Final Life Drawing Portfolio...EVER

That's right! I finished my last life drawing course ever this past semester. What a long journey it's been. Since my first ever life drawing course in 2010, to my heavy obsession with it around 2012, and my final course dedicated to it now in 2016, I've taken such giant strides that I'm quite proud at where I am now. I never had experience with it until I came to college for art fundamentals and it's quite amazing to look back. I originally started with chicken scratch and now here I am!

Here's my final life drawing portfolio for my fourth year in animation! I focused more on improving caricature and acting this year. Of course my final pieces could be stronger in that regard but I am still pleased and proud of what I was able to create. I was even surprised at myself while making it, I didn't know I was capable of doing some of these pieces. I made the effort to attempt many different styles and approaches with my final portfolio and it led me to expand my shape language and learn a lot of things along the way. It's important to stray away from what you're comfortable with to learn and expand your work!

Without further ado:

"Pest"

Played around with a more sketchy style with a bit of Ronald Searle, and also played with different shapes and texture that I normally don't do. I looked into some french animation for other shapes! Even though I suck at layouts, I wanted to incorporate a minimal one to give it some grounding and a bit of context sort of like Hank Ketcham. 

"Cold Water"

I wanted to push the proportions of this model as well as make it more graphic. I used a lot of shapes here that I normally don't and incorporated some more modern aesthetics into the design. 

"Hitchhikers"

I wanted to play around with the physical format on this one. After struggling to figure out a decent composition for these two I had the clever idea of putting them two in a polaroid and it fit with the theme and tone of the characters that I was going for! Afterwards, I even printed it to scale of an actual polaroid. The style I did for this one was SUPER loose, I was holding my pen by the eraser side with my finger tips and just scribbled and scratched until I made shapes I liked such as Raff's head tilt. 

"Regicide"

I really enjoy the style of Riccardo Guassco and Conor Whelan for its beautiful simplicity and basic shapes and colours. I wanted to take a tiny sketch/composition I made into a style similar to theirs with my own flair as well. I had a ton of fun making this the most and it took a lot longer to make because I was figuring the method out as I went along. This one is the one I learned from the most and probably my favourite from the bunch!

Here's an extra one I handed in with the portfolio. My teacher liked it a lot and thought I would throw it in there as well!

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Here are some life drawings throughout the semester! Apologies for the photo qualities, they're not the best...they were just quick pics to take home so I can work off them to create other pieces. Some are the original drawings of my final portfolio pieces! So it's cool to see progress! So enjoy some scribbles and gestures from my last life drawing class:

These were two separate drawings that I was going to combine, maybe I will someday soon.

Caricature Sculpture

We got to sculpt the model and caricature him! It was a ton of fun and extremely relaxing. The time flew by as we did it and I heavily enjoyed the process.

I was on the fence about adding eyes but I really liked, from my position at least, how the light was coming from above and casting a dark shadow because of the eyebrows I made. I decided not to put any and (if lit correctly) gives it this feeling he's looking pretty far. I really digged this assignment!

Twitch

Twitch

Conte and pastel on paper

11 x 17 in

Here's some actual art I did in my spare time. I'm embracing the cubist within me and going with it. I tried out a lot more smudging and erasing than before as well as trying out some new techniques to create depth. That was one aspect someone recommended I do with my work so tried it out here.

Also...

Introducing the new "Artwork" tab! Conveniently located below my banner to display my personal artsy-fartsy works free from walls of texts. I also have a new label: "Artwork" so click on that in the sidebar if you prefer the walls of texts talking about my thought process to certain works. So lookout for more personal artwork in the future!

Descent Into Madness

Cubism, you are one crazy beast. 

Am I a masochist for choosing such a strenuous content to explore for an entire semester? 

Here are the rest of the projects we had to do:

We set up still lifes in groups depending on our content and bringing in an object related to our content. I was in the "extra" group that included people that didn't pick the typical anatomy, portrait, or chiaroscuro as their content. We had 3 hours to draw the still life and I included some wine glasses and that little jug in the middle since most Cubist still lifes are often typical still life subjects. Then we had to abstract the drawing we made.

We needed 2 smaller explorations before creating a final. I only like how the jug turned out and the background.

The Exquisite Corpse assignment. We were put into pairs and drew half of a clothed model on two sheets of triple mayfair. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of my partner's side and mine together and I didn't like my bottom half that much. It wasn't as crazy as the top half which I did last, you can see I'm starting to become crazy because of cubism.

