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 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 4

Media class was all about using what we learned about Fechin and applying it to our own portrait drawing. I used my brother as a  reference. After drawing this, I feel like I took a slightly poor reference. There was a bit of lost information along with hard angle and harsh values. I really had to go insane with this one. It did not help that I was staying up late to draw this. Heh, I remember how many times I just wanted to quit for the night because it was so much trouble. Then I'd come right back thinking I could fix it more. Overall, I am happy. It makes me want to draw more like this... but ink is next and I am excited.

6 hours. Graphite, Charcoal pencil, Charkole stick,

strathmore drawing paper.

Figure drawing is figure drawing. Now with the understanding of the mannekin, we add in skeleton structure. This is where anatomy class from last semester comes in handy. It took a little refreshing to get back in gear. I really have not drawn much of the skeletal structure since then. So now the biggest thing to work on is getting the right shapes and less uncertaintiy. It plagues me to death how scratchy my drawings are. I think if there is one thing to come out of TAD, it's creating confident work.

Draw draw draw. The milage of drawing is emphasized in Ron's teachings.

Cast drawing class is always enlightening it seems. I got a fraction better at measuring as you can see with the first attempt. My second attempt was terrible. I wrecked my brain with the details. Simplifying could have helped the eye.  I might try to do another or some exercises to emphasize working on my measuring skills. However, a bit of my time will be to get the setup to its 100%.

Would have been better if I remembered the darks. 

So many bad things. I should just try it again. Hah except I will be seeing this

eye for a bit of a while.

Here are some value scales I did for Light&form and Cast drawing. They are pretty poor. Prettttyyy prettty poor. I saw so many in class do a  far better job. Whats worse? When I was drawing I thought they were pretty good. Maybe they just look better in person, but I doubt it. I will DEFINITELY redo these  over the weekend. Its very simple and something I need to master. I know a lot has to do with me barely using the pencil as a tool for shading. In general i've relied on photoshop for a long while.