Semester 2 week 9

A little late in the posting, I've been doing pretty well with the friday/saturday upload for this blog. Whats nice though is that I get to show all the things I did over the weekend.

Media class. Oh what a trip. I went into this project with such vigor but down the line I made quite a few mistakes that I wish I had changed. As you can see below, a bit was changed, but for the better of course. I really enjoyed inking the original drawing but I had to make some changes. That was not so fun. Inking is not pencils, you have to paint over it and reink or with the hands you can scrape it off. I'm not good with either, but I'm getting better. Also all those lines? I'm not sure if I like the look (especially with how long they took...). Never the less, its finished. I want to do more inking in the future especially if I want to draw comics.

Less than 8x11 on strathmore, sumi ink, pen nibs.

The piece can be taken literal or figuratively in my opinion with hints

of the pain of rape or the cornering during stressful times.

Light and formm.... I had to draw some blockheads. Those were cool. BUT oh my god... I feel like the perspective was some crap. I dont really like building up vanishing points... I want to free hand because it can be a hassle. Sadly, I dont practice enough to have it come out correct. So I rigged it up in sketchup, which was kind of fun. I got to try out some stuff, and I may play around with that program some more... yet I dont want to rely on it. So the best thing I can do? Draw more than just figures from life!

The cool thing was creating from a thumb than adjusting to find best

possible pose (no tangents is a big plus)

Figure drawing is now focusing on arms. The mapping of anatomy is staying in my mind pretty well. I just need to start applying this to what I do. Oh also! I must draw bigger. This is okay for some of the shorter poses but for the longer ones its harder to get those nice details. 

Each took about 10-20 minutes. Its nice to have notes while doing these.

Cast drawing is really taking some shape. It really is starting to look closer and closer like what I see. Its funny, I've never really tried to make things look accurate. I would always fake it till it looked about right. Doing this has really set a lot of guidelines. Plus I am pretty stoked, I want to try doing more of this over the summer. This type of work is really helping me with light and shadows, something I neglected for a lot of my artistic development.

Every week I seem to put in about 4+ hours. Seems like a good pace.

I'm finally starting to crackdown on color and composition. While doing these in pencil they would feel like values are semi close, but on closer inspection they are quite off. I think I have a hard time committing that its a dark value versus lighter. I will do lots more! Oh also, I feel like when I can distinguish what the object is it distorts my perception a little. They come out too big or in a weird angle. I might try blurring these before starting with the next one to see how well I can get the shapes down.

Thumbnails done in sketchbook. 

Semester 2 Week 8

Midterms have been hot in my mind this past week. I have gotten a chance to really push myself this semester and I feel like I'm starting to see some nice results.  It definitely is great to see the work I'm pushing out and how it could affect me later in my career. Obviously not just as a stepping stone, but more as a tool that I can go back to later. 

The few downsides I have with this week is that I REALLY need to start scanning stuff right away. I cannot just leave it to the last minute. I mean I had to spend about 6+ hours organizing, scanning, preparing on photoshop, and uploading the different assignments I had not gotten around to. I'll try my hardest to stay on top of that biz.

Now with Figure Drawing 2. I think I'm finding a great way to create clearer drawings. One thing that bugs me with most of my drawings is that I tend to be very heavy handed early on. This creates a messy look and its hard to tell the lines I put down early and the ones I put down later. So I just used a harder pencil first for some light lines, then went over with a softer one with more confident strokes. I really liked the feeling of how easy it was to glide with a 4B over some 2h. Oh also... we are learning backs.

Color coded. It makes the drawing even easier to follow.

The Media assignment is having us work on a personal piece now. I really like how the class is set up, first master copy then do something personal. I feel like I learn a lot and at the same time can expand my wings. A lot of what I got below was all thanks to sketchbook class. Doing lots of iterations then has me in the habit to be able to do a bunch till I get the image I want. Whats also nice, when I was finished with the iterations, the reference picture taking came out a lot easier. 

Light and Form egg drawing has come to an end. I am happy to say I learned a lot with this one. This is definitely an assignment where you can gain so much by doing it over just reading about it. For example, the proportions are a bit wonky. I think if I spent some extra time getting them just right, I would not have to spend time later with it at all. This is a bad habit of mine where I rush things and try to fix them as I go on. The other thing I learned was how to achieve a smoother look. I do not think I will ever want to do this because of the time it took. However, if I had to, I can. ALSO! I am improved with reflective lighting. It was the bane of my existence for the longest time. I still have trouble, but I'm getting there.

Small egg drawing done in graphite

Color and composition. Yea... I'm taking this class. I have not posted much because I have not gotten around to scanning them in. I feel like if there is any class I will fail at, this will be it. Somewhere along the lines, I am doing the work but I have not gotten around to much of it as I wanted. I'm definitely going to take the time to do a LOT LOT more every week from now on. 

Cast drawing is coming along nicely, and I'm starting to see a lot of results here. Seriously, it looks pretty impressive in person. Right now, I am putting in the 5 values since the proportions are looking nice. I just have to smooth out those tones then I can get to the next thing.

