Nice Guy 3

A little detail at a time, especially since my day job is taking all my time and creative energy these days.

Black and Blue Violet 2

My first response to drawing a beautiful black portrait is to do a contrast of white clothing, but I'm hoping to do a better color story. This is the first attempt, with some Zegna lewks...

Nice Guy 2

 I started over with a new pose as I think I really respond to this one but I was avoiding it for some reason.

Black and Blue Violet

With fashion favoring beautiful dark skin tones, I wanted to find a visual language for how I would paint indigo-black skin. This was an experiment, creating a face from my own imagination, but referring to two different images for lighting while creating my own violet hued skin tones. I'm quite happy with it so far, as it;s turning into one of those paintings that jusst emerged on its own. Of course now I'm wary that I don't fuck it all up, ya know?

Projecting 2

My computer was hanging so much in the past two weeks because of all the huge files I was woeking on for my freelance gig, that I would grab the sheets of paper lying around and doodle on them. Since they already had my previous Princess Projectra redesign attempts, I just made more. I forget how much I like designing comics costumes.

Swashy & Pink 5

 

Thought I'd try another color story, and I like this one but might just publish them all to Instagram. I do like the iimmediacy of that brush stroke, but not all the details are perfect, but I kinda like them that way.

Swashy & Pink 4

Now I start to nickel-and-dime the details on his face. I like how he looks but I also feel like it might be a dated face. Trying a few subtle changes...

Swashy & Pink 3

As much as it's one of my favorite colors, I felt like the fuchsia was too strong and needed toning down to focus on the features, so pink is now peach. He's getting a bit 90s looking, though. Not that that's a bad thing.

Swashy & Pink 2

I adjusted the face on the guy yesterday, and I'm wondering whether to just follow the swash or draw beyond it? I kinda like the rawness of it all.

Swashy & Pink

Still with the same Ruffin Brush, I decided to doodle a background swathe of color and fill in a figure over it. You know, this has potential.

Slouchy Pose 2

 Tried to rescue yesterday's drawing. Nope, not happening with this one.

Slouchy Pose

This was a quick doodle with me thinking I can create a casual, hands-in-pocket-while-the-jacket-drapes-nicely-all-aroound, but kinda failing miserably.

Nice Guy

Got to meet and film a lovely model from Denmakr, Nagai, whom I discovered online and chatted up in Instagram. He had so many good poses that I delayed starting—couldn't decide! I still might opt for a different pose, but this is my first attempt.

Alienated, Done

Tweaks and backgrounds. I realized I had changed the overall lighting on this guy because of how i rendered the body, so I changed the lighting on his face, then added some framing strokes. I think he's done! I am intentionally leaving some things off kilter, and uneven, because I think they have more energy than the more corrected versions I made. Again, the benefits of multiple digital files and layers—you can explore but go back to a version you prefer!

Alienated 4

The problem with having multiple versions is deciding between them. I often draw the immediacy out of my strokes when I keep adjusting an image, so I'll sometimes go back to an older version. It's good that I can, but also bad because, indecision!!

Ernesto Profile 2021 2

Slowly trying to resolcve this. He wants another version of his comic-book style one I did in 2008, but not sure I want to go there. Well, we'll see, likeness first.

Professor Barnette's iPad Assignment 2 (Done?)

 I'm really not as well versed in the iPad! My finishes are terrible.

Fuchsia Face 2

 He's shaping up to be interesting, but I still need to resolve a lot of the features. A lot isn't right yet.

Alienated 3

I realized after posting yesterday's drawing that I had done multiple versions of this piece, but didn't create yesterday's version from teh latest one. I had modified the body of the man to be much slighter, perhaps reflective of my own weight loss at the time. But I feel like I'm responding more to the fuller form before I whittled it down, but I'm going to continue to adjust this version to it's skinnier premise and see if I like it better.

Alienated 2

I realized I never finished this sketch either, but I didn't have much time yesterday so I retooled his thighs and hands, mostly.

Angles 5

 

I dunno, I'm still not feeling this sketch enough to make enough changes to finish it. This time I worked on both figures's faces.

Fuchsia Face

 Just another doodle using my favorite Ruffin brush!

Pocket Procreate-ion

Because of yesterday's drawing, I wondered about my former use of the Procreate iPhone app, and decided to do a quick sketch on it. I used to use it a lot won the subway trains, but I haven't taken the trains in this past year because of the pandemic!

Professor Barnette's iPad Assignment

 

I've had my iPad for over two years and I barely use oit for sketching!  Same with my fashion illo friends Renaldo and Sue, so we devised an assignment to force us to use it. All three of us have to sketch a pose and outfit of Renaldo's choosing, ONLY using our iPads and Procreate app. This is mine, still in need of final finishing.

Angles 4

 Been ferretting around in my folders for old work to show for a talk I'm having this Sunday, and found some pieces I thought to try and continue. This was a reworking of this face (yet again).

Ernesto Profile 2021

My friend Ernesto wanted me to send him a new print of an old 2008 drawing I did of him, which I can't bear to look at since it's not as good as I know my portraiture to be today—so much of a difference in 12 years! And yet, to think about it, 12 years IS a long time, and one would hope I'd have progressed. Anyhow, this si the beginning rough for the new portrait.

Max R (Re)Done

I kept it a day before posting, and true enough, I found stuff I wanted to retool, very specifically minor tweaks that might not be noticeable, but for me made the drawing more faithful to the model and source image that I took.

Max R. Done(?)

Wow, I really plowed through this drawing and did it in a few hours. Now I'm letting it sit so I can come back to it before I decide to post it on Instagram. I think it turned out well although I'm generally not one to do this kind of highlighting on a naked male body because I feel like it can come off as cheesy "Gay Art,", but hopefully my techniques feel a bit more legit, although I don't really have a vocabulary for this kind of highlighting (yet).

Max R.

I contacted and videotaped a couple of new models in the past two weeks, so at the back of my mind I had to 'perform' and produce work really soon. My first one was a Spanish model in Malaga, and he was so generous with his time and poses, I wanted to make sure I did a good job on his piece. This is the initial rough of the video still that I took of him that selected from my posing session. This is actually a makeup sketch since I didn't make one on the actual day of this post.

Seventies Sacai

 I realize that the hairstyles on the runway remind me of how Japanese anime hairstyles used to be in the 70s cartoons. They looked really outlandish back then but now I see why they were drawn that way.

New fall 13, In Stride 8

 Adjusting the face a bit more, and the hat. The photo reference is pretty blown out, so there aren't many details.