December 1st Update: even more figure drawings added. Click here to go to page two!
When I first moved to LA, fifteen or so years ago____ actually I guess it's been more like sixteen years now, I wanted to find two things; a good burrito, and a convenient figure drawing session. It took about five years for me to find a burrito that could compare to the ones I'd been able to get in san francisco, and nothing really does come too close. It took me until this past year however, to find a good figure drawing session. I would probably have not found it yet, were it not for my friend aliza, who heard from one of the parents of one of her 3rd grade students, that there was figure drawing on tuesday nights from 7-9:30 at the ywca. Knowing that I would be interested, she mentioned it to me, and I've been attending fairly consistently ever since. Most weeks I go with my friend tim, which is nice both to have his companionship, and also the convenience of his ride, because I still haven't worked out how to carry a big drawing board on my bike. When we first began going, I was drawing on 18x12" paper and I did put a small board in my bike basket and ride over to the Y at 14th and pico in santa monica a few times, but after awhile, I realized that the larger format paper was working better for what I was doing, so I've switched over exclusively to 18x24" sheets. I've been drawing with crayola crayons, usually using the colors found in the 24 crayon box, but I do have a 64 color box I might begin using sometime soon. I don't know if it will make too much of a difference, it will probably be fun though. I like drawing with crayons, I started doing it a few years ago when I was teaching the kids ay G of A and found that crayons are a wonderfully inexpensive source of color (the most color for your money, you know)... I don't know how archivally colorfast they are, but whatever, they're fun.
The downside of course is that 18x24" paper doesn't fit on my scanner glass and so the process to scan the separate sections of each drawing and then piece them all back together, is very labor intensive. I did that for the 1997-98 drawings and also the huck finn and tom sawyer illustrations, and have tried ever since, to only draw on small paper to save the effort. but now I've realized that I can just take photos with my digital camera and although the quality of the image is not as good as if it were scanned, it's definitely good enough for the web and it's tremendously easier. So, it's exciting to me to be able to display some figure drawings here. I hope you enjoy them.
