Toons on Tap- Sergio

On Monday I wasn't up to anything particularly exciting and I was reminded by some facebook posts that Toons on Tap was happening at the Rhino and the model was Sergio Gonzales. 

I'm usually shy but I really didn't want to miss out and I'm so glad I went!

What a fun event!

The music was great and the atmosphere was friendly and light. There were prizes and such talent! It was so inspiring to see such great talent here. I now have some blogs to follow and eat up hehehehe....

I will definitely be joining again!

Thanks for viewing!

The Royal Winter Fair

This past November our class went to The Royal Winter Fair. It was a whole day of walking around and drawing animals. In this post I've only included the horses, I might include the other sheep and pigs a little later on but for now here are the lively gestures the horses gave me.

Here I tried using brush pen and watercolour brush pen. There's something liberating about new materials that sometimes lets you move more freely than usual. I thought these were interesting markings.

By the end or the day I combined pen gesture and pale washes of yellow ochre. It was quite a fun day. 

Thanks for viewing!

Oil Painting from Summer

In the summer I kept up what I learned in class about painting in oil. I came upon some issues and tried new things to solve them while painting. This is my setup. It's my mothers doll from her childhood, Suzy.

A little drawing to guide me while I study the colour changes.

Moving around the canvas and putting down colour.

The end result before class started up mid August. (I didn't have time to finish- but the study was useful)

I just thought I'd post this now as I found time and also I'd like to start some more oil studies so it might be nice to compare later on ;)

Thanks for viewing!

Photoshop Update

So it's been a little while and I have taken a photoshop background painting course. I've learned so much since I last posted about anything photoshop related and my ideas are starting to take form in a more solid way. Isn't that exciting? The above picture was a layout from "Jimmy Two Shoes" and we got to put our take on it gathering colour & texture ideas from references for our class.

                             

Here is a fun little club girl....of course I only realize the tangents long after the fact. Easy fixes, but I wanna move on for now. There is always time to revisit ideas another time and breathe new life into them :) I was excited to draw this with marker first and then paint it in photoshop. It was pretty fun although next time I want to be a little more adventurous and painterly.

This was done from start to finish in photoshop and I feel and I think you can also see I am much more comfortable with these tools. My original plan was to do a line drawing to paint on top of, then of course I enjoyed experimenting with cross hatching and getting used to drawing with digital brushes and away I was carried into marking out areas of tonal changes... Ahhh way too much fun!

This was a photo of Lord Alfred Douglas.

I'll be posting a few new things soon but for that's all I have for digital works. 

Thanks for viewing!

Background Painting

I just finished the 2 week Background painting workshop before the regular schedule starts up again.

Here's what I was up to:

In the first assignment, we used an existing layout and painted it monochrome. This was to emphasize depth and put a 'spotlight' on the general area where a character would move. All the assignments are done in gouache, which on this assignment I was not yet comfortable using... but it gets better :)

Here are some texture studies. I had a lot of fun with them. Using a photo reference I did the sky first. The aim wasn't to look like a photo but more like a texture one would find in animation. So I took that to heart and sweetened up the wooden fence and bricks in this fashion.

Here is a background to be painted in a day scene and a night scene. This is from an existing production and we were just interpreting it for education's sake. I've gotten more comfortable with the paint now but in both night and day I have not closed up the picture with enough darkness in the foreground and not enough light in the mid-ground.

The night scene.

Finally we were to draft our own layout for an animation background.

I had such a great time designing this and getting help with layout from my instructor. Once onto painting he let me have my way with nearly the entire piece--except the tree in the foreground, it was originally lighter. I agree that darkening it really makes it come forward. 

I had some inspiration from Looney Tunes backgrounds & Mary Blair's works.

I am really taking a liking to this graphic style.

Here's where you can view Mary's work: http://magicofmaryblair.com/

Comments & critiques are always welcome

Thanks for viewing!

Summer Break is OVER!

