Captain N's Blog

When at first you loose confidence, go draw in a museum

2011-12-04T09:31:00.000-08:00

The way I see it, there have been several barriers to get through, the first was getting back to drawing and getting over my crisis of confidence, then I had to understand some of the processes and principles involved ie. the basics I never knew about, followed by some pretty intensive anatomy study. Now it's the turn of having the guts to go and sketch in a public place.

A recent trip to London was an opportunity to go drawing at the British Museum and that's just what a friend and I did. I just forced myself to do it and guess what? I managed and not only that I enjoyed it, I really enjoyed it.

To me, this is important for so many reasons. One is that while drawing outside the comfort of your own home you are limited. You can't take every bit of equipment you own, you need to travel light. Sometimes by limiting things, you discover what is important. I stuck to pencil and ink, using brush pen for the core shadows, adding the white pen I found was difficult as you can't get different values out of it and you almost immediately over-do it, trying ink and wash on this particular sketch pad was tricky. Also this sketch pad is not a perfect mid tone. So in a very short space of time I had learned a lot of things that don't work and stripped everything right down to basics. In the end I found myself kind of taking notes on the drawing: where is the core shadow, the reflected light, cast shadow, lightest light and darkest dark, then I finished off the drawings later using some of the knowledge I've picked up in the past year.

The middle drawing is a bit of a failure but I've included it anyway, it's important to realise that there will be a lot of bad drawings before there are good ones but in a way that isn't the point. The point is that this particular barrier is down, you can't get better without doing these things.

Selections from a sketchbook

2011-01-22T06:37:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been doing a lot of sketchbook work. Most of the time, if I get home from work and only have 30 mins or an hour to draw I will open the anatomy sketchbook and do a bit of study on various things just to keep my brain up to date. This book stayed in a a cupboard for 8 years while I gave up drawing and it's nice to be filling it with something finally.

I'm happy to say I've found another art class (http://www.whitespace11.com/drop-in-life-drawing.php) and have been going every Thursday evening. 5 mins from work and with a bus that takes me straight home accross the road it couldn't be more ideal. It's been great to get back to it because no matter how much you study in a sketchbook at home, nothing replaces drawing from life.

Not too much to show for my efforts from that just yet but hopefully it won't be long. I've found that my ability to look and see what I'm looking at (muscles, landmarks etc) is a lot better but my ability with materials such as charcoal needs a bit of practice. I think my main issue is hesitation and lack of knowledge, confidence unfortunately plays a big part in good drawing.

The only downside would be that the class is only 2 hours but it's enough and it lets me figure out what areas I need to work on and then I can come back the next week and try again. It is fairly quiet too compared to the Sunday class; I have always been more relaxed in an empty class than a full one- being relaxed is pretty important for drawing imo.

Semi Successful Atmospheric Perspective

2011-01-02T03:49:00.000-08:00

Having heard about atmospheric perspective recently, I wanted to give it a go, so I decided to do this study based on a Rubens painting. Atmospheric perspective basically means that where one object is behind another, it will fade into the backround, almost like a mist I guess. It's similar to the principle of lost edges but not quite the same thing. The original painting doesn't have it but it was a good pose to test it out.

In fact, personal study wise, I have changed the way I do things. I warm up by doing a page in my anatomy sketch book and then I do a study based on a Masterwork. I was worried that I was concentrating too much on anatomy and in reality I think it's probably best to have several things going at once- that way I don't get too complacent in one area. That has been the hard thing this year, I have been essentially setting my own curriculum; everyone says 'Draw, draw, draw' but draw what? In what order? How do you build up your skill from nothing/ very little? So a lot of the time you have to keep yourself in check.

A few things went wrong. For one I labored over it too long but I did take breaks. Also, yet again, the importance of knowing how your materials behave raised it's ugly head. I was drawing with a Chamios leather cloth, rubbing in the gesture and then using that as a guide to do a more accurate drawing. After that, you pick out the lights with a putty rubber and then add your core shadows. But even though I used a good paper it was impossible to rub out the lights back to the white of the paper. So the drawing is mostly shadow and mid value because I couldn't get the highlight tone.

