FACEPOCALYPSE

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.

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 →

That’s what I’m here to do. This is what’s getting drilled into us. We’re here to make good pictures, but it’s not that simple.

I’m just going to write about some lessons I’ve learnt thus far, in no particular order. I don’t even really know where to start so maybe I’ll start with what we’re doing now. Our first assignment.

The aim is to focus on shapes and composition to make a nice looking picture (without narrative). It has to be a square and we’re only allowed to use 1 or 2 values (max 30% diff) for each ‘object’. It’s a slice of life project, based on something here in Kansas City.

And here are my 2 best thumbnails thus far (chosen by John English), although the guy with the wheelbarrow was a distinct favourite; and when I drew it I knew I was onto something:

One thing I’ve realised while doing thumbnails is that to make things pop (really emphasise a silhouette – it’s all about silhouette) you can define shapes with other shapes, but they need to have different values. For example, you put a light figure in front of a shadowed wall, or dark figure against a light sky etc. This is seen throughout master painters’ work, and it’s probably something you’ve even heard before.

It also involves simplifying. A great deal of simplification. You need to eliminate unnecessary elements from a picture to really focus on the point, or the important subject matter.

There are 2 ways to make pictures; having no light source and using pattern/shapes to define everything, or using light to draw form. Defining all your shapes by how they interact with the light.

Anyway, I’m crazybusy with this project but will attempt to keep posting.

After several pictureless posts I have something to show. We have life drawing Tuesdays and Thursdays at the workshop and everyone uses Nu Pastels. They’re pretty great but take a little getting used to. I’m still not satisfied with where I’m at but am trying out a bunch of different applications. Here’s my most successful drawing thus far, which was conveniently just before a break, in which people walk around and look at what people have done.

Even though this one turned out well it’s nowhere near as good as others students’ pastel drawings, let alone the established artists that take the workshop or hang around. Mark English comes down to partake in these sessions and also hangs out in the studio from time to time. He’s pretty much a pioneer of American illustration. Read the rest of this entry →

This morning Brent Watkinson, Gary Kelly and George Pratt gathered the Illustration Academy workshop students for an impromptu discussion on various things arty. I’m just going to relay some points in no particular order. Some things I knew were reaffirmed and others completely opened my eyes to what I should be doing. There are things that art schools/universities just don’t teach you. The overall standard of art education worldwide is pretty appalling, with a few stand-out institutions that tell students everything they need to know about working and learning as an artist. Read the rest of this entry →

My head is spinning, and I don’t mean metaphorically. I hope this is just the jetlag because I’m pretty phased at the moment, I certainly hit the ground running!

After arriving in LA on a delayed plane I was promptly whisked aside at customs due to my desire for a 6 month visa. I was shuffled into a waiting room and sat there for quite awhile as I waited for my more “in-depth” review on my visit to America. What ended up being a very brief discussion with the official there kind of made me think I was just palmed off by the guy at the first checkpoint. Anyway, in short I was granted my 6 month visa, but by the time I made it through the baggage check area (thankfully I wasn’t picked for further examination there) I’d just missed the check-in for my next flight (3hrs after my original scheduled arrival time).

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I’ve been rocketing through my to-do list as my flight looms ever closer. It’s still a bit surreal as I’ve barely had a chance to take in the things going on around me. Like almost everything I’ve done this year I have little breathing space as I precariously balance work-related endeavours with socialising, or more recently, saying “bai4now” in rapid succession.

However, I’m about to be engulfed by the sound of the ~real world~ as I leave the grasp of the internets. My first act in the US (apart from settling into the college I’ll be staying at for the 3-week Kansas City workshop) will be purchasing a laptop, most likely a refurbished Macbook Pro.

Then I’ll be back! With stories!… Good stories, I hope.

At the start of the year I was invited to do a digital painting demonstration by the Alfred Cove Art Society, who meet at the Atwell Art Gallery on the last Thursday of every month. I was slotted in for this week passed, and went along to share what I could with a room full of fine artists. When it comes to demonstrations I typically don’t have enough time to do anything really ‘finished’, so focus on showing different techniques. In this case I tried to liken it to painting equivalents. eg. Overlay mode is like glazing, painting in selections is like using masking fluid, and ‘undo’ is like travelling back in time. Something I do on a regular basis here in Perth.

There were an abundance of questions throughout my 1 hour painting, which was great! It’s nice to have an engaged audience, they all seemed really eager and interested.

I received a little traditional vs digital effectiveness and timeliness questioning along the way, which can be hard to field since I haven’t spent nearly as much time with traditional mediums as digital. Anyway, after I’d mostly been focussing on painting the boats one lady challenged me to paint a tree. As you might imagine I had a sly grin when responding “Sure, I’ll draw a tree.” and opened my brush list to select an appropriate tree. Then with a single swoosh a forest appeared and the room cried out “That’s cheating!”

I was amused.

But really it requires more manipulation than just slapping a line of tree clones in, and it was a nice segue into showing them brush creation.

Anyway, I worked the demo image into the painting shown below after painting into a lot of it.

It was mostly referenced from a photo I took at the Amazon River in Peru which I’d always wanted to paint. I loved the mass of boats sitting unattended as we approached the canoe we were boarding. It was almost like a dumping ground, all looking a bit abandoned like raw husks of their former glory. It’s almost haunting. I also added the bird, an escort of sorts. Your guide across the waters, like you need some protection from what lurks beneath. The Amazon is built up as a dangerous place with lots of animals quite capable of eating you and your new safari outfi; yet it looks so placid…