Life Drawing Session 1 (2/10/2013)

Start of Year 2!

Having practised for the life drawing, which was today, I felt that I did quite well. 

With me as the only participant, it took me a little while to get used to the concept of life drawing and sketch the model in numerous poses in under two minutes. But, once I figured out just to make them quick sketches and not detailed ones, as well as just think of the model as a 'model', I slowly become more confident in what I was drawing. 

The lecturer reminded me of a technique I had not used in a while. By putting the end of a pencil to your eye and using the end of it you can determine the figures proportions e.g head, chest, stomach, crotch, legs and ankles. Once done, you then use their head as a measurement for the rest of the body. This technique helped, especially when the model was bent over.

I also learnt that you could use this technique for diagonal and horizontal lines as well since a 'head' is the same length as a figure's shoulder length. Although, it took me a while to get right I feel that I have managed to get a reasonable hand on this technique. If you don't feel that your getting results with just a pencil though you can also use a small folded piece of paper in order to figure out the measurements.  

Afterwards, we then went onto slightly more detailed five minute drawings before doing one big thirty minute portrait. During this second attempt, the model suggested that I keep my arm as straight as possible when figuring out the head measurements. Otherwise, when I bend my arm back to look at it it makes the measurement larger due to looking at it closer. Thus keeping my arm outstretched at all times keeps the measurement the same and doesn't mess up the portrait's perspective.
This image can be seen below.

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Finally we finished on a drawing that was meant to only take forty five minutes, but instead took seventy five. This one was obviously the most detailed of the lot and included shading, smudging and erasing to make the model come to life on the canvas. 

During this time the lecturer advised, that when drawing body hair, I should draw curved lines along the limbs am if they were cylinders in order to make the hair more realistic.
This image can be seen below.

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Overall, I feel that this first session went well, as the three hours went by quickly. I also feel that I have learn't some new techniques that I will be able to use the next time I attempt life drawing. 

I also feel that I will try and use charcoal next time so as to try using a completely different resource, instead of just a pencil. 

Practising Shading (26/9/2013)

Recognising how close it was to the beginning of term, I decided to work on my shading as it has never been my strongest area. Plus, I have always wanted to draw realistically which usually involves a lot of shading for added realism.

Being a big fan of Steampunk and Batman, I discovered that a comic named 'Gotham by Gaslight' existed that introduced a goggle wearing Batman and was set in the 19th century (1899). Therefore, loving his design I decided to draw him using the 3D character model from the 'Batman: Gotham by Gaslight' game that was sadly cancelled.
He took about an hour, maybe an hour and a half to draw.
I'm glad I decided not to make his outfit completely black, as I feel the amount of shading I used helps convey that darkness without detracting from the finer details. Thus why I didn't include much shading around his exposed face.
Perhaps because of my love for Steampunk, I noticed after completing the drawing, that the materiel looks very shiny, almost metallic.This further shows in his reflective lenses which I am quite please with as I used references online to get them just right.

I then heard that my friend Mali was asking his friends for commissions for portraits of him to be drawn as if he was apart of existing franchises. Therefore, wanting to help a friend and continue practicing my art, I decided to help by choosing to draw him as a 'Hunger Games' tribute.

First of all I decided to take some pictures of myself in order to have a point of reference for the perspective.
Originally I wanted to draw him from the victim's perspective with one of his hands reaching towards them and the other readying a knife.
It was just as well as I tried this one first as, although I really wanted to draw this shot, I unfortunately didn't have either the confidence or skill to draw this rather tricky perspective and therefore tried another. 

For the second pose, I went for an easier to accomplish close up shot of his hand holding his knife with him looking down at his victim. I felt this pose to be better as, although not as engaging as the other one, the impact would still be there, especially if I were to include a hand reaching out from underneath as if to defend from the fatal blow.  

