Confessions of a researchaholic

Drawing can still divert my attention away from the music, so I should focus on the concert next time.
Dvorak never bores.

While trying to draw a child, I realized that it would require shape and shading, which I have yet to master, in addition to contours, which I have been focusing on so far.
So I switched to a movie still that I liked a lot and is easier to draw from – a half covered face with plenty contours.

Adjacent to the Stanford memorial church sits a single floor building, a grand hall of men’s restroom.
At late Saturday afternoon nobody was inside; I can stand right at the entrance to draw the entire scene. But that might be weird even by Stanford standard, so I took a photo and drew from it later.

My focus is the glow at the ceiling light, applying (high dynamic) range compression, or tone mapping, so that I can keep both the glow and the walls in the same blank color.

I started with global guidelines, but after finishing the drawing noticed a glaring omission.
See if you can spot from the drawing and comparing it with the photo, before my answer below.

I did not place the horizontal guidelines connecting the left and right stall rows, and thus the left row appears shorter than the right row.

I drew this one across 3 evenings, starting from the middle and moving to the left and right sides. I had some trouble with the curved perspective building facade and eventually lost patience.

I focused more on the frontal building facade to improve the perspective issue in my previous drawing, using another photograph that has no foliage to divert my attention.

I marked the two vanishing points to begin with, both in the wrong locations.
The one on the sky should be more on the left but I adjusted it rightward a bit to have more converging window rows.
The left horizon vanishing point is outside the photo frame, so I fitted it back into the drawing canvas.

Looking upward towards buildings is a classical exercise to practice perspective. It took me a while to plan the vanishing point at the sky and the corresponding vanishing lines of the building contours.
I did not do so for the horizontal vanishing points/lines because I was bored after spending over one hour and I would like to work on the foliage on the left side.
As a result, the windows are incorrectly structured and gave the impression that the building facades were made of crumpling papers.

Spot drawing was infeasible for this one; the airplane flew by in seconds and the weather was hot and bright at noon.

I have another airplane fly-by photograph to practice.
My goal is to correctly structure the windows without getting bogged down by details. For example, outline contours instead of detailing individual windows.

Culture throwback: an overhanging warplane is a popular motif in Japanese manga like Akira and ghost in the shell. I plan to draw one as well.

Daichi and I spent the entire noon hour taking photos around.
There are similarities between drawing and photography in both goal and process: observation, selection, framing, and composition.
Photography by itself is a faster and less flexible means to record and convey visual impression.
However, it can serve as visual memory for later drawing, relaxing space and time constraints.
For example, I am not fast enough to catch a fly-by airplane via spot drawing, so a photograph can help.

I have enough footage for at least a month’s worth of drawing, even if I draw every day.
I will gradually post up my progress.