Promotional Package

For my professional practice class we had to create a promotional package for ourselves which included: A bio, an artist statement and a CV. I also included with it a business card and decided to create a badge for myself as well. I also decided to go with my banner as my logo, I've grown attached to it.

I put this one on the cap of my plastic tube and since then people have kept pointing out how that was a neat idea. I thought I might as well make myself a walking advertisement in the process.

And my business card. I think it could be better but it gets the job done, I've been handing these out like free candy. At least I finally have my own card to put in with my business card collection! And I'll most likely change the title for myself sometime soon to whatever it is I want to specialize in in animation.

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.

***

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. 

Portraits

So I'm able to sneak into join a first year class for some extra practice. They did portraits one day and they turned out well.

25 Minutes

15 Minutes

This seemed to go by too fast! I didn't time myself well and rushed this.

This one wasn't actually a portrait drawing, it's an unfinished 15 minute pose. I decided to spend more time on the upper body so the figure looks disproportionate from the shoulders down.

Other portraits:

This one was of a fellow friend of mine in fundies who went up to pose since the model was running late. Unfortunately it's unfinished because the model suddenly arrived but it turned out pretty nice nonetheless. Thanks Travis!

Caricature of the model since I was getting tired that day. 

Life Drawing Dump

Haven't posted some life drawing in a while, so here's a ton! A couple were candidates to be submitted for my portfolio but didn't make the cut.

30's

1's

Messed up the pose before and got frustrated, then I let loose with this one. I don't remind myself as often as I should of what a teacher once told me: "Be Loose".

2's

3's

15's

We recently had to draw a couple of clothed figures for an assignment. The drawing of the other model didn't turn out so well for this one.

Other

Here are some drawings I did playing around with proportions, shapes and angles. I thought they turned out nicely, I decided to try it out after doing some cubism exploration for my drawing class the past couple of weeks. I applied some things I learned from it, I guess choosing cubism as my content wasn't so bad after all.

Here you go Juli! I finally uploaded this one haha, I can see the appeal now.

VCA Grad Show Postcard Design

We were allowed to submit designs for the VCA Grad Show invitations. Unfortunately mine was not chosen. For my designs I decided to go with the whole "It Starts With The Art" thing they have on the page about VCA on Sheridan's website.

Here they are, for some weird reason uploading it to blogger made the colours look saturated. Also I submitted my cubism drawing as one potential design too:

This white one is my favourite. I'm proud of the logo I made of VCA for these two.

The purple on this wasn't as intense. No matter how many times I uploaded this it still kept changing the purple, so this will have to do.

Third Time's The Charm!

BEST. DAY. EVER.
Celebrated in the afternoon with a bunch of people who got into their programs too. I smiled the entire day, I couldn't help it.

Obligatory portfolio post coming ASAP. A bit busy with school, although one assignment actually involves posting on this blog and sharing it. So posts incoming in the next week or two! Stay tuned! For now, I can finally relax.

Time to get better at painting...

So portfolio was handed in last week! But I'm trying to keep my mind off that and focus a bit on other things now that I have so much free time...kind of. There's still an unfortunate amount of homework to do.

But one thing that I told myself that I would do this year was practice and become better at painting since I am terrible at it. So minimum 2 paintings a week, digital or traditional (preferably traditional), of anything as long as I get some sort of painting done. 

I had to paint 12 digital frames before reading week but I will save that for another post in a couple of weeks since the other half of that project isn't complete yet. Apart from that separate assignment, I attended extra life painting this past wednesday because I can sacrifice a day from life drawing now! 

I was going to just do tiny studies of the head/hands/body during my time there, it ended up becoming an exploration with colour. These may not be the most appealing paintings but I had fun playing around with colour and creating contrast with them and I think that's what is so successful about them:

After my first failure of a study I took a dive and worked with the terribly mixed skin tone I made and mixed in a bunch of colours along the way.

After working with neutral colours, I felt like working with warmer tones.

A monochrome study with a cooler colour. I thought you couldn't really tell what the entire figure was doing in the previous ones and decided to crop it instead.

The brown was the result of my first attempt at doing a tiny study, getting angry at the terribly mixed skin tone, then wiping the entire thing around out of anger. I came back to it at the end and did the head study, which I think turned out pretty neat.