Phonebooth by Jeff Henriquez

Jeff Henriquez was kind enough to participate in another installment of the Drawn in Black interview (more here).  Graffiti has been a passion of mine for a long time, so it’s no surprise that Jeff’s work immediately appealed to me.  His pointillistic photo-realistic renderings of gritty urban artifacts and scenes are a labor of love and patience.  If you want to see his work in person, he has an exhibit at the Dorian Grey Gallery coming up in the spring.

What’s your name?

Jeff Henriquez

Where did you grow up?

Lynn, Massachusetts

Where do you live now?

Boston

How old are you?

37

What is your educational background? What, if anything, did you study?

I got my Bachelors degree from Bradford College in art with a concentration in painting. I went to Howard for my Masters and have a year to complete.

Parking Meter by Jeff Henriquez

How do you make a living?

I’m an art instructor at the West End House Boy’s and Girl’s Club in Boston. Also on the side I do art exhibits and freelance work.

How long have you been making art, and what role does that play in your life?

I’ve been into art since car seats and fat crayons but never thought of myself as an artist until Junior High when I won a school art contest. Since then I stayed into drawing and painting.

Dirty Fence by Jeff Henriquez (click for larger version)

What does “art” mean to you?

Art is everything, and everywhere. You see and use it all the time. From giant paintings and million dollar sculptures, to the shape, color and design of your toothbrush. So it’s all in how you see it. You can’t always define it.

What role does drawing play in your work? Is it a means to an end, or an end in and of itself?

I draw mainly to stay connected to my environment and challenge myself with projects of progressively increasing difficulty. I never use rulers when drawing in ink and I try to maintain a solid integrity with my lines. All together it’s a means to becoming a master of my craft.

Dumpster by Jeff Henriquez (click for larger version)

What would you consider your “style” of art to be, if you have one?

Bruce Lee said, “Become the kettle… I have no fighting style.” Clearly I tend to lean toward the more realist type of stuff because I’m such a technical person and therefore I find it a harder skill to command. But I have done art “in the style of” some abstract painters, Hoffman, Basquiat, Pollack etc.

What’s your weapon of choice? What medium and drawing tool do you prefer to use?

The mighty Micron pen is my favorite tool right now. Most of my new drawings are laid out with a 2H Faber-Castell and finished with Microns 01, 001, 005. It creates super clean work, forces me to work patiently and think my way through the session without f*ckin up the piece. Nah mean?

Truck by Jeff Henriquez (click for larger version)

What approach do you take for your work? Do you plan it out or does it emerge spontaneously? How long do you usually work on a piece?

Some pieces take a month some take only one day. The “truck” painting for example took about 11 hours but I did it one sitting. The “skool” piece took a month because I worked in short 2 hour sittings. Generally, a typical drawing can take 2 days. And, yes I plan the foundation and basic composition of the work then take artistic license in the details juxtaposing little bits here and there to get that “Oh shit” effect when you look closely.

What are you currently working on?

I have a couple projects on the table right now. I have a street sign drawing from LA that I’m doing for my own collection and a commission piece for a client in Boston.

Are there any people that influenced you that stand out? What current artists do you follow?

My favorite of all time is Chuck Close. I know it seems cliche but the first time i saw a 9 foot face staring at me, I was blown away and thought, oh, I need to get up in this… But today there are just too many good artists to reference.

Skool by Jeff Henriquez

What would you tell aspiring artists?

Keep doing what you do and get better a it. Don’t get stuck in a cycle of dumb habits like sloppiness, and lack of practice. Also, take criticism constructively not personally. Use every bit of time to learn from your mistakes. People who study art and look at a lot of artists work can tell the difference between a distinct style and a repeated weakness in execution. Polish all aspects of your work.

Anything you would like share and let us know?

My services are available for shows, live art, tattoo designs, interior decor consultations, commissions commercial and private.

What websites can we find you on?

www.jeffhenriquezart.blogspot.com

You can also google me. Type “jeff henriquez, art” and some interesting things will pop up.

Do you have any upcoming events?

I have an exhibit at Dorian Grey Gallery in New York coming in the spring.

Thanks again to Jeff for taking the time to talk a bit about himself and allowing me to share his work with you!

