Bystander

My friend Ryu has been photographing people on the street whose fits he likes, and one of them was a guy with an oversize fit whose shadows looked really nice, so I looked at it, studies it, put it away and tried to draw it from memory.

Spreadshow

I think I'm perusing too much manspread porn, but this pose is DEFinitely locked in my head.

Drawing Men Online

I liked the preview of the male model so I took a chance on drawing via Zoom session today, and I was as disappointed as I have been in the past. While the model was good, his connection was not and it was too blurry to get any real details. Coupled with the fact that one member kept adding unwanted (in my book) commentary, and the facilitator kept chitchatting and translating (the model Antonio is based in Bogota and had limited English), it was distracting and unproductive for me. Ironically, it was because I gave up that my best sketch of the session occurred, and I just did a very quick, unstudied 5 minute digital sketch during a long 20 min pose.  This won't go on Instagram though.

Sore neck

The problem with retooling a pose with an arm change is that the body stance might not work. To wit: I started this pose with the man placing both his hands on his back, but shifted one arm up in hopes of making a better sketch, but I drew it like he's favoring his stiff neck. Back to the drawing board!

Berluti Hair 2

But the shirt is something else, possible Zegna. It wasn't a fave enough to download and make note of (lord knows I have enough big shirts) but it was worth sketching since I remembered it.

Edit: just confirmed, it's actually Dolce & Gabanna SS24

Berluti Hair

Well, all Fashion hair since a few years and counting. The bilevel cut has been prominent in many of my fashion sketches and other drawings for years now, and it was present again in the Milan and Paris menswear shows, which are up and running this week.  This was a cut I saw on the Berluti collection images (on another model whom I didn't choose to emulate facially, Tim Dibble)And yet I'm more interested in the models than the clothing nowadays, perhaps because as I get older I feel more irrelevant. Plus, I can no longer afford the clothing so I feel even MORE irrelevant! Ah well, might as well draw it then.

Under The Influence of Oleta, 4

There's something about this face that makes me want to wrap a narrative around it. There was talk of tattoos but I also wanted to see if I could give him more to do than just stand around, emoting. So, a rubber band game? Hmm, not sure yet.

Classically Andrean 2

I decided to post him for Instagram so I prepped and got him ready. But being that it was a digital illo, I couldn't help but pop in background color field, so now it looks more digital than my attempt at a hand-drawn life drawing piece. Oh well, me style is me style!

Under The Influence of Oleta 3

I'm definitely loving how this face and now body has turned out. Definitely a leaner male model body type, as the pose is reminiscent of model agency Tomorrow Is Another Day's standard male model pose on their website.

Under The Influence of Oleta 2

I really like how this guy is turning out, but it appears this is a kind of standard Gozum face, as the big eyes, prominent nose and small lips look like other drawings I've done in recent years. It wasn't always this type of face I would get into, but I suppose after I started doing menswear fashion illustration, I definitely internalized the prevailing male model type of the early to mid twenteens, which is definitely this sort. And now that I look at it, I imagine Kurt Wagner of the X-men might look like this if he weren't all blue and furry.

I'm not sure what the drawing should be but I obvi toyed with teh idea of floating ornaments. There might be some tattoos in the offing too...

Under The Influence of Oleta

I was listening to an old Oleta Adams album on Spotify, and the nostalgia and melancholy made me want to do a male model just solemnly looking up at the viewer, and he started looking a bit Egon Schiele-ish as well.

Tiffany Jones Pose

OMG a Facebook poster shared an entire archive of 1960s-70s Tiffany Jones strips with me, and some of the drawings are phenomenal! In particular, this one silhouetted pose of a man sitting on a couch just felt so natural to me, I HOPE artist Pat Touret based it off of a photo because if it was just off the top of her head, then her abilities to create believable body language are off the charts!

Model Crouch

I saw a pic of a male mode crouching in a close cropped photo, and I wondered if it might be a good pose for a nude, but I ended up sketching it based on the clothing (as well as trying to figure out how the back leg would look since it was cropped out in the pic). Enh, doesn't look like this quick sketch needs to go anywhere.

