Saturday, March 23, 2013

Semester 2 week 7

Even though its late, and I have lots of work tomorrow I am going to try my hardest to post my blog. Whether or not people read it, this is a good way to reflect on what I have done. I wish I could just go really in depth, but right now I dont have the time. So this will have to suffice as to see what I've done and what I plan to do for the future. I've been listening to a lot of podcast and one in particular, Lean into Art, has showed me the concept of self reflection.  Before I was posting on the whim someone might see this. Now I know I want to post so that I myself can see it.

Cast drawing is going fairly smoothly. Its really interesting to see how I fair with a project that I keep going back to time and time again. I dont think there has been any like that in my life. One thing I'm growing accustomed to is measuring and the different ways. Proportions, angles, lines, and characterization are all ways to judge an objects measurements. I still have a ways to go though. I noticed how I'm probably the one in class who did the least amount of life drawing. In my past, I did some but looking back now it was either from a photo or I just sort of guessed on the proportions (eyeball to see if it looked about right). I'm definitely thinking once this cast drawing is over, I will work on something similar to keep learning. 

Current Notan stage, separate light and darks. Shape under eye is not a dark.
feels like it... but its not.

Figure drawing is eating away at my time. It requires a lot of effort, but I wonder if thats me who is doing it. Each assignment is around 25 poses and it takes me about 6-8 hours to get that stuff done. I noticed during class many of the students use a more fluid line while mine are kind of scratchy (uncertain lines..... ones without clairty, makes stuff hard to read). I think my gesture is one of my greatest points, but I need to make my stuff easier to view. Since I became self conscious of what I drew during class. That too is a problem. My confidence in myself is one thing... confidence in my art is another but they both seem to have roots connected with one another.

I know a lot have this issue as well where you dont like the work you do. Yet, I feel my condition eats away at me and does not help AT ALL. I will try to work on it. Its definitely a hard one and something that I've faced all the time.
Torso studies.

Each pose takes about 10-20 min.

Light and form class is alright. Its hard to just get cracking on this egg. I feel like I need to be in the mind set. Crit from Dorian was that its fuzzy, bad reflected light and overall lots of noise. Heh... all those seem like things that plague my drawings from the beginning. I remember with Figure 1 Jane talked about how my edges werent alway the best and the reflected light destroyed a lot of my stuff. I DID however get some good advice from Dorian in cast drawing (its awesome having him in both classes... I feel I can ask questions easier when its less people). Basically, he confirmed squint and dont focus on shadow side. BUT, its good to REALLLY step back. I did that a few times when I was "finished" and started to realize mistakes so I went back. I'll make a habit to do that often now. The other is focus on an area outside and use peripheral vision to see. Just doing that now, I noticed a few stuff.

This egg is just a mini version of the cast drawing.

Media class had us doing an ink master copy over break. I choose Frank Frazetta because I definitely find myself going back to the guy when it comes to a lot in my art. First I have to say I learned a lot doing this. I dont think it was as good as many in my class thought it was. I enjoy praise when I feel its worth it, but this was just copying. Also... I think the web version lowers the mistakes that I see when looking at the thing in real life.

So I want to do more of these. I dont know if I will have the chance during this semester...I blame figure drawing and anime central. However, I have a couple of images lined up. Thanks to George Pratt I got lots of high quality images to work from. The second thing was my inability to really control the lines as well as Frazetta did. I got it to work sometimes, other times I didn't. Inking in general is not my speciality but its something that I want to do be. I noticed you have to have a lot of experience to get the right pressure. Sometimes my hand felt like the brush or nib was barely touching to achieve the correct result. Now, the third thing was texture. Frazetta really made it feel legit, while I seemed to disregard how much he put into this. Overall though, it was successful to start doing this.
 
Took about 3 hours to sketch and 5 to ink. On strathmore drawing paper,
sumi ink, G-pen, sable #2 brush.

The final thing I'd like to state is that I am at the point where I KNOW I want to start comics (more specifically, storytelling). So there are two projects I want to work on starting this weekend. The first is writing a short story every week to get better at writing. This will allow me to flex my storytelling muscle so that during the summer I can get cracking on comics. The other thing is to start watch/reading stories (ie animation, comics, games, etc.) and study them closely every week. Just as I look toward masters of art to influence my skill, so should I look toward telling a story. I feel that if I keep doing this every week for a long period of time I will know if I'm gaining anything worthwhile. In the end its not how much I gain, but how much time I put into it compared to the results because who knows if the time can be better spent.

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