I did another small test on Bristol board and that seemed to rub out better. I considered using white gouache to paint the highlights but I wasn't sure it would look right and I decided to leave it and put it down to experience.

More Tonal Studies

2010-12-12T06:21:00.000-08:00

Some more tonal studies this week, all John Singer Sargent. Some didn't photograph so well as I took them in a bit of a rush, sorry. Some more successfull than others, in general all are still way too overdone, really they are supposed to be simple maps of the tonal values in a picture but I can't quite stop myself making them into finished little drawings.

And little they are, comming in at A6 in size. I had originally thought that this would keep me from trying to finish them too much but nope...still do. I have to stop myself being so fussy with them. Trying to add too much detail at this size with charcoal is just too difficult, the third drawing was a real problem and took way too long for what it is.

But I enjoy these, they're very good for learning, my next sketchbook might go up a size to A5 to help but I'll have to be quite diciplined that this doesn't lead to me putting in even more detail. A recent class taken by painters Linda and Barry Atherton suggested breaking the whole picture into three basic tones and that's the way I've tried to start these. I find my darkest dark and block that in fairly early; it means that if you get it wrong your drawing is hosed but I find although you're meant to build a drawing upwards in gentle steps, if you don't commit at some point you never will. I don't however block in the lightest light until the very end, in fact a lot of paintings I've looked at are quite restrained in how they use highlights.

Still here

2010-12-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update to let everyone know what I have been up to recently. Apart from digging a lot of snow I'm glad to say that I'm still drawing; I finished my first sketchbook in years last month and have started another. On a recent trip home I found a lot of old sketchbooks from art college that were unused, so I decided to put them to good use (one can be seen in the backround of the picture). I'm trying to move away from just anatomy study and get into painting more and I think some more masterworks studies in charcoal.

Life drawing in Leith kind of fell on it's butt a bit. I knew there was a period in the middle of the term that I wouldn't be able to attend due to other commitments and after that it was difficult to go back. In fairness I had already pretty much decided that class wasn't for me, the time (Saturday afternoon) wasn't good with a 6 month baby to look after and I hated the fact that they didn't have decent equipment. The atmosphere wasn't amazingly friendly when I was there, I prefer Maryhill- just a shame it happens to be in a different city :/ When I went to wasps in the evening last year I liked the time of the class but not the format, anyway that class got cancelled. The search for a figure drawing class continues.

It's also been a hell of a month for books, not only animation but I splashed out and bought a set of John Singer Sargent books. He's my favourite painter by far at the moment, I think I can learn a lot from him. They are beautiful books but it just so happens that some of my favorite things in them are little study sketches and thumnails that aren't very large in size, bit of a shame. Nothing better than putting the feet up with a cuppa and flicking through them for inspiration. There are little nuggets/ hints to his working methods which are really interesting, He seems to use a yellow ochre/raw umber mix for his ground which I like and will be trying out.

Influence Map

2010-10-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

Doing the rounds on Deviant Art at the moment is the notion of doing an influence map of the artists that inspire you. I recommend doing one, it's good fun and a nice trip down memory lane. Though, I admit looking through all my Disney reference was kind of depressing as my dream was to work for them...and I didn't get there. Write ups are comming, they take a while- keep checking back :)

1. Bruce Timm- Originator of the Warner Brothers Batman Animated style, Bruce Timm is heavilly influence by the work of Jack Kirby but is a true original. The two things I love the most about him are the fluid quality of his inking line and his marker sketches in colour. Do you know how good you have to be to colour in marker? His skills are off the chart. I hate him.

2.Glen Keane- Is a supervising animator with Walt Disney studios and when I was at college studying animation was pretty much my all time hero. I love the energy in his drawing, a lot of animation drawing can be quite tight and technical but his is the polar opposite. The Art of Disney's Tarzan is above my desk and I still read it all the time...I don't quite know what to say about him except that his talent is sickening. When I was finding animation difficult I'd look at his drawing and it would remind me to persevere.

3. Star Wars- Being born in 1978 I am a Star Wars baby. I've specifically shown Empire Strikes back as it was my favorite movie and also one of the first movies I saw in the cinema (I remember my Dad having to read the title sequence because I couldn't read). When I was younger I wanted to build space ships for movies like Star Wars when I grew up. It hasn't been bettered, all the design work in the Star Wars originals is stunning and hasn't dated in 30 years. Empire still looks more impressive than most modern sci fi movies, including the terrible prequels.

