Drifting Embers

I am a very slow and inefficient person in life. It grates on me all the time. It annoyed me enough the other day that I completely analysed my workspace in Photoshop and streamlined it. Remapped a bunch of my tablet's keys. Learned how to auto-hide panels. Figured out where to put my keyboard while I'm painting so I can actually use keyboard hotkeys. Was amazed at how much time it shaved off.

I painted the arm to my art mannequin to try out the shading techniques I learned in the workshop I took last year. I think it took around 20-30 minutes.

I started doing value studies of paintings I like, kind of like this (Sargeant) and this (Giancola). I was mostly concerned with composition and looking at value masses and hard vs. soft/lost edges. Then I decided after every one or two I finish I will throw something together of my own for composition practise. This time was a waterfall.

Still working on anatomy. Tried drawing figures from photographs while thinking in terms of spheres. Drew my husband's back. Had no idea what I was looking at. Except for the arm, I knew the muscles there! Looks like my sketch smeared there though. Hmmph. I think some technical studies of the scapula area are in order.

I chose to study a photograph with a highly unnatural pose and fabric preventing me from discerning the back leg very well mainly because the arm and front leg were situated in a way that I did not have any muscle diagrams that matched. I wanted to try figuring out where they would be located.

When I drew the gesture, I drew the overlaps in the upper arms backwards because I didn't understand how the deltoid insertion moves with the arm. I also noticed one of my previous studies looks like I connected the iliotibial band to the femur instead of the tibia. Lots to learn.