Because Tom Hiddleston is Overrated on DA...

These last few weeks have been... Shall we say stressful? I may have mentioned the crazy neighbors before, but it finally came to a head last week. They were having what a massive scream-fest accented by what sounded like striking each other and throwing inanimate objects around 4:00-4:30 Thanksgiving morning. Those whole ordeal actually woke me, the sleeping dead, AND Josh who had passed out intoxicated. Needless to say, we called the cops. As usual, the neighbors didn't answer and pretended like no one was home until the cops left, I got a gnarly recording of it all from the bedroom and, after being informed of this third major incident, the landlord has issued them a notice to leave the premises or be evicted. So, that's something to look forward to. However, until they actually LEAVE the other side of the duplex, I have and will continue to feel like I am walking on pins and needles. Now that I have THAT off of my chest...

The semester is winding down and finals are hardly a week away. I don't have many exams to study for, but their are a lot of big projects due soon. I'm trying not to freak out about the final 2D assignment because I caused quite a stir with my last assignment and I'm not sure I can top it! What was the last assignment, you may ask. Well, it was a 9 frame painting of a fish demonstrating the different color schemes. However , since I am blogging from my mobile phone, you'll have to scroll down to see it.

Go ahead. I'll wait...

I think it turned out really well. The color schemes are as follows (top to bottom, left to right):
1. Achromatic - grey scale
2. Monochromatic - many shades and tints of one hue
3. Analogous - two or more colors right next to each other on the color wheel (green, yellow-green and yellow)
4. Cool colors - purples, greens and blues (like water and space)
5. Secondary colors - colors created by mixing primary colors
6. Warm colors - reds, oranges and yellows (like fire)
7. Complimentary colors - two colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel (red-violet and yellow-green)
8. Original image colors
9. Primary colors - red, yellow and blue

The whole project showed me that I'm not that bad of a painter and that I REALLY enjoy painting water.

But, you may have noticed ANOTHER image at the bottom. If you missed it, go ahead and scroll down again. I'll wait...

...

Holy S***! What is that? Is it a graphite drawing of Chris Hemsworth as Thor?! It totally is.

This was brought on by some frustration with the current Drawing project. No one has ever asked my to draw myself in the mirror. I found it quite difficult. A lot of it has to do with the subject matter. It is now apparent that drawing is not something I consider where mirrors are concerned.

So I decided to draw someone else's face to blow off some steam. Actually, I had compiled pictures of the Statue of Liberty as potential references for future projects, but that seemed less relevant to my current study needs.

I don't remember when or why Hemsworth first came to mind, but I made a definite decision around the time the third or fourth drawing of Tom Hiddleston or Tom Hiddleston as Loki hit my Deviant Art DevWatch. I'm not knocking those who like him, but he just isn't my style. Besides, I have a friend who is practically in love with Hemsworth and Thor so I'll have someone to give this to.

Which brings me to my last point. In Non-Westen Art History, we are learning about how many cultures do not see art as a product, but as a force that radiates forth from the artist. Many of these cultures have art that is destroyed or given away once completed because they knew that they can and will create more. So I picked something I knew I would be able to give away to practice this thought process.

I have a possessiveness about my work and have a hard time letting it go. Perhaps I feel that I have left a piece of me with the graphite, charcoal or acrylic paint piled onto a canvas. Perhaps I am just scared to feel rejection, or unimportant if the person should lose or mistreat it. Either way, as someone who is now studying art as a potential profession, I've decided this concept will be important for fighting potential hurtles in the future. I wont be scared of losing pieces of myself with my artwork but will be happy and excited to share and give my talent to others.

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!

So much room for activities!!

We finally have a REAL apartment! Sure, we paid rent and utilities on the studio and lived there for nearly 2 years. However, when you cram two adults into one 200 sq ft room for an extended period of time, it starts to feel more like a jail cell than a humble abode. The irony of the situation is that I end up spending a lot of time in the living room with Josh anyway. I guess the CHOICE makes all the difference.

Furnishing the joint was fun (that's sarcasm). Even though it took around 2 hours, I did enjoy putting together my new art desk (which can be viewed at the end of this blog). Unfortunately, in a rush to get a couch (because there is something fundamentally incomplete about a living room without a couch) I managed to pick the world's heaviest one. Seriously, the thing weights a MINIMUM of 250 lbs. I'm pretty sure whenever we decide to move out of here, we will be doing it without the couch that I suspect may be made of dark matter. Moving on...

I did a bad thing last week and skipped my drawing class. Actually I blew everything off that took place after I left Brick City at 4:00pm. It couldn't be helped. When a girl is in go-go-go mode for over a week straight, something has got to give eventually. I have to make up for it now, but at least a majority of the move is done with, so that won't be filling up every free moment of my schedule. Of course, we're adopting a dog from my mom, so training him will soon be taking up a decent chunk of my time.

And dear GOD what did I do before Internet?! AT&T had to set me up with new service that was SUPPOSED to start last night, was ACTUALLY connected last Saturday and DOESN'T work so we have to wait for the technician to come by tomorrow. I'm redoing all these mobile posted blogs once I have access to the full website again.

Blah, that's all boring stuff. Let's just wrap this up and get to the pictures. Today we finally got to draw something other than boxes and box-like objects. We got to draw plaster heads on sticks. Well, we weren't supposed to identify them as heads in our minds, otherwise we would not truly draw what we saw and would recall memory of what a head looks like instead (which is what I STARTED to do on the first one). Anyway, the product of about and hour and a half of work can be seen somewhere below... Darn blogger app not letting me place pictures where I want them.

Oh well, until next time!

Plaster Cast Head on a Stick

 

Snazzy Desk that can be purchased HERE!

