Not as rusty as I thought

I had the chance to do some actual life drawing yesterday, and I was pleased to find out that I wasn’t as rusty as I feared I’d be…

“Quick! Draw Degas!” was the November theme for the gathering of the Thieves Guild, a locally-grown artist collective. Trained ballet dancer Dolly D. Imples of Foxy by Proxy was the model, who “twist[ed] and turn[ed] into poses inspired by French artist Edgar Degas.”

It’s been a good 20 years since I had my last life drawing class– and I haven’t done all that much observational drawing since then, either– but I dug up some newsprint and charcoal and gave it my best shot. After so long drawing cartoon dogs that don’t look even remotely like real dogs, I wasn’t sure how switching to such a different media and such a different drawing method would work out. Especially given how unforgiving a medium charcoal is compared to the cut ‘n paste/whiteout/PhotoShop cleanup method I use in my comic strip. But it was actually liberating to not labor over a panel and just make the most of a 2/5/10 minute pose. It’s a good exercise for me to step back from the more complex issues of panel composition and story pacing and just enjoy making marks on paper– to remind myself how much fun drawing is!

It was a blast! I  had such a good time, I definitely intend to be back next month…