This weekend I was trying to come up with something to distract myself with, so I pulled out my giant 18"x24" sketch pad and decided to go to town. At first I just wanted to draw this dress I had floating around in my head after seeing this spectacularly gorgeous and bizarre gown on "Make Me a Supermodel" (so help me, stupid television has been good to me lately, especially when it involves pretty clothes.) I sketched that and I was really proud of myself. I'm still in the process of coloring it in, but alas, I can't show it to you because the sketch is waaay too big for my ickle scanner.
I was working on coloring it in some more today, but I got kind of tired of that, so I decided to work on something that I've been putting off for a while. I wanted to design a logo for my Dercum's Disease support group. I was going to rework a design I did a long time ago of a curvy, single-line outline of a woman. It was all very stylized and cute, but as I started to sketch, the outline was just a bit too accurate. But I decided to go with it, so I kept adding more and more detail, until it got to the point that I was really, really pleased with it.
It was at that point that I decided to go all the way. I realized that I'd never done any kind of real form studies, so since the shape of the body looked so natural, I figured it was a shame to try and cover it up with clothing. I decided to do a nude female form study. By the time I got the torso done, I was so afraid to mess up the arms and legs that I just decided to not draw them at all. I started working on drawing curly hair - also something I'd never done successfully - and once I got that done, I was so overjoyed with it I was afraid to do anything to the face. I've always had an incredibly hard time drawing faces and at this point I loved it all so much I really, really didn't want to mess it up. I kept staring at it, trying to imagine what the face would look like, but it kept coming up wonky, so I decided to leave it.
And what I was left with made me feel really proud. For never having done a nude form study before, for not having a model to base the sketch off of, and for only spending about half an hour sketching, I was incredibly proud of the result. And thankfully, it was just small enough to scan! So I'd love for you all to take a look and let me know what you think.
A bit of warning - the sketch is of a nude woman, because hey, that's what a form study is. The idea being that if you can recreate the complexity of the human body, you can then draw anything relating to people. But since apparently I wasn't clear enough about that, I thought I'd add this little tidbit of information.
Please feel free to take a look and publish your thoughts, comments, and constructive criticism in the comments. Since it's my first form study I know I have a lot to learn and I can only do that if I get honest feedback. One last note - make sure you look at it full size as well in order to look at the details. :) Thanks!
