Proko Pears

Fundamental’s. One thing I never really buckled down on during my drawing bursts was the fundamentals. I’ve been doing Proko’s Drawing Basics class alongside Draw-A-Box (more on that in another post). The very first project Proko has us do is drawing a very simplified pear. There’s also a “level 2” portrait, which I attempted and will keep to myself… the result was horrifying.

For the pears, it’s a simple but challenging exercise. All lines must be straight. The values are simplified into five basic values. Generally, two dark and three light (including the highlight). I attempted the first one without watching the demo and then cleaned up my mistakes afterwards.

The idea with simplifying the forms is to imagine that this pear is “chiseled” out of stone. Instead of a rounded surface, you get planes. These planes are easier to identify with a simple value scale. It’s also easy to spot mistakes. For example, in the image above, I struggled with that weird area in the lower left of the pear. The dark shadow kind of hooks up, however, I didn’t really make the lighter values feel like a plane that made sense. Specifically, that Nevada looking piece.

I did about five more of these pears, which is overkill considering this is the very first project in the lesson. The point isn’t trying to master anything but I had fun with it. Above is my final attempt. Not perfect, and definitely still some work to do. The next project in the lesson is a “CSI” project. CSI stands for c-curves, s-curves, and i for straight lines. Maybe because a capitalized I looks like a straight line? I don’t know. I’ll explain more in the next post about these.

Figured I’d write about art. This is my first time doing this, so please… be gentle.

Art is one of those things that comes and goes in my life. The last time I made art a consistent practice in my life was from 2021-23 (with pauses in there). At that time, I was getting out of the Marine Corps (for the second time in my life), got engaged to my now wife, and started a new job. Art fell to the wayside and I didn’t pick it up again until recently.

Beyond just drawing and making cool images (at least, I think they’re cool), I find it as a way to connect with people. Specifically, one of my good friends (who will remain nameless because it’d give him away). Much like hockey was initially a way for me to connect with on of my best friends in the Marines, art has become a way to connect with this other friend. Who, whether we both like it or not, are friends for life thanks to the green weiner.

Below are some studies I recently did. These artists are some of my recent influences and will be linked accordingly.

Vandal is an artist who’s work inspired me to get back into drawing. I don’t remember how I cam across his work. This piece I did is a study of this piece. I changed the grenade to a mortar round and gave it a “Rando-style” skull. Done digitally.

Rando is a tattoo artist out in 29 Palms, CA. Someone showed me a tattoo they got from him, and I loved the linework. Seriously, his linework is probably the best out there. I ended up getting four tattoos from him and plan on getting more. I dig skulls, and snakes are always fun to draw, so I picked one of his pieces to study to get better at both. Pencil and markers.

This is a flash study from Marc Mutan, another Southern Cali-based tattoo artist. I’ve never gotten a piece done by him, but he’s on my bucket list. Dude has great linework, and I love the colorways he uses. Specifically, I want one of these reapers that he does.

I’ll be back with more stuff that I’m working on. Nothing exciting, as it’s been a lot of fundamental work.