4. Disney-

5. Darwyn Cooke-

6. John Singer Sargent-

7. Andrea Del Sarto-

8. Aliens-

9. Paul Felix-

10. John Watkiss-

Don't Stand Directly In Front of the Model

2010-10-03T08:32:00.000-07:00

A slightly unsuccessful life drawing session this week, though I think mostly due to feeling ill than the usual artistic reasons. I had a problem this week in that everyone turned up early and booked their spot on the quick pose floor- so no quick poses- darn.

I decided to go for a long pose and set up pretty much directly in front of the model. I had an inkling this was a bad idea but it got worse once the model was set up and posed. At home I've been enjoying drawing twisting torsos and dynamic poses but today....completely flat pose and it kicked my butt back to 800 BC. Of course if I had the abiltity I could twist the drawing a bit to make it more interesting but I'm still focused on getting a fairly accurate drawing on the canvas so I'm not there yet. Pelvis and torso where straight as an arrow and at my particular angle quite a few of the landmarks where hidden by cloth. Eventually I will make these up out of my head when I can't see them but at the moment that really threw me.

Oh yes and I got my leg muscles mixed up, I thought I was looking at tensor when I was looking at the Satorius; that's odd I thought, how it doesn't connect to the trocanter...em that would be because it's not remotely the right bloody muscle you dimwit.

The drawing below is from the week before. It's not the best drawing in the world but it does have something that I'm trying to get into my work. In true me style it was done in the last 15 minutes of the 4 hour day after struggling quite a bit. I figured out I wasn't enjoying how pastel handled on my cartridge pad so I switched to newsprint and...there it was. I do seem to get quite badly affected by the materials I use, sometimes it just doesn't feel right and it all goes downhill. My thought process is a lot better now though, I constantly think about what I'm doing, I know what I'm looking for, I don't always get it right but it's in there and it's getting easier gradually. In the beginning I just drew without knowing what I was doing.

Life Drawing week 1

2010-09-12T07:34:00.000-07:00

So I finally got off my butt and started some untutored Life classes in Edinburgh. Not going to say too much about these except that most of them aren't very good but there are positives to be taken from the day. One is that most of these are short 5 minute drawings and I plan to continue that way for quite some time- interestingly I was pretty much the only one doing this, everyone seems to love long poses.

The idea is that this drums in a drawing process that I should be following, making sure that I'm actually thinking about what I'm doing and that I don't loose focus, which is all too easy to do. So when I started the first drawings I found that I wasn't paying attention and I defaulted back to my old habits- I stopped myself doing this and tried to address it in the next drawing. Then when I found myself making other mistakes I just stopped and thought about what it was I should be looking for- the gesture, not the details. In fact all of these drawings are taken too far towards finish, which is why they don't work, the goal is to get gesture and measurement/ proportion down, then I will progress to other stages when I'm ready.

It's amazing just how nervous you can be sitting in a room surrounded by people you don't know, I can find it quite intimidating and part of of my progress will be learning how to relax at the drawing board. My confidence is still shot but I have to say considering it was only a year ago I was scared to pick up a pencil, I have to be pretty pleased, there is a long road ahead but I could have given up drawing for good.

Lieutenant N

2010-08-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

A little delay on the art side of things due to the arrival of this little fella. Luca Nolan arrived on July 17th, weighing 7 pounds 15 ounces but is unfortunately ill and therefore gets priority I'm afraid. I have begun to pick up the pencil again after quite a stressful month of being in hospital and staring at the walls with worry.

So some sort of update is comming soon- but don't blame me, blame:

Masters Thumbnail Studies

2010-07-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

So here's the start of another sketchbook on Great Masters tonal studies. I've done a few of these thumbnails before but they weren't in a sketchbook. All of these are very small; fitting into an A6 book. They're not designed to be exact copies, rather more a method of studying how they laid out tonal values accross a picture. The small size really prevents you from doing any detail work, which is ideal.

