Watercolour Portraits

For both my painting and life drawing class, we had to make self portraits with a twist.

For painting we had to change ourselves. His examples were superhero, rock star, or monster. Having never worked with watercolour apart from last week's demo, I had no clue how to approach the project. I constantly thought, "could I do that with watercolour?" I made one sad attempt by taking more of a drawing approach. I threw that away and just painted while looking at myself in the mirror. This was the result, and I'm very proud of it. It's supposed to be the "rock star" idea, I just gave myself longer hair and making it go down rather than brushed to the side.

(I have no clue why my scanner decided to create a bright rectangular area)

For life drawing we had to create a narrative self portrait. So it had to convey who we were in our drawing. It didn't even have to be a drawing, it could have been a collage, a logo, our name used creatively and more. I attempted this last night and struggled all morning today thinking of how I should draw myself. After working on my watercolour "rock star" portrait, I took a break and doodled this:

I loved it so much. It was simple, and it was me! I struggled for a long time, only to have the final product be a simple caricature of myself. Here is the final product before and after using watercolour, since the requirements were for it to be on 9x12 and watercolour paper was the only paper I had of that size.

I'm starting to like watercolour now, especially for the fact that one dab of the paint is enough to use and when dried, can be used again with the addition of water. 

For my 2D class, we had to take images and crop them any way we liked to create an overall design that flows throughout the grid (as well as following the principles/elements of design). At first I was going to do a theme about original sin with images surrounding the outside that depicted the 7 deadly sins. I found that too overly complex and couldn't find great images that I needed. So then I thought a drowning person would be pretty sweet, and I thought going with a simple design would be the best way to convey someone falling(?) to their death. This assignment was unexpectedly irritating, but I am highly satisfied and proud with the finished product. (Although when we were critiquing classmate's own grids, someone noticed I messed up with the cropping on the top left square, there's a black line under the image UGH)

This is the group created one we did before doing our own to get familiar with InDesign and the assignment itself.

Extra Life is back!

The strike is over = extra life! Never have I been so excited for life drawing.

Today I had the whole day 8AM-6PM (wake up 5AM, go home 7PM-ish). But with the convenience of having life drawing at the end of the day, I stayed 2 hours longer for extra life. Now I'm exhausted.

I finished off my half-finished pad and started a new one today. I did a ton of drawing in my sketchbook as well today, and to top it off I got complimented and asked for some advice from a fresh Fundies student in extra life. Woot!

I got a couple of good drawings, but I left my pads at school (along with my watercolour stuff for painting) because I didn't want to haul all of that home. But I will bring the finished pad home tomorrow and see if there's anything worth showing from that.

Excuse me, but I must go and pass out now.

Sketchbook Spam

So it's been over one week of school already, I would expected to have created a good number of stuff already. But I haven't. I have only completed one project, which was a group project. I'll post that up as soon as I make a way to view the file since it had to be saved as a PDF, I'm just too lazy to do that right now.

I also expected to have a bunch of life drawings by now, but that stupid strike that is happening prevents me from doing that. Apparently the person who is in charge of extra life is part of the strike, you have no clue how angry I am. I'm actually putting in so much effort in getting better, and that strike is just ruining my plans.

So in the meantime, enjoy some scans from my sketchbook. I've done a lot of head studies in my sketchbook, so here are the few pages that aren't.

Here is one of many other pages of my hands. I've taken up the idea I heard someone say last year that you should draw some hands very often, like every other day or something. Since hands are bitch for me, this has been good practice.

I randomly picked someone on facebook and looked for a full body picture they had, so I drew it.

Woke up one morning and had a funny thought about about an owl wearing a sweater vest. I just had to draw it immediately.

This was when I noticed I haven't tried drawing cartoon characters in a while. I spent a great deal with head studies, so I decided to practice what I learned and use my imagination to doodle something quick.

This was at the city hall garden while I was waiting to meet up for a friend. It was turning out well, but my friend that she was nearby already and I had to abandon it. I was actually going to colour this if I finished since the flowers and trees in the garden were so colourful.

LEYENDECKER STUDIES

I can say for certain that Leyendecker has become my favourite artist now. Sorry Monet, you're now second. While doing these Leyendecker studies I've taken more of an appreciation towards his illustrations and just how well crafted they are overall. 

The man's eyes were covered by glasses, and that area is a mess when looked at up close. So I left his eyes out since it was confusing, but it turned out well either way.

For this I decided to have fun with the pencil for his body, i'll probably start having fun with the pencil from now on.

Since there aren't any extra life sessions and the only thing that I have close to it is drawing people in the cafeteria/during class and my life drawing class, I'll probably post more of my sketchbook in the meantime.

First Day

Today was the first day of VCA second year, and it was fun. I met up with some people from last year, which was the highlight of the day. Nope sorry, the renovated cafeteria was the highlight of the day. I am enjoying the new comfy chairs on the bottom floor, Subway and how there's much more open space.

That's all I have to say for now, I might post something in a week after being settled in.

Killer Queen

Queen is my second favourite band ever (The Beatles being first). So for Freddie Mercury's 65th birthday, I decided to do a quick late night doodle of him. Not so proud of the hands, so you can just ignore those. My excuse? I did this as quickly as possible just like the Leyendecker doodle. Also, I haven't practiced hands for 2 weeks now; I should get back to doing that.

Random Fact: I always listen to Don't Stop Me Now before any big event that I am involved in. Some include: first day/last day of school, before big test, my birthday, a couple of times I had to dance for someone's party so before that I listened to the song. It gets me pumped up and ready for whatever I'm about to face. So you can count on me listening to it on the bus ride to school on tuesday.

Hello Pat

Stop reading this.

P.S. I played Ico. So now you can STFU.