Saturday, July 25, 2015

Alé

Last Summer while attending DrawAMania I met this one model who really is something special & unique in a great kind of way... My friend The Amazing Alé!!!

When she posed for the sketch above, something of her reminded me of one of my favorite female comic book characters (I think the lightning is a dead giveaway)
This is what Alé had to say about it "The thunder & lightning one. It truly resonates with my personality."

When I got to draw her at DrawAMania again half a year later I was ecstatic and I admit I did throw the lightning in get he attention



Dynamic Figure Drawing - "Alternative Night"
About a not even two weeks I convinced the guys at the sessions at Park Slope to book her.
They used her for a Punk/Skater theme night and the amazing muse stroke again!






 


This one has been my favorite sketch working with her.

Alé the Iron Muse
And pretty soon one month later came Pratt's annual Draw-A-thon, and who was one of the scheduled models... you guessed it!!!
3 Min Sketches (well one of them she forgot to set the timer and I got lucky)


The DrawAThon lasted from Friday 7pm - Saturday 7 am.  And rooms were divided by time limits of poses which lasted from 3 mins to 3 hours.

I was happy about that cause I was hoping to make Alé into a full color sketch or a painting.
(1 Hour Pose with Prismacolor Colored Pencils and Colorless Blender)

Well I was not completely satisfied with that color sketch especially cause I didn't finish in time and the darker skinned models can be tough to color when it comes to blending (I unfortunately Don't remember what colors I used for Tea Eaton the first time)

Well after the second hour passed the crowd started coming in and it got really difficult to find good spots. I couldn't get any decent pencil sketches of her in the 20 minute room cause she was on the other side of the room and she posed with this model Elena (whom I hope to draw again someday).

Well according to the schedule... Alé was posing in the three hour room from 2am-5am. That was when I decided to plan ahead and showed up in the room at 1:45am to setup my easel pencils and paints. Once the first set of 20 minutes came in I was luckily enough to map out the figure on the board and had less than 2 Hours and 40 minutes to finish. I wanted to at least get most of it done so I wouldn't need her as reference to finish. But at least 2 hours, 30 minutes, 1 Pepsi, a ginseng filled Arizona Ice Tea, and a Vitamin Water later... I was done.
3 Hours - Painted with Egg Tempera

I learned to use Egg Tempera (or Gouache with Egg Yolk) from my past mentor the legendary pin-up artist Robert McGinnis and used his primary colors (which I'll never tell).

I was done after that  I did not stay for the next 2 hours I called it a night (or morning) in that case.
I owe a huge thank you to Alé for posing the full 12 hours and still giving us 110% (like I said Iron Muse) and for being a supportive fan.

Mistress Siren


Shiela

I first worked with Shiela back when I was a student at FIT....

After that I may have got to sketch her in a few other classes.

I had the pleasure of working with Shiela  seven years later once I started going to my session in Chinatown/Soho where she is a regular there.