The Daily Sketch

[wolfenoctis]

[Ai]

@Wolf: interesting crayony effect; I really love the effect they give on textured paper. I think you are using PS? I'm hoping to find a way to get that effect digitally (probably in Krita I guess, MyPaint is philosophically opposed to using bitmaps as input.)

For me, a few of yesterday's Nicolaides stuff, and a bit of the obligatory precision/design practice that typography is:



Fairly consistently happy with gesture now. This writing is also based off gesture (and the standard brush-work motto "think carefully, stroke decisively")


Typography close up:


(2mm Calligraphy pen and 0.4mm technical pen respectively.)

Getting slightly better quality with better processing, but not confident it can get a lot better than this without complicated bs to scan these pages that are all larger than my A4 scanner. Fluoro desk lamp might help, I suppose?

[0xDB]

the current Nicolaides schedule...Spoiler

appears to introduce a new exercise in every block... "descriptive poses" is new which I had to adapt to working from myself as ref lacking a model. In the original exercise one is supposed to tell a model how to pose verbally, then first draw that pose from imagination and then again using the model in the pose as understood from the description as reference.

[0xDB]

No Nicolaides today, just a few invented poses from imagination:

[wolfenoctis]

@AI: Yes I'm using PS, brush with a "canvas" texture (got the texture off a google search, converted it to grayscale and used define pattern option).
Spoiler: My brush settings

[0xDB]

new gesture exercise variant at bottom...Spoiler

...is "reverse pose": observe a pose for 180s but imagine it reversed and draw the imagined reversed pose, then afterwards draw from reversed ref again for 180s

[wolfenoctis]

[0xDB]

"gesture" and "memory drawing":


"group poses" (from a Voyager episode after giving up on finding groups on the usual art model sites):


"modelled drawing 1 (30 min)":


"modelled drawing 2 (60 min)":
Feeling too sick, so abandoning today's Nicolaides session after only 2h.

[Ai]

I will finish Nicolaïde's 2E schedule today and move on to schedule 3. There's a fair bit of organization involved!

(I do little label things that I fold over the media for each exercise, eg "2E:3 E2 x 15", and queue up the media for a few subschedules at once, collecting them in order so I can just take the item on the top, read it and go.
Based on experience so far, I'll queue up all materials of schedule 3 at once (and maybe schedule 4))

A few scenic gestures:


Spoiler: gesture thoughts

My view of gesture has evolved several times.
Currently, I consider it as showing an object's paths through space, and something that should always be "drawn-through" because of this
(developing a strong sense of perspective attenuation and ability to estimate hidden masses in objects). The emotional element Nicolaides emphasizes is highly effective as a tool and you should definitely use it whenever possible.. but, it is not *true* —
it merely is a way of getting away from 'layouting' into 'sympathizing with the processes of an object's creation'
This view of gesture shares a lot with the cross-contour exercise, of course, since you typically aim to bisect a volume along the line of greatest tension.

It's strictly necessary when doing this, and all other exercises so far, to keep in mind: stay away from representationalism. The point of study is to *learn*. A tidy result may indicate your method is converging on solid theoretical basis, or it may just indicate that you are trying to draw what you see, rather than attempting to see through it. When you think 'ah, this looks good!' — forget that! Ask 'does this make me think about what is true?'

Part of my collection of improvised pencil holders [I usually get pencils down to about 1.5cm long before discarding them.)

(the shaped gel-pen type is really good -- they have threads on the inside so it's dead easy to just screw the pencil in)

I also made a flash-pose helper script, which I'll put inside
Spoiler: this spoiler

Shell script functions that enforce the 'flash' part of flash pose automatically. Depends on bash (of course), xdotool, and utimer.

Code: [Select]

# show pose for this time
FLASHPOSE_SEEN=5
# plus this (time for the image to load)
LOADING_TIME=3

# Go to specified desktop,
#  cycle sxiv to next image,
#  wait for FLASHPOSE_SEEN+LOADING_TIME seconds.
# Then come back to current desktop.
#
# It's expected that you will execute this from a terminal
#  on a different desktop/workspace than your image viewer.
#
# It's also assumed for simplicity that only one image viewer window exists on that desktop,
#  and that it is in 'view' mode rather than thumbnail mode.
#
# Adjust the search key 'sxiv' or the advance key 'space' if needed.
# I recommend using xev to determine what keysym the relevant key produces.

flashpose_step () {
local DESKTOP=$1
local SAVEDDESK=$(xdotool get_desktop)
xdotool set_desktop "$DESKTOP"
xdotool search --desktop $DESKTOP sxiv key space sleep $((FLASHPOSE_SEEN+LOADING_TIME))
xdotool set_desktop $SAVEDDESK
}

# sound files used by below functions. YOU WILL NEED TO SET THESE TO FILES THAT EXIST ON YOUR SYSTEM
# (if you want sound).

