Lanna Portrait Drawing

Hi everyone. Thank you for stopping by. Today's sketch is from my portrait drawing class at Scottsdale Artist School with Bill Lundquist. I missed last week's session on account of my recent illness. Last week was supposed to be my first session in the class with a live model, but with me missing class last night ended up being my first one. While I've drawn from a live model many times before, I've never drawn a live model with charcoal.

Bill started the class with a 40 minute demo, after which I began drawing this portrait. This sketch is about 2.5 hours of effort. In a sketch like this I'm aiming to make as complete a statement as I can (because after all, drawing is about communicating an idea,) but the time really seems to fly when I'm concentrating as intently as I do when drawing. Often times during a drawing I will talk to myself. Bystanders might think I'm mentally unstable or the obsessive artist type, but in reality it keeps me focused on solving visual problems. The dialogue during a drawing might go something like this:

Ok, I want to focus on the left eye first. I'll start with the pupil and upper eyelid shape. They connect there...ok, there's a dark underneath with two thin lines. That shadow shape of the eye socket connects to the eyebrow... is the right eye higher or lower than the left... higher, ok. How far is it from the left eye...let me measure that... it's a little over one eye length away. Does her right eyelashes look like a thick or a thin line? Does it go thick to thin?

People think drawing is about being loose and just scribbling, but it really is a deliberate effort of focus. It isn't mentally taxing the way writing a dissertation might be, but it is highly engaging work on multiple levels. What I just described above is simply the effort required to record the visual facts of the model. The true aim of art is creating a statement or recording a impression that a camera cannot. For example, in this drawing, I tried to capture her intense eyes and the wonderfully rich dark of her hair. I was trying to emphasize what time hasn't taken away, as the wrinkles reveal she isn't in the prime of her life. A camera cannot selectively emphasize or study a person like an artist can.

Lanna was a wonderful model from the Ukraine. She had a rather sweet disposition, but I didn't pick up on that until talking with her at the end of the session. From the beginning on she struck me as a rather serious person and I think you see that in this drawing. I absolutely loved Bill's drawing of her as even her eyes were smiling. She seemed like a gentle angel in his drawing. She's modeled for him extensively, so I think he knew that side of her better than I did.

Bill has been such an excellent instructor for me that I've decided to take another class he has in January called "The Really Useful Drawing Class." He and I can have wonderfully insightful discussion about my drawing. He helps me to correct proportions and see the true visual impression my eyes are receiving. The challenge in drawing accurately is drawing what you really see, not what you think you see. Bill has been instrumental in helping me to do that and I want to continue studying with him. This class has been one of the highlights of my whole life up to this point and I want to keep this feeling going. I just love to draw.

Butterfly Stool

Today's sketch a day is the Butterfly stool by Sori Yanagi. He recently passed away earlier this year. You may read a obituary about him by Jasper Morrison here :
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/18378/sori-yanagi-obituary-by-jasper-morrison.html

courtesy of designboom.

I first got to see this product in person at the MOMA over the summer in NYC. I was instantly struck by it's delicate, organic shape and the simple nature of it. To me it exemplifies what I so deeply admire about East Asian art and culture, particularly Japan's.
It has a wonderfully considered and poetic nature about it. It's simple, but also intriguing at the same time. It's modern, but also timeless. I visited Japan in 2007, when I got to see first hand how deeply ingrained aesthetic sensibilities are in Japanese culture. That trip fueled what will be a lifelong admiration and respect for Japanese art and design. Walking through the streets of Tokyo and Kyoto it is deeply apparent that Japan is a special place. The buildings, the graphics/logos of businesses and the city lights blaring at night are some of the things I miss most. I remember thinking to myself during that trip "Wow! This culture is light years ahead in design and creativity." I was at once humbled and inspired. I felt privileged as a child of such a young culture like the U.S. to see the wonderful aesthetic refinement of one of the oldest cultures in the world. Put simply, Japanese people inherently just "get it" when it comes to beauty.

