some WIP renders

Ran out of time with the second/building type one. I'm working on, for my pirate ship in Sketching for Entertainment class, one that is part mangrove. Such a tree actually exists in real life, but doesn't have an interior as shown online. So that should be fun to make it habitable just as a pitch for a story. I also had a great moment happen where I thought a teacher absolutely hated me. I don't know why...I guess I am too sensitive about some things. Turns out, as he said two weeks ago "I'm expecting great things from you. I'm serious. I've seen what you can do and you have a lot of potential." I wanted to cry right then and there but I was surrounded by other students haha. I've been thinking about my future a lot and setting goals. I've also been reading a great book about owning companies and have the mental foresight to know when something will be a good financial opportunity and not a dud to invest in. I actually think that being in the know about finances is important to modern artists/designers. You can't be financially stupid (I guess I can't say "you can't"..it would just be unwise) and just leave it up to everyone else in the blind. And you have to be a good negotiator, or when you die someone else will negotiate a better price for your work for you (that you may never see). B0uguereau was said to have been VERY savvy about money and branding. It was part of the reason he worked so large and for the upper classes (they had money; big pieces=more money). Also, I staretd reading V@n G0gh's "Letters to The0". Every artist should read it. Incidentally the first book recommended it, because part of being bold and recognizing opportunity is to have so much drive that you stick to your guns when others won't. It's having an indentity when others around you are willing to settle. And absolutely owning it.

Happy 500th post...mateys!!!

Last night was Pirate night. That, of course, one of the models telling us the crummiest joke ever; so crummy that I had to laugh. "Why are Pirates s0 mean?" "Because they just Aaarrrrrrrrr!!!!" Hahaha. (wonk wonk) And yes, that is an asian pirate!

Sunday morning painting

I don't like doing the alla prima stuff, but the first is better for colour and the second is more realistic proportion of what it looked like. It was fun and it was just five of us having a blast on a Sunday morning. Jennifer is having the workshop every other week. It's a bummer that I start class in two weeks, but if it continues into the New Year I'll def be doing more.

a render

The DWorks peeps in my class seemed to like this one. They actually crowded around my desk and asked how I did it, and the techie of the group sat behind me and I heard him just go "wow". The TA asked if I had been practising a lot with the programme, and I said sure...yeah, but the truth is that I haven't touched it except during class time. I have been drawing, painting and sculpting a lot though LOL. I did a better render with more wispy clouds to create a clear foreground, middle and background. I don't have it though, because it was taking too long to render. So in the meantime....

some drawings from last night

Been pretty busy lately, averaging about 3 hours of sleep a night (not too bad; I'm use to 4 or 5 max). However, my Sundays are all mine! Mwahaha! The good thing is, when I hit the gym in the morning, it is all good and I'm ready to start the day. There really is something about people who can integrate exercise into their lives or some sport that makes you disciplined and work harder. Plus, when it's time to sleep, you get good sleep; you're not just lying there staring at the ceiling. A semester of (rowing) crew kept me going all through college, because even though I didn't end up following through with that sport all through the four years, I integrated the discipline of getting up early and taking care of myself into all aspects of my life and stuck with it. I also love reading, particularly on business, economics and science (math too). I once read that even B!ll G@tes will supposedly take the summer off and sit on a boat somewhere and just read all kinds of books. Particularly on alternate fields from his own. The Academy (Classicism, etc) used to believe that a perfect body was a sign of a perfect mind. I watched the movie "W@ll Street" this past weekend; it's amazingly shot; B0b R!chards0n is THE man!!!! There is a part where the lead villain, Gekk0, looks at a man in a suit standing next to a bum digging into the trash, and he says to the protagonist, as they both gaze through a limo window "you can't tell me the difference between that (the guy in the suit) and that (the homeless guy) is "luck". True story. I know we can't control the future, but I hear people all the time talking about how they like to draw and sing or do other things in their lives, but that's all it is. I think it's important to SET YOURSELF UP FOR SUCCESS as much as you can, plan and then plan some more, and also follow through. If you say you're going to do 1000 head studies, JUST DO IT. Okey doke. And here are some crappy drawings too, but I'm continuing to bust my butt because I must and will get better.

I had

three classes today and got home after midnight last night. Today was painting, sculpting and then my digital matte painting class. So um...really tired. I was learning a bit about layout on Friday and I have to say, a lot of the approach in animation seems really foreign to me. I think that in animation, a lot of the focus is shot to shot (as that is inherently how they work in terms of process) whereas in live action, the story is told from movement to movement (ie persistence of v!sion is more inherent). I haven't heard the phrase 'm!se en scene' used once..which kind of scares me as someone with a movie background LOL. Even the POV shots, for the most part, are static (cut to blah blah) when people talk about it, wherease more and more in cinema POV shots are moving constantly. My teacher said that people tend to, when learning, rely on the characters to show an action in a storyboard. So if a child is scared in her room alone, they will show her hunched over her bedsheets, whereas the smarter way to do it would be to show the shadows from her room that look menacing. See, that's one difference right there. Someone from l!ve action would NEVER rely on character to show the scene, because THEY for the most part DON'T HAVE CONTROL OVER THE ACTOR! So they tend to use the camera and the 'mise en scene' to tell the story. But hey...I'm ready and willing to learn some stuff. Here is a progress of my sculpt from yesterday and two renders from today.

gesture sculpt after gesture drawing

I had made the armature before, which is a copy of a larger, thicker version of what I'm working on. I'm working on a Medusa sculpt, but her hair, instead of what I like to call "Barb!e hair", is just two braids, which split into snakes, one of which pokes through the head/eye socket of a skull she is holding. She also stands on another man's skull she has conquered (I know, I'm a scary scary person..ha!) Simon wanted me to focus on the pose, even though I started on the first one. So he suggested that I do a smaller one or a series of smaller ones. It's about gesture and finding balance for the sculpture, something that in digital or even in drawing a lot of people don't think about because there is not that sense of weight. Also, in sculpture, the line of action/lines are very important to provide 'flow' for your piece. You want to keep the eye moving. So I started after doing a gesture drawing class with K@rl. It's not rendered out or anything, but already I think it has character; you can get a sense of the 'attitude' of this woman. She doesn't slump and has a line to her gesture. I think that of all the STRONG sculpture pieces I've ever seen, the line and gesture is what pulls the person in, especially for entertainment. All the rendering and textures and wrinkles in the world can't save a bad gesture or line in a sculpt, in my opinion, because then the character just looks DEAD. And if you're trying to tell a story about a character who we should give a rat's buttocks about, shouldn't we try to give it as much 'life' as possible? J0rdu says that also comes from a LOT of l!fe drawing and observing NATURE, the best teacher. So it's something, since Simon has been talking about it, that I really want to continue on. He says the more you do, the better. And it's also not so intimidating ecause you're focusing on the 'start', not the rendering out where you might think as an artist "I suck at this because I can't do the eyes right in sculpting a f@ce", etc. You can literally go to a public place, carry some armatures and clay and right then and there do some gestures inspired by the people you observe. Fabulous-ness!!! AND you're getting your 'life drawing' on in 3 DIMENSIONS!! Woot!!

Patio girls

The lovely Jennifer modelled for us. It was my first time drawing her as a figure model instead of costumed.

just a render

So I'm working on this sculpture in Le Be@u T0uche for Sp!der's class, and classes have also started back. This weekend was great but it was a lot of running and I didn't get to eat lunch on Saturday until around 9pm (linner?) So um..yeah. And I made friends with this awesome Canadian lady named Jett who is a DW m@tte painter. She paints and sculpts traditionally, also, and her work is quite impressive! She's also really fun and funny...so totally enjoyed giggling throughout class sitting next to her. Just wonderful.

