Drawing 2

Noah Cummins “Eastwood Lawman”

9x12, Graphite on toned paper, 2022

I like cowboys so I thought it would be fun to draw some western-looking guy. I’ve recently played Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 and I really enjoyed them. Before I played those games I used to think that cowboys were kind of tacky. After playing those games I realized that you could make a really complex character out of a cowboy, and I really liked the historical setting too.

I started with the hat because I thought that would be the hardest shape to create. After that, I started shading the hat. Next, I did the outline of the face and the shirt and just repeated the shading process. I tried to make the left side a little darker because I decided that my light source should be somewhere off in the distance on the right. For the wrinkles, I drew faint geometric shapes with the blend sticks. I also just drew lines around where I thought muscles should be and blended those too. I tried to make it dark under the collar of his shirt. The bandolier is supposed to be tugging on his shirt so that’s why his collar is uneven and a little bit more forward on the left. The shading on the bandolier was blended with blending sticks too but I erased the bullet holder things at the top to give them a little depth. The last thing I did was shade the background a little so it didn’t seem completely empty.

I thought it would be cool to capture a man of action. Cowboys are characters that feel like they move fast all the time. If you freeze one in a drawing you can appreciate all the elements that actually make the cowboy. My theme right now is his hidden identity so I made the shadow of his face covering his eyes. He’s supposed to be mysterious. He’s plain enough that you can’t tell if he’s a good person or bad person, but I think he’s scruffy enough to be able to tell that he has a past as some sort of gunslinger.

Getting the shape of the hat correctly was sort of hard, I had to erase and redraw it a few times to get a shape I was okay with. I drew the buttons of the shirt on the wrong side so I had to draw those again, and I’m honestly still not sure if they are on the right side. I had to resize the nose multiple times because I kept drawing it too small. If I started over I’d probably make the body bigger, or the head a little smaller because it looks a little disproportionate unless you imagine him reaching for a gun in his holster or walking forward. I’d also spend a little bit more time on the bullets on the bandolier. I drew them before I started shading in that area and that was a bad idea.

I think this is a realistic style. Even though it’s slightly disproportionate. I think it’s unique because of his posture. His arms are close to his body. There isn’t really a background besides the shading so your focus remains entirely on the details of the cowboy. I really liked how the wrinkles in the shirt turned out, and I think I did a good job on the details of the face.

Noah Cummins “Medieval Assassin”

12x9, Graphite, colored pencils on paper, 2022

This is a drawing of a medieval hooded assassin. I had heavy inspiration from the assassin's creed games, but this drawing is original. I took the most inspiration from characters from games based in the time of the renaissance. I tried to make the designs on the armor and clothes similar to something that’d be seen in that time.

I started by sketching the body, head and arms to the correct proportions before I decided to add details. Then I sketched the shape of the hood because I thought that would be the hardest part and I wanted to get it out of the way. Then I started drawing the cape over the arms of the assassin. I added body armor and facial features. I had to sketch the shadows over his face before I shaded them because I wanted to do all my shading at the same time. I added a transparent red sash around his waist by drawing it on top of previously existing details. Once the details on the body armor were finished I started shading. I decided the light source would be from directly above. This way the shadow over his face would make sense. I used a shading stick to make wrinkles in his clothes and hood. I made it look better by making the shoulders of the cape lighter in color and making value by making the lower parts darker. Then I used an eraser to add wrinkles in the cape. Finally I made the background pink to contrast against the white, red, and black.

This is my second artwork in my hidden identities theme. With this theme I’m trying to capture men of action while keeping their eyes covered. I like making these guys as shrouded in mystery as possible. This way you can interpret the drawing any way you want. I didn’t draw his hands for this reason either. Maybe he’s holding a weapon but you’d never know. He’s obviously performing an action with his left arm because it’s raised, but what he’s doing is impossible to see. Like “Eastwood Lawman '' he has a scarred face and half of it is covered to make it look like he has a violent past but there isn’t anything that definitively states that he did. You might even question his wealth because of how fancy his clothes are.

I’ve never used color pencils before in a project and I didn’t realize that they were going to be near impossible to shade. I had to add fine graphite to the black cape to fill in the gaps in between the black on the cape and that’s how I was able to blend it into the shoulders. I’d probably be a little bit more careful with the black colored pencils if I did it again so I could make the value on the cape more balanced from the shoulders to the waist.

This is supposed to be a realistic style like my last project. I think it’s unique because it’s an original design with the combination of black and white for the face and color for the clothes. I’m pretty proud of how the little swirly things that make up the fabric of his clothes around his neck. I think my audience will be able to understand what the drawing is fundamentally, but they’re going to have questions about who this guy is and what he’s doing, and that’s what I set out to achieve.