These are in order from left to right; a Titian, a Bourguereau and (I think) a Rubens. The Titian was drawn first and is quite tight, in the other 2 I tried to loosen things up a bit. These thumbnails are great for experimenting with what materials work best together- the second drawing uses Conte for the darkest darks and the third uses compressed charcoal.

I enjoy doing these, they're quick to do and remind me what I should be looking out for on larger drawings. So if I get up in the morning and don't know where to start I will do a few of these. Considering a baby is due this week (should have been last week) I need things like this to keep me going when everything goes crazy.

Tone Studies

2010-07-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

Following my pretty unsuccessful self portrait and a class last week where the light changed regularly all afternoon I decided that it might be a good idea to study how light affects the head a bit more. Any Art tutor will probably faint/ hurl into a bucket but I decided to start a sketchbook of tonal studies from TV shows/ movies etc- cue Mad Men season 3. This isn't a replacement for life drawing, it's just one sketchbook out of the many that I'm trying to keep. Personally I feel it's a valid thing to do in order to understand light and shade. Of the 3 I like the second one (top right) the best, the third one didn't start off well and has just about turned out OK.

I now have 3 simultaneous sketchbooks: Anatomy study, light and shade/ tonal and a small sketchbook that is more for very basic tonal study and composition- I realised last week that composition is a bit of a weakness. I'll probably add another sketchbook for cafe studies and for keeping in my bag all of the time. Then I intend to start some weekly life drawing when the new term starts up in September.

Added to that I'm mulling over buying a full size easel for home- drawing at one in class is still uncomfortable and doesn't feel natural. I still need to understand how to use charcoal without getting into a mess, so there'll be a bit of exploration of that I think. Maybe some small skin tone oil studies as well. That is my sock btw, bit windy for taking photos.

Abandoned self portrait

2010-05-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, I really didn't want to post this but since I have to post the failures as well as the successes it's going up. There are 2 problems; 1- it doesn't look like me and 2- it's terrible. In actual fact this started off quite like me and fell off a cliff the more I struggled with it.

I'm told the average drawing time is about 3 hours. Well this took 6, I can't believe it took that long but it did and as I write this I am well and truely shattered and defeated. I went through to see the Glasgow Boys exhibition at the Kelvingrove yesterday and at the moment I couldn't feel more opposite to the enthusiasm I had last night after seeing it.

I know what went wrong, for the life of me I still can't control charcoal. I totally get why it is a great medium but it's erasability is it's achilles heel to me. I put construction lines down and very soon they've disappeared, it's smudgy, it's blunt (even with breaking the sticks) and willow charcoal only goes grey at it's darkest.

And by 6 hours in my eyes just don't want to see anymore and I'm done. I'd come back to it but I want to try and manage these in 1 sitting. Sometimes I wonder why I do this to myself. Must repeat and do better.

Break Through Number 2

2010-05-23T02:59:00.000-07:00

So.....for the last couple of weeks I' ve been concentrating on keeping an anatomy sketchbook. It seems pretty technical and boring but I' ve been quite enjoying it. I am aware that concentrating too much on this type of drawing is probably bad so I will move on when the time is right but my thinking is to do it just enough to have a better grasp of anatomy and to always keep the sketchbook going on the sidelines.

But the drawings below aren't the breakthrough, in fact some of them are plain wrong- that's OK right now, the main breakthrough is that I have figured out an approach to tackle figure drawing in a logical order. This had previously been a big problem; where to start? Added to this, I seem to have figured out how to draw open handed with the pencil on it's side- another breakthrough, the pencil grip in figure drawing is a big deal IMO.

Why? Well, in the weekend classes I've been to this year I've been given all sorts of great tutoring, ideas, tips and tricks, I've even bombarded the poor teacher for even more info on the train home. I did this because I'm so eager to learn something. I soaked all of these things up like a sponge and pretty soon all I had was a long list of techniques, not necessarily a logic in how to use them. I realised this in my first class when I totally froze up and couldn't draw and interestingly I've seen other people do the same; they come in with a checklist of what they've been told and end up being confused.

I think that this happens because you get shown so many new tecniques in a class, often without repetition- you try one and then quickly move onto the next one, sometimes it has been hard to see how one fits into another, sometimes it plain doesn't make sense. Added to this, different tutors have different styles of teaching and opinions on the subject and really when you are a beginner you are slightly at the mercy of the person teaching you.

