Figure Painting – Ken Crocker Artist

Rutledge Street Bridge

Another plein air on a beautiful summer day. 8 x 10 inches, oil on panel.

About a half-hour quick sketch from an online Croquis Cafe pose by Rhus. I've been reading about photoshop painting techniques and for this I used layers for the background texture and to make adjustments to the skin color. Plus I used the alpha lock feature in Procreate to lighten the color of the original line… Continue reading More iPad Quick Sketch

Pushing Electrons Around

Latest iPad quick sketch. Procreate custom brushes. Thirty minutes. Done after watching a Steve Huston video on shading. Posted with Blogsy

Struggles with ipad quick sketch

A little more than a month of weekly quick sketch sessions plus practice at home has yielded the top sketch, a half-hour one, and bottom, a more typical 5-minute sketch. I'm using a Procreate brush that changes width with speed so I can get a nice fine line if I use quick strokes, but the… Continue reading Struggles with ipad quick sketch

The Plan

Here’s a plan for the typical three-hour quick sketch session: First half-hour—One- and three-minute poses. Follow the example of Michael Hampton’s Figure Drawing: Design and Invention, p. 38, and focus on the placement of landmarks. Second half-hour—Five-minute poses. Start with the same landmarks, but add more volume and contour. … Continue reading The Plan

Return to Watercolor

I'm working in my sketchbook a lot these days—almost no charcoal drawing at all. My dream is to have one place to put everything. All of my quick sketches, practices, study drawings, and paintings in one book. This is a watercolor 1/2-hour pose at Friday's open studio. I brought the scan of the original into… Continue reading Return to Watercolor

Sources

To the left is the original half-hour sketch I used to make the print below that I posted last time: And here's the 1934 Japanese print by Toraji Ishikawa titled “In the Bathroom” that I used for the basic design: The print went really quickly. It only took about 4 hours. Now I'm working… Continue reading Sources

Moleskin Gouache Figure

Putting this figure on two pages is almost ironic, since you could pretty much divide it down the middle vertically and say the right side held together pretty well—nice edge where the right side of her back is in front of her right arm; nice substantial right leg and buttock; decent head angle. This against… Continue reading Moleskin Gouache Figure

Gouache in Chicago

I'm finally back in Chicago on Fridays: 1, 5, 10, and 15 minute sketches in charcoal, and 30 minutes in pencil and gouache. This painting was done in my 5 x 8 inch Moleskine sketchbook, so the lighting is different above and below the fold. I'm looking for larger paper that takes the paint (or… Continue reading Gouache in Chicago

Class at Madison College

I usually take some kind of workshop every summer, and this year I signed up for Chris Gargan's Life Drawing for Illustration class at MATC here in Madison. It runs for three weeks, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. I took the same class 2 years ago and really enjoyed it. So far it's been a… Continue reading Class at Madison College