Leaning In 3

I visited my friend Nicholas and asked him to pose for the hands, which I wanted to be more natural and authentic, so I retooled the arms and hands. I think this might be my next IG post, as it's full frontal but hidden.

Also Leaning 3

I'm filled with self doubt—do I post an innocuous ass shot in Instagram, knowing that other posters are getting away with both hidden and overt full frontals? Or do I play it safe? And how safe is safe? I feel like a butt shot isn't even safe nowadays.

I do like this technique of taking out the outlines. It feels like an old school poster from the 30s.

NeoMontana

I'm trying to find a new style for my womenswear sketchs, as I feel like if I default to an Antonio variation, it just looks like that I get Gruau already too much on anything I do, and maybe I just don't see it. This feels like me doing my own version of what other artists are doing, except with the precision of this Palette Knife Bonus Opacity, there might be an t=nteresting texture-versus-precision thing happening that I can work with. Her face looks very old though, kinda like Emily Blunt or Erin O'Connor, without makeup, lol. A nice older woman, but perhaps too old in general for my fashion students.

It's called NeoMontana because I thought I was going to draw a Claude Montana inspired design, but I lost interest in the garment when i discovered the brushe effects haha

Open Studio: Sophie

My Friday morning class had an open studio and I tried to teach a new watercolor technique but no one was interested. So I just drew along with them. Funny how looking at these pics I'm less impressed with the work than when i finished them. I have a long way to go to liking my quickly-made natural media drawings for fashion again. Or, you know, at all.

Hide-A-Wee

I'd always heard of the term Bide-A-Wee, which I think means stay for a wee little bit more or somesuch, but with Instagram cracking down on male nude posts of late, I feel like I need to hide any penises/weewees in my drawings, and this is an example of what I might do. But not ready for publication yet definitely!

Also Leaning 2

I got some reference photos to try and suss out the lighting on this piece, but I can't seem to finalize it to my liking. I'm strangely vacillating between being slavish to reality or stylizing it more, which the face certain falls into.

Akera Again

A scheduling mishap had me scrambling to book another model instead of Nubia, whom I thought was available but turned out not to be despite her not saying so. So I brought in Akera again, and she is really pretty and fits the clothing, but is just a bit too stiff. Ah well.

Images to come

Irene Again

I don't like how my portrait of Irene turned out, so I am secretly making another one based on the photos I took of her during the session. This is the start.

Big Pants

I subscribe to just a few marketing emails nowadays, and one of them Constant Practice, sent a shot of some vintage pages on one of their founder models, and I noted how great the drape of the fabric looked, so I decided to first draw it then create a front view of it, extrapolated from the photographed back view. I thought it turned out great!

Irene

I had a commission to do a live sketch of mother-to-be Irene, and we finally scheduled it for today after a series of snaffus. Irene turned out to be lovely but there was something about being in the setting of a small apartment full of people who were all renovating the space, and what started out as a 30 minute sketch stretched to 1.5 hours! I felt bad for her, but they all seemed to agree it looked like her.

Akera

Worked with a new model today. Akera is very young and just started doing this, and as a result is a little stiff for fashion modelling. But she has a beautiful face. Hopefully in time she'll get more comfortable with the gig.

Graphic Fashion Illustration Style

I posted an old, simplified sketch on my work IG today, and it was getting a lot of good feedback. I thought maybe I can do a women's version of my 'Etruscan Vase' style.

Porn Recline

The usual "Scene from a Crotch" pose crept back into my subconscious today and I decided to do a quick, simplified sketch to see if it. I almost feel like it doesn't need to be finished any further...

Sophie in Watercolor

Had my 109 Model Drawing class today, and model Sophie, who was really not feeling well. Despite that I got some good drawings out of her.

Nicholas and his St.Andrew's Cross, Done

I did all the other versions but for posting on IG I decided on a porthole-grommeted pair of bikini trunks...which I really like! I'm sure something similar has been designed before, but perhaps not in the same location for the cutout holes.

Nicholas and his St.Andrew's Cross 4

I'm refining the highlights even more. I'm really pleased with how this is turning out but still trepidatious about it being censored on IG.

Nicholas and his St.Andrew's Cross 3

I've gotten a groove on this one now that I've gotten Nicholas' likeness in the face...and the body! He's not as muscular as he was last year, but I like the leanness of his arms in this pose. There's something really natural about it. But that ass tho'! But since IG is being temperamental, I'm making outfits to hide the fact that hes naked.

Nubia In Watercolor

I did a full class in watercolor for my second model drawing class, and it was interesting albeit less successful. But I think the tehcnique held up, just wondering more about how the students took to it.

Nicholas and his St.Andrew's Cross 2

I realized I have been remiss in finalizing many of the sketches for this S&M story, so I pulled out this rough from last January and started doing better finishes, especially since I recently got a walking reference (albeit for another project idea) from Nick that I could use as a reference for this. Perfectly, I might add, so here's to making it more him.

Also Leaning

When I did the sketch of (possibly) Nicholas leaning on a pole frontal, I wondered about a side view and quickly did this sketch.