But what I've realised is that in order to progress you have to lean less on waiting to be told what to do and find your own way to understanding all of this. My approach lately has been to get less upset at my lack of ability and try and analyse what it is I wasn't doing right, then try and figure it out. So number one was getting the first marks on the page, the gesture, using the pencil. I'm a big believer that when people get upset over their drawings it's not that they can't draw, it's that they don't know how to use the tools. It's a practical thing and it has taken me over a month of drawing simple geometrical shapes to learn how to use the pencil open handed- I am convinced this is a majorly important step.

Next was taking all of this information and putting it in an order I can use, so I have taken some things, discarded others for the meantime and I feel that it's starting to make sense. In one particular class the tutor was more keen for you to draw what you see. This was good in the sense that using your eyes to see is majorly important and usually taken for granted but with a room full of ambient light often these things are very subtle and they forget beginners can't see what they see. This is where having some sort of anatomy knowledge is useful- to show you what you should be looking for.

Normal Service Will Resume Shortly

2010-05-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

No updates in a couple of weeks but I have been up to quite a bit, I promise. First of all I have started an anatomy sketchbook which I can't really show on the blog because it's quite a technical type of drawing and may not be that interesting but it has taken up quite a bit of my time. I've been following the Glen Vilppu lectures that I bought last month and so far I think he's excellent and really explains things very well. I have however noticed a few things that he leaves out when I cross reference him with Bammes or Loomis so I still believe learning from a few different sources is the way to go.

Secondly I was on holiday in Skye. I don't think I've ever used the word 'wow' so much on a holiday, it's an unbelievable place and to top things off we had amazing weather. But there is a slight snag as I had intended to do some sketching up there and that would form the basis of this week's post, except.....I failed miserably. I sat on a hill in front of the Quirang mountains, dusted off the watercolor set that I've never used and then proceeded to paint worse than a 6 year old. My water fell over, my paper blew away and my leg fell asleep from having no seat to sit on. Yes, I looked pretty pathetic as I limped back to the car, dragging my leg behind me, tail between my legs. Not good.

Never mind, I can draw a stone bridge right? Er no...no I can't it seems. Pretty horrific just how far my drawing has fallen by the way side but I guess I have to be practical about it. Ok, I couldn't do it, now let's log it in the (rather large) art to do list. It does show you that if you concentrate too hard in one area you really neglect other skills you should be developing. One other big interest of mine is photography, so here are some of my photographs from Skye to browse. Self portrait next I think.

Cast Drawing

2010-04-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

Here we have a cast drawing that took roughly 4 hours to complete. It is in sanguine chalk and wax pencil and roughly 8x10". Against the big taboo this one is from a photograph but only until I can source a real cast for myself. I had one of those days (which happens a lot) where you wake up and haven't a clue where to start. During the week I purchased some Glen Vilppu drawing videos, I like him quite a lot, he draws open handed (which I still can't do) and teaches in a similar way to how I have been taught. So I didn't want to do a still life this week, I wanted to do something related to the figure.

One of my biggest problems right now is how to structure my home learning. I can't afford more than a couple of classes per term and yet I need to progress, it's very hard to know where to go. I don't think I need weekly tuition so much now as I've been given plenty of teaching to go on but I do need regular practice. Added to this pressure is the fact that my actual job can really drain my energy, I am often very tired when I get home during the week, this is before I mention there is a baby on the way in 11 weeks :) One thing I am going to do is look for some weekend figure drawing classes in my home city of Edinburgh. Hopefully that will give me a chance to experiment a bit more with what I am learning.

This drawing was useful to do. I discovered that it is best to lay down the chalk pencil first and then use the waxy version on top to give your darkest darks. These pencils are quite permanent and don't erase as easilly as willow charcoal. At my last class I had a problem where I was rubbing off the charcoal from my drawing with the palm of my hand. This caused a problem because just when I had got some of the drawing about right, I then accidentally got rid of it later on causing me too keep chasing my tail. I love the way you can constantly keep knocking back willow charcoal but I'm starting to think that sometimes something more permanent is not necesarilly a bad thing.

