Andrew Sandberg's Fine Art

Having established an outline of the structure and light, I merely have to consult the original sketch to to give a fuller definition to the shadows. I begin shading at the figure's left arm and move outward across the torso. I do not yet bring out the darkest darks, because I may need to make erasures later.  Below, I continue shading outwards from the center. I have established by now all the basic muscular  and skeletal forms to be fleshed out. I try to do this with a fluent hatching stroke to avoid making prominent lines in the interior of the figure.  Besides giving a convincing roundness to the form, it also puts an added emphasis on the harshness of such lines that I do want to feature, such as those in the deltoid and triceps. This allows me to stress angularity without sacrificing realism.  If you click on any of the images for a close up view, you will see that my hatching is done in largely uniform direction. This is a choice that grew out of ...

I began this project with a sketch from a live model. This was done quickly and roughly, as a mere practice exercise. My goal was basically naturalistic—to record the body of the model in the pose that he had chosen. However, I emphasized certain elements that I found striking. The angularity of the shadows produced by multiple lights sources; the separation of the muscles into rotund masses; the elongation of the limbs; these were all spontaneous stylizations suggested by the model's body. These were what made me want to develop the sketch further The first step was to identify what I liked about the drawing and the pose, and to distinguish these from what was accidental and irrelevant.  I did this by laying tracing paper over the original sketch and manipulating various aspects of the figure to see which elements were essential and which could be changed. I found that I liked the twist of the body and that this could be emphasized by adjustments of the ...