Related posts:

1. Matt Cassan: Charcoal Art and Interview
2. “The Drawing Is the Most Important Part” – Interview with Matt K. Smith
3. Caricature of Jeff Lafree by Sean Gardner

So your furry feline friend has you feeling inspired, eh?  Well it is no surprise that there are plenty of tutorials on the internet on how to draw the internet’s mascot, the kittayh!  But to be honest, a lot them just ain’t that good.  What I’ve done here is weeded through the garbage and hopefully retained those tutorials which I think are worth your time.

Here we go.

Let’s not mess around – let’s start with the good $#!+  Jack Hamm really breaks it down, as he tends to do, in this book on How to Draw Animals, available here on scribd.com – if you want the physical thang, go get it here on Amazon.

Polly Pinder wrote a book on the topic, you can grab it on Amazon.

Helen South has another good one on about.com. Look at the purdy kitteh!

How awesome is this? Even the master Da Vinci was rocking out some cat drawings – righteous!

This is a nice little tutorial over on dragoart.com, How to Draw a Cat Head by finalprodigy – very nice indeed!

This dark beauty was put together by Carol Rosinski.

Carol also has this guy, buddy on a blanket

Grant Fuller gets furry in his tutorial over on artistnetwork.com.

Good little primer on getting the shape and proportion of your kitty right, by the fellow over at drawing-pencil-sketches.com.

I don’t think the artist ultimately gets the proportions just right, but you can see by this example again how to use shapes to build up your final masterpiece.

Bob Davies breaking down the shapes of a cat – it’s all about the shapes man!

Now this is just funny:

Related posts:

1. How to Draw a Rose by Carol Rosinski
2. How to Draw a Horse Tutorial
3. How to Draw a Face: 25 Tutorials

How to Draw Cats in Simple Steps by Polly Pinder

All drawing is based on the construction of simple lines and shapes, and this easy-to-follow book teaches how to draw short-haired and long-haired cats and kittens in easy, step-by-step stages. Including a good selection of every cat enthusiast’s favorite breeds—from domestic and pedigree cats to the amazingly-patterned tabbies—even absolute beginners will be able to create great drawings following these illustrations.

Related posts:

1. 10 Tutorials on How to Draw a Cat
2. How to Draw Hands: 35 Tutorials, How-To’s, Step-by-Steps, Videos, Studies, Poses and Photo References

How to Draw Animals by Jack Hamm

Simple, clear instructions for drawing animals with more than 1,000 step-by-step illustrations. Basic fundamentals for the beginner, new principles and techniques for the professional. A detailed guide for everyone who enjoys–or wants to enjoy–drawing.

No related posts.

Frontal View of Human Skull

Side View of Human Skull

Both of the preceding illustrations are from Grey Anatomy.  There are also some real skulls:

Human Skull Frontal View

Human Skull Side View

Here’s another poor soul (at least I’m pretty sure they’re real!); these are nicely lit and show great detail:

Here’s another nice three quarters view, this time with a full set of teeth:

There’s also this guy with a nice and interesting looking up perspective:

This is how the master, Da Vinci himself, drew the skull:

Of course these just scratch the surface.  If you really want to dive into the anatomy of the skull and learn what each nook and cranny is called, check out one of these:

• Skull Anatomy Tutorial
• Anatomy of the Skull
• Skull Bones | Cranial and Facial Bones

Hopefully this has been helpful, and as you can see, the internet is truly awesome and a great resource when it comes to advancing your drawing skills.  I leave you with this guy, found on Flicker Commons:

Related posts:

1. How to Draw a Skull: 50 How-to’s, Tutorials, Studies, Photo References, Videos, and Inspirational Skull Illustrations
2. Drawing Study of Human Anatomy by Julius Guzy
3. 7 Tutorials on How to Draw the Human Anatomy / Body / Figure

"Drawing: Horses" by Walter T. Foster

With assistance from Michele Maltseff, artist Walter T. Foster shows you how to render a variety of different horse breeds in pencil, with tips on adding touches with charcoal, crayon, and brush and ink. In this step-by-step book, he explains not only a number of drawing techniques and special effects but also his own method of developing a drawing to its fullest. You will learn about various breeds and their proportions, starting with their heads and then progressing to full bodies. And in addition to helpful drawing instruction, Horses also contains a wealth of beautiful equine drawings you can both copy and admire! It’s a fabulous addition to any artist’s drawing reference library.

No related posts.

