Movie Stills...II

Tarantino makes some beautiful movies...
Here are some stills from Django Unchained I did last week. I keep using the wrong proportion frame (it's not as wide as it should be, since I'm drawing these pretty small already) so I'm cutting off a bit here and there.

Movie Stills

This week I've been drawing some movie stills. It's an exercise a professor of mine introduced me to in college, and it's a wonderful way to explore bold compositions and value. First up Alice in Wonderland - one of my favorite stories, and a visually rich movie. Definitely one of my favorite themes this year since I'm a big movie fan, and well, there are so many movies & so little time. :)

Curiouser and curiouser!

Dancers

I haven't drawn people in quite a while, so I still have a lot to brush up on when it comes to the human form. Some foolish crazy impulse lead me to start drawing people again in one of the more challenging positions: dancing. What was I thinking? Not only do dancers contort their bodies making it harder to follow their anatomy, they further elongate their bodies by positioning their fingers in what I can only call ridiculous poses. Time and time again, the hands in my drawings started looking like claws.

Needless to say I'm glad this theme is over for now. I did quite a few studies of ballerinas before I illustrated a coloring book, so I know eventually the claw hands become human. Since the ballerina book took an unfortunate art direction turn (more on that in a different post), there will have be more dancers! I've always been in love with Degas' ballerinas, so I may have to take out my pastels and capture some of these elegant creatures in color. I've had enough of the Verithin pencils - too hard to get any contrast.

Hair

Mostly been doing some line studies on Van Gogh's drawings since I always loved his style, so decided to repost this one larger and in grayscale.

A focus on hair

As I was drawing hair this week, I drew two conclusions. One I am still not a fan of big hip beards, which I guess makes me unhip, and second drawing hair gets a bit repetitive, especially when using the same medium. My trusty Tuscan Red pencil is now only 1 in tall, so it is being retired.