I Survived The Week! HOORAYYyyeezzzZZZzzzZZzzz...

Phew, you know, I wasn't sure I was going to make it through this week. However, after spending a horrendous 36 hours conscious, I managed to pull through and get everything caught up.

My body isn't what it used to be and the lack of sleep plus three Rockstar energy drinks in a 24 hour period probably knocked at least 6 months off of my life span. I'm being serious. It was actually mildly painful when I finally laid down to sleep after my Art History exam. My poor little heart, I really should be nicer to it.

What made me fall behind? Well, I underestimated the time needed to complete a project and due to general laziness over the weekend I put off studying for my first exam in, as mentioned before, Art History. The test ended up not being too terrible, but I wouldn't have felt that way had I not skipped Drawing II to cram for three hours before the test began.

The problem arose with my 3D project. The assignment was to build two walls constructed of 100 pieces of cardboard. Each wall had to use the same shape (although the size and proportions of the shape could vary), one had to be constructed of regular cardboard, the other had to have at least one side with the corrugation exposed, the walls had to either intersect or create tension and the whole thing had to be free standing. Here's what I turned in:

"Conflict in Cardboard"

I had half of the curving wall done when I started work on this Wednesday afternoon. Most of my triangles were cut out and I thought it might take me 4 to 6 hours to get to a point where I could finish the rest in class. What a gross underestimation. I worked on that things for 8 to 10 hours and then ended up using the entire 2 hours in class to finish it. I hadn't factored in cutting out all the squares and while the super glue I used was quick, it didn't cause some issues.

When I found a stopping point Wednesday night, it was actually Thursday morning at 3:45am. Anyone who knows me knows that I will generally choose to pull an all-nighter rather than risk sleeping through my alarm if I'm going to get 3 hours of sleep or less. I knew this would be the case and chose not to risk it. I didn't get much done between 4:00 and 7:00am (I got my back pack ready and watched a whole bunch of Home Movies episodes), but I did leave early to get some extra time in the studio to finish those damned walls.

The whole thing did actually have some meaning for me, so I'll do my best to put it into words. The two walls represent the duality of thought. I am always interested in the conflict between the right and left brain. The curvy triangular wall represents the creative right brain while the uniform square wall represents the rigid left brain. Originally, the triangular wall was the only one that was going to break apart. Very right brain people have a difficult time fitting into the rigid left brain world that society has created. It wasn't until later that I wanted the squared wall to be effected as well. Left brained individuals are very much about logic and step by step process and can sometimes become frustrated when dealing with a right brain who is fluttering in the wind. However, when they both smash together and play their parts well, they can make a beautiful piece of art.

It's not my favorite piece from that class so far, but the first with any meaning. I'll leave you with an image of the last assignment. It was an exercise in movement and repetition. We constructed 12 shapes with the same proportions made of packaging material (cereal boxes, 6 pack carboard, etc). I used boxes of tea and a glued card stock on the other die for color (something everyone got to do because of my ingenuity). I broke the rule for this assignment stating there should be 10% or less area of color. I don't mind the 2 point hit on my grade, though, because I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

"Ice Wrath"

That's all for now. Until next time!

Stone Age Meets Digital Age, Photography Style!

I'm going to try to keep this post as brief as possible, hopefully under 300 words. I am going to do this by trying to stay in the immediate past. Still, I've been known to ramble...

I am in Photography I this semester. It's been over a decade since I've handled film, development chemicals or photo paper and actually knew what I was doing. Needless to say, I don't trust myself (or currently have the time) to study ahead independently on dark room procedures.

Tuesday night I found myself playing around with my negatives. It was too late to go up to the MSU photo lab and, again, I have no confidence in myself (please refer to previous paragraph, sentence 2).

In a fit of innovation, I constructed a (mostly fire proof) light table using a floor lamp and a white sheet of printer paper and took close up shots of the negatives with my phone... I feel like MacGyver when I use more than two tools to solve a problem... Of course, one of those tools is usually my iPhone... Because smart phones are the Swiss Army knife for a digital society. Anyway...

Using a free, mobile Photoshop app, I straightened, cropped and inverted the negatives and was able to pull off some reasonably decent images. Most of the pictures are crap, I'm still figuring out this camera. In 36 shots, I have confidence in the content and technique of 1 image and I am looking forward to seeing a large print of another.

I won't ramble on about what this pictures means to me, but I will say that it has re-sparked the creative flame within me. So, with out further a due, here it is. Until next time! ... That was 291 words, by the way.

