Friday, May 20, 2011

Head Matters



I am always blown away by those sketches that capture someone/something and show so much in a single outline. My inclination is always to go for too much detail - in everything I do. It drives me a little crazy sometimes that I cannot find the stop button. Most of the art I love has little to no detail - I love abstracts, Expressionism, Impressionism - all of which make suggestions and leave the brain to fill in the detail. So in an attempt to make my sketches look like sketches and not get hung up on detail I set myself down to do short sketches of heads (another weakness of mine). The problem was then to stop myself from going back and fiddling about with them once I had done them. I haven't got as far as a single line yet .................... I'm hoping that will come in time.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I struggle with drawing heads too Anita but I think these are extremely good :)
I also admire those artists that can capture so much with so little. I think it's not just about knowing when to stop - it's knowing how to start, and I'm a long way from being able to do that. Have a look at the work of Adebanji Alade (a link is on my blog list in the sidebar) and in paricular his people sketches that he does on London transport - truly amazing.

Anita said...

Michael - there is obviously a knack to learning when to put down your pencil. I had a look at Alade's work - thank you for the suggestion. Also lead me to looking at the proportions of heads. Funnily enough was watching a painting demo on YouTube yesterday and the next video was one of Alade's too!