homework

Balsa Wood Man

Posted on August 29, 2012

Balsa Wood Man, Balsa Wood Man, doing the things that balsa wood can…

A little figure made from balsa wood. We were asked to make a small human model demonstrating our understanding of how a figure would appear based on eight-head high proportions. (Most people are actually less than eight heads tall but this was for convenience.)

To understand what I mean when I say “eight-heads tall”, observe how the height of the figure divides into eight equal portions, each the size of the figure’s head. Along those portions are particular landmarks, eg. the start of the torso.

Some of my classmates used modelling clays and one even made hers out of a bread and PVA mix.

Mine has rotating limbs!

Creation

Posted on August 25, 2012 1 Comment

This piece was the major homework assignment from my life-drawing classes last year.

: The piece started in class with a drawing done from observation…

: We were invited to introduce a sense of context to the scene, drawing from the surroundings of model. However we were also encouraged to make the image as busy as possible, so many of the objects and surroundings here aren’t actually drawn the way they were found in the classroom. The pot plants, for example, came from the other side of the room.

: The model took up another pose and we were asked to redraw her in the image. She didn’t have to fit in the perspective or context of the scene. Some of my classmates drew the new pose over the old one. We had opportunities to add a third pose as well however I felt my image was sufficiently busy at this point.

: The image was divided into nine sections and we were given a few minutes to work up each section individually. It was interesting to see the works evolve by bringing each section to different levels of polish.

: For homework, we were asked to cut up our image and then enlarge each piece. The desired effect was to introduce some slippage and distortion.

: The new pieces would then form the basis of our work. We laid out the pieces in ways that would allow for interconnecting lines or concepts to be drawn across the image.

: It took me a few tries to settle on something I felt comfortable with…

: Eventually I felt that trying to fit all nine pieces in wasn’t serving me well so I took a few out. Here are my first attempts to link the pieces together and pull together a concept. The drawing process is pretty stream-of-conscious from here…

: Feeling the image was top heavy, I turned it upside down and continued…

: Here I introduce a bit of depth with black gauche. The image was pretty chaotic at this point as I hadn’t got in my head what I was doing yet. By blacking out a busy section I was able to get some of the clutter out of the way and concentrate on building up shapes and form.

: The white paint steps in here!

: This step feels much more cohesive than the previous ones. I’ve worked up a good range of tones and it feels like this has some real depth and flow to it. A a little yin-yang symbol appears. It’s a little scribble that I make while I try to remind myself to stay on task. I don’t really have a theme for the image yet, so it’s an attempt to find a conceptual direction… balance again?

: The yin-yang felt poorly placed, compositionally. With reminders that this was a life-drawing class and some encouragement to “find” people and body parts in our image the yin-yang evolves into a little person. With a focal point now found I have no idea what to do with the rest of the image. I’m feeling a little lost, but I soon work out what to do…

: I find a second person in the lower sections of the image! (You may need to view the large version to see my initial face scribbles)

: Now my picture has some direction! It feels like this is turning into a story about creation – of art and of ideas. The squared shapes and edges will become picture frames and the swirling masses will become hair for my creation goddess. There’s the totally unintentional treble clef in there too.

: I try to find some way to link my upper figure to my lower one, both visually and narratively. For this image we were allowed to use white and black gauche and a single pastel colour. It feels as though the ‘magic’ here is flowing like water, so I choose blue.

: Some better lighting here. It’s funny how much the colours change under different lightings!

: Here I’m working to integrate the white from the paper sheets with the rest of the image. In some spots I blend white in the surrounding areas to integrate things and in others I just try to match things tonally.

: More blacks!

: I use photo reference to fix up the hands.

: The completed piece! I had been unhappy with the straight-down blue line in the image which ran counter to all of the nice flowing lines so I played with the shapes a bit. I could have polished this a bit more but I was feeling a bit nervous about how I’d tackle some areas and felt they’d probably be left ambiguous instead of introducing details that might ultimately just confuse the whole thing. Part of what I like is just the simplicity in some of the bold blocks of black.

Breathing space

Posted on August 22, 2012 Leave a Comment

A homework piece from life-drawing. We were asked to consider composition and the impact this has on the way an image is interpreted.

Theme and Variations

Posted on August 15, 2012 Leave a Comment

As a homework exercise for life drawing last year we were tasked with drawing a particular image in as many media and styles as we could (aiming for about 20 total). Here’s what I came up with…

Top left: Lead pencil.
Top Right: Felt-tip pen outlines.
Bottom Left: Brush pen.
Bottom Right: Highlighters.

Top left: Grey markers.
Top Right: Fine-liner pen, taking inspiration from Freud.
Bottom Left: Biro, trying to define the image using a continuous line across the contours of the face.
Bottom Right: An attempt to draw a net across the contours of the face.

Top left: Warm and cool planes of the face.
Top Right: Extended lines – every line enters and exits the image at the edges and the line width is modified where needed.
Bottom Left: Newspaper collage.
You can also see the grid I was using to reproduce the image in the blank bottom right area.

Left: ContÃ© and charcoal.
Right: Pastel, using only horizontal strokes.

