Semester 2 Week 3

Things are going well at TAD. I'm definitely getting back to my stride that I was able to hit back at the end of the last semester. With figure drawing, I'm reallllly enjoying the way Ron Lemen is teaching the figure. It feels very simple, and I over complicate it! Its all about cylinders and just pointing out where the bone is. Plus, he is really driving in the fact that you need to push the quantity. These are all quick drawings probably no more than 10 minutes.

Over complicated... dont need muscles right now.

Simpler, but I need to pay attention to proportions and relations of body.

Light and form is now really entering the meat of it all. The first assignment is about connecting organic and inorganic object. I think I did a fair job with it but I wasnt paying attention how unconfident my strokes were. I was going in too deep at the very beginning. It makes for a very ugly looking page even if the form looks fun. 

The other assignment was the egg head. We started with a rendered egg and had to paint over a face on it. I definitely did a lot better than I thought. I'm noticing all that hard work is starting to pay off very slightly. However, I did not really go too unique. The face feels a bit plain except for the expression. Also I did need some reference to show me the details of the face. In general, I have avoided the face for the past few years. So I'm not as well accustomed to the muscles or bones as I am with the rest of the body. I'm going to try and do more portrait studies.

Photoshop, took about 4-5 hours

Media class is now having us start our original piece with emphasis on how Fechin has done his. I started with a thumbnail to plot the composition and will work on the finished this weekend. This is really all about what to keep and what to lose. We automatically want to draw everything we see but we need to make a hierarchy of whats actually important. In this instance, its all about the face. More so, John English showed me that adding some tone in the background can balance this out while pushing the focal to the light side of the face.

1 hour study, thumbnail size

Every week, I'm happy to know I am taking cast drawing. There is just so information taught in this class about observing and translating as well as exercises that I really should start doing more often. The first assignment was to block in almost as if we were doing the real assignment. I was stupid in thinking this would go fast. I should have given myself more time since you have to take steps back to measure, compare, then adjust and repeat. 

The other assignment was to break up the values. Its pretty simple but the concept was enlightening. Jon Hardesty talked about how the lights should be emphasized most. The problem was sometimes I was unsure if it should be a dark or a light. The lightest light and darkest dark is easy. But its that middle to dark value that is a little harder. I think this has to do with Dorian Iten talking about relation of value to the ones around it. Basically, a medium value near dark will seem lighter, while a medium value near a light will seem darker. The eyes play tricks... and thats why this whole cast drawing will take a long time! I best prepare.

Take a step back, measure, check, take a step forward, adjust, repeat.

Winter Break is over

Well winter break is over and I never updated this blog during that time. I get very lazy it seems. I will try to make better habits to share my art in the future because I noticed my views went down dramatically. Oh well... 

So new semester at TAD. I feel a lot more comfortable with the structure and not to worry about all the classes I'm taking which are Color/Composition, Light/Form, Figure2, Media1,  and Cast Drawing.

Color/Comp has been pretty straight forward, no real new stuff right now but doing the studies during class has served as one of those exercises I know I should do but I just dont as often as I'd want. I also had to do a little intro piece of me, so I'll show it here. I wish I could have had more space since I have so many things that influence me but breaking it to the bare bones (and sometimes the more interesting ones that isn't shared by everyone) I choose this.

Figure Drawing 2! Yep thats right #2. I really enjoy figure drawing and having 3 classes of it in the TAD program is good to know. The way we are doing right now is a lot more natural for me then using charcoal or pastel and building up shape. What we are learning right now though is how to simplify the form so that you work out perspective, proportion, gesture issues early while leaving muscle and detail for later.

Done in about 15 minutes each. Foreshortening was emphasized as was

drawing through the form.

15 each. Graphite pencil. Dots indicate where bone is visible.

Light and form class has been pretty simple and kind of relaxing. Its a weird feeling where I'm not exactly learning anything new right now but I'm working on something I dont really do at all. Like these boxes. They are a lot looser than the perspective class ones, its really just about grasping three dimension. My next assignment is painting a head over an egg... I doubt I will be as relaxed with that one.

Media class will be grazing over a few different tools to learn that could enhance a drawing/painting. Its really all about marks and the variety that you can make not so much anything else (except they are touched upon in class). We're starting with graphite and charcoal. This piece was done by Nicolai Fechin. Mine is on the right side. Up side, I really focused on the variety the way he draws. I tried my hardest mimicking the speed but I lost the precision that comes from skill. 

Down side, I pushed the features down which might have been the cause of some of the distortion. Overall, fun piece. The next step is applying it to a drawing of my own.

Done with graphite pencil, charcoal pencil, and on drawing paper.

Size is about 8-10"

Cast drawing... this class has been making me stress out. Not with the work i'll be doing, not with the long hours it will take on a single image... No, its the set up. I feel like I over thought it in the beginning but now I'm getting closer to achieving the setup (well...at least the place for it anyway).  

While we work on the setup, we are also doing some excersice. This is nice since I did not want to jump head first into the piece. This one down here is something I will try to do over and over again. Its drawing the same image next to it then putting it over the original and seeing where you went wrong. The red indicates bad, yellow okay, and green is good.  As you can see, just a little shift can ruin well placed lines from being exact.