Lee's Artlog

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2007- As I sat there in a workshop I realized time was running short and I wouldn’t be able to finish all the sketches that I wanted to do. I volunteered to exchange seated poses with other students so that we finish up our desired results. The style that I was focusing on that week in particular was using a black verathin on newsprint, and then about halfway through putting down a sheet of tracing paper and tightening it all up. As usual I was surprised with the results and got 3 or so accurate representations of students in the class drawn in the style that I am used to drawing.

I met Mike my first or second day of orientation. At first, I genuinely wasn’t sure what to make of him. His skater hairdo and incongruous appearance made me wonder if he’d fall into the same pratfall traps that I was used to seeing with the new younger generation, but my concerns and general impressions all fell wayside after talking to and getting a feel for him. I wanted to frame the portrait as genuinely as I had come to understand him in the sense of self-determined originality that I had come to know.

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2007- The Bald Man is the culmination of about a 40 minute pose in Head and Hands class at Art Center. I’ve been worked to the bone and much of my body aches from stress. My hands suffer immeasurably from going ‘nerve dead’ and a fair amount of pain. I believe that it is all worth it at the midway point of my first semester. I look forward to the challenge each and every day and in the future.  

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2007- At the end of a workshop session I began to relax and search for my style. Instead of treating my Micron pen like a ballpoint or traditonal ink, I tried to find a solution that would look realistic, polished and less rushed. First, to alay my nervousness I would imagine a cylinder, not a ball for the head. Second, I’d place a total of 4 marks in the general boundary edges of the hair, chin, ears or cheekbone that popped out furthest. Third, before building the face I would destroy the product before I began by drawing a wavy line going down the center to give guidelines where the eyebrows were, the bottom of the nose, the mouth and the chin. By approaching it with this nonchalant but systematic style I was not afraid of using my pen skillfully. Finally, instead of forcing shadows in as I went, I charted their locations with a light hatch, then indicated them with a diagonal stroke. I would repeat this process on 3 other pen drawings that day, replicating the accuracy of this piece with varied but overall asthetically pleasing results.