picking a line

So welcome to my first entry at pickaline. Just a quick bit about me before we get started on what i hope to be an eventful journey. I am currently residing in Atlanta, GA and i work as a classical animator...which means yes, i still draw everything by hand.I primarily work for Cartoon Network, but my clients range from large corporate entities to small businesses. I have been drawing since i was in 6th grade, which for most children, that is pretty late in the game. And unlike most artists, i sucked at drawing until my second year in college. Once i figured it out, i completely fell in love with drawing. It is the most challenging and most rewarding process i have discovered in my 29 years on this planet. I attended Savannah College of Art and Design from 1996 until 2000 and later in 2000 i was offered an assistant animation position at an Atlanta FX house called Click3x. I have been animating for the last 8 years and I believe i'm just now getting to the point where i'm good at it. Just recently, I have decided to start this blog to sort of document my future process. You see, i'm on the cusp of turning 30 and a great artist once said, you learn in your 20's, you create in your 30s, and you reap the rewards in your 40's. If this is to be my most productive decade of my life, I wish to capture it, so i can look back and perhaps I as well as others can look at my process and learn something.
Why am i calling it pickaline? Van gogh was quoted as saying something along these lines, and keep in mind i'm paraphrasing, but he said "you cannot be at the north pole and the south pole at the same time. You must pick a line, and my line is color." I believe he was trying to say that it is impossible to be a master at everything at once. If van gogh painted for more than 10 years, i would venture to say that eventually his line would change to something else. He mastered color. perhaps if he had lived longer, he would have ventured out to master tone, or line, or any other number of principles. My line was contour, for the longest time. I have yet to really master contour, but i feel as though it is time to pursue another discipline. I am currently focusing my energies on tone. I plan on using this blog to showcase my studies, for entertainment and for study. I encourage all of my readers to check back regularly to see the new work that i post. I may talk about what i was trying to capture, or what went wrong, or perhaps i'll just bitch about how my subject was restless and difficult to study. I'm not exactly sure how this journal will evolve, but i am eagerly awaiting the outcome. So without further ado, i present my daily studies for you all to see. I completed these while sitting in a busy coffee shop today.



this was an elderly woman rocking out to what i could only assume to be beethoven, or perhaps the eagles...it's really impossible to know for sure. she remained quite still and i was able to study her tones at leisure. probably about a 15 minute sketch.


I really love this quick sketch. reminds me of a very quick study by some of the old masters. This gentleman had very striking features and i really wished i could have studied them longer. I was only allowed about a minute or 2 to do this one but i think the limited time really forced me to include only the most important elements. While this was completed in only a minute, i love it more than the 1st drawing i did. it has much more life to it i believe.



this last one was kind of interesting only because I think i discovered an new and interesting way to work. It began as a blind contour. for those of you who are not artists or art students, a blind contour is a drawing created by placing your pencil on the paper and keeping your eyes on the subject the entire time. you never look down at your paper. So i began this drawing that way and liked the way it looked. But what i did afterwards was to take the initial sketch and then rework it by actually studying the subject, refining lines and shapes until it more closely resembles the subject. I'm looking forward to trying this technique again.

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment!