Charcoal Still Life

So here's a still life from last quarter. I used one directional hatching to add value this time, which I haven't tried before, and I really like it. Here's the finished piece:

Here's the process I went through to get there. I forgot to take a picture of the line drawing, but the first image is the value block in stage. The second image is after adding a bit of value using one directional hatching.

Sketchbook Drawings

Last quarter I had to keep a sketchbook for my drawing class where I did two drawings a week. Every week we had to use a different technique and/or medium, because it was all about experimentation. I certainly experimented, and it didn't always lead to the best results, but it was a lot of fun anyway. I don't even like most of my drawings but I'm going to post them all anyways. Bad drawings are just part of the journey, and I did learn a lot from each one.

Here are the first two:

In these two drawings, the requirement was to use a toned background and to create a focal point. The first one is ok, but I really don't like the second one. I tried using colored pencils for a realistic drawing, which I had never done before, and it didn't really work out.

Modeling In Maya!

Hello everybody! I'm back with some new stuff! It's the third week of a new quarter here at SCAD and I just finished my first ever project in Autodesk Maya! I'm pretty happy with the way it came out, especially since it was my first time using any 3D modeling program. The assignment was to create a room, and it could literally be whatever kind of room we wanted. I chose to make a futuristic train station/subway:

Maya is quite a complex program, so this was a pretty tough project. I had to spend a lot of time watching online tutorials. It was a lot to figure out in two weeks, but the result was very rewarding. I especially like the lighting I was able to achieve in this scene, which took a lot of experimentation to finally figure out. I thought the lightning was a cool, futuristic effect too :)

Color Studies

So I'm going a bit out of order here, but I really wanted to get this project up because it's my first attempt at something related to concept art! For color theory we had to create three images that were related, but each image had to have a distinctly different color scheme. I decided to do digital landscape paintings, which was awesome because I could finally practice my photoshop painting skills while working on a school project, rather than trying to do my own digital painting in my very limited free time.

So the first thing I did was draw out a whole page of thumbnails of various ideas:

Then I picked three and went straight into the digital painting. I tried out a different technique during this project too. Rather than doing straight up digital painting, I used the lasso tool to make all the shapes I wanted and then painted within the selection. I was going for more of a graphic look, rather than a highly rendered digital painting, which quite honestly, I just didn't have time for.

There were a few requirements we had to follow for this project. In this first image, I could only use saturated hues and tints.

In this image, I could only use de-saturated hues and shades.

In this last image, I used a color scheme from one of Albert Bierstadt's landscape paintings.

As much as I liked working on this project, I still think each image needs a lot of work. I would have loved to have a lot more time for this project, but I was only able to work on each of these images for about 2 hours. We had less than a week to do this project from start to finish, and there were also some other aspect to the project too that had to be completed. That's why I'm simply calling these color studies rather than digital paintings. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this post!

Toy Animal Study Finished Project

Hello everyone! Before I get down to business, I'd like to celebrate the fact that this is my 50th post! If you've been keeping up with my blog for a while, thank you for the support! If you're new, thanks for taking a look and I hope you'll stick with me as I record my artistic journey!

So, now to the art. I've been working on this piece for the past few weeks and I think it turned out really well!

Here's the first stage of the final piece, where I sketched out the toy animal and broke it down into it's basic shapes. Most of the time I spent on this drawing was during this phase, because it's more important to get the correct proportions and alignment than anything else. Once that is all set, adding value is easy.

Once the proportions are correct and the planes are all mapped out, adding value is very simple. A key part of this project was using value to create an area of emphasis, so I built up a lot of value in the head of the bottom figure and left the other two figures less developed. I also shaded in the background in select areas so that it was very clear where the area of emphasis was. Overall, I feel that I accomplished what I was going for with this piece. (Sorry that this image is so much more red than the last one. The pictures were taken at two different times with different lighting, and my camera kept trying to correct the photo since it was so dominantly warm)

The Development Process for my Next Project

Hey I'm back! It's been quite a long time, but I've started school again and finally have some new artwork to show! These first few drawings show the process I am taking to develop my first project for my Drawing II class. I have to draw the same toy animal three different ways to create a good composition. My teacher is basically having us create our own studies in the same style as studies done by the masters like Da Vinci and Michaelangelo.

The first step is thumbnails, which help to quickly establish a good composition:

Next is a practice drawing of our toy. The goal was to focus on getting the right proportions and angles, and making sure everything on the animal lined up right:

After that we had to pick our best thumbnail and do several comps. This step is to establish where the focal point will be in the final drawing and how it is going to be emphasized:

That's most of the work I had to do before even getting to the final drawing. A new post about that will be up by mid-week the latest, so make sure to keep checking back!

Final Drawing Projects

So it's been about a month since I came home from SCAD for winter break, but I've still got some stuff from school to put up here. Finals week was crazy and stressful, but I somehow managed to get all my work done on time and still do very well. That's probably only because I got four hours of sleep or less for 5 nights in a row, but I got through it and I have to say that I loved every second of my first quarter at SCAD. I'm actually surprised at how badly I want to go back, despite how much I love being home and seeing family. I'm certainly not rushing things though, because I'll be back there soon enough. 

Anyways, here are the pictures of my final projects for my drawing class. I'm pretty happy with the way the perspective drawing came out, although if I had more time I would have liked to put in more detail:

For my other final project, I had to pretend that I was a toy, and then draw a scene from the toy's perspective. It took me a long time to come up with a good idea for this project, and I think it came out alright, but there were still lots of things I wasn't happy with. I definitely felt like I could have spent a lot more time on this one, but that wasn't really an option with all of the other finals work I had to do. I really enjoyed doing this project though, because my teacher let us choose whatever medium we wanted. I picked black and white charcoal on toned paper.