When it came to drawing the image, I found that by trying to include his head, arm and knife I wasn't able to include the victim's hand. However, I found this to be for the better as, not only did this provide a better close up, but it also allowed me to give him emotion. 
I decided to have him face the viewer and made him look as if he had just lost it in the games e.g. spent days awake and therefore killing just became another chore for him. Thus I was trying to make his eyes look cold and dead inside, thus providing some sort of sympathy. However, my folks thought he looked more like a maniac. Though I suppose that may have been a subconscious thing from me as Mali tends to stick to rather crazy characters in the 'Dungeons and Dragons' games we play. 
It took about two hours to complete and includes not only shading for his darker skin tone and body hair, but also for his fuzzy hair and reflective knife. I would have loved to have something reflect on the knife, but alas my skills aren't that good yet and I didn't want to ruin what I already had achieved.
The "May the odds be ever in your favor" in the background was added to further establish that he is a tribute in the 'Hunger Games'.

Overall, I am very pleased with my drawings and especially the shading. Therefore, I am looking forward to building on these newly learned skills when I return to university. I can only hope that one day I will master realistic beings and proportions.   

Also on a side note, my friend Mali thought the picture was "Brilliant" and thus now his new Facebook cover photo. Therefore I must be doing something right afterall, or is he just being kind? ;) 

Harvard Referencing: 

• https://forums.station.sony.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/dlc7-new-gear-styles.9481/page-12 

Practising Life Drawing (23/9/2013)

Having received an email detailing that I will be taking part in life drawing when I return to university, I decided to practice. Therefore, I searched for a suitable model online and drew them in order to gain some confidence in drawing the naked human form. I also wanted to practice shading as, I still feel this to be my weakest area.

As you can see below my image is reasonably close to the original pose, considering I decided to draw it free hand i.e. without using the skeleton technique, as I usually do.
I used a number of techniques during this piece including shading which is evident, missing lines to show her bone and muscle and finally, erasing areas in her hair to give it a parting. 

Having shown my work to a friend and discussed it with them, I realised that I had unintentionally drawn her heavier whilst trying to make her look more realistic as oppose to my usual cartoon style. But, by also trying to get her entire self in the frame and her curves correct, I had also made her right arm far thicker than it should have been.
However, I feel this works for the better as, not only does this show off my individual style, but my drawing also shares similarities to the works of Botticelii and Gauguin as they drew their women more voluptuous and curvier as you can see below. 

Looking at the pose I chose as well as the works above, I now realise that I need to focus on not only perspective, but also the positioning of the human body and understand how the different positions off arms and legs can affect the curves, size and position of, for example the hips and breasts. 

Harvard Referencing:

• http://www.meetup.com/Holborn-Life-Drawing/events/49504212/
• http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/botticelli/
• http://daily-norm.com/2012/11/29/norms-do-gauguin/

Handing in work (19/3/2013)

Today I handed in my work which included my memory stick and sketch books before carrying on with other work which mainly involved editing and getting my blogs up to date.

Preparing for my deadline (12/3/2013)

For this session I decided to update my blogs making sure the spelling and Harvard Referencing were correct before doing the following.

• Used the 'Analysis of art' sheet in order to know which techniques and styles I could write about in my 500 word evaluation. I also found our during this time I could compare my work to more than one artist which is fantastic as I believe my work closely resembles Shigenori Soejima's and Georges Remi's art.
• Looked back over the work I had done over the year and made sure to include images of all the other digital drawing applications I had used over the year. 

Side notes and finishing my art (5/3/2013)

Side notes:

At the start of the session our lecturer reminded us of our art deadline and that we needed to include a 500 word essay with it that we should focus on next week after completing our art this week. This was very useful to hear as I had totally forgotten about the 500 words.

As for the 500 words themselves, they can be based on any previous artists I have talked about including my favourite artist Shigenori Soejima. 

I will also need to provide evidence of all the different programs and resources I have used over the module in order to create different pieces of art. This includes Photoshop and Ipads.  