Studio MK 2

2010-04-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

I don't have any art this week but for good reason. I spent all of my Saturday art time putting up shelving and re-organising my home studio. Well... it's a small room really but it's my studio none the less. I used to have everything including my PC on the one desk but for 3D work that doesn't cut it and so I decided to bite the bullet and buy another desk. This means I can have everything 3D related on one desk and have another table for drawing- it works really well. I've mainly been concentrating on drawing since Christmas and this will continue but recently I've been getting the itch to do something in zbrush, just to remind myself that I can still sculpt and now that we don't use it in work I miss it a lot. I'm hoping that my recent MAS classes in anatomy will will help with my sculpting.

I have a lot of books, in fact I was a little disturbed when I saw them all in the one place like that. There's some Graphic Novels, Art of books, lots of animation books from years ago which I absolutely love and quite a bit of photography. But I love books and I look at them for inspiration all the time. The drawing board has various small still life studies on it at the moment. I find that posting up your work somewhere and being able to see your progression is really helpful. Next week's post will have some artwork I promise!

M.A.S Weekend Course

2010-04-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

This week I have a few examples of work done from the weekend classes I am attending. The Black and white charcoal drawing is most recent. It's not quite as finished as I would have liked but it does represent some progress on my part. For example I am now using willow charcoal comfortably and able to stand at an easel and draw- I used to hate easels. It was a tough one to do, a real battle back and forth but I was trying trying out various things with this and they all worked. I was seeing things happening in front of my eyes, knocking back areas, ballancing the whole picture, recognising the errors and not panicking (all too easy to do).

The paintings don't quite work but I'm not going to be too hard on myself because this was the first time that I have painted in about 15 years and also the first time I've attempted these techniques. We were drawing with large Filbert brushes and the model was moving quite a lot- I found this quite hard. About 3/4 through each of these I started to get the idea, so I'm going to try it again with the benefit of hindsight and see how it goes in round 2.

But right now I'm content, you learn to be pleased with the progressions that you have made, whatever they are and even if they are small; I don't think it's likely that you would master these techniques first time. It wasn't so long ago that I was in that first weekend class and came out with nothing. I'm starting to get it, I just need to keep going.

Small Still Lives- Part 2

2010-03-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

So... More still life value studies this week and I think a bit of a turning point. The more I do these the more I realise how useful they are. The third drawing isn't as successful as the 2nd one; I struggled to draw it that small and could probably have used going up a size, that meant I got a bit too fussy with it and lost my way about half way through.

But the second one I like quite a bit, I think it's the first drawing where what I'm trying to learn has actually started to work. I've finally dialled back that intense graphic line I seem to have and it looks much more natural to me; I am drawing more with value and tone, not line. More to the point whether I'm there or not, I seem to be following a much better process for drawing in general and I'm pretty happy with that, it means progress and this is quite a personal step forward.

The 2 drawings below have been drawn in the space of 1 week and it's amazing how many different things I have been able to try just by keeping the drawing small and the subject simple. The proof is in the pudding, these small studies are definitely working. Not only that but I feel that this will help a lot the next time I go to a class- I have a tendancy to not know what approach to use or even what pencil- these small studies help me figure out what works best.

Squeeze My Lemon

2010-03-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

Just when you think you're progressing, you try drawing a lemon and it all goes to hell. I'm still directing all my attention to studying tonal values which is why I've moved to these small charcoal studies. These drawings are about 4"x3", part of me thinks this might actually be too big as I still catch myself getting bogged down in the details; even though I know not to do this. To be fair I'm a lot better at this than I used to be , I at least have some sort of approach now and I know what I'm looking for.

The first lemon is quite honestly a complete crime against humanity, moving to the second I had started to feel that maybe my paper was too dark. I had to add chalk to lighten the ground to the correct value and I'd prefer not to do this as the more chalk you add the greater the risk of everything getting mushy. On the 3rd try I moved to white paper; much better but I think I got the local value of the lemon too dark.

