Oh, baby! A blog entry before the middle of the semester? Unheard of!
Up above there, you can see Koby, a little 12"x12" oil painting I did for some family friends. He's the first oil portrait I've done in about... 6 years. My technique was rusty, but my heart was in the right place. I meant to scan it before I gave it away, but I didn't, so one poor photo will have to do. As much as I fell back on some of my old habits (like never putting more than a millimeter of paint on the canvas if I can help it) I did try some new things as far as coloring and composition. The folks I gave it to were very happy with it at least, and I very much enjoyed doing it. I did put my palette away again last night, but I almost left it out. I will be doing more oil painting soon.
Speaking of color and composition, that's the focus of one of my classes this semester, Color & Design. I was lucky enough to get my instructor from Analysis of Form last Fall, so I'm super happy about that and so far the class has gone well. It's a very different, very interesting class. I took about a year of graphic design classes before starting Illustration at AAU, so I felt I was at least aware of the elements of design. I never got such practice with them, though, or such hands-on, crafty assignments. Everything gets painted or rendered by hand, with a lot of mixing and judging value. Our second assignment consisted of creating an interesting design and then coloring it in with 9 different shades of black pencil. Extremely tedious. Then we cut out these things and past them on pages to make a neat little Color & Design book.
It's been a lot of work, especially with the tedious crafting of everything, but at the same time a very good class. I've always felt very weak in my compositional skills so I hope this helps. I'll just have to start trying to *make* compositions instead of just drawing a subject, and see.
The second class is Intermediate Figure Drawing. Coming out of the direct-drawing Clothed Figure Drawing class from this summer, slowing down and starting over with gestures almost seems too easy. In the first week we did 30 various 2-3 minute gestures. Though there's always room for more progress and refinement, I'm beginning to feel like I've got the basics down.
I want to make my gestures *prettier* and more artistic, as far as line weight and such goes. Once the proportions are there and the movement and pose, that's really what makes a gesture stand out. After the 30 we did for assignments, the instructor said, "Now do 50 more for fun!" I need to start taking a half hour out of every day and just banging them out, as many as I can in that time, and get a real method and technique down.
Drawing genuine people is probably more important to me than anything else. People tell stories just by *being*. To be able to portray a character visually opens up so many opportunities for illustration, even if there is nothing else going on in the picture. And if there is more going on, more composition, more environment, props, storytelling, etc. the genuine, real person just tells the story better.
So I strive for that with every figure drawing I do. This guy below came out as one of the best I've done in a long time. I'm not particularly fond of the model, but we had to use him, so I did the best with what I had. It's one of the first figure drawings where using lines of rhythm really came through to me. I had these great big bows drawn on the paper before I ever started his body and limbs, and they somehow helped guide the pose. I've been taught about rhythm several times, but this was the first time it fell into place. Hopefully composition will click the same way sometime soon!
In the meantime, I have a World of Warcraft project from last summer that I'm intent on finishing soon, among other things, and then I'm going to hunker down and start doing character sketches for serious. I have not given up on my list of things from the summer! In fact, before I put the palette and oil easel away, I was thinking of doing a cat face next, and all that blue in Koby's painting reminded me I want to do that Yelena Isinbayeva piece. I have not given up on them!!
Scheduling my time remains as difficult as always. I am taking Sundays OFF work and schoolwork. Hence the blog post. I might even keep up with them!
