These days I spend most of my time painting, but there was a time when I used to spend my days drawing every chance I got. Painting and drawing are very different disciplines for me, one being about edge the other about line, although I sometimes merge both into a single concept in paint, scribbling & sgraffito.
Growing up, my fascination was people, trying to capture, not only their physical attributes, but their personalities, I loved to draw them & find those unique features that made them… them. Especially faces and noses, it seemed that noses were really those defining features for me. I guess you’d say I have a bit of a nose fetish…haha, but for reals. Whether they were drawn in charcoal, lead or ink, most of the time I’d challenge myself to either not erase or not lift up my drawing implement from the paper. It was a bit of a self-challenge to force myself to see form & shapes correctly. Though, I still tend toward exaggerations of a sort, from the slightest, to more caricature and cartoon.
There are hundreds and hundreds of sketches and drawings throughout my home & studio, books full of figures and ideas. I recently picked up a new drawing pad in an ongoing effort to force myself to make time to draw. I used to do lots of cross hatch & cross contour in ink. For years I’d do a 5-10 minute quick sketch, mostly more single line drawn cartoon and gestures. It’s so infrequent , less than 5% of my time, that I paint or draw figures anymore that I’ve got in the habit of drawing them out on the canvas first before painting them, just to be sure I have the proportions down the way I want them. That said, in the past year or two I set to do a self portrait in oil and was half way complete before I saw I had forgot to do my preliminary under drawing first. With the direction of my current work over the past decade or so has led me to do more scribbling, sgraffito & scratching. Here’s a recent scribbled figure I did earlier this year. I think I’ll have to do much more scribbling. I love the organic, free flowing & natural feel of it.
As always, your questions & comments are welcome~
Richard
Broke out my ebony pencil and did some scribbling.
‘Angelo’ 12”x12” pencil