GETREADY=/usr/share/sounds/KDE-Im-Contact-Out.ogg
GO=/home/kau/zgi/_mine/sfx/simple/timeup.wav
ELAPSED=/usr/share/sounds/KDE-Sys-App-Positive.ogg
DONE="/media/k_exthd/zgi/chip2/sms/mp3/Shinobi - Stage Complete.ogg"

# you can change this to "alias mfx=true" if you don't want sfx.
# or to reference some other commandline media player if you prefer.

alias mfx='mpv -really-quiet'

sfx-done () {
  mfx "$DONE"
}

sfx-elapsed () {
  mfx "$ELAPSED"
}

sfx-ready-go () {
  mfx "$GETREADY" "$GETREADY" "$GO"
}


# Given a repetition count, a duration in seconds, and a desktop number:
#
#  * Prompt the user audially to get ready
#  * for N repetitions:
#    * Perform a 'flashpose_step' using the specified desktop number
#    * Count down the remaining time
#    * Cue the user audially that the period finished
#  * Cue the user audially that the entire set finished
#
# NOTE: Currently we block while playing audio. This means that we wait until
#       the audio file finishes playing before continuing the loop.
#       For this reason I prefer to keep the 'elapsed' audio file short in duration.

flashpose_seq () {
local N=$1
local DURATION=$2
sfx-ready-go
for V in $(seq 1 "$N")
do
flashpose_step $3
utimer -c $((DURATION-FLASHPOSE_SEEN-LOADING_TIME))
sfx-elapsed
done
sfx-done
}


You can save that as a file and then source it, then type eg "flashpose_seq 15 58 4" to do 15 flash poses with 58s time/pose, with the image viewer on desktop 4.

PS: the forum "underline" function is unfriendly - it blocks unicode input. "ï" is U+00EF, which on Linux is entered via Ctrl+Shift+U EF Enter.

[0xDB]

Scripts are nice. I also have been using scripts to assist myself in timing various exercises. I have not automated the "pick and show reference" step though, so I just use the scripts to time things(it talks to me via text-to-speech) and manually run the source material through a randomized slideshow with an image viewer (xnview).

Mine is a two-piece script, one is just a progress bar, the other (exchangeable) one contains the schedule itself which can be redefined for different exercises.

progbar.sh

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash

# simple timer with progress bar using zenity, notify-send and espeak
# usage example: progbar.sh 60 "title" "message"

# init variables
COUNT=$1
TITLE=$2
TASK=$3

START=$COUNT

SAY="for ${COUNT} seconds, do ${TASK}"
espeak "${SAY}" &                                                        # announce task via text to speech

until [ "$COUNT" -eq "0" ]; do                                                             # loop count to 0
((COUNT-=1))                                                                             # decrement count
PERCENT=$((100-100*COUNT/START))                                                         # calc percentage
HOURS=$(($COUNT/3600))                                                                   # calc hours
MINUTES=$((($COUNT-$(($HOURS*3600)))/60))                                                # calc minutes
SECONDS=$(($COUNT % 60))                                                                 # calc seconds
echo "# "$TASK"... "$HOURS"h:"$MINUTES"m:"$SECONDS"s left"                               # update zenity message
echo $PERCENT                                                                            # update zenity bar
sleep 1                                                                                  # sleep 1 s
done | zenity --title=$TITLE --progress --percentage=0 --text=$TASK --auto-close           # zenity progress bar

if [ $? = 1 ]; then exit 1; fi                                                             # skip notify if cancelled

notify-send "${TASK} completed."                                                           # show notification

scheduleMemoryDrawing.sh

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash

REPEATS=8
R=0

# define tasks
# seconds "taskname"

TASKS=(
   30 "look at pose one"
   30 "look at pose two"
   30 "look at pose three"
   60 "draw poses"
   
)

until [ "${R}" -eq "${REPEATS}" ]; do
((R+=1))
MSG="in tasks repeat ${R} of ${REPEATS}"
echo "${MSG}"
#espeak "${MSG}"
for (( i = 0; i < ${#TASKS[@]} ; i+=2 )); do
        run="./progbar.sh ${TASKS[i]} \"currently\" \"${TASKS[i+1]}\""
eval $run
EC=$?
if [ $EC = 1 ]; then
        MSG="schedule cancelled"
echo "${MSG}"
espeak "${MSG}" &
exit 1
fi
done
done

MSG="schedule finished"
echo "${MSG}"
espeak "${MSG}" &
exit 0
So for example with the "Memory Drawing" exercise, I first open xnview, set the slideshow interval to 30000ms, then I hit enter on the shell to run the schedule for that and at the same time click to start the randomized slideshow in xnview so that both processes are roughly synchronized (100% precision is not necessary for stuff like this).

In the "moving action" exercise I have a task of 10 seconds to give me time to jump to another random clip in vlc-player playlist and setting the player to repeat the current item.

Did not really write these scripts specifically for Nicolaides. In fact, I don't remember what I originally wrote them for but they're sufficiently versatile and adjustable to be used for anything that involves doing any number of things repeatedly.

Just so that this post is not without any image, I believe I did not post this here yet(watercolor pencils and a tiny bit of opaque white for water splashes):