The world spins madly on...

Playing a bit with animation.
I've been watching Ryan Woodward's 'Thought of You' multiple times. Still one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Portraits and maps

Today I decided I'd take inspiration from Illustration graduate Ed Fairburn, and produce portraits using maps. Well, one portrait - a self-portrait.

I used a map of my local (home) area, and used a black ink pen to first line the face and features, before hatching certain areas, the shape influenced by the contours, roads and markings on the map. I enjoyed producing this because the map was influencing how I drew the picture as well as myself.

Oops

Bit of a bad day today.

Felt a bit homesick and generally a little low, so there wasn't really much productivity at all.

However... in the evening I returned to the drawing I started yesterday and have now finished it! I was nervous quite a lot of the way whilst doing it, mainly because when I'd done half the face in colour pencils, the blotchy colours of pink, purple and blue made him look like Harvey Dent from Batman when he'd had half his face burnt off...




Here's a pic of it in progress! Working on A3 with a laptop on the desk is a little tricky space-wise.. but I go with it.

I (unintentionally) used a rather limited colour palette for this one. A purple, a couple of pinks, couple of blues.. er, oh and a light lemon coloured one too.

I really really really don't want to admit I used a small amount of black for the darkest areas...

Before bed

Rachael spent the evening drawing her favourite person to draw because she felt she hasn't done so in a while.

Apologies for the terrible quality (of the drawing, I mean, not the photograph). This is the sketch and watercolour part... I'm hoping that when I focus with the colour pencils and add all of the details, it should begin to look slightly more like who it should...

(Did that last sentence even make sense??)

'Me without giblets' accessorised!

Today I have finally finished off my skeleton!

Thanks to some (incredibly magical) wundaweb hemming tape, I was able to loop the brown fabric into a cylindrical shape before flattening it and hemming the ends. I then cut it in half and shaped and applied each piece in a way so that together they somewhat resembled a scarf. With the hat I made sure that the sewn hems were tucked beneath so they cannot be seen!

I used a glue gun to attach the fabric to the wood and burnt my fingers multiple times. But at last he is finished! (Now for a place to put him... Hmmm...)



In other news, we had our first 2013 life drawing session today!

It was terrible. I blame the fact it's the first time I've been in there without a watch.

This is actually the second drawing I did, which took 30 minutes. Not that I would know. I didn't have a watch.

<-- Look how terrible that is! It's completely out of proportion; I don't even know how I managed that! She's like an Alice in Wonderland character, getting smaller the further down her body.

I enjoyed taking photos of it afterwards though. I figured that if I shot from a low angle, the perspective would fix the proportions. So... ta da!

I then thought it'd be fun to try it the other way round and see how out-of-proportion I could get the drawing to be...

And finally on the left is the first drawing I did for 20 minutes. Better than the other one for sure, mainly because it was pretty small in size. Guess I need to brush up on my life drawing skills!

Boiled bones

As it's Sunday today, roast was on the menu. We had it at lunch so that Joey and I could use the rest of the chicken for ourselves - Joey to make chicken soup with the leftovers, and me to just use the bones.

The bones were boiled, then scraped of skin, then boiled and scraped again before being left to dry.

Then I spent a while photographing them arranged to form letters of the alphabet. After a long time of monotonous editing on photoshop, I now have a finished bone typography set!

Have I been productive enough today yet?

Drawn to life

I've spent the afternoon messing around with a bit of digital sketching.

I've taken inspiration from an illustration/graphic design student whose works are amazing (see here), and thought I'd have a go at merging photography with drawing.

I required the assistance of Joey to model for me as well as take photos for myself, and then it was off to photoshop for some good ol' drawing and editing!

Must say I quite enjoyed doing this.

Myself and Tea

In order to get over the troubles of last night with a little more productivity, I started off this morning with a few quick pen sketches of myself in the mirror.

Since I'm now focusing on personal lives, I'm beginning with myself - possibly how I see myself (in appearance and deeper) as well as interests.

Hence why I then went onto tea!

I love my tea, so I thought experimenting with the gradients of colour due to strength would be fun. I also varied the cup size so there was an order in that too. (This was a little harder than I'd expected, but quite enjoyable. Now, what to do with all this tea?)

Nobody said it was easy...