Draw 50 Horses by Lee Ames

Arabians, Pintos, Morgans and Clydesdales: jumping, bucking, rearing, grazing and kicking — all are in this collection of 50 drawings.

No related posts.

This post is divided into two sections: first, the horse drawing tutorial that I have put together (immediately below); second, links out to other worthwhile tutorials on how to draw a horse.

How to Draw a Horse: the Drawn in Black Tutorial

Now let me start by saying that before this tutorial, I have never drawn a horse (that I can remember anyway). However, I know I can do better than most tutorials out there, so what I want to show you is how I would go about if I wanted to become an expert horse drawer (heh).  This method would work well for me, and it might work well for you!

First, find a good picture of horse. If I want to draw a realistic horse, the best thing to do is actually look at a horse.  If you don’t have one in your backyard, find an awesome picture online.  Some clutch resources are Flickr Commons, Wikimedia Commons, and of course Google Images.  We’re looking for pictures that are large in size, good resolution, and with proper contrast so they make nice print-outs.  Here’s a picture I found via Google Images: a pretty badass wallpaper a wild horse on its hind legs.

Next, print out the picture. The first thing I did was crop it in Photoshop so that it would fill out the entire sheet, and then printed it out:

Now the first thing I want to do is explore the shapes of this horse.  I’ll do that using my lightbox and a separate sheet of paper (don’t worry, this is NOT a tutorial on how to trace a horse).  The lightbox I’m using is the Artograph Lighttracer Elite:

Then, trace the major shape masses of the horse. Put the horse printout on the lightbox, overlay it with a sheet of paper, and then find the large shapes that make up the horse:

What this gives you now is a general sense of the shape masses of the horse and the proportion they have to one another.

Next, freestyle an outline of the horse. The final drawing will not be traced, but by tracing, our hands and minds get acquainted with the horse so that when we freehand we already have a much better sense of how all the parts fit together.

Now that we’re more familiar with the horse, let’s go ahead an sketch it out freehand (remember, we’re NOT tracing this drawing!):

Freehand the horse outline.  This was my first pass just getting the basic shapes of the horse down.  Having traced the horse before, this is much easier to get down.

Find the shade shapes. After you have the basic outline of the horse on paper, it’s time to explore in more detail and putting the outlines of the various gray values down.  I like to just go ahead and pencil in absolute black value shapes right away.

Finally, shade the horse. Here I’ve completed most of the shading using cross-hatching.  Finally I cleaned it all up a bit and darkened the outline so it would pop a bit more:

Overall, I worked fairly quickly, so there’s obviously a lot of room for improvement.  I wasn’t particularly loose, so the horse actually looks stiff.  You’ll also notice that the neck and head are a bit shrunken and that the tail could look a bit more like hair.

But if you want to learn how to draw a horse, this is how I would go about it.  Hopefully this little how to will be of benefit to you, definitely let me know in the comments what you think.

For more horse madness, here are additional horse tutorials worth your time.

More Horse Drawing Tutorials

Draw a Horse by Helen South

Short and sweet, breaks down the overall shape masses of the horse fairly well.  Definitely worth your time to study.

How to Draw a Horse by emfrank09

Video on Youtube – nicely rendered horse, always helpful to watch someone else drawing something you’re trying to get down!

How to Draw a Horse by kimibee91

Another nice tutorial on Youtube, again based on the constituent shapes of a horse.

Drawing Horses by Suz on Elfwood

Nice compilation of different aspects of drawing horses. From anatomy to various horse poses, this should definitely help you out.

Draw 50 Horses by Lee Ames

If you really want to get serious, I suggest thinking about buying a book devoted to the topic.  This is a really nice one and highly rated on Amazon.  You can also check out the book preview for some freebie tutorials

How to Draw Horses in Simple Steps by Eva Dutton

Another book worth your while, again highly rated.

Drawing Horses by Walter Foster

This book really takes a detailed look on all aspects of the horse and Walter Foster’s drawings are superb.

Drawing Made Easy Horses and Ponies by Patricia Getha

And finally, this book by Patricia Getha is great if you want to learn how to draw different types of horses.

