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"Blind Contour Still-Life"
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I had actually tried some blind contour drawings before, but in this one I really started to have fun with the technique.
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by Ben Scheele / created 2-3-97
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"Ink-Wash Plants"
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I really surprised myself with this image. I brushed out the lines with pure black and then layered on the midtones using diluted ink washes.
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by Ben Scheele / created 2-24-97
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"Doorknob And Tulips"
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It is a fairly obvious and simple technique, but at the time it really struck me. The tulips seemed to pop off of the paper. Of course it would have worked just as well to add shadows, but I think this creates an interesting feeling.
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by Ben Scheele / created 3-17-97
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"Undersea Dream"
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I cut out pictures from a National Geographic magazine, made a collage, and then drew it with a stippling technique using technical pens of varying widths. Rather surrealstic, eh?
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by Ben Scheele / created 3-17-97
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"Hand Holding Pencil"
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I drew my hand about five times for that class, and this was my favorite. I still remember how excited I was about this drawing after I finished it.
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by Ben Scheele / created 4-8-97
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"Welcome Home"
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Another composite image, I added in the background and the sea lion. I worked hard to get good contrasts, and to keep the scales accurate.
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by Ben Scheele / created 5-27-97
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"Resting Along The Shore"
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In this image I put together the groups of penguins from two separate photos and then added the rocks and crashing waves from my imagination. The ink washes gave the penguins a soft look that I was very pleased with.
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by Ben Scheele / created 6-8-97
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Work from Normandale
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"Balancing Work And Pleasure"
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This is a drawing where I made a familiar technique from exercises work for me. I had fun telling this little story about my conflict of wanting to go out mountain biking while I still could, and having to work on drawing, which I also loved. The larger sized image should allow you to figure out some of the objects in there, even though it is a modified blind contour drawing.
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by Ben Scheele / created early fall '98
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"Sustained Gesture of Taurus"
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This was a technique that was difficult for me to deal with, because I always wanted to put in every detail in my drawings. I left a lot of it very sketchy, and was able to capture some of its essence through the slightly blurred wheels, which hinted at their purpose.
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by Ben Scheele / created early fall '98
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"TJ"
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TJ was a good friend of mine from drawing class and fencing club. He lent me comics and tons of anime. I sometimes wonder where my old friends are and how they are doing, and that is what this drawing represents for me now. I drew him while he was drawing me in an exercise in class. It was on poor quality newsprint paper, so I had to develop some Photoshop actions for adding contrast and some more thickness to the lines so it would be visible here.
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by Ben Scheele / mid fall '98
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"Skull"
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This was a fun value study that has a nice personality to it. The creepiness of the subject is alleviated by its grinning expression.
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by Ben Scheele / created mid fall '98
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"Wipeout Chair"
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The technique used in this drawing was new to me, and quite intriguing. We had to rub out what we had drawn, rotate the canvas and draw again, then repeat. I think it gave it a cool eerie softness.
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by Ben Scheele / created mid fall '98
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"Perspective Study"
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Perspective is something that is not too difficult to capture -- when you are paying attention to it. In this exercise I did, and it paid off. The texture of the wood seemed to come out of the paper naturally. I used a woodless graphite pencil on newsprint.
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by Ben Scheele / created mid fall '98
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"Value Study 1"
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In these two value studies I used a watercolor paper with a very coarse bumpy texture. I didn't know to use a sharp hard pencil to get in between the bumps, so they ended up looking very coarse and sketchy, even though I nailed the values. With a little blending using median and gaussian blur filters in photoshop, I was able to smooth them out a bit while still leaving my own pencil-work partially visible.
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by Ben Scheele / created Oct. '98
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"Value Study 2"
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These value studies were cool to begin with, but now they just blow me away. The modification removed distractions and left all that I saw visible. In this one I played around with the background to give it some atmosphere.
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by Ben Scheele / created Oct. '98
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"Still Life"
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This is charcoal on newsprint. The object in the middle is a drum my father built that has fur accents and a leather strap. I played with the textures, and left some areas sketchy, because we didn't have too long to work on it.
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by Ben Scheele / created mid fall '98
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"Foreshortened Hand"
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I was happy with the sense of depth in this drawing. It was a fairly quick sketch, 15 minutes max, and I didn't use any sighting techniques like Durer did. It just flowed. Hmm. I just realized that I had that watch for a long time. I just recently replaced it because one of the buttons often wouldn't work, and it was falling apart. My hand looks pretty much the same. Sometimes when I look at my hands, I think, "these hands are beautiful. They can do great things."
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by Ben Scheele / created mid fall '98
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"Texture Study"
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This drawing used the same paper as the value studies, but I was prepared for it. I used pretty much the full range of my pencils from 6B to 4H. The velvet's sheen, the conch's matte, and the pinecone's bristliness were all very fun to explore. I had to be very careful to get the conch's texture right with such a bumpy paper, but it was ideal for the velvet. It almost drew itself. This drawing ended up feeling quite complete when I was done with it.
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by Ben Scheele / created 11-2-98
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"Still-Life With Perspective"
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For this project I had to use perspective, so I found some rectangular prism-like objects and went to it. I found some nice details, like the reflections in the glossy table and on the yo-yo. The box is my old toy chest which still holds my surviving transformers, go-bots, rock lords and the like. I called it the red-white-and-blue box, because those were its colors. The other item is an old toy semi-truck trailer. I think this composition works so well because the vanishing points are up in the direction of the top corners of the page.
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by Ben Scheele / created 11-18-98
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"Boot"
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This is a drawing I did at a fine arts symposium in Bemidji that I was selected to attend. I was coached in a seminar by John Giarizzo, a great artist and cool guy. He presented his life's work and story in a very interesting slide show ( a rarity ). He was very influenced by Caravaggio, and made some huge paintings of earth -moving machinery, people, and other cool things. I had a fun time sculpting this boot with black and white chalk. I experimented with a tilted cropping of the image while drawing it, just because I was feeling a strong need to experiment after a previous seminar with Martin Garhart, who was actually Bill Watterson's teacher at one time. Needless to say, it was a great experience. The fall colors in Bemidji were incredible.
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by Ben Scheele / created late fall '98
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"Final Project"
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This was the culmination of all that I had learned in Drawing I, and my most challenging drawing at the time. The reflective surface of the tuba required constant checking for alignment, and constant examination of the distorted forms in it and what they were reflections of in the room. I spent a long time on this over several nights, totaling around ten hours of work. I focused on every element equally, but the values in the cloth background that I hung up are one thing that really make this drawing special. You can see how I set the drawing up in this compositional sketch. With a knowledge of how much time I would probably invest in this project, I wanted to make sure it would have a good set-up. It helped me to see that I needed to allow more room for the pathos plant.
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by Ben Scheele / created 12-17-98
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