Classically Andrean

There's an Italian model named Andrea who looks like a classical drawing come to life. When people draw him, especially one truly gifted artist on Instagam named @rogner5 , he's like a turn of the century piece. I had him in mind when I drew this not from him but from imagination.

Emerging From A Chair 3, Done

Well, it's done in the sense I tweaked it to post on Instagram, but you never know, haha.

Emerging From A Chair 3

I really like how he looks like a boxer in his corner between bouts. And that he's also in boxers, and his dick is hanging out. I fixed his arms more, especially working on the hands. I had done more detail on his fingers but wasn't getting the right anatomical look, so I thought I should just leave it more amorphous since adding detail was taking away from the inital joy of all the roughness...

Emerging From A Chair 2

Yup, I couldn't help myself and started refining more and more, but I'm still keeping the beneral rough feeling. It reminds me a bit of Bill Sienkiewicz's work, which I ironically don't love as much when it's this raw, so I'm wondering how it would be received. Generally, my drawings that are full of blacks don't get a lot of likes, IIRC

Emerging From A Chair

I was inspired by a series of photos I saw on Fucking Young, with models wearing socks the same color as their chair, so it looked like their feet disappeared. I didn't copy the poses but did get inpired by the idea of allowing everything else to fade back and let the flesh come forward, but while I could still do an otherwise nude pose, I thought it might be fun for this to be more about a peek.

This was so fun to do with this rough brush. It was all about putting the background down and erasing the figure so it emerged from the darkness. It really felt like I was carving out the guy from blackness. Don't know if I'll clean this up or keep it raw, I rather like how raw he is.

Frenchie, 5

I have a feeling this might be the final iteration, as I'm presenting this to teh client for final payment. This is one of several background color options I dreamt up.

Frenchie 4

I'm a bit complacent about doing this sketch, because I know it will turn out okay once I work on it fully. Not sure why I'm not worried as much as when I do other models—perhaps because they don't have to be my usual icons of perfection, I can revel in the idiosyncrasies and end up enjoying the drawing process more (as well as ending up with good drawings).

I fixed the proportions on this piece—it might not look it but I made his head bigger and more correctly scaled to his body. I had stretched out his look in a fashion style, even if it really isn't a fashion sketch.

Back At It

I have an entire folder of reference pics called "Looking Over Shoulder" as I haven't mastered exactly where chins and neck creases go when you have this kind of a dramatic pose. So this was a study in that pose.

Simple Sweater Drawing

I found a reference pic online of a guy wearing a sweater, and I was inspired to this drawing of a guy wearing ONLY a sweater! I wish I could leave well enough alone and post things this simpole, but I would likely futz with it until every detail is to my liking, minimalism notwithstanding.

Frenchie, 3

Continuing the progress on my commission!

Weller's The Best Thing, (Re)Done

I noticed a slight imbalance on my drawing, and realized I had to fix the arms, which weren't going into the pockets at the same level. There was no reason that that should happen in this pose!

Gymmie

There's this hot Italian-looking guy at the gym whom I couldn't stop staring at and I hope I wasn't too obvious—his body was super fit, and he was making all sorts of poses that I just wanted to draw so badly because sudden;y I could see very clearly how muscles change in particular poses! These are a few I could remember—his arms were so well defined that they were my initial focus. WIP

Frenchie, 2

Started work on my commission, and I don't want to jinx it but I think its proceeding easily enough! Started by working on his likeness.

Race Bannon 3

In my search for things to post on IG recently, I ran across my old Race Bannon sketch and thought I should revisit. I headed for his face first and foremost, as what was okay before now seemed in need of tweaking.

Mistaken Identification, Done

I decided to just adjust the sketch and prep it for posting on to Instagram.

Weller's The Best Thing, Done

I decided to post it to my Facebook group, all ideas of changing his clothing to something more distinctive abandoned.

Leap of Fashion

I was resisting going outside all day today but I finally did for a moment to wander around and get a cream puff (I had a craving). I'm glad I did because I got an image in my head that could be the start of a new illustration series. The one in my head looked more Gruau, but this pseudo-pottery painting (it reminds me of artwork on Greek pottery) is cute already for an initial stab at bringing the idea to pixel.