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.

One more week to go

I'm on my second to last week here at TAD for foundations 1. I have to say its been a journey and I have only just cracked at the first part. 

The final version to my sketchbook project about impact. I did two different versions because I wanted to try different compositions, value structure, story. Originally I was going to push this further into maybe a comic but I think I will flop while I'm still ahead. Critique had a comment about unoriginality where humans try to use a resource created by an alien for their gain. I was looking more into the psychology of humans how they will abuse, be distrust worthy, and steal any friendly companionship making them the monsters. But eh whatever, I'll come up with something else.

Diggers looking for some bones to munch on.

Scientist hopes to use the crystal the diggers make and possibly

reverse death.

Details.

Tried a different approach, I want to get better with ink.

Photography had to do with depicting my studio. This was a tough one because I didn't want to just take a picture, I wanted to think about this a little bit. So I put the cup in there to kind of show the need to have it as if its a tool. I swear I cant get the energy needed sometimes to work without it. The second idea came from showing interesting lighting. I experimented and found a nice result. The picture looks like a warm glowing sun however its a 60 exposure at night. The light is from the streets outside.

I need to get back on track

Time for a bit of an overload. I think coming back from break has made me a little sluggish. Its also a bit of a hassle sometimes. Never the less, I have lots to show. On a side note though, I think starting this week I will do reviews of books/animation/objects I have that might be useful. Not to mention restart up my tumblr. While I think of those ideas, take a look at all the stuff i have in this post.

The first on the list is the photography assignment of missing. I had a lot to show but I think this is one of my favorite. Its funny, most of my staged photos looked not as good as just a random sign I found. Sometimes its hard to realize that trying really hard does not always mean good results.

You can't just stage this. Maybe thats why its successful.

Keep an eye out for everything. I must carry my camera everywhere.

The sketchbook assignment was to find something that was impacted. I have to tell you its hard when I seen so much over the summer and not much now. But what I did findwas ComEd's construction going on. There was a patch of ground dug up. The next part was imagining what did it. I found that a back hoe probably created the problem, but I could go into the realm of fantasy. So my story is an alien that searchs for bones to be absorbed so they can become more individualized and attract a mate.

I tried to improve upon the process from the last creature assignment. These were late sadly, so I can only go on by a personal critique.

Thumbnails to start out. 

This time I tried more iterations with details.

The first rendered iteration, good but not great.

I took the basic concepts from the image above and rework the silhouette.

This had a lot of cool rhythm.

Second rendered iteration. I'm getting there.

Over the weekend, I did some figure drawing past the assignment. I feel like doing this is definitely helping at my observational skills at least via a picture. I would definitely like to mix this with observational skills from real life. However while my measurements and details are getting better, I start to lose the basic light/shadow groupings. This is probably what i'm going to focus on for the rest of the semester. Its been brought up in critique for almost the past month. I'm trying but I think I need to just really focus on only that.

2 hours total using nu-pastel.

Breaks recharge the soul

I hope everyone who is reading this had a great break. This one was well needed for me because I fell behind in class and it gave me sometime for catch up. I also got to do a lot of personal sketches (i might upload if I find the time) and that was really refreshing.

This is my disaster project for sketchbook class. The process was due before break and I just didn't have time till now to do it. I choose the bridge that was close by because the desgin appealed to me in the beginning. The nice thing about this is that you get to see all my thoughts on how I make an image. Originally I was documenting every detail I thought might play a role. Only later did I realize I did not need them. 

This class mixed with linear perspective definitely helped me see angles that I could not photograph which gave for interesting compositions. As you can see, the disaster I choose was an earthquake. I did some studies to get the feel of what it would be like. Also while the first one is clearer the other two were more experimentations. I tried using different mediums I'm not used to. They definitely gave a different mood.

The first two are from before break. It was a calligraphy assignment working with line and I took this time to experiment. These were two of my favorite. However, I think its one of those things I need to keep practicing.

Both are about 15 minutes.

Trying to get better at focal.

Now these are what I did over break. I had a lot of time to do these and it feels like I'm applying certain things I worked on previously. There is still so much I could work on like values, focal and detail accuracy.

2 hours, trying to find accurate values with various edge work

about 20 minute.

20 minute, this was fun because my last one using this pose was

very different.

Getting back into that sketchbook

Finished midterm week at TAD. To be honest, I am very happy with the choice I made going to this school. I say this a lot but people don't realize how annoying normal art colleges can be. I could rant about this, but I'll save that for another time. For now, I'm just happy to see my skills developing with teachers who are all very willing to push me. I hope to get even more quality work done this half (I plan to push myself much harder.)

Redone version of my sketchbook assignment, I used india ink washes and a black water soluble colored pencil. This technique was inspired by James Gurney, who does quite a bit of sketchbooking adventures that he shares online. I definitely like the results and hope to do more of this soon.

Old tea pot I got for like $5 at a yard sale.

I spent a good portion of my weekend working on my creature concept again. I went from the ground up by photographing new refrence to inspire me for a new location. This time I did not think of the place as what I photographed but instead an alien world. I'll post the finished sketches later. For now, here is some stuff I have on my computer.

Small ink silouettes, tried to push various ideas of a mountain cave digger.

My favorite silhouette given detail. 

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!

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.