My deepest sincerest respect goes out to those studying fashion and textiles... I spent the majority of last night attempting to make the hat and scarf for my pyrography-skeleton-dude and it was the most STRESSFUL time I've had in a while.

Seriously, I'm not even going to go into what I did last night, it gets me stressing just thinking about it.

Let's just say I thought it'd be much easier than it really is.

Dragon in the Post

My gift for the student in Canada is now finished!

I sketched out the whole dragon a few days ago, then inked it with the 0.3 and 0.05 waterproof pens (love love love). And then this morning I painted it with watercolour!







I loved playing with the colours here, and I hope she likes it since they're her favourite! I briefly looked up pictures of peacocks to look at their overall covering. Since their bodies tend to be the deep blue/purple and their tails the light green with markings, I thought I'd switch it round on my drawing. Since the dragon's scaly skin could somewhat resemble feathers, I thought the lighter colouring would be better suited, and the darker colours for the sharp wings.

Just a few highlights with the gold pen and then my gift was ready to send off to Canada! It's currently in it's envelope with a note to the recipient - I'll make sure to post it later today.

Oh my lordings

Whoa, a tad freaked out at the mo - only because of an amazing coincidence!

I was browsing art pages on tumblr and came across a nice one, 'Ernest the Gentleman Owl' posted by eatsleepdraw, who take people's submissions. It said it was part of a series so I thought I'd check out the others and it turns out that the person whose work it is ONLY GOES TO DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY IN LEICESTER, UK. She's studying Graphic Design and Illustration, and my mind's a little blown considering tumblr is used all over the world, and eatsleepdraw is a well-known site.

Spooky.

I've sent her a message now, how could I not? I hope she doesn't think I'm weird for doing so...

'Me without giblets' framed!

In the afternoon I popped back to the workshop to see Technoman! 

The skeleton was now glued tight to the base board, so with Technoman's help wood for the frame were cut and stuck down in place. G clamps had to be used since there was a slight curve in the longer sides, and they had to be securely held in place to dry correctly.








An hour later I headed back and Technoman was just sawing the edges of the frame so that they were completely even. Since some of the G clamps had left circular dents in the wood, I had to use a hand-held sanding machine to go over the frame over and over, trying to make it smooth again. The edges were then sanded also, and I gave a slight angle/curve to the frame so that it was smooth instead of a harsh sharp edge.

After that, all that was needed was a quick go-over with 'Noo Noo' (the hoover) to clear the dust, and then a little extra care with sand paper to make sure everything is completely smooth.

Of course the piece isn't actually finished yet. But today I managed to purchase some material to use so very soon I'll be experimenting with the best way to combine that with the wood... Exciting!

Personal lives

So today in the studio I got working in a new sketchbook, starting to look at a new aspect of the theme 'life' - personal lives.

This can include my own personal life and daily occurrences of it, as well as other people's too, considering their interests and daily activities. I may also delve a little into portrait work (if possible - I'm guessing self-portraits are the easiest to do, reference wise).

To start of my sketchbook I did an ink drawing of a lovely hand mirror I own, to symbolise reflection of my own life, as well as other peoples'. I followed this by doing a series of quick biro sketches of my reflection in the mirror at different angles, never completely all there.

Just a reflection...

As it's nearing the end of my second week into the Final Major Project, I thought I'd have a brief look back on the work I've done to make sure I'm keeping on track.

I'm fairly satisfied with the amount of work I've done so far. I'm nearing the end of my second sketchbook and am determined to have that completed this weekend. However, I am now halfway through my allocated 'research' time for this project, yet have only really explored one aspect of the 'life' theme which is it's contrast with death.

In that case I'm going to try and pick up speed and explore more areas in the next two weeks. I have many more aspects to look into before starting to develop my sketches, so I better get down to it!

Onto the next sketchbook!

In the lecture room

Rachael was listening in the lecture... honest.

'Me without giblets'

Long day today!

I was in the wood workshop all day except for a short lecture mid-afternoon. Unfortunately the first hour and a half were wasted due to 'Technoman' insisting on going around each individual in the room to question their motives for the day before allowing them to continue... and my insability to decide what my motives actually were.

I ended up sketching out an enlarged version of the skeleton drawing I did on Tuesday (yes, the one where it's wearing my hat and scarf). I used a large MDF board so I could then use the pyrography tool to outline and add shading.

