The class

    
I can comfortably put ten people sitting in two tables in the main studio room, and that still gives me enough room to stand in front of then and use the white board or the tv to show examples of narrative through the use of images and words. Still, I felt I could have more people, so I opened up two classes, one on monday nights and the other, on tuesdays. Soon enough, I had twenty students enrolled in my two month class on the possibilities in creating visual narratives and, after eight years since we last opened our studio to students, my entire routine changed as I'm starting to get to know each one of them and their particular desires and works.

    
They're a very eclectic bunch, ranging in age from 17 to 37, with a lot of people interested in drawing, but a good number more interested in writing, and all willing to try to merge these two creative activities in the comic form. This week, I'm having nude figure drawing in the class, and it's a very interesting exercise to note how even those who are more used to drawing are not naturally used to paying attention at what they see, as figure drawing is much more learning how to look than learning how to draw (at least that's what I take most from it).

   
Even after we stopped giving classes at the studio, we continued to give workshops and lectures about comics, the narrative form, the history of the medium, our history in it, so there's a lot of subjects I could talk about, and have talked about, when it comes to teaching comics. I'm constantly curious to research new authors and new stories, new styles, trying to know everything great being done in comics around the world, but there's something different in this class now. To balance what I can talk about comics when I use the great comics and great authors as an example and to try to see what the work of the students show, and where it leads, it's sometimes like being on both ends of a road.

An exciting long road, in which I'll be traveling with the students for the next two months.

Life drawings

Some of the drawings Bá did this year at the live drawing class. Not one took more than 10 minutes, but these range from 1 minute to 5 minutes each.

Figure drawing

Here's Bá training.
A little practice never hurts anybody, even if you already "know" how do draw. There's always something new to learn, to think about, to consider.
Most of this poses were just one minute poses, some were three minutes long, one or another, five minutes long.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure drawing 2011

Every chance we get, we go back to figure drawing sessions. It always helps, no matter what style you have. We have been fortunate to have found a great group that gathers every week, and with a great and diverse rotating team of models.

These are from some of the latest sessions.

Figure Drawing.

The girl you'll meet.

Figure drawing - Ugo

I love figure drawing. Keeps me relaxed and widen my horizons creatively. There's something into drawing one minute poses that I don't get drawing comics.

I did this last night. The guy was an actor and a puppeteer, a mimic, and even holding still, it felt like he was moving.

In two weeks, there will be a pregnant women posing. That should be interesting.

Talking about style back in the day.

I've done these series of drawings to use on a class about inking and style. They were all done based on a photograph, so none of them show what my style really is, but they show 4 different ways to draw the same scene.



Your style is the way you chose to show things or to say things. It's all you've chosen to put in and all you left out.



If you're looking at a photograph, you see all that's there to see, all that was captured by the lenses and when you want to draw that, you have to chose what is important for the drawing and what is useless information. All those things you find important, all the details that make it into the picture, they are defined by your style.



When you're not looking at a picture to draw something, you'll have to make all the decisions of what goes in and what stays out in your mind. For something like that to really work, you must know very well the subject you're gonna draw. And that's when live drawing comes very handy. The more live drawing sketches you make, the more studies you do, more "visual vocabulary" you get to enable you to draw anything you want in your own style.



There's no right or wrong, better or worse. I can't say a clean sharp style like Mignola's is better than a very scratchy dirty "detailed" art like McFarlane's, a cartoony style like Jeff Smith's or the very photo-realistic cinematic style of Bryan Hitch. You all know I'm teasing you and all I could say would be a matter of personal taste, but what really matters in the end is that all the choices you make work in favor of the story. Your art should help you tell the story and not distract the eyes of the reader.

There are endless bits of information in every single panel you make and it's up to you to chose what will help you tell your story and what's useless lines in a piece of paper.

Figure Drawing.

For a little more than two months now, Bá started attending live figure drawing sessions, and it's refreshing to be able to exercise this side of the artistic creation. Most poses would be only one minute long, with some three or four minutes exceptions. In this time frame, it's impossible to think too much, to analyze, and it's much more a matter of putting pen to paper and seeing what appears. Even the mistakes have to be incorporated into the drawing, for you have no time to erase, and Bá uses just some pens so he wouldn't erase even if he could.

I'm amazed at the complexity James Jean does his sketches, and at the same time it's fun to watch Bá's pictures, fast and energetic, and both capture the essence of the gesture, all the curves and folds and imperfections. It doesn't really matter your style. Everybody has something to learn and absorb when figure drawing.

What is the most fun in most figure drawings is how much we learn drawing those who will deviate from the current model of beauty or perfection, as they give you much more lines to work with, much more curves, and you realize how how much real all your drawings will get when you start to practice on the full range of the visual spectrum.

It's not necessary to do figure drawing, but it's good to be able to do it. If you have done it, you'll know how much you enjoyed, or how much you suffered, only showing how much you need it. At art school, it was one of my favorite classes (and I always drew an old lady with tits down to her knees - literary!), and I missed it for a long time, and it's good to be able to do it again.