Wait for it...

SHAZAM!!

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!

Week Two Under Way

Sooo, I should probably be doing homework, but I've only been awake for about an hour now. Week two has been off to a relatively good start. I'm still not entirely enjoying my metalworking class, but I think if I can just bring in a pair of ear plugs with me, I'll be okay. Nothing but hammers banging against steel for the first hour of class yesterday, it would be a very bad place to get a migraine.

Regardless of the alarmingly loud noises to be dealt with, the day went pretty smoothly. My Black Square project is not due until the beginning of class on Thursday, so I will be finishing that up tonight and posting it in here as soon as I can get a good picture of the finished work. Drawing is still by far my favorite class, though.

Last night we were working on the concept of mapping out a figure with lines and geometrical shapes before adding the fine and organic details. This is not a concept that I am unfamiliar with, but it was nice to get back to the roots and remind myself of the techniques that helped me to become better at drawing. So without further a due, here are the two pieces completed in class last night:

Don't worry, it's just pieces of a mannequin. The legs gave me a bit of trouble on the first one as you can see by the copious amounts of rubbed away charcoal (not included the intentional shading) and, a known problem I've had with figure drawing for years, her head was too large. I had more fun playing with geometric shapes and shadows on the second one. Of course, I bypassed drawing any toes per my own limitations at this time. No big fret, though, there are months left to hone my abilities and next semester I have Drawing II, so they'll only get better.

Well, I suppose that is all for now. I must get ready for my interview at the library center, so wish me luck! Until next time.

Fall Semester Week 1... And so it BEGINS!!

Week one of my new scholarly endeavors has already proven to be a blast. I'm taking a very interesting art history class on non-western art in Africa, Oceania and the Americas. I haven't learned a whole lot yet, but I've only had two class periods so far. After that, I have a quick trot over to Ellis Hall where I'm taking my Metalworking & Jewelry class. So far, this is proving to be one of the more tedious classes.

Don't get me wrong, I love to make jewelry (I've actually been doing it for almost a decade now) so it's very nice to learn about techniques and medium I have very little experience with. However, think about it as if you were independently wealthy and owned 4 high end sports cars. Sure, you don't really dislike any of them (otherwise you'd be an idiot for spending so much on them), but you have your favorites. Hence, one of those awesome cars is going to be at the bottom of the list.

Right now we're working on a small layered project with brass, copper and nickel. It's mainly been tedious because we have to take 10 different magazine clippings and do 4 design evolutions (each) on top of the simplified tracing of the image itself. If you add that up, it's 10 tracings and 40 drawings. I get the idea of practicing and trying a bunch of different things, but I've already picked the one I want to do, so it's been difficult making myself complete the other 20+ evolutions I have left. No biggy, I plan to make quick work of them tonight.

Once I've completed the first half of my day, I then have to trek back to the car and take a little trip downtown for my two studio classes. The third class of the day is Two Dimensional Design. To my understanding, we will only be working with abstract images (hence the word 'design' in the class name). For example: our first project is the classic 'Black Square Problem'. We were given a list of 6 adjectives and our job is to creatively use 4 black squares to convey the emotion the word evokes. I'm happy with 2 or 3 of my designs so far, but I need to pay that project some extra attention tonight and tomorrow as we are turning it in at the end of class Tuesday.

And finally, once I take a brief one hour break following 2D Design, there is what is already my favorite class. I took a drawing class or two in high school, but it has been so long that I forgot how much I enjoyed honing my talent. Drawing I one is the last class of the day for me and is by far the most enjoyable class. No homework. No Tests. No wordy BS assignments. We are just drawing from life. As my instructor put it, we are learning the art of 'seeing'.

I'll admit I got really annoyed about half way through the blind draw (where you only look at the subject and not at what you are drawing), but that's because I like feedback that comes from looking at what I have done. Not too big of a deal, though, since we only did that for 30 minutes and the class is 2.5 hours long. After that, we were pretty much given free reign to draw anything we wanted in the room. I started by drawing my shoe:

Now, for anyone who might aspire to do still life work, I highly suggest that if your subject is an article of clothing make sure that it is not currently on your body. I had my leg stretched out at this angle for at least one hour before I couldn't take it anymore. My entire ass had fallen asleep and my lower back kind of felt like it was burning.

However, even with the numb butt, I was pretty proud of the improvement you see from one drawing to the other. The shoe on the left was the first attempt. With this one I sort of haphazardly started drawing. Of course I was becoming annoyed with the inaccurate proportions I could see and it is very difficult to effectively remove charcoal from newsprint. So, I started again and did quite a bit more planning before adding detail. Gently sketching out the prominent shapes I saw first allowed for a better skeleton for which to add the shoe details on later.

That's one hour I spent on drawing my foot, but what did I do with the last hour of class? Well, the instructor had set up a still life for the blind draw that consisted of a couple plants, animal skulls and a tussled table cloth. I decided to have some fun with the table cloth:

Now, he only wanted us to do line work, but I, again, was getting bored so I disregarded such instructions and let loose with some shading. I haven't used charcoal in so long that I had forgotten how dynamic the lines and shading can be. Sure, you can't keep a charcoal pencil as needle sharp as a graphite pencil, but when use effectively, charcoal can do what graphite cannot.

To wrap this up I will go ahead and say that I can tell this is going to be an amazing semester. I know this because I have only had two days of class and I'm already chomping at the bit to get back on Tuesday. I guess that means that I might be addicted to art...

That's right, I'm addicted to art. Say what you will, but I need it and there's nothing you can do to keep us apart. Now, hand me a tourniquet so I can shoot up with creativity, 'kay?