The lowdown on this weekend's class

I just want to say how much I appreciate you guys, and how much I enjoy teaching you.

Our Mar. 3 meeting will put a pretty bow on our "people jumping" exercises, and then cover that most vexing of drawing challenges, HAIR. In particular, we'll find what we can learn from painters on that subject.

Then I've tentatively planned some work on what TEXTURE can do for us: how it can help or hurt storytelling, how it can waste or save time.

John

For review, here's this from last fall :

HAIR NOTES

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Remember that these are mere words till you get the pencil moving.

• Simplify masses (e.g. Loomis blockiness and tonal groupings)
• Contrast = luster
• Weight effects on hanging hair: tighter curls toward bottom.
• Tighter curls > tighter highlights
• Highlights go across hair direction 
• General “highlight zone” in typical lighting
• detail goes here 
• more even black or tone outside zone
• a little hair texture here can evoke hair-ness throughout
• you can observe this zone in anime....

Everything is an imperfect mirror:

Hair is for us made of:

• Shape

• Forms 

• Directions 

• Value

Are there any aspects of hair that one of these types of these photo manipulations bring 

 out especially well?

Can we learn anything from Alex Raymond, whose method of drawing dark hair seems to defy the very word "method"--it's more intuitive, impressionist and marked by many years of drawing a strip everyday. 

Raymond's hair moved from a graceful, decorative look in the first year of his strip Rip Kirby (1946)...

.....

... to a confident, varied approach later. Please note the way he mixed big fat brushstrokes with fine, feathered ones and that the areas of black have some hard edges and some soft (feathered) edges. The very lovely example in the lower left below isn't necessarily typical: In general he seems very free with how he spaces the "grain in the "gray"areas.
The women's hair in the second panel is quite different...

John