So that took up the majority of my day...

Below is the finished pyrographied (is that a word??) piece.

Mr Skeleton is currently glued to another (larger) MDF board under 4 weights. Technoman also cut some wood for a frame, and I'll return to the workshop tomorrow afternoon  to put that together.

All that's to do after that is to add the material for the hat and the scarf (hence why the drawing is not complete!). I'll have to do some searching to find the right kind of material, and then I'll find a way to attach said fabric to the board in a way that it's more 3 dimensional instead of completely flat.

Should be good!

(The title is what it is because Technoman suggested so...)

Looking good!

The first day of 2013 when we spent an entire day in the studio since it wasn't closed due to snow!

Guess what... I got the skeleton out again.

We've become so aqquainted with each other that we've attempted to slow dance together on numerous occassions (though we haven't yet managed without one of his bony fingers managing to snag on my glove or jumper), and we've even got to the 'clothes-sharing' stage.

I think he looks rather fetching.

I did also manage to get a few digital sketches down of the skeleton too, one shown above. I'm enjoying using the tablet and am trying to use it more often so I can get used to the tools and feel of using the pen. I hope I'm improving.

Apart from that I focused on my lovely accessorised friend and sketched him using the most amazing super-thin waterproof ink pen. It has the control and fineness of a mechanical pencil, with the dark colour of blank ink (since that's what it is) and IT'S WATERPROOF. Hence the addition of watercolour on the items of clothing. Just to make them stand out.

Return to Art Crossing

Rachael is tired because she's just eaten chocolate tacos and now she's feeling super lazy and wants to lie dead on Joey's bed.

Ahem. I've finally got back into Art Crossing again! Art Crossing is a fantastic group where you are assigned a profile of a random unknown deviant to make a gift for, and for each gift you send, another deviant will send you something in return! I've managed to convince Joey to sign up to, and she's pretty excited! You can see the group's page here.

The profile I've received is for a 20 year old in Canada, and from her extremely long profile, I picked up on that she likes fantasy animals such as dragons and griffins, and although her favourite colour is a rich red, the colours of royal purple, blue and peacock green closely follow.




This made me think along the lines of peacock colours in general, and using such as a colour palette and/or texture to apply to a dragon or griffin. At first I thought I'd try a griffin, since I'd experimented with dragons once before on an Art Crossing gift, and griffins should be easier to reference since it's common to see statues of them.

However.. I soon realised that griffins probably aren't the best animal suited to a peacock theme... so I resorted to dragons.

First step is to find lots of reference images of different styles and types of dragon that interest me, and make sketches from these...

And then I play around a little, taking the parts I like most from the sketches and tweaking them a little - working with form and posture, and extending claws and horns etc.

On the left are my first initial sketches. I liked the face but wasn't fond of the pose. The arm and leg were particularly difficult to draw and make look realistic. tried to make the wing style dark and harsh, with sharp hooks and jagged edges, though I thought these could be made bigger.








I then developed further and sketched the designs on the right. I much prefer the overall shape and form of the dragon, and I played around with the positioning of the wings and tail. I like the idea of a spiked/webbed back, and I know that the final piece must have a scaly/feathery skin to more resemble the patterning of a peacock.

That's about as far as I got with the gift. I have less than a week to complete it so I better sketch the picture soon and get a move on!

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones...

The studio closed early again today.

But in the morning I sketched a lot more bones... I'm becoming quite familiar with this skeleton now.

Just a game of poker...

This idea came into my head and I couldn't ignore it.

Ezio Auditore, John Marston and Vaas Montenegro playing poker.

Please note: I do not understand poker, nor do I have any intention of learning to...

Today is Saturday

Shockingly I was in quite a productive mood today. After my pixel shenanigans I turned to working some more in my sketchbook, as well as going back on a couple of pages that were left unfinished.

The views out of the flat's windows are beautiful; the trees with their branches draped with snow. I decided it would be a shame not to do some sketches from the kitchen...





The drawings on the left were done on black paper using metallic silver and gold pencils. I felt that the silver lead brought out the highlights of the snow on the branches more so than a white pencil.

I also tried a different style, using thinly cut black paper rearranged to form extending branches, as seen on the right.

 So, I'm quite happy with how things went today!

Here's to hoping I'll work well tomorrow and the studio will be open next week despite the weather...