Kevin’s Coaching Page

Hi Lane! Thank you for providing this coaching tier on Patreon—I’m so excited to get started. I thought I would put everything on a page here hoping that it might be easier to follow rather than in an email.

Background that might be helpful

• I’ve been practicing drawing and oil painting since 2012 but started focusing on figures and portraits about 3 years ago after going to a figure drawing session for the first time
• I took drawing classes in college and continued studying in my teacher’s private studio after college. This instruction was focused on direct observation (“draw what you see”) and was designed for mastery based skill development (not exactly atelier style but highly structured and sequential exercises). I’m more self taught when it comes to things like construction and gesture (draw what you know / draw what you feel) and somewhat in design and composition. I haven’t had a teacher giving me direct feedback in a few years, which is one big reason I’m interested in coaching!
• I organize a life drawing group in my town that offers both figure and portrait sessions
• I’m starting to teach beginner level drawing classes in my town this summer
• I have a full time job as a software engineer and past professional experience in graphic design (print and web)
• Fun fact: I live in Appleton, WI which is where many Strathmore papers are made including smooth newsprint 😄

Current goals

• Improve composition, shape design, and atmosphere in figures and portraits
• Develop more confidence and fluency in physical charcoal
• Create more developed and intentional collections of portraits and figures in charcoal / sanguine / oil
• Learn new ideas to support my own students and the life drawing sessions I host

Challenges

• While I’ve practiced in physical mediums, I feel my figure and portrait work in Procreate tends to be a couple steps ahead of my skills with pencil and paper. I feel I tend to make more basic proportional and mark making quality mistakes on paper and my results are less consistent. Perhaps I benefit a lot from the ability to undo and zoom out on a screen. I want to learn ways to exercise my physical charcoal skills and set myself up for more consistent results.
• I tend to gravitate toward short studies and sketches, and I value spontaneous exploration, but I’d like to develop a better sense of what a “finished” figure drawing means in my practice. I don’t often take the time to work on a drawing over a couple sessions or to do preliminary exercises to work out compositions or design elements, and I think the ideas you’re sharing on Patreon will help me grow in this direction. I’m unsure what my vision is for my own “finished, composed, refined” figure drawings, and I’d like to explore that (similar to the level of intention and unity you’re pursuing with Threadbare)
• I have access to plenty of reference photos, although I highly value working from life with a model. I would love to create more opportunities for myself to develop both of the above points in collaboration with a model, and/or to learn how to work with reference more freely to use it as a starting point rather than a final answer.

Drawings

Envelope exercises

I watched the videos published so far on Patreon and made a couple drawings (in Procreate with the charcoal master pack) practicing the framing exercise, envelope exercise, and refinement process. I’ll link the reference images in the captions below.

Exercise 1 (Reference image after framing exercise)

Exercise 1 envelope exercise after negative shapes and value shapes

Exercise 2 (Reference image after framing exercise)

What went well:

• I think the framing and shape design process helped me bring a lot more refinement to the drawing, they do feel more finished than other drawings although I was still rushing a bit because I was so excited about the results.
• The atmospheric effects of lost edges and details in shadow were a lot easier to achieve with this process, rather than hoping they might happen by accident.

What I struggled with:

• I got stuck on developing the background tone as a design element, it kept feeling either too noisy and complex or too soft and non descript.
• It was difficult to get accurate proportions in the negative shapes without loose gesture and construction sketching to guide me. Probably just need to practice it more! I was very far off in finding key landmarks and needed to overlay with the reference to make progress.
• Struggled a bit with simplifying the shapes / values of the face

Sample life drawing session work

Since one of my goals is to feel more confident in physical media and I’m particularly interested in working from life, here are a few drawings from recent sessions. It’s a mix of work I feel is representative of the range of results I’ve been seeing, for better or worse.

3-5 minute poses, vine charcoal, 18 x 24 in.

20 minute pose, vine charcoal, 18 x 24 in.

10 minute poses, sanguine, 18 x 24 in.

5 minute poses, vine charcoal and charcoal pencil, 18 x 24 in. I can see some clear proportional issues and I’m not satisfied with the quality of the values.

25 minute pose, vine charcoal and charcoal pencil, 18 x 24 in.

25 minute pose, vine charcoal and charcoal pencil, 18 x 24 in. A few proportion issues. The composition feels a bit promising but kind of awkward on the page.

2 minute poses, charcoal pencil on smooth newsprint, 18 x 24 in. I felt pretty stiff during these poses.

25 minute pose, charcoal pencil on smooth newsprint, 18 x 24 in. I felt pretty stiff during these poses.

From my first ever figure session, April 2022

Other work from reference

Unfortunately I don’t have reference links for these, mostly they were from Croquis Cafe fast sketch random poses. I’ll start keeping track of references for feedback!

5 minute poses, vine charcoal, 14 x 17 in. I generally feel satisfied about these, after many less successful pages.

5 minute poses, vine charcoal, 14 x 17 in. One of the less successful pages.

3 minute pose, Procreate.

3 minute pose, Procreate.

Resources I have studied in some depth

• Figure drawing books:
  • Jake Spicer
  • Henry Yan
  • Steve Huston
  • Loomis
• Videos / channels:
  • Steve Huston
  • Jeff Haines
  • Love Life Drawing
  • Sinix
  • Your workshops in Kenzo’s study group and proko, and now Patreon!

A few artistic inspirations

• John Singer Sargent charcoal portraits and figure studies
• Teresa Oaxaca charcoal portraits
• Sebastien Jupille charcoal portraits
• Sean Cheetham
• Henry Yan (of course)
• Jeff Haines
• Eliza Ivanova
• Jake Spicer
• Zin Lim

Questions

• What is your typical physical setup either in the studio and at life drawing sessions for drawing on newsprint, especially when managing a large sheet (18 x 24 in.) for example? Big drawing board? Easel? Something else? Or do you work with smaller sheets?

Links

• My instagram
• My life drawing group’s instagram
• Portfolio of other works

Thank you!

I hope this is helpful and isn’t either too much or not enough to go on 😄 looking forward to your feedback, and happy to provide any more context that might be helpful!

–Kevin