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An Exploration In Using Stiffer Brushes With Acrylics

A few weeks ago I set out to explore the use of stiffer brushes in acrylic painting after reading this post on the Crimson Daggers art forum.

I started by purchasing these bristle brushes from Cassart which I am very pleased with.

I found that the stiffer bushes allowed me to work with thicker paint and use less layers of paint than the glazing method I tried previously.  Also I could use the technique of dry brushing which worked really well for blending soft edges.

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Forging A Figure Drawing Process

Over the past few weeks, I’ve gone back to figure drawing but this time I really wanted to come up with a solid process. A process that would allow me to invent figures from my imagination.

To do this I went back and re-studied a number of my favourite resources:

  1. Proko’s YouTube channel.
  2. Michael Hampton’s book “Figure Drawing: Design and Invention (affiliate link)“.
  3. Matt Kohr’s Ctrl+Paint website.

The process I’ve settled upon so far is as follows:

  1. Gesture. I like Matt Kohr’s approach to this best as his gestures most closely match the human skeleton. To my mind starting with the human skeleton is the most logical way to build up a human figure.Figure Drawing Gestures
  2. Landmarks. Both Proko and Michael Hampton teach this step and I have found it very useful in finding the correct orientations for the various body parts. Figure Drawing Landmarks
  3. Volume. Again Proko and Hampton agree on this step and it really helps me to construct the various body parts with the correct perspective. Figure Drawing Landmarks
  4. Details. This step needs more work on my part. I intend to study more from Hampton here, I really like his method for constructing musculature from simple forms. I also intend to re-visit Proko for this as well, his videos on anatomy are probably the best I resources I have found to date on this subject. Figure Drawing Details

It’s not quite my perfect figure drawing process yet but it will do for now and I will tweak it as time goes by and I learn more stuff.

Any comments on this approach would be most welcome, I’m always open to critique – don’t be shy :).

 

 

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Under the Mountain and Other Stories

About 2 years ago, my author friend John Fulton asked me collaborate with him on a self publishing project.  He had written 8 short stories and needed some illustrations to go with them.

Now at the time John had just won an award for his writing and had had a book (The Wreck of the Argyll) published off the back of it so I was thrilled and honoured.

Having never tackled an art project of this magnitude before, I promised myself that I would treat this as a proper business venture, and be a real professional about it.  Of course I promptly fell prey to a massive spell of procrastination.  It took me around 8 months to complete the first illustration!

This is one of the reasons why, as I sit here typing this, I still can’t quite believe that our book is available for sale on Amazon at this very minute!

This project has been a fantastic learning experience for me, teaching me the importance of a defined workflow and of breaking work down into smaller and smaller chunks in order to beat procrastination.

I want to publicly thank John for his patience and hard work in writing the stories in the first place and in handling the Amazon side of things.  John, it’s been an absolute pleasure mate!

If anyone buys this book – thank you and I hope you enjoy John’s stories as much as I did.  There are some brilliant twists and turns.

Where to buy:

Amazon UK (Also on Kindle)

Amazon US (Also on Kindle)