Below is a step by step of how I'm handling these sketches. Step 1 is the basic line drawing and shadow block in, Step 2 develops these shadows slightly and adds the objects local colour values and Step 3 is where I introduce black pastel to really bring out the darks. My Step 2 is a bit overworked and I'm overblending the final product a bit but because I'm mostly concerned with tonal value at the moment I'm not too worried about this. I'm sticking to willow charcoal for the time being though I'm finding it wipes off too easilly, so when it comes to placing the darkest darks I use pastel or conte crayon so that it stays whilst I work on the rest of the picture. Not too pleased with these but I am happy with how I'm starting to see all the different tonal values- this is improving and I think it has clicked.

Masterworks Tone Study Thumbnails

2010-03-14T09:38:00.000-07:00

This week's update is a couple of small thumbnail studies from 2 of the Masters of painting; Rembrandt and Vermeer. These are only a few inches accross and are really designed as quick studies in how the Masters structured tone in their paintings. As I am mainly concerning myself with the study of tonal values at the moment it seemed liked a good idea (that and my teacher suggested it). I'm not sure how many of these I'll do, maybe just a couple more and then onto still lives. What's interesting is that not only do you have tone to contend with in the object you are painting but also in the picture as a whole. Both of these pictures have lost edges and sharp edges if you notice and this is something I will be using in my own paintings.

Boring Old Spheres?

2010-03-06T06:19:00.000-08:00

Well no, what you are looking at here is the palette system for skin tones (previous post) put into pratice. You can attempt to paint a portrait without any kind of system but it helps a lot to pre mix the palette like this because it tells you exactly what value should be placed on any given plane of the head.

I felt that I had painted the first sphere too yellow with too high a saturation/ chroma. So I decided to go and look at some paintings both in a gallery and online. Now I'm not saying online portraits have accurate colours, they don't but as an exercise I felt it was quite useful- just to get an idea. I picked portraits from a few different artists and analysed the colours and values. I am sure some of the values on these are wrong but it did show me that I was closer than I thought, especially on the Sargent painting.

Sphere 3 is meant to to be closer to the De Laszlo portrait colours. I did this one slightly differently by painting an underlayer in white first. I wasn't really trying to do a Grisaille, I had found with the first sphere it was difficult to paint the lighter value colors without the dark canvas showing through.

Half way through painting I struggled to get close to his choice of colours which tells me that he might be using a different red and maybe yellow- I couldn't get the bright orange you can see just before the face goes into shadow. There's a lost edge on this sphere too as it goes into shadow, which I think really helps it look three dimensional. Next up is some rough small portrait copies I think.

Colour Palette

2010-03-06T04:54:00.000-08:00

Not a great picture I'm afraid but shown below is the current colour palette that I am using to paint with. It is split up into 9 rows of 3; earth colours, reds and greys. My palette here is slightly incorrect because the earth colours should be at the top, one or two of my values jump a bit too far as well but essentially, this is what it looks like.

I changed this slightly from the version that I was taught by mixing Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine for the grey strain, this gives a blue/gray rather than the more neutral grey you get from mixing Ivory black and Raw Umber.

Where did it go Wrong?

2010-02-26T03:34:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been putting some thought into why things went so wrong to result in me effectively giving up drawing and painting completely. When I was small I was always the artistic one in the class, I used to sit on my Nana’s ice cream fridge in her Belfast shop and draw- she would give me brand new pencils, pentel pens, special green paper pads and comics and I loved it, life didn’t get better than that. This artistic interest lasted through Grammar school and then started to ironically go downhill at art college.

I chose to study animation and it is probably here where I got it wrong, for a number of reasons. Number one to my mind is that there was very little tutoring and it was badly directed. The crucial thing that they did not develop was our drawing skills, understanding of painting and colour, form, lighting and to this day, 9 years later, you can still tell that no one has been taught how to draw. Trying to animate without being able to draw is impossible. We did draw of course, we had reviews but no one actually taught us any drawing technique, it was all mostly about self discovery. Whilst we spent no money on proper teaching and support, we did seem to be able to buy lots of Apple imacs to impress visitors as they walked around the studio.

I found Art College pretty traumatic, when it ended I wasn’t sure what I had achieved and I felt that I hadn’t managed to live up to my potential. I didn’t get a graduation photo, my parents didn’t understand this but it was because I didn’t think there was much reason to be celebrating. I kicked myself for many years about this, blaming my lack of ability and it was only recently that I discovered lack of teaching traditional skills is very common in art colleges.

