"How does a bear sit?"

"Like a fat kid."

The finals weeks of a semester are always hectic, but I can't remember being so tired by the end like I was yesterday.  Out of the chaos of the last two weeks came a strange little thing I'm currently calling my Finals Mascot. I had planned my final drawing for Head Hands and Feet to be a funny nod to the "Head Hands and Bears" joke our class had early in the semester.  This is what it became:

The face, hands, and feet are all mine, just exaggerated.

After lightly outlining everything to make sure I got what I wanted on the page, I started roughing in the values of the face.  That's when I pretty much lost control of the outcome. I didn't have the eyes or the eyebrows drawn in, so when I sat back to make sure I had the basic values I wanted down, I had that face staring at me. Unnerved, I decided to try to ignore it and work on the rest of the body. The reference photo I'd pieced together wasn't great so I tried to draw my own hands from life while making them look fatter.  About half way through I considered leaving it and starting a new drawing.  I decided to keep working at it mostly because it made me laugh, but partly because I really didn't want to start another drawing.  It was definitely worth that brief moment of silence when I put it up for critique followed by variations of "That's really, really creepy."

So much for "A face only a mother could love."

In-Class Paintings

I still don't have coffee... slacker!
Painted from life in my Alla Prima Class this week.  Got the go-ahead to try the rub-out method so I did a little bit.

Didn't really use it too much on the first day, but I was working with a crappy sheet of paper towel.

It's pretty hard to tell since my paint application is so thin, but many of the lighter values are the subtracted areas.  I remembered to bring a cloth with my this time so it went a lot more smoothly.

I had trouble capturing the likeness of the first model.  I think it's because I haven't drawn his face before.  The second model has always been challenging to me, but I think this is my first successful attempt getting her face fairly similar. Overall it was fun, and I'll be playing around with this method some more.