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.

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.

Its been a good first semester

Just today, tomorrow, then I will be done with my first semester of TAD. I have to say I learned a lot, have had good classmates, and wonderful teachers to push me. I can't wait for the next semester to start so that I can learn even more. Luckily though with this break, it provides lots of opportunity to jam in what I learned in school (especially the areas I had lots of trouble with).

So figure drawing is done. I still have lots that can be improved on. I'm still unsure if its the material or way of thinking. Quite a few had similar problems where its hard to change what you made when using nu pastel. I know that better materials don't make better art. So what I might want to do is start looking more and putting down less. 

The other thing I need to start working on is a focal point. I'm doing the whole study thing correctly but my drawings could be so much stronger if they looked interesting. 

20-25 minutes

Another 25 minute one.

2 minutes each.

Linear perspective class was definitely the one that taught me alot of rules I did not know. This final definitely came out better than any drawing of a room from imagination that I've done in my life. I put in some good time with this one like all classes. But after looking at it for a long time, I just see a lot of the flaws. So I decided to finish and just move on to the next thing.

Rough final. I like the lines

My attempt at cleaning this drawing up. I don't know

if it completely works.

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.