Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Sketchbook Dump + ROM Trip!

I noticed I haven't uploaded anything from my sketchbook in a while since I haven't shown some drawings since summer, a couple of these are from the summer. Most are during school, especially my Culture of Photography elective since there's really not much to do during that class. So here we go!


Culture of Photography. There's 2 of the same people from the previous photo. One of which I made more stylized in the first drawing.

A friend asked me to draw her sans double chin, which was important to her. Her nose looked very Leyendecker-like, which I absolutely loved since I draw noses akin to his style.

Dude in my photography, cafeteria and a dude at the barbershop last time I got a haircut...and I'm getting a haircut this week...yeah...that was a while ago...

Showing this because I thought it was interesting to see something else other than drawings in my sketchbook, such as my commentary. I was studying this area during the summer to possibly paint (which I unfortunately didn't) but I got a pretty neat tiny thumbnail that I like. What I'm writing about at the top is some dude who climbed over the little waterfall area and dipped his finger in the running water and proceeded to wash his hands. He left then came back and did it again. The top right says "AR! He's back!" 
Bus sketches, because I wanted to try drawing on the bus again. I fail miserably every time I try but I thought I got some pretty decent ones this one time.

ROM TRIP!

Visited the ROM today with some Fundies students. I got some pretty decent animal sketches there and I hope to come back. Apart from the dreadful travel to and from downtown Toronto, it was really fun! Good practice for the little zoo trip I'm taking with another group of people this friday. The group I went with today are going to the zoo this thursday and might come again friday since I mentioned it. 

Anyway here they are some sweet presentation! 


That tiger (left, yes no stripes) was so hard to draw.

When we went to the busts/figure sculptures, I didn't want to draw them like usual so I did a tonal study instead.

I had fun making this composition, although I need a logo/watermark. Why is a logo for myself so difficult?

******

Even though it's reading week, I'm still busy going to school for extra life and such. A life drawing post will come by the end of the week and I also need to post about my sculpture that turned out well and some photos from photography.

I actually created some decent paintings?!

So first painting assignment aside because it turned out terrible, here are the others:

Second project was appropriation (kind of like sampling other works). Everyone brought an object and randomly chose someone else's to use in their painting. I got 3D glasses, but not the red-blue variety but I wanted to show that it was for my painting. For mine I decided to go for a pop-art style quadtych since I noticed that pop art did a lot of sampling, so I sampled the colours found in a couple of Warhol's Monroe works. I made the top right and bottom left have some connection to the original lens in the first by keeping one of the lenses the same while the bottom right was completely different. This is how it's supposed to be set up, it was fun thinking about presentation for once.
My teacher liked it, especially as a mini series. I want to actually make this into a digital version sometime soon and create some more. Oh and these are watercolour and gouache (just the frames).

10 Objects Project

We have to paint 10 things on 4x6 that interests us in our everyday life. We're not supposed to think too hard about it and he gave us the assignment at the start with 5 of them due last week and the other 5 at the end of the semester. They don't take too long to do and it definitely is good practice. I'm surprised these turned out nicely (except for 2 of them which I'm not posting). I'm actually enjoying this project because there's really no way you can do this incorrectly. The range of subject matter that are in my classmate's paintings is huge, everyone's is so different.


All paintings were done with a watercolour base and then painted over with gouache. Backgrounds remain as watercolour.

I like how this turned out, the brown spots interested me.

They were giving away this "Awake" chocolate bar in front of the school book store for free. I really liked the design of it, which was the reason why I went to the store to receive one haha.

Apple cider. I really liked the warm  colour of apple cider, so for this one I attempted to only use watercolour.

******

We also had a landscape painting to do, but we ended up hanging them in the showcases for the entire school to see. I'll post it up as soon as I get it back.



Monday, 8 October 2012

Because my brother got the collector's edition of MoP and I've been loving the art book that comes with it.

Friday, 28 September 2012

Gestures Marathon

Thursday is my Life Drawing day. Workshop + Life Drawing + Extra Life = 8 1/2 hours of life drawing. So I was definitely tired by the time Extra Life came by and I got pretty sloppy.

But this past thursday was focused on gestures. For workshop we asked if we can practice gesture drawings, so the few of us there got some pretty decent 1 on 1 time with the instructor. Then for life drawing class we also did gestures the entire time. I can actually see improvement in my gestures this week than what I was drawing last week, Ed is my lucky charm.

SO HERE ARE THE FEW OF MANY GESTURES I MADE:

These are 2 minutes with the poses very similar to each other. It was so that we can see what we missed in our previous drawing and attempt to get more information in the next drawing. The exercise really helped with these two.



A quick head gesture because I need to get better at drawing heads proportionate to the rest of the body. I tend to either leave them out (because I couldn't get to them) or they end up being too small or big.


1 Minute:




2 Minute:

I'm kind of angry that I drew this one too much to the right, resulting in his left foot being cut off.




3 Minute:

For this one, the pose was finished and we had to draw the missing features from memory.


I had to post this one up during class, I was nervous because she numbered us and it was my turn to put up something after a set of 3 poses.

10 Minute:

...I think. One of them is definitely 10, I just forgot the other.


I'm only posting this one because my friend seems to like it. Her elbow did get cut off on the paper unfortunately.

Sunday, 23 September 2012

I Missed You Life Drawing

I haven't drawn from a model all summer so I was pretty rusty at first. Anyway here are my first projects for my life drawing class:

Portrait #1 Planar Study
For homework we had to do a planar self portrait of ourselves with a bit of chiaroscuro. I tweaked it a bit at school before handing it in, mostly darkening areas where it should be dark and the forehead area along with my left eye socket. I like how it turned out!

For some reference we were given a mannequin to do a study of during class before working on our self portrait. This turned out way better than I expected.

 We did robot guy again this year. Last year's didn't turn out so nicely. So this was my first attempt, but my teacher told me that I clearly understood the shapes and I should make it more complex.

So, voila! Definitely waaaay better than last year's and my first attempt.

Now onto EXTRA LIFE stuff!

I'll go from short to slightly longer, since the models seem to be doing so many short poses (I'm talking about 30 one minute poses at one point).

I did pages full of gestures because I didn't want to waste a lot of paper on the very many 30 second poses:



I like how the legs turned out on this...that's about it.

1 minutes: 



I think this was 3 minutes and the other two are 5's:




For my life drawing class we have a workshop for further practice in life drawing. We practiced chiaroscuro drawings since we have to submit one this coming week. Here's how mine turned out during the workshop:







Sunday, 9 September 2012

Big Ears

Here are a couple of doodles I made in my spare time. I seem to have a fascination with big ears lately.

A quick sketch I did during my last week of summer, I wanted to play around with funky hair.


A drawing I was working on last night, I'm really pleased how it turned out. The entire purpose of this one was to get comfortable drawing on a tablet and the result of playing around with rectangular faces for a while.



Back to School

So I finished my first week back at school, I only have one more class to attend which is painting on monday afternoon. 

I also have two photography classes: a legitimate photography class for my program and the elective I chose was a photography related course. I think I finally gone full hipster. So I guess that means I'll have a photography section this year too...



Here's a photo that was part of our photography "scavenger hunt". We had take pictures following the list we were given to become familiar with the camera operations and settings. Generic close up shot with a dramatic depth of field, I know. But it was the only interesting photo I took that day so deal with it.

I also haven't really done any photography since high school and kind of abandoned it, so this will be fun.

Third year is looking pretty interesting so far and there's also the end of the year VCA art show, which I'm kind of nervous about. Portfolios are my main priority though, let's hope it's this year.