This stool is such a wonderful design. It looks like it could have been designed this year and yet it was designed in 1956. Sori Yanagi is probably the best designer you've never heard of. He was passed over in my design school; although I'm disappointed, I can see why. His work, like much of Japanese culture, is quietly poetic. It doesn't scream at you like the Italians do and it doesn't generate the money American design does. But it quietly exudes grace that no other culture could ever dream of. Simple but refined, humble and unassuming. I learned a lot about the subtle nature of curvature in sketching this. This product is an exemplar of warm materials and restrained but elegantly fluid form.

The story behind this design is also quintessentially Japanese. Sori designed this stool after becoming inspired by the bent wood techniques pioneered by American design duo Charles and Ray Eames. Sori took their American technological pioneering spirit and applied elegant, timeless Japanese aesthetics to it. It is pitch perfect in this regard. New and old. Forward thinking while honoring the past. Japan may not invent technologies, but they make them better. Yanagi San, I love your work, you did well!

Tell me what you think!

-Park

Portrait Sketch

I've been extremely sick this week. It came upon me very suddenly Friday and zapped me of my energy. As a result I missed my Monday night class. Bill is an older gentleman, so when I still felt so terrible, I thought it would be better of me not to bring it along with me. Sadly I missed our first session with a live model, so I decided to draw another sketch with the aid of a photograph. This one took about 2.5 hours as well and was a lot of fun to do. I tried to imagine having Bill looking over my shoulder saying "bring the nose in a bit... the eye's not right." His ability to spot inaccuracies is incredible. What is so wonderful about his feedback is that it's already improved my eye as well. On this drawing I was able to spot inaccuracies with much more confidence than ever before. He's also helping me to spot the lighting and structure of the head with greater accuracy. Over all I'm pleased with the likeness, but I need to make another pass with the blending stump and soften some of the edges. If I like what happens, I'll update this post with the refined drawing. (updated: the drawing has been blended with a stump to smooth out the values of the original.)

Let me know what you think!

-Park

Stool ideas continued

I'm sorry about missing yesterday. I've been extremely sick this weekend. Today I'm feeling better, so I managed to sketch some ideas today. I'm continuing with furniture because it's an area of design that I really like and I'm trying to refine some ideas for a possible future project. Overall I'm pleased with the page, but there are some nagging perspective issues. Take for example the drawing explaining the feet assembly. The ellipse of the felt tipped foot is too narrow, it should be about 5 degrees larger. The other perspective issue is with the far legs on the left side drawing. The way they arch doesn't match the near side legs. Oh well, things to work on for tomorrow's sketches!

Thank you for stopping by!

-Park

Apple Ear pods

Bleh, I need to sketch more...

Stool Design 2

So, today I decided to further explore the idea on the left of yesterday's sketch. I won't elaborate too much today, particularly because I'm not very pleased with the perspectives and proportions of these sketches. The legs don't seem to sit right on the seat pan and the legs on my largest sketch are a bit thick for my taste. One of those days where you just have to keep going and look for long term trends. ;)

See you all tomorrow!

-Park

Stool Design

This sketch page is a collection of stool and seat pan ideas I've been inspired to come up with after sketching furniture/ chairs. The idea is for an artist's studio stool. It's something that I explored in school but I was never truly satisfied with the result of my efforts. In these sketches I'm aiming to capture a "workmanship" like appearance- unassuming and solid, but I am also trying to arrive at a design that reflects the "zeitgeist" and has a elegant sense of proportions in the legs and seat pan. Something that struck me about the Bouroullec brothers' chair is that it has a blue collar / unadorned sensibility at first glance, but upon closer inspection it has spectacular refinement that only highly trained and experienced designers could accomplish. I like the larger sketch on the left, although the two right large sketches are also rather interesting. Let me know what you think!

See you tomorrow!

Park