Beginning to feel like I had hit a wall this spring, and hoping to make some headway (no pun intended), I signed up for an online drawing anatomy class through Sktchy in March.

@2021 Elizabeth Fram

This particular course concentrates specifically on the head. It is divided into separate lessons that go over the skeletal and muscular systems of each feature (eyes, nose, mouth & ears), the skull, and surface anatomy. The teacher is a medical illustrator who covers the material in great detail, referencing her own layered and labeled drawings using Procreate. She draws simultaneously as she explains each feature.

@2021 Elizabeth Fram

Every lesson is followed by a real-time portrait study/demonstration reiterating what we just learned. I’ve found it helpful to draw along with her, listening as I work. I seem to absorb the info much better that way.

@2021 Elizabeth Fram

How often do we really look at the faces of those we know and love? The human face is such a rich landscape of information. With other subjects my focus often shifts back and forth between recognizably portraying the object(s) and sliding into an abstraction of shapes and placement. But every time I draw a face I can’t help but get lost in the details. Empathy is always looking over my shoulder, reminding me of the potential depths lying beneath the surface and the ever-present similarities in our differences.

If you’re interested, the class is “Drawing Anatomy with Tiffany S. DaVanzo: Learn How to Draw the Human Face from the Inside Out”. Most of the lessons are between 30-45 minutes long.
As an aside, she really knows her way around the Procreate program, which was fascinating to watch in and of itself. Yikes – another rabbit hole one could very easily drop into and become lost within! I know some of you must have experience with Procreate. I’d love to hear your thoughts – pro or con – and how you rate the size of the learning curve.

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As you might imagine, I have quite a variety of sketchbooks, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. For the drawings shown here, I’ve been using an 8.5″ x 11″ Crescent RendR. I like the size — big enough to not feel constrained, but not so large as to be unwieldy. It has a soft cover, so is relatively lightweight, and the paper is very smooth, similar to hot press. It is advertised as “no show thru”, meaning that ink of any sort won’t bleed through to the back side of a page. My Tombow pens have proven that to be true. Since I’ve been using graphite with these drawings, I’m much more interested in the smooth surface, the heft of each page and the fact that a kneadable eraser removes lines cleanly and without any surface abrasion. The one caveat is the paper has a slight grey cast, which I think is due to whatever it is that makes it “no show thru”. Because of this, photos of drawings made with a hard lead can appear under-exposed. That doesn’t seem to be an issue with scanning — although you can definitely see the cool slant of the paper in the images above. All in all, the advantages win out over that one downside, so I’m happily filling up the pages of my book.

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My Instagram share this week also falls in the portrait drawing arena.
I’m always captivated by the gestural and complicated work of Graceina Samosir who packs a lot of punch and information into every drawing. @graceinasamosir

Moving out of winter into spring isn’t an overnight event here in Vermont. The transition is a slow roll-out that offers plenty of time to savor the “two steps forward, one step back” nature of spring’s dance of color as it gradually returns to our landscape. Every day there is something else to notice, its discovery made all the more special by a muted backdrop and lack of visual competition.

Mulling this idea over, as one tends to do while out on a walk, it occurred to me that there is a connection between this slow unfolding of spring and the way my daily drawings are currently evolving.

The coronavirus may have stymied our weekly life drawing sessions at Maple Corner for the time being, but there are always other options. Lately I’ve been using the Sktchy app for my daily sketchbook practice. And while ordinarily I wouldn’t chose to draw from a photo, it’s surely better than not drawing at all. As with most limitations, it’s best to just look for any advantages and get on with it.

So, back to how Vermont’s transition to spring might inform my drawings.
First, part of the reason I notice and appreciate the measured changes that arrive as our surroundings reawaken is that I walk the same general route every day with Quinn. In a similar vein, I also tend to make the biggest discoveries in my work through daily repetition. I don’t mean repeating each drawing exactly, but rather echoing the same parameters (coffee cups say, or in this case, head-shot portraits of the same size, all made with ink and colored pencil). In doing so over and over, parallels begin to rise to the surface that, once noticed, plant a seed for how I might play upon and push those ideas further in each new drawing.

The second part of this so-called vernal theory is that limited color, thoughtfully placed in tandem with shapes and patterns composed of black marks and cross-hatching, create a sense of energy and interest (at least I think they do) that might be lacking in a work with more extensive and fully fleshed-out color. I can’t shake the idea that often the strongest work is the most concise. (And that’s a great goal for me to be chipping away at, especially in light of how intricate my current stitched piece is).

In Process ©2020 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk, stitched area approximately 10 x 8 inches. I still need to try to tone down that bulls-eye circle smack in the middle of her face. Hopefully as I do more to suggest her veil, it will help to solve the issue. I’ll have to keep the lessons from this post in mind, hopefully figuring out a solution without a full cover up.

One of the things I enjoy most about what I do is paying close attention to surrounding details and inferring unexpected connections from them. I can’t think of a better teacher than spring in Vermont to promote the lesson that you can often convey the most by saying the least.

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A recent email from our local library reminds me that even though its doors are closed, our librarians are still hard at work offering our community valuable resources, such as virtual programming for all ages. I know that lot of folks are having trouble concentrating on reading at this time, and to some degree I count myself among them. But I’ve been listening to a ton of audio books while stitching and drawing, all coming through my library’s RB Digital platform, and it’s been exactly what I’ve needed.
See what your library has to offer, and say a quiet thank you to Ben Franklin for ensuring we have this resource in times of calm and of crisis.

Elizabeth Fram

Eye of the Needle

Tag Archives: Sktchy

Head Games

Slow Dancing With Color

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