Paper, Pastel, and a Can Opener

For figure drawing recently, I had to work up my speed with gesture drawings.  The faster ones turned out great. I also used a new type of newsprint, smooth versus rough. It glides very easily. However, I feel the paper I am using for my 10 minute pastel drawings is not the best choice. I will have to find the paper that was recommended or try it on the newsprint.

2 min charcoal drawing, feels super powerful!

2 min, I liked how fluid this came out.

10 min nu pastel, best of the bunch I did.

In sketchbook class, I had to take a mechanical object that moves and study it. Then I created an exploded view which later would be used for drawings from my imagination.

Linear perspective was another form analysis. This one seemed simple enough but still took a lot of time. I definitely want to get better at drawing stuff like this so I can start doing it from imagination.

Week 4

10 minute with a focus on bg shape.

A warrior going down a hallway or something.

Can opener from my sketchbook. I'm trying to understand it.

Hey look more cubes!

Cubes make the world go round

Things are going smoothly in class. It feels like I need to be doing double the work to get the results I want. For this last figure drawing assignment, I did it twice (aka 20 drawings instead of 10). It took longer but I found that the ones I liked were in the second batch. 

My ability to use charKole is improving. 5 minutes

Having fun with shape, still need to worry about that light. 15 minutes.

Cubes, that has been the focus for linear perspective this week and probably for the rest of these classes.  I have been drawing these from life and they have been a lot harder to get perfect than I thought.

Cubes, cubes,  and more cubes.

How do you get better at cubes? By drawing more cubes.

I have needed to take some pictures outside of all the drawing I am doing. These were interesting because I had to pay attention to where the light is falling. The different types of light/shadow can evoke a different mood or feeling.

Short loop lighting using my phone cam. I was also holding the light at the same time.

Rembrandt lighting with a point and shoot, this time I had a tripod.

The mark of materials

I have been working with a lot of nu pastel because of my figure drawing class. Probably in the last 2-3 years, I barely even touched charcoal. So, this (and still is) a bit of work to get into the swing of things. I am having fun though. 

One of the things I need to improve on is confidence in my strokes, proportions, and stop trying to work on detail when I have a time limit. I get into this habit of suggesting stuff quickly and it all takes away from the focal.

Two tones fig in 10 minutes.

15 minute, she looks almost amazon long in my picture.

Another nice thing about TAD is that I have drawn more in mediums I have wanted to like ink and nib. I always tell myself I will get to it. 

Ink drawing studies with g-pen nib, I need to get more of those.

Lines, lots of lines

Linear perspective is something I have not done much of in these past couple of months. Hell,  my bg in my illustrations or sketches usually rely on it at its simplest form. So, having this class has helped me a lot do something I have been meaning to do (for a while now).

Creating a chair using a bunch of boxes. 

Vacuum Cleaner from different views then do in a 3/4 view.

This was done in Sketchbook class. Initial drawing was 2 minutes long from my memory. 

Afterwords I put the light/shadow using the reference. 

My Inspiration

Too often, I let most of the things that inspire me wash away. Only recently have I started to create an inspirational folder to look back at all the wonderful things that motivate me to draw. I feel like this is a good thing to have when there are days you can't seem to ignite that spark.

In classes I've been taking, we had to show our touchstones involving what I want to do or how its a good example of what we are learning in class. I thought I'd share some of them.

Johannes Voss, an artist who I've seen do a lot of Mtg art. His use of background elements and camera angles always astounds me.

James Gurney, this guy is a master at his craft and does it in such a believable way. I check that guys blog everyday to see any new stuff he comes up with.

William Adolphe Bouguereau, he paints the figures wonderfully from life and creates magical mythological scenes.

One-Vox, some of his work is so breath taking because of its surreal feel yet grounded in a very real lighting.

David Palumbo, the way he carves the figure with light makes them look so real but I really enjoy his composition most of it all. I feel all of what he did was intentional.

rei子 (I believe this is the name of the artist), someone who I've seen on pixiv a lot and almost always churns out elegant composition mixed with powerful imagery.

These are just a few of the many artists I admire. Another thing I enjoy to see is armor and knights, both fantastical and realistic. I enjoy to draw them and I hope I can make part of my living off doing fantasy art at least. I'm also not a stickler for unrealistic armor ;P

Justice Wong

GoddessMechanic (on deviantart)

(couldn't find artist name)

Lvans (on pixiv)

Another step up the long ladder

First 2 weeks of TAD almost done. I'm very happy for deciding to go with this school. Not only is it cheaper but I feel like I'm doing more and learning more with each class.

This was a 90 min piece using whatever medium you wanted, I choose photoshop.

5 min silhouette, still need to get used to charcoal

5 min silhouette with 2 tones of nu pastel 

From photo ref I took, experimenting with ink. I like how it adheres to paper.

Sketched a tree outside using india ink + nib + brush + sharpie