Week 2 - Making Connections

Last week I was sick, so rather than talk about classwork (which I obviously was not present for) I'm going to talk about connecting the skills learned in this class with my aspirational career: Concept Design.

Networking.  Networking, networking, networking.  It may seem like it has little to do with a students experience in a life drawing course, but that assumption (in my case at least) would be erroneous.
I previously mentioned my acquaintance with Ruth Thompson, and she shared with me some wonderful blogs and information about various classes and conferences, but all of her information paled in comparison when I saw some of her rough sketches.  She uses cross-contour, heavily, in her work.  (photos of sketches to follow, pending Ruth's permission).
It's one thing to have a teacher say "This is relevant", it's another to see how it benefits your own work, but it's something entirely different to see someone whose work you admire to use (20 years AFTER school) the techniques that you are currently using.  It seems childish to be comforted by this validation, but I am, somehow, comforted by it.
"But what does cross-contour have to do with networking?" you may ask.  Well it doesn't have anything to do with it, but Networking is about meeting people to learn new things to meet new people to expand your point of view.  So that's what networking has to do with cross-contour.
I will (hopefully) soon get a chance to speak with concept artists from Blizzard and RavenSoft game studios in order to get a feel for what I should be working on.  To me, life drawing is a stepping stone to greater artistic ability.  As a concept artist I will be expected to draw not only from life, but to be able to draw life-like images from my own imagination.  There is little in the way of instruction on this particular skill set, I must pave my own way, draw my own conclusions, and practice-practice-practice!
Below is my first set of concept drawings for this semester  A stylized robot character:

These are first-draft sketches, make no mistake, I am aware of the roughness here.  But I will be posting progressive drafts of my concept design along with my life drawing work in order to catalog their side-by-side progression.

One thing that life drawing and concept design have in common is that they both require forethought to create a polished, high quality final image.  Concepts may start as random sketches but eventually many details will come into play and will all be part of a greater whole.  The minor details in this early sketch alone are part of a greater overruling world.

Similarly, in life drawing it benefits the artist to examine and think about their subject before ever lifting arm to touch tool to paper.  The slightest shift of the spinal column, the tension in a muscle, the tiniest quirk in an expression can change the entire tone of a drawing.

One thing that I want to particularly look at (for use in my concept art) is mark making.  I've been studying Todd Lockwood's body of work on and off for several years.  Particularly his line drawings, used heavily in reference books for Dungeons and Dragons.  The image below is a concept piece for a basilisk.  This compex creature is elegantly rendered with only a few different types of line.  But it is an undeniably elegant line drawing of a creature that exists only in the imagination.

This is what I'm aiming for.