Gordon In Motion.

This week involved drawing Gordon using the traditional media of pencil and paper. We drew him in three different key areas; the first being perspective, the second being motion and the third being a combination of both perspective and shadow.

Perspective

This focused as a starting point on perspective drawing for many of us as a refresher course for the rest. We all started by drawing a straight horizon line and placed a dot in the centre to function as our vanishing point. After this, i drew a selection of lines from this vanishing point to the rough corners of the paper. I was forced to use a ruler for this as the lines i draw else wise are either far too rough or too feathery. After drawing the rough shapes of a street, Gordon posed for us in a rather obscure angle. I attempted to draw him leaning against the right wall but due to the lack of shadow, he looks as if he's floating. After drawing the rough outline, we were told to draw him, to scale, roughly half way back.

This simply required me to draw lines from each of his defining portions to the vanishing line. Using these lines and the distance between the wall of the right hand side, i was able to draw him about 90% correctly scale and proportion wise. As an added challenge, we were then told to Draw him standing upright as he posed for us almost at the vanishing line. As the pose was different, this seemed extremely difficult so i used the reference line from his feet to create a rough basis of his position and utilised the line for his head as the new shoulder position. The mini Gordon has very little detail but i believe it did not go too badly, especially with the limited time available.

 Motion

The concept behind these drawings was to draw Gordon extremely quickly, within a couple of minutes, several times, in different poses next to each other to show the wide array of movements.
For the first image, Gordon for some strange reason grabbed a pair of nun chucks which was both amusing and terrifying. We had two full cycles to draw but due to the time restriction and my general incompetence when it comes to drawing an image that will physically fit on the page, i ended up drawing an extremely short, disfigured version as seen below.

I did not do a very good job of this first attempt with each proportion being entirely out, just look at those stubby little legs. Using what i had learnt from this first attempt, i had a much clearer idea of what i was expected to do for the second cycle. For the second cycle, i took more time to draw the refined shapes/ boxes that practically made up Gordon and allowed the sketches to overlap ever-so-slightly for a more flowing array of movements. Beyond the slight confusion of Gordon holding up two fairly large blades, i believe this helped me greater understand how the body twists and turns in a wide selection of poses that generally looked unnatural when i attempted to draw them previously.

 As you can see from the images, what looked like an intimidating man holding knives, turned in to a few sketches of him twirling round and round.

Perspective and Shadow

This was the final and longest drawing for the afternoon, taking roughly 30 to 40 minutes in total. Gordon was posed on a easel to the right hand side of the room with his face then being projected across the wall to the left. This was fairly daunting as i was fairly unsure of where to start so i just drew the basic boxes that made up Gordon and then the large square to the left which represented the projection of his face. I spent the vast majority of the time allocated just trying to draw the proportions in the projection as the shapes were far more simple and easy to manage.

Once this was done, i added a small amount of shadow around his fingers and then began adding more defined features and proportions to the real Gordon. I spent too long drawing these features, meaning that i ran extremely short on time, forcing me to rush some basic shading on both Gordon and the corners of the projection in an attempt to give some depth, making it look rather messy. In the future, i am going to try to push fine details to the side until the entire image is roughly drawn in hopes of improving my time management.  

 Yes, i know this image is upsidown, Blogger is simply having a fit at the moment, alongside my desktop so i cannot physically change it at this moment in time, i will alter it the next update though. (Officially, that will probably be the -Thursday Night, after life drawing-.)