Use our book links to support Drawn in Black! If you are thinking of buying something on Amazon, simply use this link to go to Amazon – I get a small referral commission from Amazon and you don’t pay a dime extra!  It helps me a lot in continuing this site, so thank you in advance.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, please let me know when you think in the comment section. Happy drawing

Related posts:

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2. “Making work makes me want to make more work” – Interview with Henry St.Leger (aka Sainty WHAT)
3. How to Draw Hands: 35 Tutorials, How-To’s, Step-by-Steps, Videos, Studies, Poses and Photo References

Tutorials

UPDATE 12/10/11: If you’re looking for even more eye drawing resources, check out this great Squidoo lens on how to draw eyes compiled by Martin Stankewitz!

Figure Drawing For All It's Worth by Andrew Loomis (p. 176)

Drawing the Human Head by Burne Hogarth (p. 37)

Eye Drawing Tutorial by Brian Huey

How to Draw Eyes by Stanislav Prokopenko

Drawing the Human Eye on OnlyPencil

How to Draw Eyes on DrawFurry

How to Draw Eyes: The Male Eye by Cataclysm-X

How to Draw Eyes by JR Dunster

How to Draw a Realistic Eye by DorsY69

How to draw the femal eye on Instructables

Female Eye by Faith Te

Drawing Cartoon Eyes by Pete Emslie

Cartoon Eye Reference Sheet

Manga / Anime Eyes

Drawing the Manga Eye by Archvermin on DeviantArt

Tutorial: Create Unique Anime Eyes by Kikariz on DeviantArt

Draw Female Anime Eyes

How to Draw Eyes by Koda Tadashi

Videos

Photo References

Eye Stock Images on DeviantArt

Eye Images on Flickr

Eye Stock Images on morgueFile

40 Amazing Female Eye Photography by Amir

Related posts:

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3. How to Draw a Face: 25 Tutorials

"Balloon" by Johnny Crap

What’s your name?

Jonathan Bergeron

Where did you grow up?

Beloeil, a suburb of Montreal in Quebec.

Where do you live now?

Montreal.

How old are you?

ugh, 38

What is your educational background? What, if anything, did you study?

I am a self taught artist, who studied graffiti, punk/harcore album covers & skateboard deck art on his own time.

"BMX Viking" by Johnny Crap

How do you make a living?

It’s a 50/50 split between “Fine” art & band shirt designs.

How long have you been making art, and what role does that play in your life?

I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember but I really fell into art when I started doing graffiti in the early 90′s. Around 95 I picked up the brushes when my mother gave me her set of oil paint.

I am now lucky enough to say that art is what I do, my personal escape & on top of it it’s my “Job”.

"Jackalope" - Johnny Crap

What does “art” mean to you?

That’s a tough one. Not sure how to answer that.

What role does drawing play in your work? Is it a means to an end, or an end in and of itself?

I love drawing, I even sometime prefer looking at drawings from other artists more than their paintings. I find that it gives you a better insight to their true personality.
& there is no end.

What would you consider your “style” of art to be, if you have one?

I would fall into the Pop-Surrealist category…

"Shreddin Zombie" - Johnny Crap

What’s your weapon of choice? What medium and drawing tool do you prefer to use?

For drawings, I always love pencil but most of my inking is done with a simple Pentel Pocket Brush pen. Rives paper is also a favourite.

Are there any people that influenced you that stand out? What current artists do you follow?

Todd Scorr, Robert Williams, Rick Griffin, Jim Phillips are old faves, and right now I really like Craola, Martin Wittfooth, Travis Louie & Viktor Safonkin’s artwork. I have a terrible memory of names, I could probably think of hundreds but can’t remember anything that isn’t an image. Haha.

What are you currently working on?

A couple of commissions, including a Mona Lisa/Calavera mash up for another artist as well as a couple of themed paintings for group shows at Gallery 1988.

"Sideshow Pigeon" - Johnny Crap

What would you tell aspiring artists?

To keep at it. Try to find their own thing & to push it. It’s not easy, lots of ups & down, especially if that’s all you do, but at the end it’s worth it because you do it for yourself by yourself.

What websites can we find you on?

You can purchase my work through Yves Laroche Gallery
I have a blog that has older stuff, johnnycrap.com & I maintain a TUMBLR site until my real site is ready: johnnycrap.tumblr.com

"Oldschool Line art" - Johnny Crap

Related posts:

1. “Making work makes me want to make more work” – Interview with Henry St.Leger (aka Sainty WHAT)
2. “The Drawing Is the Most Important Part” – Interview with Matt K. Smith
3. Matt Cassan: Charcoal Art and Interview