When I started working in Video Games I put all my energy into genuinely trying to be good at my job, in the beginning it was exciting to be working, earning a living and at that point there was a lot of optimism. What I didn’t do was keep in touch with the traditional skills I wanted to have. This has changed recently as games are becoming increasingly technical they have drove me seek out those traditional skills again and I actually think there is some advantage to facing that wall as I have a lot more focus than I did when I went to college

Astrofunk Issue 2

2010-02-25T11:58:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine , the very talented Ross Burt, asked a few of us to contribute a page for his up-comming comic Astrofunk. Seen below are the pencils and inks from my offering.

Things like this are good to do because it pushes you into areas of discomfort. In my case I'd literally never attempted a composition like this and really my drawing is not quite up to speed just yet. My inks should be a lot better but I was literally doing this piece by the seat of my pants. That and I was figuring it all out as I went along and I only had time to go with the first draft. I put his ear in the wrong place too if you look closely, schoolboy error.

Sketchclub- Knight

2008-09-08T02:29:00.001-07:00

Alright, so....

Cheating slightly with the theme this week but who doesn't love a bit of Gladiator? I even made the costume once for halloween, it took weeks of bending cardboard into plated armor and in the end I was beaten by a guy dressed as the tin man who just covered himself in tin foil- but hey, I'm not bitter...

Here is this week's sketch club entry (see link on bottom right of blog). First off I was trying various things with this drawing, I'm not particularly good at doing tight comic style line so I was using conte crayon and a smudging stick on this. I don't even know what I'm doing half the time so it's all about experimenting and having fun at the moment. I might do a second draft of it, strengthen various things, the form isn't so good, or the lighting and the pose could have a bit more life to it. But there you go, comments welcome as always and don't forget to check out the Uncanny Sketchmen blog for all the good stuff that's missing from your life.

Life Drawing part 2

2008-08-31T08:27:00.001-07:00

A bit more life drawing here. The first are all 1 minute studies and the second is about 1 1/2- 2 hours spread over 2 weeks. I didn't quite nail that one, I find it difficult to do delicate shading with pastel but all in all one of the better life drawings I've done.I leant too heavilly with the white so it over dominates the shadow tones which are left as the natural colour of the paper. So close yet so far! Sketch club drawing comming next.

Life Drawing

2008-08-17T10:53:00.001-07:00

And here for my sins is some recent life drawing.

Life Drawing

2008-04-24T11:47:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I attended Glasgow school of Art for a 2 day life drawing and anatomy class. So fantastic to get back to drawing and to have a teacher that actually well...teaches. We didn't tend to get this at Art College, the odd thing here and there but not much feedback. I've always wanted to improve my drawing and learn more about it, so I took the opportunity to bombard the tutor with questions and I learned an awful lot.

Here, I think my anatomy is relatively ok but my shading is all over the place- me and my dark charcoal but hey...that's me :)

I'm going to do more- this has got me buzzing again

Russian Iron Man

2008-02-24T09:37:00.000-08:00

Oh and scraping the barrel but here's the model from earlier updates out of the bind position

Oh and.....

2008-02-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

I found this lying about from ages ago....

Not finished but...

2007-12-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

Not quite finished this just yet. I really like Kirby's original Grey Iron Man design so this is influenced by that- it's a character for a game idea that I have- hopefully I'll do a series based on the same theme. I have to play around with posing him and I have to add a bump to the armor, it looks too smooth but you get the idea- hopefully get round to it soon. I really haven't rendered this properly either, just a quick thing.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away....

2007-12-08T08:59:00.000-08:00

Well where do you start with a blog? I have no idea but a recent ZBrush sculpt seems as good a place as any? Technically, this is exactly what I said I wouldn't do- the idea was to concentrate on drawing in my spare time but I enjoy sculpting in ZBrush. This took about 4 days of solid, eye-blurring work but I learned a lot.

The hardest part was getting the weight and proportion right. I kept it simple, no un-necessary detail and this is how I'll probably continue- at least for a while anyway. I might texture it in future but at the moment I'm just enjoying sculpting little maquettes and leaving it at that.

There's something else in the works- it just needs some TLC- so keep posted :)