FACEPOCALYPSE

A few more figures!

A 10-15min drawing people seem to like. I was playing more with softening edges for this one, also keeping in mind the idea of ‘sensitivity’. Paying attention to the marks you’re making and not being really heavy handed. This ties in with the rendering form in general; blending the pastels where the shadow softens and turns the form.

Plus an untimed drawing. I intended on using this for a poster but did a painting instead.

The aforementioned painting. Oil painting on canvas + digital wizardry. It was a bit of a rush; kept it very simple, reliant on implied detail. The poster design is in the works and due Monday!

Information! Process! Pastels!

Here’s my impersonation of someone trying to start something cool. I thought it’d be a good idea to have a TAD student tutorial blog.

I definitely learn the most when I know what I should be thinking about, or the specific benefits of a medium/approach.

There’s so much subtext in one person’s particular process that it may help to hear how other students approached a piece, or thought about when executing their particular process. The ‘why’s as well as the ‘how’s. These tutorials would be less of a demonstration, but more a singling out one particular process point and elaborating on why they made a choice which applies to the whole image.

I made a tutorial to elaborate on this (click to view larger):

The main point of this tutorial is to treat pastels like a painting medium. As long as the paper isn’t overloaded with pastel they can be applied very opaquely. This leads to a technique I adopted years ago after looking at concept artists that paint on a single layer, and ofcourse it’s also true for painters with opaque mediums. To adjust a shape involves painting adjacent colours over one another until the edge is in the right place. This idea translates to working with pastels, and I think when I realised it was about painting and not drawing was when it made sense. I see a handful of students trying this for the first time by drawing the silhouette then working inwards. This is the kind of tutorial I thought would help address that approach.

A few different mediums. Pastel for the first, and chalks (B&W).

The objective is to train your eye to see shapes; the overall shape and masses of light and dark.

These were probably about 10 minutes each from a photo reference.

Following on from my original sketch I did some thumbnails of the girl on the bus, sticking to 3 values to make sure everything reads.

After my critique the decision was between the top left and bottom right thumbnails.

I chose the bottom right, and didn’t completely stick to the value structure (which I should’ve), but kept in mind the principles of composition. Most importantly, putting a light shape on a dark shape or vice versa. This assures the silhouette of everything reads and will help direct your focus.

Today I took some time off from homework to do a few studies with another TAD student, Jarkko. We both spent about 2 hours replicating a few paintings he’d collected that were awesome examples of aerial perspective (using atmosphere to give depth), and just great pictures.

So I have some things to post. Just note I did not design these pictures, it was a copying exercise to learn from other artists.

Week 1 of TAD has just concluded and assignments have been flooding in! They’re given in the lectures but not all of the details are posted online which makes it difficult to track.

One of the more confusing assignments was to do a master copy of a drawing by Fechin. A master copy being where you find a master’s work and try to replicate it yourself.

I’ve never done a master copy before so I just lunged into it, which I shouldn’t have. So now, for the artistic viewing public I’ll elaborate on how and why you should go about doing a master copy, as explained by Carl Dobsky.

Carl told us that before doing a master copy you must have a goal in mind before commencing. My goal was to do the homework, and I just expected to have some revelation while doing so but it doesn’t quite work like that. I didn’t really connect the dots. My goal should’ve been ‘learn to use graphite’. Or more specifically, ‘learn how Fechin would’ve used graphite/charcoal.’ It all seems so obvious in retrospect.

Doing a master copy is supposed to make you figure out how another artist would’ve gone about doing something. To try and extrapolate how they produced the picture, assuming you can’t research and find out about their process. By thinking about it from this perspective it becomes more personal and invested. You chose this artwork because you want to figure out its secrets.

Here’s my master copy of Fechin’s Mexican Woman drawing using pencil. It’s not a perfect replication, and I have a lot to learn about working with graphite, but still I learnt a lot. Click to enlarge!

The first semester of TAD started this week!

It’s pretty full on, just like the workshop. Plus, since all work will be posted on the forums I need to digitalise and resize (transform and rolllll out) everything, which will be incredibly convenient for blogging.

One of the things due tomorrow is something for the sketchbook class run by Sterling Hundley. We had to find something blue outside of the studio and draw it, then take notes about our ~emotions~ and other whimsical stuff on the next page.

I did a few pages of drawings but here is my favourite.

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Well, more mobile. The guy selling it said he didn’t know anything about bikes. His salespitch was “It goes up curbs, it goes down curbs” to which I added, “Everything you need in a bike!”

While buying time at the Green Tortoise hostel I’d found 2 pretty appealing options as far as house-hunting went.

The first was Yuba Buena Commons near 3rd and Harrison; a subsidised, low-income SRO (single residence occupancy). The apartments are really nice, close to the POD (studio) and well-priced, but it’s reminiscent of some elaborate human storage operation. I went to ask a few residents what it was like living there and got mixed responses. And by mixed I mean “Seems good, everyone keeps to themselves” from some people and no response from others. Literally. No response. Just empty stares. I’d be halfway through saying “Hi, can I ask you a-” and they’d turn their heads and look at me with absolutely no emotion, then just continue on their way. This happened more than once. And by more than once I mean twice. But still, I only talked to 4 people so that’s a 50:50 split! Read the rest of this entry →

Crazytimes, crazy people. I’m certainly drifting, and it’s fun. I’ll share a few stories and people I’ve met thus far. Read the rest of this entry →