FACEPOCALYPSE

I really like how this drawing turned out. I thought I’d share.

Nu pastel on smooth, halftone paper.

We’ve also been doing some block-ins lately for our Light and Form class. They’re also known as constructs, with the purpose of getting your eye in. Thankfully in San Fran we get to do this under the guidance of Dorian Iten, the current resident instructor at our studio. Observational drawing is his specialty so it’s great to have him around while doing these.

The aim of a block-in is to map out the shape of the cast and then break it into light and dark masses.

It’s all about seeing shapes over ‘things’ – things being what they are in real life. When you start thinking of the cast as a cast (with a torso, some legs and so on) you fall into the trap of drawing what you think a torso or leg looks like instead of seeing the shapes they’re actually made from. You’re not really observing, you’re making bits up. By seeing the object as a collection of (2-dimensional/flat) shapes you can draw it more easily, and one trick in doing this it to squint and/or picture the shapes as something else.

Here’s one of my block-ins, along with a shape visualisation example:

To help draw the shape I highlighted in red, aside from squinting and just matching the angles I could’ve imagined that shape as the bottom of a crocodile’s jaw. It could be anything, there’s no significance in choosing a crocodile. The purpose is to psychologically trick you into looking at it in a different way, like an optical illusion. After this I just need to match that shape on my drawing.

Doing block-ins/constructs is a great way to train your eye, and at traditional ateliers art students will keep doing block-ins until they’re good enough to move onto the next phase, which involves rendering the form.

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.

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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Last Saturday was the 3rd sketch meetup for our Perth sketch group. I would encourage any artist to come down and draw with us. It’s an awesome incentive to draw with other artists and a good chance to trade tips.

I’ve always been terrible at giving faces ‘character’, and while I don’t want to go as far as Jeff‘s caricatures, it’s nice to see how he tackles them and get some protips.

I haven’t taken these very far from realism (and a few are totally representational), but I think I’m improving with faces. It’s also helped me to think about the underlying structure (map it on a skull shape), as you would when learning anatomy.

Learning the base form allows you to exaggerate it in ways that aren’t absurd.

This week’s sketch meetup event is here. Greens @ 2:30-5pm on Saturday. Possibly my last meet before ducking off.

Alright, so I just had a big rant about the latest Transperth ad and thought I’d better put my money where my mouth is, so I’ve sketched up a storyboard of how I’d restructure the advert while sticking with their idea. Click the image to see it larger.

My key changes:

• The ad starts at ground level. You’re really in the thick of peak hour traffic, not a detached shot of the traffic from above.
• There’s more focus on the cars transforming into a robot, because this is (in my opinion) the biggest flaw of the actual ad – I didn’t notice that the robot was originally made of cars. The way I envision it the viewer sees something strange happening with the cars (they start lifting off the ground) and pays attention at this point, and then find out they’re merging into a giant robot. It doesn’t need to show all the transformation (production $$$) but it shouldn’t just happen in a split second.
• I felt the ad was very “face on, cut to side on, cut to blah.” I want to really emphasise the size of this robot.
• The pollution issue is exaggerated with the sum of the exhaust shown expelled from the robot as it moves. Also, the destructive nature of everyone driving as it crushes the surrounds (albeit man-made bitumen).

Ofcourse this is the kind of thing that would be reviewed in a real job circumstance, I just thought I’d take a crack at it.

The sketch group for sketching. As a group. In Perth. has been born kicking! Created yesterday and it’s already held an event. People have been talking about getting regular sketch groups going in Perth for ages, and now it’s happening. The group had its first meetup today, which was basically Jeff and I telling everyone we were meeting at Hyde Park to draw/paint, and anyone else interested was welcome.

I bet Jeff that noone else would come.

I was pleasantly surprised when 3 other people came along, 2 of which were complete strangers to Jeff and myself! Thus is the power of the interwebs.

And here is a picture – Party of 5 (incl me)!

We’ll probably make Saturdays a regular thing so join the group if you want to join us.

I used the opportunity to do a watercolour painting for Mother’s Day. I referenced a black and white Daily Mirror (Sydney) newspaper clipping from 1985, just after I was born. Mum and I made page 5 with a very punny article entitled “Boxer’s a champ at just eight pounds.”

I went to Dr Sketchy’s last night to draw and paint Celestina from the Melbourne performance group Eccentrix. For those not familiar with the Dr Sketchy format, there’s a handful of quick poses, a break, then a model performance and some longer more poses.

This particular model’s “specialty” was fire with some sort of ~sensual wiggling~ similar to bellydancing, and during her performance she had flaming things (?) on her shoulders and arms… And I just realised I don’t know what they’re called. They were kind of like little poles with a flammable piece on the end.

Anyway, I’m not sure whether it was the way she moved, the bright flames dancing around, or the fact that I was ridiculously tired that sent me into a light trance, but it was hypnotic! One of the best Dr Sketchy’s performances I’ve seen.

And here are some watercolours. This was a 15min pose with greenish lighting:

I want to study the affects of coloured lighting more as some of the shadows were kind of orangey. My colours are exaggerated though.

Here’s one of the earlier 10 minute poses under orange light. I was trying to get a big patch of orangey skintone down then bleed shadows back over it. A much simpler palette, but since I didn’t get time to paint around the form and expose the white highlight I just painted a solid colour background in digitally.

Last of all, a little gift for Mel. She left her facebook signed in the other day so I did the obligatory status update. I then noticed she didn’t have anything in the “Write something about yourself” section, so it promptly became “I’m a sparkly princess YAY!”.

And without further ado, here is sparkly princess Mel:

Another minimal landscape.

Just a simple landscape. Very minimal, which is something that interests me. Sparth did a series of quite minimal landscapes some years back that struck me, but I can’t seem to find them on his website. Still, looking at the way he paints makes it very evident that I should be using a wider range of values.