Semester 2 Week 12

This posts a little late. I wanted to do it on friday, but I didn't have anything to really show. It sucks being behind. Every second I feel like I'm about to catch up, I get pushed back a few more. Oh well. The more work I do, the better I become in the end.

Media class image is first seeing as I just finished it. Overall it took about 8 hours to do. I probably could have done it quicker but I second guess myself. Started with some photo ref, sketched it then inked, and last night I did the watercolor. It was really difficult. Two parts really. First was picking the correct colors (too often did I choose the wrong thing I wanted... but ended with interesting effects). While the second was letting it dry. I feel like I rush myself all the time in my art (it shows a lot). Sometimes I made a mistake for not waiting long enough. Overall though, I'm quite happy with the results. I want to do more and get better.

I pushed the forms a bit for some lines to link.

Figure drawing... oh figure drawing. I'm pushing myself and soooo close to catching up with the hw. Now the only problem? Scanning and compiling which I really do hate. Its probably the least artistic thing to do at tad heh. However, it is nesecessary. So I'll get it done soon. In the mean time, check the in class work I did. Working on shadows now. I feel comfortable with the muscles... now I just need to start applying what I've been learning in Light and Form or Cast Drawing. The other thing? I need to LOOK at the correct shapes. I sometimes get too fixated in one spot. Other times I'm just rushing through.

Uneven tone, and correct shape needs to be applied. However

I am improving on my muscles

Attempt after Crit. Still needs work... I dont know what I was thinking with those

waves.

Cast drawing is the last of it for now. I'll be working later today on it. For now as you can see I've been working those dark vales which really give my form some depth. However, I will need to clean this up some more and adjust the values. This is getting very close to done. The only problem is that the next hurdle can be very big. I feel like sometimes I go through an hour of clean up (aka taking out those dots and making an even tone) and not feeling like I did anything. The postivity on the the other hand is that I am going to have one impressive piece by the end of the semester. I'm already fired up to start another over the summer.

Paper really makes a difference. Now I just need to keep poking at this till it looks

right.

Semester 2 Week 11

Haha I'm falling a bit behind on some parts. Figure drawing is demanding but worth it. I think I've push in more hours into that then I have in a while (by that I mean before the semester). However, I'm becoming well accumusted to the different muscles. Every week or two feels like a huge challenge in the beginning, but then it all clicks in the end. Sometimes it feels almost too simple. Sadly I dont have any figure drawings to show yet.... they need to scanned.

What I do have is the watercolor still life for Media class. This took a little while getting used to. I've never done anything serious with watercolors in my life. Not to mention color has been the furtherst from my mind. So this was an excellent project for me. I need to do more... I dunno why but it was kind of fun. I kind of want to advance so I can start doing some kind of plein-air paintings.

Done on Cold Press Illustration board, took around 6 hours.

I'm a little upset with my cast drawing or better yet my judgement. For the longest time, I have been using a certain paper hoping it would work. Sadly, the charcoal was just not adhering to it very well. All that time spent and I had to transfer the image over. I feel like some time could have been spent else where because of that. Then again, this is all just a learning process. Even now the paper is a different quality and will take some getting used to.

Took about 7 hours to get it to this level. I was able to fix certain mistakes.

Blockhead is at this level right now. I have been neglecting it since figure drawing and cast drawing eat away my time. The reflective areas are a bit bright and this needs occlusion shadows. I was a little confused with them but I am starting to get the principle. Its one of those things that by observing I get a better sense of what I'm doing.

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 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 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.

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.

Figures and further than that

A good milestone was set forth with this recent set of figure drawings. While I didn't do the assignment quite how the teacher had planned, I still got some nice results. What I really should have done was focus on the lines and proportions. I will definitely do some of that later this weekend. However, I did these in ten minutes. There are a lot of things wrong if you put them up side by side with the reference but they still look better than ever. Confidence has been one of my key things to improve and with that came speed.

This time I tried to push focal point and render certain areas that only needed it. I don't think I achieved it. Maybe with more time, but for now I need to really just be all over the place. I also think color palette has a lot to do with the focal (obviously, but for figure drawings with such little time its really hard to plan so all I can do is experiment).

10 minute drawing with nu pastel and toned paper

The assignment had to do with foreshortening.

2 minute drawings, charcoal and newsprint.

15 minute drawing.

My finished creature design. I worked from the ground up like I said before. I had to first imagine the place that the creature resided which was tunnels and caves in a mountain high up in the sky. This type of creature digs and lives off certain rocks. The stuff it can't digest is put into a second stomach which is metal ore. This stomach melts the metal and they later use this ability to forge their city. The altitude they live up in is very high so little prey or predators. These creatures only have to worry about are the behemoths that float and try to snack on them. 

I've been coming up with names like a jackhammer dragon. These are not dragons, but earth explorers fantasize over things like this. Maybe in their tongue they are called Aih'skee, aih meaning one who breaks and skee meaning one who builds. Their civilization believes in a strong foundation and value the beginning to many problems.

Another multimedia attempt. 

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.