Finishing my art:

Environment:

Taking note of my previous points from last time, I cleaned up my work by removing any awkward lines and added colour where necessary. In this way I was able to complete both my environment and my object which you can see below. 

The bottom left image is the environment piece that I plan to hand in for my final assessment. Whereas the one at the bottom right is the image without the dark transparent layer over it. Thus you can see the contrast of the scene between night and day. 

Overall I am very pleased with my environment as I have never completely coloured an environment before and therefore I feel good about what I have done.

I believe I was able to make a convincing city street that appears lived in thanks to the lights and smoke I used. This was due to me adding some great shading and lighting to the scene which helped give it atmosphere. 

Even though the white lines in the background were an accident they turned out to benefit the final piece as they help the eyes tell which things are in the background and what are in the foreground.

If I could change anything I would add some textures and details to the buildings as so far they only appear painted and not made of materials such as brick. Also the background overshadowed by the darkness could have had a lot more detail added to it and even though the drawing is not meant to be entirely in proportion due to the genre of the game the environment is based, on I still feel that the air vent on the roof in the foreground should have been tilted slightly.

Object:

With the hammer I added further shading especially on the 'face' in order to make the object appear more three dimensional. I also shaded the eyes and made them glow in order to make the 'face' more menacing and more veins were added to make it look life like. By adding light green to the slime I was able to make it stand out more and look as if its puddle was lying on some sort of surface. 
Unhappy with the wooding handle merely being one colour, I decided to add lines to it in order to bring out a texture that you can see below.

Coming to the conclusion that these lines didn't  look good I decided to remove them for my final image and keep the wooded handle as it was originally.

Overall I am really happy with my final object as since I used a lot of soft sprays to colour the face they have left a sort of aura around it, thus giving the Cthulhu hammer an unintentional but great atmosphere. I also feel that I was able to make the object look three dimensional which is something I usually struggle with and therefore I am pleased I could accomplish this.     

If I were to go back over this I would make the eyes more detailed and Cthulhu like as so far they look too simple compared to the rest of the image. Though saying this they would suit an action adventure game which the object is meant to be for.
I would also have liked to add at least something to the wood other than shading in order to make it stand out more e.g. a realistic wood grain.

Working on my environment 2 (28/2/2013)

Going into college to crack on with some work I decided to tackle my environment again. 

First of all I focused on recolouring some of the buildings as looking back over them I felt that the ones closer to the foreground needed to be darker in order to show a better contrast when compared to the buildings in the background.
I also recognised that I couldn't tell what cultural style the back two buildings were meant to be, and on further inspection noticed that the other two were a mix of cultures as well. Therefore I decided that since the buildings are meant to be in a city full of contrasting cultures that I would use the colour scheme that would suit the scene and not necessarily the architectures' origin and design.

I then went on to removing the text on the screen and finding a picture of a mountain surface which I used as a means to create an effective looking backdrop. I was able to do this by tracing over the orignal picture before filling it in with that picture's original colour and then tweaking it where necessary (especially since the fill bucket ended up filling in previously blank areas by accident, thus I had to paint over those individually).
You can see the before and after below.

With the basic colours now complete, I decided to work on the light and shad of my environment. I added a glow to the windows and lights and made the alleys in between the buildings darker. I redid the Christmas lights again as I didn't make them glow nearly enough originally before adding a transparent black layer over the whole environment. With only the glows on top of this filter the enviroment appears lit up.
I even added smoke coming out of the chimney in order to give that building and the street more of a 'lived in' feel.

Overall I am really pleased with my work today as not only have I finished colouring in my piece, but I was also able to light it appropriately. This really shows when you look at the last two screenshots back to back as you could say that these are pictures taken in order to show the city during day and night.
I may go back to this again before the final deadline once I have had feedback from others.
Even though it now looks a lot darker than my usual preference for bright colours in my images, I feel that the colours I have used are still bright enough to keep my action/adventure game genre and atmosphere intact.