Friday, December 6, 2013

Drawing of an Old Era

 Rolling up my sleeves and using a few personal obsessions to start chipping my through a personal fear.

The obsessions: a love of early 20'th century illustration. More specifically the racy kind of tricolor proto pin ups that would appear in magazines like "La Vie Parisienne" or "Le Sourire" during the late 1910's-early 1920's, and of course all things rococo, (something those illustrators were pretty obsessed with as well, vive la panniers! ).

The fear: Drawing again after not having drawn anything of any scope in a good few years.

See I have a background in fine art. Got my degree in it, been studying it most of my life. But as drawing became a smaller part of my job, I fell into a lapse. Then after few years, became almost deathly afraid of what I would see on the page when I finally put a pencil to it again.

This past week though like I say, I finally plucked up the nerve and the pencils to see just how much rust was sticking up my drawing gears, and I started drawing up some stylized pin ups to get back into figure drawing, and something I love.

(Nerd note:) The backgrounds were loosely based on 18th century pleasure gardens  like Vauxhall and Ranelagh, and the names from breeds of roses.




So obviously the rust is showing, but it wasn't quite the cack handed scrawl II was expecting. things are already starting to free up within just these three. The lines flowing better and becoming more elastic, and things started to become more comfortable. There is hope after all!

Next demon to hopefully be banished by frothy frolicking figures I guess will be painting. The biggest "sucking at stuff I used to rock at" specter of all...
 

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