Drawmelting the Warrior Woman

Drawmelt: The Warrior Princess Edition

Last night was another night of drawing and hanging out with fellow geeks at Meltdown Comics. The model was the lovely and talented Ashphord Jacoway who took on the role of an African woman-warrior for the evening. She is a stunning model and gave us some great, strong, dynamic poses to work from. She was also fun to chat with between poses and on breaks, and showed genuine interest in what everyone was doing. 

On this particular evening I was joined by my good friends Gibbergeist and Celluloid Girl. Gibbergeist has been to Drawmelt with me pretty much since the beginning. Tonight was Celluloid's first time, both enjoyed themselves thoroughly. I can't wait until we can all go back, but it will probably have to wait until after the San Diego Comic Con. Have to save money for precious merch. 

Here are some of my favorite drawings from Monday's drawmelt. 

This was my favorite pose of the evening, and I wish we'd had more than about a minute to draw this. With that said, this pose was done in what martial artists refer to as a "horse stance," and she held this for more than a minute. That's really, really difficult to do. If you don't believe me set your feet about double shoulder width apart then lower your body down until you're in a sitting position, but with out a chair. Now stay there for a full sixty seconds. I dare you to tell me this is easy when your legs are shaking and you can barely stand. 

This is one of the earlier drawings in the evening, done as a warm up. It reminds me of some photos I remember seeing in National Geographic of a tribesman standing, one foot up, one hand holding a spear longer than he is tall, looking out over the African vista. That photo always struck me as being very serene. I tried to get some of that sense here. 

I have a lot of work to do on being able to draw hands well every time I need to. On the recommendation of the host, Satine, one of my drawings tonight was focused on getting just the hand. This isn't too bad, but there's a lot of room to improve. 

This was one of my favorite poses of the evening. Ashpord had this great, kind of mischievous expression and attitude. It looked like she was daring someone standing behind us to come get her, but in a way that suggested a playful kind of flirtatiousness. 

After several poses we moved into holding a single pose for twenty minutes. I think this was the first of thsoe poses. It gave me time to do some basic shading, and even outline the drawing in ink. Asphord put on this fantastic air of imperious indulgence that screamed "young royalty." This was a very expressive pose that was both challenging and a lot of fun to draw.