Actors and Stage Workshop

This sketch was one from my workshop with Lius Ruiz.  I have followed his blog and studied his work for the last two years.  On top of his proficiency, he's a delightful guy and he gave me some very practical tools to help my composition. He had us start our drawings at the focal point and move out.   As in draw from the back and move forward.   He also taught us to simplify buildings by implying the rhythm of the windows.  We did several thumbnails to practise this as well as place overlapping figures in the foreground (the actors) to add some dynamism and draw the eye to the focal point.

The one question I continue to have is "when to stop".  His lesson plan didn't directly address that, but I think it gave me some tools to help me with that decision.

The first workshop I participated in was given by Lynne Chapman.  I met her last year in Santo Domingo and correlated her expressive sketching style with her buoyant personality.   True to form, the workshop was lots of fun.  My take-away was cropping and using angles to create interest.  She suggested zooming in on an object and filling the page. Of course, true to form, I started with the interesting root buttress of a Plane tree, before moving to buildings.