Top left: Watercolour.
Top Right: Charcoal and white gauche.
Bottom Left: Wet-in-wet ink.
Bottom Right: Charcoal – the entire area was covered in black and then erased back to produce the image.

Some experiments with using a black background.
Top left: White contÃ©.
Top Right: White acrylic, using only horizontal strokes.
Bottom Left: White acrylic, I tried to paint out ‘pixels’ of colour however the black base I used kept bleeding into the paint I was laying down.

Black ink over wax scribblings.

Completed Kai

Posted on August 8, 2012 Leave a Comment

Continuing the trend of art-from-ACSA-homework that I started with last Wednesday’s post, here’s the finished Freud work. (last seen here.) Well, maybe not quite finished, but it’s what I handed up.

Doubt – Concepts and Experiments

Posted on August 4, 2012 Leave a Comment

Saturday is concepts/walkthroughs day!

Here are the sketches and scribbles that went on to become the painting I posted on Wednesday.

The original concept was all about the raaaage in the foreground character and didn’t focus so much on the background pair.

A first play with the ink.

Building on the composition and the characters.

Final thumbnail.

Some different style experiments.

Kai Progress

Posted on August 24, 2011 1 Comment

Progress on the Lucian Freud reproduction, first posted about here.

Apart from just doing more shading, I’ve moved his eyes down a bit.

Contours

Posted on August 4, 2011 2 Comments

Alright, so time for an explanation.

In late July I was challenged to a blog-war. Blog-off. Blogfest. Blagofest even. The challenge was for each blogger to set a posting rate for themselves and to commit to it for the month of Blaugust. Uh, August.

Most of you probably know this already because you likely follow my comrades and rivals. You can find these fiends at the following places:

Leaflocker, home of the curious Thom, instigator of this blog challenge. Head here for all your miscellanea needs.
Telling Stories, John’s writing blog.
Jp’s Lab, James P’s blog that we’re all surprised is updating at all, considering he was somewhat reluctantly roped into the challenge. Primarily a coding hub.
M Dev Blog, The volatile blog of James F. We all wait with baited breath to see if this fascinating swirl of words and ideas will remain standing until the end of the month.

My commitment is to provide three posts per week of hopefully art things. Readers may even be graced with bonus updates from a guest poster. ie, someone that I couldn’t convince to start a blog, but did feel that a once-weekly commitment to do stuff sounded like a good challenge. While we’re on the topic, if you’d like to start a blog or website and lack hosting space, a) that’s a pretty lame excuse and b) I’d be happy to take on more people under the ‘chenonetta’ umbrella, provided you don’t find the domain name too silly. Let me know and we’ll discuss your needs.

Right, “Where’s the art,” you say? Here it is!

Homework for my life drawing class. We were to take a piece of cloth, like a dishcloth or something and twist it up. The aim is to portray the surfaces of the object using contour lines. Think of topographical lines or a wire frame model. I found it helpful to imagine a grid design printed on the dishcloth that I had to draw.

My first attempts are hurried and shaky. I can kinda follow the idea in the trailing ends of the cloth but lose the rhythm along the twists of cloth where I’m unsure about whether to be following the folds and curls or to try to simplify the mass into a simple sausage shape.

My last few are a bit better, probably also because I slowed down and thought about the problem a bit more. I’m quite pleased with the progress shown between the first attempts and the last ones.

Until I blog again,
Ale

Oddities.

Posted on November 8, 2010 1 Comment

Last week’s homework was to create two images that were hybrids of two objects that were randomly assigned to us. Each image needed to have one of the objects stand out as more dominant than the other.

Here are my attempts. Can you tell what the objects are, and which is supposed to be the dominant one in each image?

Does this one give things away too much?

Light and shade

Posted on April 5, 2010 1 Comment

Some things I’ve learned about depicting objects using tone:

Work from light to dark, covering the whole image with each layer of tone.
Use circular movements to apply pencil strokes, so that the direction of the strokes don’t interfere with the shading.
The human brain is capable of filling in lots of information. There’s no need to use a line to define an edge when the viewer can imagine it.
Squint! Let the shapes blur into each other and then work out what the main tones throughout the piece are.

Here are my last three homework pieces, all focused on practising the correct application of tone:

A polystyrene ball and toilet paper roll. Glamorous stuff.

Quite a light application overall, but the shapes are still readable (though my camera might try to convince you otherwise). It was a bit light in the room when I did this one, but it might have been that I was using an HB pencil that resulted in the lightness.

Katamari, soap and mini-dish

Well, my prototype Katamari was an excellent matte white object to draw. Part of me wishes that I composed this differently, with all the objects stuck to the Katamari, but I think this turned out really well. The Katamari was described as a “mutant tennis ball” during last week’s homework review, and other than the soap appearing to tilt upwards a bit (I wasn’t able to erase the pesky lines in the back corner), I got a good response for this one.

Powerboards in charcoal

I like the composition in this one. It has a little more narrative than random objects put together. The plug caused me lots of troubles and the sockets were no walk in the park either! After taking this photo I tweaked the far left shadow and the shape of the top power block. Taking a step back from things really helps to point out errors and inconsistencies. I’m eagerly waiting to hear my art teacher’s critique tonight!