It's Been a While

Well, its been liketwo months since I've updated this. School just got so hectic. I'm finally close to recovering from all the pressure, all-nighters, and stress that the past few weeks of school has created. This is going to be a small update, just a taste of what I've done over th whole term. Hopefully I can give more explanation and insight in a later post. But pictures are worth a thousand words....


Head and Hands

Jeff Is God

So this is the last (or first since its at the top of the blog) update of my classes so far. Its just after week 4 and I think i see a little progress in my Head and Hands class. Jeff Smith is an amazing laid-back guy but serious about feeling through the problems of drawing the head. Its not been easy adapting to his "risky" method of drawing. But it has been rewarding. Heres some of the projects we've been workin on outside of class first:

The Hundred Heads Project

Well I've done the first 12 (though I didnt quite finish the two Durer-style paintings on the piece of wood to the right). The first 3 artists I chose were Durer, Modigliani, and Schiele. I hope you can tell which is which. I think my self-portraits in the style of the artists came out decent.

The Skull's Muscles

So we've attached like 9 muscles so far. Had tests on them too. I think I got em down.


Skull Rendering

So we have a skull rendering due on week 9. I thought I'd get a head start. He asked for a rendering and he'll get one.



In-Class Work

So these are drawings from our in-class model. The first are from the very first day....lil rusty.

Week 2 came out a little better. "Feeling" it more. He doesnt want us to take proportions or measurements at all with our pencils, just use our eyes. No lay-ins or balls for the head or any kind of "weak, scared, and fearful" drawing. Just commit to something without being a puss. You can erase, but that line you draw next better be THE right line for the curve you see.

Week 4 got much better I think. Even with short poses, I think things just clicked a little faster. Week 3 was memorial day so it was two weeks without head drawing, but it all came out all right.

Comp and Drawing Thumper

So drawing neked people in Comp and Drawing can be monotonous. I'll give you a glimpse into all the drawings I've done over these 4 weeks. Just a glimpse of all the beans, boxes, and basic shapes. I've tried to put them in chronological order and grouped according to the model.

Our weekly drawings of twenty random household objects....

And last week, we drew Thumper! Had a sheet of 13 Thumpers from the Disney masters and had to make up 17 more to make 30 total thumpers. I was the only one who drew small enough to get them all on one page.

Next up for comp and drawing are Bambi and Lady heads from Disney. And we actually might get to the "Composition" part of Composition and Drawing!

Design 1 oh boi!

Bruce Claypool is such a way cool guy. But he is such a bitch when it comes to grading and precision. We had our first real assignment turned in yesterday and the grading curve was quite high. My twelve compositions of "problem solving" got a 10 out of 10 for their effective solutions to the concepts, but I got a 7 out of 10 for craftsmanship. Why? Well, he really didn't like the small portfolio I put them in. That's it. They were fairly perfect for being hand cut (except I used a hole puncher for the circles), but the first few slip pages of my portfolio got wrinkled mysteriously, and Bruce just generally didn't like the unoriginal idea of a portfolio as a presentation device. Whatev.

Here were my solutions for the following concepts

Figure Ground Ambiguity, Figure on Ground, Random, Order, Asymmetrical Balance, Symmetrical Balance, Diagonal, Horizontal, Vertical, Emphasis, Kinetic Energy/Movement, Black Eye Freud.

They're not in order so try and figure out which piece represents which concept.

We now have to find some uniting theme for photographs we'll take to represent these eleven compositional concepts. Uh....sounds fun, right. I thought of setting up all the fast food I eat into weird settings to do it. I do eat a lot of fast food.

Oh then the grayscale. Five hours of painting swatches to get just the right shades of gray for a perfect transition. And when I say perfect, I mean it. Nothing less will suffice. After cutting out 60 shades of gray, I picked out the 11 to make a good gradation. Bruce said it was good enough to leave alone till next week. I spent 2 hours picking them. This is what I left it at:

Le Fin

K So Now K

Imaginatomy. I can't love this class more. Rey talks a lot and could surely go on for hours about his immense knowledge of the anatomy of EVERYTHING. But its great to learn about every facet. Form certainly follows function. We're continuing to work on our human skeletons which are starting to take shape nicely. Some progress shots:

after week 2 -

after week 3 -

after week 4 -

So while we were constructing the human skeleton bone by bone, we started to think about our creature and had to present six different silhouettes of ideas. They could be similar or along a similar theme, but I chose to do a variety. I looked at a lot of skeletons and weird animals, but I think my ideas still came out somewhat tame:

He liked the top one and the little one. I remember him telling everyone that most people like to do the typical giant-could-eat your-house-evil-looking creature. Thats the top one. But he also said very few go down the small or mundane road. The cows and rats of the universe. So thats why I threw in the little cute creature. He thought it would be cool to do something non-monsterish and stand out that way. I thought "Hell yeah." So I'm doing the lil guy. I thought it would be a mix between a frog, kangaroo, kangaroo rat, and rabbit. Jackie dubbed it the "Rangaroo." That fits.

Some new stuff y'all

Ok, so to take abreak from painting, I decided to go back to my love of drawin'. Mmmm-mm I can taste the graphite. Anyway, I've done these studies over the past few weeks. All of them are about 8' x 12" with black and white charcoal on toned paper. Enjoy!



So, this is a study of good 'ol Leonardo...das right homies, da Vinci. Anyhoo, it was from a cartoon (no not the spongebob kind) he did back in his prime. I think this is his best rendition and amiable expression for the Virgin Mary.




This is one of two studies I did of one of my favorite widely-underrated artists - William Bouguereau. He was a French dude living in the 19th century and his work, although popular at the time, was eventually overshadowed by the up-and-coming Impressionists and the modern era of art that followed (amateurs, all of 'em). This particular study is part of a painting right here in sunny (bleh) San Diego titled "Young Sheperdess." I focused on the head portrait of the girl rather than tho whole composition.



Another Bouguereau study, but this time its of a whole painting called "Evening Mood" or whatever that is in french. I always like his balanced images - very calm, soft, wonderful combo of both hard and soft edges (uh mostly soft...), glowing paint, extremely subtle value changes...just perfection of composition, luminosity, color harmony, and figure drawing. Ok, I'm done worshiping him



And this is a product of the other studies but using a stock photo as reference. I tried to use what I learned from the other studies and make it my own with a photograph. Ken Joudrey, my instructor, likes it so I guess its good nuff.

Next post: World of Warcraft painting sketches and progress shots!

Same ol Biznis

So I got some updates on paintings. I haven't blogged for a month, so this should be packed, right? Not quite...but I got some progress shots of that pandora painting thats taken fo-eva:





This is where the painting stands today (colors may be a little off) and i think its come a long way since I first began. A lot of little details were added that hopefully gave it a second read.

And the following paintings are tiny in real life - 5" x 5". They were done for my brother in a just a few hours in acrylic. Its a good sign of me getting just a little faster...hopefully.




le fin