Charcoal. About 12-15+ hours put into it already

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.

Semester 2 Week 5

I'm falling behind just a bit because I find scanning stuff to be a little troublesome. Its one of those things that does not take long but I push it off very easily. I really need to get on that this week. I have the time.

Honestly a lot of bland stuff. Studies studies studiesssss.

Skeletal structure still emphasized but I'm working on

muscles now.

Started the cast drawing! Its fun. Really chill.

Egg drawing. Similar to cast, but going a little quicker.

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.

Came in bronze

I'm a little late on my postings, it has been a pretty rough week in terms of work. I've been falling behind by just one step so its hard to just regain my footing. Some of my stuff like my sketchbook assignment and last week figure drawing still need to be scanned/photographed. Tomorrow I'll upload more figure drawings.

Anatomy from last week was just to do better form skeletons. I feel like over this class I have gotten a lot better. Its now easy to pay attention to which side the form is on. The difficult part was trying to rotate the figure. 

The rest of the linear perspective class is devoted to the final project with a few random lessons here and there. I still don't know how I'm going to show my studio, but these were my first iterations. I'll do lots more later..

Studio room from different angles.

Box flaps.

A new long study that took about 80 minutes in nupastel. I did one before but there were just too many errors at about 2 hours. What I did differently was spend the first 35 minutes with just proportions. This allowed for lots of minimal problems later on. The MAJOR thing though that dragged this down was the high contrast I gave the model. One reason was because I didn't pay attention to the overall figures light/shadow relation. If thats not worse? I used ivory white thinking it was a light yellow for the highlights. This blasted them to a greater degree. On the brighter side? Because I did not have to think about proportions, I could look at the details and render to a better degree.

Dubbed the bronze statue. 

Lots of work ahead

I feel like the moral of this whole blog post is if its bad then draw it again. I just need to keep pushing myself in the general direction that is set forth.

Linear perspective has been pretty tough as of late. While I am getting better at ellipses, for some reason I don't quite grasp gridding a sphere. I'm definitely going to have to rewatch the videos from class. Which is really nice because TAD is an online school that records all its sessions. This is very good when they pour tons of stuff in such a short amount of time.

Photography was an interesting assignment where I had to play with shadow. I really did not want to just use the silhouettes I was given. Instead, I played with crumpling paper and boxes to get unique shapes that I normally would not get. This was definitely a lot of fun to play with but frustrating when I can't control them all that much. So, what I get is what I get.

Heh, I did the sketchbook assignment wrong but I'll still post this anyways. Luckily, we went over the rest of the creature designs in last class. I will actually redo my creatures this week with a different process. Unlike the last time, I will focus very hard on the initial stages instead of the later ones. I get too caught up in details and then afterwords I don't want to get rid of it. I'll try to show my process. But for now, here is a teapot and cup. I did about 18 thumbs to get composition I wanted. (This is something I will also redo this weekend, all I needed was one object and I probably should render it better)

After working from strutturo uomo, I can tell my anatomy forms are getting just a slight bit better. They still have a way to go, but they show me reaching one level higher. In the beginning, I was struggling with certain things which now make lots of sense. 

Looking closer

No figure drawings today because of midterms this week. Instead here are some simplified forms of the body. Its harder than it looks. You really have to pay attention to where things are going, what side is facing you and how they all work together. I will be working on some anatomy studies this weekend. If I get a chance, i might upload some.

One step at a time.

My newest sketchbook assignment is a cool assignment but a tough one. I need to look for a mini ecosystem and draw it. Thats cool, but there is just so much detail sometimes that I kind of get lost in my drawing. I will have to try harder and its definitely good practice. Oh the other thing that needs practice is how I can render with a pencil because I feel it will be a lot easier to correct values later on.

Next, I will create a creature to inhabit my eco-system. One is a rusty, moldy, rocky industrial area (under a bridge). The other is dirty mushrooms with leafs. 

This was tough, I'm not a fan of bugs up close.

Its funny how I overlooked these all the time.

Linear perspective class has me creating random objects from imagination. I'm happy to see that all of this practice is showing results. I think I can push myself further then this but for now I was so worried about getting the ellipses correct. 

Forms broken down and drawing with light

The best way to understand complexity is to break it down into simple shapes. However, it can be really hard to see the lines that really show the true form. I have some problems when it comes to that. But the more i practice with it, the better I am getting. Soon, I should try lighting some of these figures.

10 minute pencil, understanding form with wires and blocks

This was an optional assignment for photography that I really wanted to do.  They are long exposures using the night time photography mode on my camera. There is no light except the little flashlight that I took a part. By shining it on and off, I was able to get an interesting effect.

shinku...Hadouken

A blaze of light made by a small light.

And made by a shutter speed of 15 or 30 seconds.

I have gotten a lot better with cubes. Why all this for just a simple shape? Because many if not all things can just be broken down into this shape. It's also helping my see perspective. However, I still have a way to go. The more I do, the better I can see my early mistakes.

I will never see the end of cubes, never.