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!

Oh, hello creativity, how have you been? I've missed you!

Today, I begin a blog to help reintegrate my brain back into the things I enjoyed previously in life; more specifically, drawing. I’ve been doing it my entire life and, according to others, I show a sort a knack for it. Of course, as we get older and find that life is filled with medial tasks and irritating obligations, we lose track of the things we once loved.

The idea of how this blog will help me is that it will begin to reintegrate art back into my life slowly and steadily. This is so I can train my scattered right brain to create and handle manageable projects without biting off more than I can chew. I got this wonderful idea from my friend TellCosy who recently began her 1,001 Things I Can’t Do Blog blog to begin writing more frequently.

The problem lies in that most art tasks I sporadically start become much larger projects at a rapid pace. When this happens, I get overwhelmed, or have to put the project down to take care of my every day responsibilities. And when this happens, the project inevitably sits at the bottom of an artistic ‘to do’ stack for months to years, or the idea is lost completely.

This blog aims to resolve this issue by setting a goal and a limit on weekly projects, or doodles. Over time, the minimums and maximums will be increased as much training regimens do. I will draw in some medium, whether it is traditional or digital, and post it on this blog weekly.

For these first few weeks, I will be setting a goal of one hour spent to complete the project and a two hour limit. Obviously these projects will be small, but they will not be so small that they will be neglected, or ‘half assed.’

So, without further a due, here is week one’s doodle.

Lucky Invader

I’ve been obsessively watching Invader Zim on Netflix lately. Also, I have an English Assignment I am working on that is a ‘How to Draw’ book for kids showing them how to draw the characters from this show. After constantly studying, drawing and redrawing these characters, the cartooning patterns are starting to become second nature.

As this is my first entry, I felt it fitting to do a self portrait in some fashion; I call it “Lucky, Invader Style.” Yes, I realize this is not too creative, but titling is another thing I need to work on.

Until next week!