.

In his talk at the University College Dublin, Ireland, he demonstrates the approach he uses to begin a conversation that most often leads to a successful encounter. (Link to video) Bottom line: be small and unthreatening, show them your work, don't ask for too much at first, and be willing to listen.

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Richard Johnson's article for the Washington Post, "Drawing the Invisible"
All images ©Richard Johnson and/or the Washington Post
Brandon Stanton's new book Humans of New York: Stories
Previously on GJ:
The Ethics of Sketching People on the Subway
Logger in Supermarket
Tattooed Guy On the Train
Caught Sketching Girls in a Pizza Shop

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Thursday, September 24, 2015

Deja View: Smee in Trouble

Deja View: Smee in Trouble: A photostat of actors as pirates, as they go through the motions of threatening Smee. As the sequence's story goes, they feel the...

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Eye Candy for Today: Aegidius Sadeler rhino [feedly]

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Eye Candy for Today: Aegidius Sadeler rhino
// lines and colors

Fable of the Rhinoceros and Elephants, Aegidius Sadeler

Etching, roughly 3 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches (96x112mm), 1608. In the Rijksmuseum.

Today — I am informed in a tweet from the Rijksmusem — is World Rhino Day. In celebration they point to a selection of rhino images from their collection, from which I focused on this wonderful etching by Aegidius Sadeler.

Not only is the exotic beast made more so by Sadeler's marvelously textural line work, the fairly-tale like elephants and elegantly rendered tree are a bonus.

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alisonsampsonart: Art for the DC/Vertigo Mad Max Inspired... [feedly]

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alisonsampsonart: Art for the DC/Vertigo Mad Max Inspired...
// space in text

alisonsampsonart:

Art for the DC/Vertigo Mad Max Inspired Artists book. I don't think I've put this online in its entirety before. We were originally asked to submit the art with our text on the image, so this is mine. The image was cropped on bottom, left and right edges for the book, so this is the first time anyone has seen the whole thing.

NB This was made before I saw the film, so I was having a guess as to what the tone might be.

I updated my art tumblr. This was one of the things.

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Artist's Studios [feedly]

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Artist's Studios
// Muddy Colors

-By Dan dos Santos

I am endless intrigued by Artist's workspaces. I love seeing what type environment different people find inspiring and what type of layouts they find conducive to their workflow. For years, I've kept a folder on my desktop and dragged photos into it of all the various studios I've come across on the internet.

There is of course no shortage of beautiful, awe inspiring workspaces to drool over online, and I certainly save those too. But this particular collection of pictures is not about the best interior design or interior decoration for me. These shots are of working artist's everyday working spaces. It's where these artists go, day after day, to create the very images that we all know them so well for. The spaces are often meant to be beautiful, but they are always meant to be functional.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. And please feel free to share a link to pics of your own studio in the comments section.