Leather & Watercolor

Today's model drawing class was a bit of an experiment. I kinda jus went with my own techniques, and had to rethink how it might go forard for these kids. But I also thought, shouldn't I be sharing my particular way of doing things too? 

I say this because I asked the kids to map out the shadows in watercolor lightly, since there's only so much time in a model drawing session. It's different from a normal watercolor technique but with 8 minutes average, I wanted thm to get a sense of the volumes right away, sorta like a wash grisaille.

The leather, I just showed them in pencil. As once student put it, so do it like comics? Yup!

Nubia's Leather, Digital

I wondered if I should do a digital version of Nubia's model drawing outfit. So I did. It's fine, but not inspiring me to use it for tomorrow's class (which is a week behind my other class because of a snow day last winter).

Walk Together

I was watching a reel on Facebook earlier today and at one point, a photo of  Marc Jacobs and Sofia Coppola—the subjects of the reel—walking together popped up then disappeared. I was struck by how natural and relaxed they looked together. So I did this gesture sketch from the memory of that brief glimpse, albeit with two guys since I was thinking of it as a menswear fashion illustration.

I often think, "oh, I'll flesh this out more later and fix the errors and make it a fully-rendered drawing", but sometimes it's so much better to just leave the immediate, raw line just as it is, without fully-rendered anatomy and garments to take away from the gesture.

Leaning In 2

He's looking more and more like my friend/model Nicholas, I guess I've gotten his features in as symbols now in my mind. Obvi there are elements that are not him, but the brows and lips definitely feel like him.

Nubia's Leathers

One of my regular models, Nubia, has such an extensive leather wardrobe that I barely need to bring anything in, she's so equipped! So today we talked about rendering leather and these are some of the work I did to demonstrate.

Leaning In

I had a photo idea for a friend of mine to model for a nude that's perfectly frontal yet without revealing him fully. I wonder now if this is better as a sketch or as an actual photo?

Frontal Recliner 2

I adjusted the pose and started experimenting with the colors, but I'm still not into this. It might just be a study I went through to get somewhere else...

Rebecca

Both my regular models were unavailable for  my Tuesday class, so I ended up booking an older model, who is also a former dancer. Rebecca could actually hold a pose well! I got the feeling she was an old East Village bar habitue—she had that classic old New Yorker feel to her.

I forgot to take photos of my sketches of her so I'll upload them later.

edit 04.11.26: sketches added and blog entry updated!

Frontal Recliner

Taking off a bit on a photo a fave model sent me online, I thought, is he trying to get me to draw him in this rather  naughty pose? I mean, I'm all for it, but this particular model was always so careful about his...exposure.

East Bunneh

This was actually a makeup drawing as I had neglected to do one during teh actual day. But it was a nice two continuous lines drawing (the second line was the eye)

StonerHustle Also

This one is the more racy, although I have quite a few racy poses from him that  can draw. But this is the beginnings of it.

Stoner Hustle, Done

Here he is in all his flouro-orange glory.

Couch Layout

I also had another idea involving multiple men seated on a couch, one of them being naked. It'd be fun to draw all these models and then one naked guy. I'm already imagining him to be my usual model Nicholas.

Fashion Tableau

I had a push-and-pull long layout idea with multiple models at different distances from the camera, and this was the rough layout.

Foppy

There's a neo Victorian-slash-preppy vibe I'm getting from men's fshion these days, so this little fop is invoking that vibe.

Stone Hustle 5

Making incremental but significant adjustments to this guy. I can't wait until I get a groove where I can't stop drawing. it's been a lot of start-n-stop with this one for reasons I don't understand!

Eyes

I thought it would be fun to do a shared eye between two different faces.

Notebook Cover

I was inspired by the cover of a notebook being sold by a very chic online desktop goods seller. It's a seriously well-curated store, and this cover was decorative abstract art. i got inspired by the colors and technique, so I thought I'd see what I could make of it, in my oeuvre, of course.

Sheerly Sophie

Last day before Spring break, and my Friday model drawing class is learning to do sheer fabrics and lace. Model Sophie was on today, which was good because I myself (as well as the class) seemed ready for Spring break already. Anyhow, these were teh demos I did. Can't say the facs are great, but I think I got the lesson across in rendering.

Courreges Beauty

I was looking online a few days ago, at a website that we at FIT have access to. And when I examined the latest pics from Nicolas di Felice's most recent Courreges show, I didn't realize wit would end up to be his last one. I started this sketch then, but touched it up a bit (even if it's intentionally raw and unpolished).

Colby, Done

I changed the background to my couch, and leaned into the side lighting a bit. I also did a lot of refinements on teh face and body, especially the abs. Although after publishing on Instagram i realized I should have cleaned up the arm on the right a bit more as the highlights are a bit too defined. Oh well!

Colby 5

So my issue now is, I don't know how to resolve the background. I know I need to have one, but the seat he was on and the actual situation wasn't as attractive a set up as I would like. So I'm trying to fake something in a looser fashion, but am not completely satisfied yet.