Tools of the Trade: PIXELovely

As a new section,"Tools of the Trade" will look at art tools and resources that I utilize during my coursework as an art student at the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University. I'll try to not only include resources that I myself use, but also newer resources that might not have enough exposure as well as including specific art tools and brands that aren't well known or used.

To start off we have PIXELovely - Figure and Gesture Drawing Tool. I was introduced to this website in my freshman year as an art student after asking some of the senior students about the tools that they use when working on their personal projects. PIXELovely is the perfect tool to use for daily sketching practice. The website will let you practice your gestural drawing in timed sessions that are tailored by the options you choose. You'll have a choice of not only the whole body, but  for hands and feet as well as faces and expression practice. If those aren't down your alley they also have an option dedicated to practicing animal figures as well.

The homepage, displaying the four figural drawing options as well as other resources below.

After clicking one of choices they'll take you to the next screen which has a plethora of options to chose from to further tailor your experience. You can chose whether you want nude models, clothed models, or both as well as which gender to be presented. After making that selection you'll choose which kind of session you would like: Standard or Class mode. Standard mode uses a static timer based on the length of time that you chose and is an endless cycle, while Class mode starts slow and quickly picks up the pace cycling for however long you have chosen.

There is an extensive choice of options that are tailored to which session mode you have chosen.

Afterwards they'll begin your session, displaying model pictures of your type on an all black background while notifying you of the amount of time you'll have per image as well as showing the controls over on the left-hand side. The images will automagically cycle when the time indicated is up allowing you to focus entirely on your sketchwork. When your session is over they'll promptly take you back to the website so that may begin another session or continue about your day.

There are previous, pause, forwards, and stop controls on the left that you can use if you wanted to use a particular image that comes up in the rotation. The images also provide the source if you wanted to visit it for more of that particular artists work.

The website also has a forum, yet it is unfortunately rather inactive with the oldest post being a few weeks old the last time I checked. Regardless, PIXELovely is an amazing website to use for an artist that just wants to get some help with their daily practice or even as an external resource for gestural drawing. This is definitely a tool I'll find myself using for quite some time.

PIXELovely: Figure and Gesture Drawing