honestly, the alliterations just kinda come out.
no idea why.
i skipped an activity the other day* where friends and food would be involved in hopes of finding focus. it worked!
stuff has been slow but a little better.
loooooooook.
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picture 1: looking at a piece through a mirror often helps pinpoint errors a lot faster than just looking at it straight-on. same concept of turning it upside down, etc. picture 2: super excited about this one. it's based off of one of my favorite places and my hand literally cramped up after i finished drawing it. picture 2: start of a painting. after taking this picture, i worked on it some more and really messed it up. i couldn't stand to look at it for about a week, but when i worked on it again i was pretty pleased with the result, which you'll see in the show.
[*confession: by "the other day", i mean the day of september 17, which is when i wrote this but forgot to publish it. so i changed the content and posted now. good alliterations shan't be wasted in this space of the interwebs.]
i don't even know what that alliteration was about.
anyway, i talked to chris thornock last week and he suggested i make 6 small paintings (5x7 inches) within the week to just explore and experiment before I really get into the big pieces for my project. i made them diptychs and it's been really fun! i've used different processes on each one and have done lots of stuff i've never tried before. the subjects relate to my actual paintings.
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picture 1: halfway through the process of diptych 1
picture 2: early stages of diptych 2
picture 3: what diptych 2 currently looks like
picture 4: early stages of diptych 3
picture 5: what diptych 3 currently looks like
by tomorrow, these will all be done. so be excited? or not. or whatever.
but i'm not gonna lie...i'm pretty excited about that last one especially.
i just came across my phone pictures, and found a few process photos that i took. they're not great quality, but it's interesting to see how a piece comes about. sometimes.
this was from bob barrett's head painting class last year. i love taking classes from multiple artists, because the techniques are always different. i try to emulate each professor and eventually i find what works for me and what doesn't. for example, in justin taylor's class, we often started with tight drawings underneath. in bob's class, we painted directly onto the canvas as shown below.
similar to figure drawing, i found that i painted these best when i blocked in whatever was most obvious to me in the particular composition. in this 3-hour study, there was a strong light/shadow contrast. so i blocked in the darks and background first, because they were most prominent. the background created a cradle for the shape of her face. then i was able to work my way into refining the edges and shapes.
the end result may look familiar, because it was shown in this post.
(i obviously intentionally ripped off this image.)
[click to enlarge]
it was a fun process, and i did it rather quickly. after 40 minutes, i went from the first photos on the left to the second image.
from that point on, the other 2+ hours were just tweaking and awesoming.
in short, i -- desaturated the photo, cut myself out, added grain, adjusted lighting and contrast, cloned part of the lower half of the body from the second original picture, painted fog, and added facial highlights.
the hardest part for me was painting the rim light and highlights. but i think i got the gist of it.
i really needed a break from work/freelance/classes to recharge my artistic brain, and i think it worked.
happy halloween!
i had the privilege of teaching the friday illustration labs for the freshman seminar class last semester (fall '10). i only had two hours with each group of pre-art major students, and constructed my labs so that ideally, we'd cover three main areas within that time: we defined illustration and the illustration program, established basics of life drawing, and let the students practice after my demo. it was crazy full, but there were some good times to be had. and the students were troopers.
...
i made the following slides* as part of my presentation. don't take this as doctrine, but hopefully it makes a little sense of what probably went on in my head as i drew.
let me know if this is at all helpful, or any other thoughts or questions you might have. i'd love feedback!
the final product:
i'm highly influenced by my professor, bob barrett. if any of the above process makes sense to you and want to learn more, i would suggest studying his life drawing book which goes into great depth.
*apologies for the quality of pictures; when i drew it, i wasn't intending on using the process pictures for anything other than checking my progress. obviously my cell phone camera isn't the most hi-tech thing in the world....
so. i took intro to animation with kelly loosli...3 summers ago. i was already in illustration, and took it because murphy wanted me to take it with him, and i'm so glad i did! (sidenote, murph was all worried about making it into animation, but he totally got in and he's amazing at it! currently on a mission in buenos aires, argentina. i'm so proud of my friends :D)
i'm taking gesture drawing right now, and will be taking more animation classes too.
for class, we worked on our animations. had to sketchbook a lot. watched documentaries about amazing animators. studied cartoons for research. so. great. (!)
we also learned the principles of animation (these notes are straight from my class sketchbook):
1- timing --number of frames and their spacing over time
2- squash and stretch -- deformation of an object in motion
3- staging -- presentation of information in a way that is readable by the audience
4- straight ahead -- animate starting at the first frame and going chronologically
5- key framing -- animating the extremes in motion first, then putting in the 'tweens'.
6- slo-in/slo-out -- objects must ease into and out of motion (acceleration/deceleration)
7- anticipation -- preparatory movement before action
8- arcs -- natural, elliptical pattern of motion
9- follow-through -- usually main body of action. combination of movement through it's normal cycle
10- overlapping action -- main body of motion may have other elements connected to it that have to catch up to it's motion.
11- secondary animation -- main action, is defined by secondary action
12- exaggeration -- accentuation of motion
13- appeal -- aesthetically pleasing to the audience
14- solid drawing -- ability to consistently draw the same object, maintaining the same relative shapes and masses of that object. make a 2d object accurately look 3-dimensional.
in the intro class, we did solely hand-drawn animation, pencil tests, which were way fun and way frustrating. anyway, i recently found my animations from that class!
the first assignment was the bouncing ball. to my complete surprise and happiness, kelly praised mine in the class critique. however, i'm pretty sure my classmates upped their game after that, whereas i think i probably slacked off, as i wasn't trying to get into the animation program. i still worked hard, though! i don't think the rest of the animations weren't as well-done, but here they are!
this is my final project, where we could do what we wanted as long as we incorporated some of the principles of animation. i don't remember specifics, but i was excited about this freedom. however, sadly, i got incredibly sick the last two weeks of the spring semester--when it was DUE. as i recall, i was either in bed or up, being, well...actively sick. but i did the best i could under the circumstances:
we also did a walk cycle, but i disliked mine so i didn't post it :) instead, here's my favorite. the flour sack. it was the second assignment, i think, and good to do after the bouncing ball, because it's basically like two bouncing balls on top of each other, with personality and story. it only had to be 3 seconds, and the sack had to fall somehow. 14 seconds later, with something like 175+ frames (individual drawings), i was done. i still would have liked to slow it down in some areas, but simply lacked time. it's my favorite, which is why it's last. :]
welp, there they are! stay tuned for the next post (i think it'll include two concert reviews!)
