Figurative Art by Annelie MacKenzie

I like these expressionist drawings a lot.  They have a freedom that I sometimes have in quick sketches but get further away from in my own drawings.  You can see more of her work at her blog, and on Flickr.

More Drawings by Arthur Momand

A few more pages of drawings by Arthur Momand the creator of Keeping up with the Joneses.


Click here to see these and other items by Arthur "Pop" Momand for sale on Ebay.

Wikipedia link to the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses."

Below are two examples of the strip itself.

Google Book Search copy of the strip as a book.

How to Paint in Water Color

A Course of Sepia Painting, A Course of Painting in Neutral Tint, and A Course of Water Colour Painting by R. P. Leitch are three interesting books for anyone working in water color.

They each follow a similar format. There is an introduction which specifies the materials to be used followed by 24 individual plates each of which has a description of the method employed.

Sepia Painting and Water Colour Painting both have examples of a first stage water color lay-in followed by a completed watercolor painting.

The plates in each case are continuous tone lithography which is similar to the process modern printers use in silk screen printing because the printer puts down successive layers of color to make the print rather than the half-tone  process of a dot-matrix using red, yellow, blue and black inks used in photolithography.

What the continuous tone process gave

 the artist and the printer was a very specific and managable way to make the plates look exactly like the artist wanted.

  It was a fairly difficult and labor intensive process and probably made for a lot of discarded pages when the plates were off register.

The publisher, Cassell, Peter & Galpin, was obviously good at it, there are a lot of books in 

their catalogue listed in the back of these books and other sources from the time. and Mr. Leitch was also a master of the form.  He was particularly expert at the second book of the series, A Course of Painting in Neutral Tint.  He gets a great deal of atmosphere out of his plates combining the warm sepia inks with the other 

cool blue/grey ink.

R. P. Leitch was a accomplished watercolorist and designer of prints active in the middle of the nineteenth century.  Here is a sampling of his work:

Leeds Town Hall

Drawing by R. P. Leitch

Tete Noire and Trient

Richard Principal Leitch. watercolour heightened with body colour

Other Books of his include:

A DREAMER'S SKETCH BOOK. With 21 Illustrations by Percival Skelton, R. P. Leitch, W. H. J. Boot, and T. R. Pritchett. Engraved by J. D. Cooper.

EASY STUDIES IN WATER-COLOR PAINTING, by R. P. Leitch and J. Callow. Nine sketches from nature in simple tints.  

AN ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD - Thomas Gray
Sampson Low, Son & Marston, 1869. Monochrome portrait of Gray on title pages and 16 colour plates from drawings by R. Barnes, R.P. Leitch, E.M. Wimperis, and others.

This is an engraving of Victoria, Vancouver by Leitch.

An engraving of a La Belle Prairie winter cabin.

Figure Drawing in Color

Figure Drawings in Color. I revised this ebook and made it available as a printed book at Lulu.com.

In it are a selection of colord life drawings by Cedric F. Weaver, a twentieth century Canadian commercial artist.  I like his simple use of black and terra cotta to produce effective drawings.

I included a step by step guide to drawing in  colors that I drew after looking at Mr. Weaver's drawings, and a section of my own drawings that I did after seeing his work.

Two of Mr. Weaver's life drawings.

First stage of the step by step example.

This shows the basic structure of the figure, the alignment of the body, particularly the alignment of the head with the center of gravity, and a basic outline.

The intermediate drawings show the addition of highlights, then shadows, followed by the addition of color and the blending of the colors to produce the final result.

Finished step by step example.

There are other drawings of mine like this in the last section of the book.

Arthur "Pop" Momand - How to Draw Hands and Feet

"Pop" Momand gave the English language the phrase "Keeping up with the Joneses," by using it as the title of the popular comic strip he started in 1916. He started as a sketch artist at the New York World. He drew the strip until 1945, after which he became a portrait painter. For a more complete history see Lambiek.net, also Don Markstein's Toonpedia.

All the time he kept up his figure drawing. These are two pages from a sketchbook, one a study of hands, the other of feet. They are on the Ebay Auction site.

Click here to see these and other items by Arthur "Pop" Momand for sale on Ebay.

The artistic life must have agreed with him, he lived to be a hundred and one.

Some strips from Keeping up with the Joneses.

Jessie Pixley Lacey - Teacher of Figure Drawing

According to a description published on the auction site Federalist Antiques  Jessie Pixley Lacey was a teacher of Figure Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s.

She was born in 1865 in Charlotte, Michigan. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago then at the Académie Julian, Paris. She showed works in the Paris Salon of 1900, at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the St. Louis Exposition and in New York and Washington.

Childe Hassam, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger all studied at the Académie Julian which was founded in 1868 by Rudolphe Julian as a private art school. The École des Beaux-Arts did not allow women to enroll but male and females students were allowed to study together at the Académie Julian including drawing and painting from the model.

For more on the training of female students around 1900 see my other post How to Draw the Human Figure - The Figure Drawings of Grace A. Young.

Above is a self portrait from Robert Henry Adams Fine Art.

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How to Draw a Foot

These are two more images from The Art of Figure Drawing by Thomas H. Maguire. Mr. Maguire was an accomplished portrait artist with numerous credits. The one below is of Charles Darwin.

Here's a step by step method for drawing a foot.

1. Sketch in the basic structure of the foot, notice the weight of the figure is on a vertical line through the balance of the foot.
2. Add outlines of the skin as it passes over the structural parts of the foot, the ankle, the toes, the heel and the lower leg.

 3. Continue to develop the anatomy of the foot notice the angle of orientation of the ankle bones, and the curvature of the toes. Notice how the second tow is the longest, longer than the big toe, and how the smallest tow tends to curve under the one next to it. You can see these in the drawings at the top of the page also.
4. Add details, toenails, shape of the toes, shape of the ankle and begin to indicate where you will shade the drawing.

5. Now you can finish shading the drawing and do some finish outlining to the forms. be sure to observe how the shadows fall because that will help develop the forms in space.

 Two plates from The Principles of Drawing by Gerard De Lairesse Published by Thomas Bowles.

The principles of drawing: or, an easy and familiar method whereby youth are directed in the practice of that useful art. Being a compleat drawing book

The principles of design for the curious young gentlemen and ladies, who study and practice the ... art of drawing, colouring and japanning: or a new and ... drawing-book; ... introduction to drawing

A treatise on the art of painting, in all its branches; accompanied by seventy engraved plates, and exemplified by remarks on the paintings of the best masters ..

Other Posts:

How to Draw Legs and Feet

Arthur "Pop" Momand - How to draw Hands and Feet

Anatomy for Artists Painters and Sculptors ebook at Figure- Drawings.com









Drawing Hands and Feet: Form, Proportions, Gestures and Actions (The Art of Drawing)

Drawing and Painting Hands and Feet