more figures

Our model was Natal!e. Oh, and once a week we are trying to convince the owner of the workshop to run a painting one with a model! Hopefully it comes through and I can make it, but we shall see! One of the guys in our workshop was telling me that one of the hottest fine art painters is actually living in my country, (where his parents are from?) but he's considered Scottish (he actually looks very Tr!n! though (ha!), and that one of his pieces alone sold for 12 million pounds. I hadn't heard of the guy before but his work is good. Then the guy in my workshop (his name is Larry, no need to call him 'guy'..ha!) said that he often sees these beautiful Sight S!ze drawings but the paintings look so stiff. I told him that actually we have the opposite case in my country. I had NO sense of depth perception before I started studying in the US about a year and a half ago. NONE. I would copy shapes and use overlap to create depth, because our system in my home country is a graphic design-focused and fine art (modern) focused one. We used things like texture to create depth. It is all very strange. My first teacher, Steve, thought I had a lot of talent (he was one of the first to encourage me), but one day, he went through our homework and he said "omg you don't understand perspective?". To be quite honest, I had NO idea WHAT he meant? 'Of course I do', I thought. 'I can see what is in front of me and I just draw it'. Yeah...little did I know. (and still know lol) We can paint and draw with emotion, but a lot of our foundational academic skills are lacking. But it's a good thing in that you can always teach that (and I've been learning here...sculpting has also helped me a lot, but when my teacher also brought up that whole 'if you struggle with sculpting at first, it's usually because you are struggling with depth perception, especially if you are used to drawing and painting/2D' thing...it had me thinking); the energy and the vibrancy that is natural to our work and the region is something you cannot teach. Most of the artwork coming out of our region is RICH with colour because that is LIFE around us. I remember studying the Northern Rennaissance artists, and how my teacher pointed out the low skyline was the result of what they SAW/observed every day. It makes sense. I went to a transportation design class one night (open house) and there were some students receiving a critique. The teacher was lamenting that his other students were 'too safe', but that there was this one guy who had an interesting design that was very bold, and he said "you see this!? I can't f**king teaching this!" (he was very animated..great teacher!) He said he could teach the guy to hold it back when it was needed, but that natural energy and sense of design wasn't something he could teach. I think about it all the time because I constantly struggle with that. In high school, I was told that I was 'good', and I'm sure that a lot of people can say "yeah right, so was I", but the difference is that I NEVER remember the work being a task or really LEARNING art. We saw work we liked randomly in books or studied from nature, and dabbled in calligraphy, gouache, acrylic, watercolour, tie dye and dye extraction, pottery, even soap carving and wirebending/costume making, and we tried the various techniques (especially brush techniques for watercolour like wet on wet, drybrush, stipple and using things like alcohol and salt). We did a LOT of nature study. The work we were encouraged to do was much more emotional (if that is the right word). Yes, because of that we did miss out on a lot of things that 'other people just learn' typically as a foundation in more academic schools, but there is a broad range of sophistication in the work from our region in terms of emotional content. It's coming from a completely different place. One of the things my teacher said to me last semester was that he is going to try to make me a little more methodical when I work, because I work very much on 'feel' and 'emotion'. I think to survive in entertainment, I kind of have to, but I'll always be me and where I come from is rooted in a sense of this vibrancy and emotional state of being moreso than overanalysis and overintellectualizing a state of being. I'm not sure if this makes sense, but...

drawing

Working on a sculpture, two paintings and took a 'night off' to work on some short pose drawings from life. The model was the beautiful Fey. Love her. My prof once said something to the extent that some models do give you everything 'on a platter'. Very true with her. A week from now I start on the crazy schedule (8 classes total) so it was nice to wind down for a week or two. I'm dreading all the paper and materials I'll be burning through, but R0selle was nice enough to give me a bunch of paint and medium last night. I'll definitely be using um...everything! I also have the most amazing teacher who is so motivational; he started when he was 38 to reconsider his career and ended up working on movies. He is the sweetest, most generous guy and teacher, and especially since he didn't take the typical art school approach, it raised my estimation of him that much more!And his work is so interesting...that has to be from HIM, and not from what he was 'taught' anywhere. He said that a lot of his movement and ease in sculpting throughout his life came back from his bamboo painting when he was young and the wrist movement, as opposed to the 'straight line' movement people have muscle memory for when you just are used to drawing with a pad on paper. Your sense of depth perception in your hand/eye/brain is better in the former. I have to say, having to pick and choose your own classes and work around work and just be exhausted some days and keep going, is a LOT harder than deciding you're going to put aside time for just doing school and school alone. I actually have never done 'just school'. When I was in college, I was doing a major, two minors, working three jobs and volunteering at the career centre to help persons with resumes, etc. I still feel a bit strange when I'm not doing that much or resting; it's my life. People tell me all the time "you only get four hours of sleep typically", but that doesn't seem to be a problem. I'll never be happy unless I'm DOING. In other news, I read yesterday that Art-making is good for things like Dementia and that people who do invest in learning and practising art are less likely when they get older to have Alzhe!mer's or Dement!a. I thought to be interesting, having a grandmother who suffers from both. I'm also interested in s!lverpoint..it's something I'd like to try, maybe in the near future as a medium.