The final assignment required us to pitch an idea for the class to draw. The one picked was "indirect drawing" as a starting point (having very little to no control over drawing i.e. paint splatter). So I took some string, dipped it in ink, and dragged it across my page in various ways such as whipping it, dropping it, slithering it across the page, moving it back and forth and more.

Here's a photo of just the ink, I put tape in certain areas to create some interesting shapes.

I started off with drawing dancers after being in an event that involved dancing...and people attempting to make me/teach me to dance. I became entranced by the position of the arms, hands, and feet in dancing poses that I started to focus on them more. I then got into The Zone: drawing and erasing areas that I already drew for the sole purpose of taking a risk and going with it.

I was worried for a while that my final drawing wasn't going to reflect the work I put into understanding Cubism and worried that my last drawing in that class would be lacklustre. After two days of drawing, I finally grew to like it a couple days after finishing. There's something about seeing the mad side to yourself in visual form.

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I began this semester with little knowledge and appreciation for Cubism but decided to pursue it as my content for an entire semester as a challenge for myself and to perceive things in a different manner. It was a struggle and surprise to discover how much you must think in three dimensions to create a cubist piece. Combining different viewpoints wasn't as easy as I thought.

I'm glad I took a risk rather than settling with something I'm comfortable with. I've expanded my artistic capabilities and now I appreciate Cubism on a different level and can connect and understand it a lot more than what my previous naive self thought: "That's stupid, anyone can do that." 

I never really enjoyed Cubism that much before, but now it's apparently "my thing" according to a couple of colleagues. 

Another Rivera Exploring Cubism

Oh hey there, not dead just super busy. But I will make multiple updates this coming week so here's the first!

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For Drawing we had to choose a content that we needed to study and incorporate within the work we're doing for the rest of the semester. It was so difficult to choose something and I wanted to choose an idea that would help me draw better. But my instructor told us to choose something that we're not familiar with, since we do need to study about it. A ton of people chose anatomy or chiaroscuro so I didn't go that route, instead I went on the other side of the spectrum of how I draw and see and chose to explore Cubism.

I was nervous to choose it since I just couldn't (and still can't!) wrap my head about the process of creating work like that. My instructor read my proposal and promptly agreed (contrary to the many talks she had with a lot of students about their proposed content). I had no clue what I was getting into and it still makes me nervous about the oncoming projects and how exactly I'm going to create them. 

So this is my first attempt ever with 4 poses in 40 minutes. 

I began with drawing the figure the same way I normally would but a little more stylized and even more geometric than my own style. Then I erased a bit of the side since we were doing an activity with erasing and drawing in new parts of a pose for this ghostly combined image, and aligned her sitting pose proportional to my first drawing. Then I started to think about the composition and drew the third pose on the lower right since there was too much white space, and emphasized the curve of her back to add some movement throughout the piece. The fourth pose is when the process of cubism and drawing the form in multiple angles then combining it and as well as the careful consideration to line and composition just finally made sense to me. I turned the page, drew fragments of the body, repeated sections and emphasized lines in my previous drawings to guide the viewer everywhere.

I had a classmate give the compliment of calling it a Picasso without even telling him my content beforehand. Mission accomplished.

This was my second attempt during the same class. This time I played with minimal colour and set a rule for myself when I use certain colours. I went more for a straight line drawing style and rotated the piece many times. There are 4 poses, each with a randomized length. I took what I learned from the previous drawing and applied it here like fragmented and repeated parts, rotation etc. This is my favourite I've done so far, I think it's far better than the one I drew for my first project:

We had to create a piece that incorporated 5 subjects. I took a drawing that we did in class with multiple poses and erased lines and used it as a reference, I also combined two extra poses from other drawings that I had. For this one I made it so that each figure shared certain body parts with another pose, either through the torso, arms or legs. A classmate said it reminds them of Picasso's Les Demoiselles D'Avignon and now I can't unsee the similarities of the poses.

It could have used more work in the background, others said rather than having it organic make it look cubist as well. I said I was worried that the figures might be lost in the background if I did that but other suggestions made me realize that a solution to the background wasn't as hard as I thought. So I may go back and fix it.

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So it turns out this Cubism thing isn't as easy as most people think it is. I'm gaining a ton more respect for cubist artists because of how difficult it actually is to create something like this. And I'm actually learning more about the figure and how it actually looks (especially in different angles) and how it moves in contrast to what the pieces actually depict. It's actually fun trying this out and my instructor said it's good that we should try something different and out of our comfort zone now and then because we mostly stick to our own way of doing things, and that can eventually get stale and boring. I guess, "When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms" holds some truth to it.

I heard a classmate (who's in my drawing class) say in a different course, "Picasso was a piece of shit." It's good to know she dislikes my work then.