Yesterday I woke up at 4 am and didn't want to sleep. It was 45 minutes till my alarm clock would ring so I decided that I would use the time given to me for sketching. I took some old cardboard paper (it has a nice toned and sturdy surface) fountain pen and white chalk. There's a mirror on my drawing table and I was lazy to put clothing on my self so I saw the opportunity to do some anatomical studies on myself.
Mirror gives you analogical interpretation of a depicted object the same way as seeing things from life.You have the same optical experience as you would have being drawing from life figurative sessions. It is a far more better option than working from photos, that could give you false illusion. Mainly it is a shape transition that you have within your subject. Analog mirror gives you far more wider range of edges starting from crisp edges - cast shadow or the edge between foreground and background in some cases, firm edges, soft and lost ones. Photograph has a tendency to flatten down the picture and make things more in focus.
To name all the benefits: If we work from life we have truthful information about edges as I mentioned above, we can see more information in the shadows (photography has a tendency to make shadows more dark a duller, and we see more saturation and chroma in the highlights (photography makes it more whitish)
If you don't have life figure classes in your town (in our city of Zdar nad Sazavou we definitely don't have any) or you don't have time to commute all the hours to get there mirror is a great servant. Your spouse should make a same service if she/he's willing to pose for some time...
I was ready to draw 3 minutes right after I'd woken up. This is really beneficial because it frees you up from decision making - It is just so easy that you can't say no to do that. After 45 minutes I ended up with 3 sketches.
To draw with pen and ink is a great option - you're forced to make decisions that you don't have the option to change. You just don't fuss around. Pen and its linear nature supports your need to describe the form and shape in 3D and forces you to focus on high quality STRUCTURE - Which is one of the two most important pillars of drawing.
With that saying it is not good to forget about GESTURE which should precede STRUCTURE and because the ink isn't erasable your gestural lines will show trough from your drawing. This could serve you down the road after several years even, when you can check how you'd been thinking about gesture and what has improved or what hasn't. It is like a mirror in to you past. Believe me that this scratchy, charming sketches will be well cherished after many years!
Here's my sketches:
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Pete
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