'Keep it in Perspective'

Almost taken down by, of all things, a MIRROR!

Oh my, is Lucky going to start posting regularly again? Shh! Don't jinx it.

Today was the final day of class as I have known it for the duration of this semester. Finals are next week and, if all goes as expected, I'll be taking in a 3.75 GPA for the semester. Not bad for my first round of art courses. Yeah, there's a B in there, but it can't be helped. Metalworking ended up being much more difficult than anticipated, and I'm not holding out hope that this last assignment will be enough to pull me up to 90%.

All an all it's been a great semester and I already feel like I've learned so much. Even in drawing, a subject I have been practicing independently since I possessed the fine motor skills to hold a pencil in my hand. So many great tools and techniques have been added to my artistic tool kit.

It seemed fitting that the final project in drawing should be a self portrait. I've spent so much time looking at everything around me and taking in so much outside information that initially the assignment proved to be a struggle. I've never drawn myself from a mirror before and I've never done a large scale portrait in charcoal... Actually, I'm not sure I've ever done a large scale portrait in any medium.

So, after having a minor freak out the first day and leaving class early out of frustration, I took some time to examine what was going wrong. There were a couple major things.

First off, I wasn't using my powdered charcoal which has become my new favorite drawing material. You sprinkle it on the paper and spread it around to give your canvas a nice middle grey. This allows you to add not only shadows with charcoal pencils, but also highlights using an eraser. It also didn't help that the mirror was a bit wonky and squished or stretched my appearance depending on where I was.

The second mental block was a fear that it was too soon to 'immortalized' myself. I was afraid that I would mess it up and forever be ashamed to try again. This is silly, I know, but I'm curious if other artists have had the same problem.

Last Thursday I left early and mulled all these things over in my head. After bolstering my confidence (and practicing drawing myself in the dark), I returned to class on Tuesday to give the self portrait another try. I moved to a darker side of the room because practicing in extremely low light had shown me that if my face were not as well lit, I wasn't as afraid of making the picture too dark too quickly. I also moved to a smaller drawing pad so the task didn't seem so monumental. Once I prepped my paper with powdered charcoal, I dropped all insecurities and began to go to work...

After two full class periods, this is the fruit of my labor:

 

It's not an exact likeness, but then again a reflection can't be. Seriously. I don't have a perfectly symmetrical face or hair line, so any drawing of a reflection is going to be backwards! All technicalities aside, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out... And I'll probably never do it again willingly.

My instructor is actually keeping this one for the foundations show next semester along with the fish painting from last week's post (different class, same instructor). He even went do far as to make sure that I signed up for the Drawing II course that was being taught be the best drawing instructor. It's cool to have teachers looking out for you and I'm mildly curious if my reputation will precede me in that class... Mustn't... Get... Big... HEAD!!

Seriously, though, I have done my best to keep my humility intact. As I said before, even in a subject that ie been practicing since I can remember did I learn something new.

I have got a lot of projects that I have been wanting to work on, so when the break is here, I plan to take a mini-vacation from the Internet... Or at least social networking. After all, I do need to find a job. The idea is to remove as many distractions as possible so that I can use the momentum I have gained this semester to work on things that are for my own enjoyment and not a grade. Either way, I won't be gone for too long. Maybe a week or two at most. I'll be sure to post before I go on break as well.

Speaking of projects done for fun... For anyone who hasn't had a chance to see this yet, this is the finished Thor drawing (WIP was in the last post) for my dear friend Shawnee.

Not bad for ten hours of work... Not bad at all. Until next time!

And then she found an amazing book...

I've been long overdue for a new blog post, so I guess I’ll go ahead and get on it now. Quite a few things have happened in the last… Wow, has it really been 3 weeks? Jeez, I’m horrible about keeping a schedule, huh? Anyway…

One of the coolest things that happened was that I got to mean a guest speaker named Rafal Olbinski when he visited MSU earlier this month. He’s a painter/illustrator from Warsaw Poland and he’s pretty much awesome. Part of why I was so excited to visit his lecture was because he himself actually started off doing engineering architecture but switched to painting at a later date. Beyond that, he gave me hope that as an artist getting a late start on my education, nothing is lost. Olbinski didn’t actual come to America, where he gained notoriety, until he was 37. And here I am freaking out about being just barely over 30 when I plan to graduate.

I actually got to meet him and gushed a bit to him about how he is my inspiration. How does he react? With graciousness and humility, that’s how he reacts. I want to be all these things when I’m older!! Basically what I’m trying to say is that if you have some time, you should really go check out his work which you can view here!

What else happened in the last three weeks? Well, I had a dog for about 72 hours, and then sent him back. He didn’t misbehave or anything, I just didn’t have the time or dedication to train an adult dog. Uuuum, I finished my second project for Metalworking. I started looking for a part time job (because I have WAAAAY too much time on my hands). Oh! And I offered to do a collaborative work with another user on deviant art!

I always find myself trying to give my own creative input when working with others. This can be good, but I also wanted to have a stab at not creative input (at least story wise) and strictly creating a visual experience of another person’s tale. She’s written a clever little short story and seems to be incredibly honored that I would like to do a black and white manga of it. I’m nervous, but it will be a great learning experience and hopefully prepare me for potential commissions in the future.

So, on to the art… I bought an AMAZING book last weekend. After a brief failed attempt to find tasteful nude photos to use as drawing reference, and by the way, where they hell are all these children on Deviantart parents at?! Anyway, I gave up rather quickly on Deviantart, ran to Barnes and Noble and found “Anatomy for the Artist” by Sarah Simblet.

The problem I have always had with anatomy books is that there are too many words! Even the artistic anatomy books have so much jabbering. This book, while still filled with good information and diagrams of the inner anatomy, is filled to the brim with human figure photos in color and black and white. So, I chose my favorite photo as my first self-study practice session tonight:

Actually, I’ve been drawing a lot of male head figures lately. It’s not entirely intentional, I don’t get to choose the subject our Drawing instructor puts in front of us. This image just jumped out at me when I was flipping through the pages. It’s a great lighting choice and one I was excited to work on. I didn’t really finish the finer detail because I was working with charcoal on a smaller surface than I’m used to. Regardless, I’m pretty happy about the outcome. I’m really looking forward to doing more drawings from this book.

Until next time!

Holy Hornbeam, we're SHADING!!!

Well, I managed to make it over 24 since my last post! I'm so sporadic with this darned thing. Anyway, there's not a whole lot new to say except that my drawing class has gotten way more interesting. The reigns have been released and we are now SHADING!!! As some of you may have noticed, I have already been shading a lot of my pieces, but I've been timid about it since we have been trying to focus on our line work up to this point.

This new approach is actually challenging my ability, so I'm super excited about it. Until this week, I have been finishing at least two drawings per class period. However, since we began shading, I have yet to really complete a drawing in class. I'm not complaining, though, because this means I am outside my comfort zone which means I am learning. Before this week I was getting kind of bored in class, but now I'm actually excited to begin my next piece.

These are the two pieces I have completed this week:

Plaster Cast Head Drawing 2

Plaster Leg Muscle Group Drawing

 
Another piece of information that is new is that I just upgraded my deviantart subscription and am once again a premium member. You should really go check it out at some point. It still looks about the same at this very second, but this evening will be spent updating and fancifying all the nifty stuff that you can when your have a premium membership.

That's all for now, back to watching Cloverfield and fiddling with my DA account. Until next time!

Nobody is perfect...

Today’s blog is to demonstrate that while we may all have talents of our own, or excel in certain fields, no matter how good you think you are, there is always room for improvement. I was left with this thought after a particularly trying day in Drawing I class. We still have yet to begin shading, but I have been doing it anyway out of boredom. No to toot my own horn, but I am at the head of the class (toot toot). If I did not use shading to slow myself down I would run laps around my classmates as far as quantity of drawings.

This week we began drawing plaster casts of faces. As some of you may have read in the last post, we aren’t supposed to actually think of them as faces, but simple ‘draw what we see.’ Last week’s post showed what I think is one of my best drawing pieces. Aside from being very naturalistic, I also managed to frame it perfectly on the page. However, I will admit, it was not an exact replica of how the plaster head looked in class. Sometimes I will ‘fib’ in my drawings to make them appear more idealistic.

However, my ability to do this was utterly shattered today. We were still drawing the same batch of plaster heads, but today, many of them were turned upside down, or on their sides, or laid at angles to where foreshortening ruled the image. I got agitated with the first set up which actually had me drawing the same exact head from last time, but upside down. I gave it three shots and got extremely frustrated with the results.

After a quick break, we came back and had the set up rearranged. This time, I was looking at a head turned to three quarters view and tilted back drastically. I spent a good 30 to 45 minutes attempting to capture the cast’s likeness, but upon my third attempt, I gave up on making it look like the head in front of my and just drew the shadows but on a more ideal face.

The end result of my efforts was this:

 Now, I hear objections from others whenever I say this, but there are a multitude of things wrong with this picture. That is not to say that I hate it, in fact, I quite like it. For only spending about 30 minutes on it, it didn’t turn out too bad. Regardless, that is not what the plaster head looked like (apart from the shadows), and even so, the eye is off, the nose was haphazardly done and the lights were turned on and class dismissed before I had a chance to really rework all the issues I’m seeing with it now.

I’m still posting it, though. Not because I have nothing else to post. I mean, I still have a few days to find something better anyway. I’m posting it because it shows my own imperfections. Pride goeth before the fall and to hide your weaknesses is to deny yourself a chance to overcome them.

So, that’s it for now. I’ll be busy for a while catching up on projects, organizing the new apartment and, beginning sometime next week, training a new dog. Which reminds me, any suggestions on names for a Maltese/Shih Tzu mix with an under bite that makes him look a bit like an Ewok? His name’s currently ‘Duke,’ but that doesn’t fit. Oh, and before you flood in with a bunch of actual Ewok names, we decided Wicket is too abrasive and no other Ewok names really stood out.

Until next time!

And then The Collegiate Gods said, "There shall be NO rest!"

Man, it has been a busy week... Or has it been weeks? Projects have been keeping my hands full, but I have enjoy all aspects of my new homework.

I did, however, manage to find the time in the late hours of Saturday evening to order myself a snazzy work desk. I'm completely serious when I say this is the most handsome thing I have ever laid eyes on... After Josh, of course, but I'm still in love with this desk.

It has a glass top, so a simple lamp on the floor turns it into a light table for tracing. The table can lay flat or tilt up to a 25 degree angle, so no more hunchback drawing for me. It's got a lot of other cool features, but if you're interested in one, you can check it out at the following link:

http://www.dickblick.com/products/studio-designs-futura-craft-station/

Anyway, while I'm waiting for that to arrive, I will share a piece from a couple weeks ago. This was done at a friend's house the night that I FINALLY quit my soul sucking job. That's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I don't seem to be alone in my thoughts on the place.

I had actually intended to work on a homework assignment, but forgot some key elements needed to start it. I ended up drawing anyway.

I didn't NEED to draw the coffee table covered in various trinkets, but I really WANTED to. This is further encouragement that I am on the right path.

Oh yeah, and we begin moving this week. We are going to have a whole 650 sq ft to ourselves! It may not sound like a lot to some one else, but when you've had two people living in a tin can of a studio together for 2 years, having the living room, kitchen and bedroom actually be separate rooms sounds like a mansion!

I think that's all for now. Until next time!

The Winds of Change

Today is a good day. This is because I have finally decided to be honest with myself in what I want out of my future.

For over a year now, I have trudged through school with the intent of acquiring a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science. To be fair, it seemed like the most logical way to go. I am good at math, problem solving, have a good memory and have simply shown a knack for programming. This is all well and good, but for the last few weeks, I have been struggling with the idea of trudging through another two years of course material I do not get much enjoyment out of.

As stated, my left (logical) brain has been telling me that if I am going to put myself in debt for school, I needed to do it in a field that would pay back greater dividends. All the while my right (creative) brain has been screaming that I am going to hate it just as much as every other job I've ever had and that I am selling my soul for a paycheck.

I am always telling Josh that it is more important to be happy then it is to have money. So, I am going to take my own advice. While I do not expect it to be easy, I feel that pursuing a degree in art will be much more fulfilling for me. Exactly what type of art degree I will go for, I do not yet know, but I have made a very big step in being honest with myself.

So, this week's piece is a tribute to the struggles within between the left and right brain. Enter 'Inner Conflict':

So, which is the reality and which is the disguise? It's hard to say, really. I have been blessed, and at times cursed, with a very well developed right and left brain. But, as time passes and I work through more of my conflicts, I begin to think that the robotic logic was developed more as a survival mechanism to make it through my childhood.

I strongly encourage anyone whose creative endeavors are met with criticism to ignore any nay-Sayers in their lives. They do not have to live your life for you. You can do everything for your parents or loved ones and live a life that they feel is best for you, but if it does not truly make you happy, then it serves no one in the end.

Until next time.