And it's a good thing too! This week at school we began with just two courses, Traditional Background painting & Intro to photoshop for Digital Background painting. Already, I feel I have learned so much. I went out to the library this weekend and found 4 great books related to my upcoming courses as well. The book on storyboarding will probably be a life saver, its one of my courses that I think I know the least about (besides photoshop -- I just started this August!)

              I can tell this 2nd year is going to be a great test of many things, my skill and time management. But I'm determined, and sincerely when it gets hard and I imagine quitting, I try to think of what else I'd be doing. Honestly, if I gave up, I would still be in my room painting or sketching in the streets, and now that I'm smitten with photoshop I'll never stop doodling, painting & creating. Its like some kind of addiction! >: D haha... ok well I have a few pictures here of some of my studies over the summer. Enjoy!

            This is a small bust in my mother's garden. I still need to work on foliage around the face. (I'll post the finished piece a little later)

Watercolour

9''x12'' Cold press 140lb. paper

 An antique radio.

Watercolour

4''x 6'' Cold press 90lb. paper

Back Alley in Kensington Market.

Watercolour & Ink

4"x 6" Cold press 90lb. paper

PHOTOSHOP

 This is me working with a tablet for the first time, I just wanted to show where I'm coming from and soon enough you'll see drastic improvement. I had no idea how to use anything except a loose idea of brushes and layer. ( I mean REALLY loose : P )

 I go on to scan a drawing in to paint on top. I still had no idea about anything just layers and one brush. Feeling overwhelmed I left this as is and decided to come back when I've learned a little more ;) I'll be seein' you in December missy! ;)
Also to mention the pose is taken straight from Gil Elvgren's cowgirl, I couldn't seem to make a cutesy pin up, they all ended up too... suggestive. So thanks to that inspirational artist ;)

This little treat was for my sister as a silly e-card surprise! 

And finally in school and learning from an experienced background painter the basics just in a few little classes. This course goes on all year so you'll just have to check to see where I'm at in a year with this. But great leaps have been made just this week both in knowledge of software and speed! 

I <3 photoshop now :3

This work is unfinished I am going to add in a few more shadows behind the bed off the shelf, also some items on the shelf and other various details on the window, trunk and picture frame.

I was also working on an oil painting this summer. I am still working on it, in my next post I'll show my progress from set-up to a good portion of work completed on it ;) and I will update when it is completed.

Thanks for viewing and comments & critiques are always welcome!

School Year in Review

DRAWINGS

This was part of my sketchbook for a class on composition, It was an extremely helpful class. This was an example of central location composition. Much of the curriculum included the famous Andrew Loomis examples from his collection of books on how to draw, paint, and compose images successfully. 

So many errors in drawing props and objects and all goes back to getting the basics downs, drawing elipses properly. Still practicing ;)

These two were part of my perspective of the human figure studies. Well I'm sure once I get anatomy in my head I will ace drawing figures later on.

PAINTING IN OIL

In class working hard!

Here is a technique that introduced us to painting in oil and seeing tonal values and changes. The two above were darker than the set up. It was direct painting using a method outlined by Hawthorn. where you find the center tonal values of the major groups. As we found the correct tones we moved onto finding what was next and spreading about the painting bit by bit, ever analyzing each stroke. This trains the eye and later will come as second nature. I felt it was tedious, but very helpful in the end.

Here is how far I got on this piece, overall I learned so much from it and it really helped me to develop my sense of tone, I had gone back and lightened the entire piece.

This was a quick warm and cool oil study done in the same dot by dot fashion as the tonal study. This time we were learning about warm and cool. Using only Titanium White, Cadmium Red Light, and Prussian/Pthalo Blue, we moved across our studies analyzing the warmth of light and coolness of shadows. But also learned that sometimes light is cool and shadows can be warm. At the same time keeping tones in mind. after this we moved onto a larger colour oil study on canvas. 

Unfortunately I thought I had a picture of mine but I just realized I don't. 

I can tell you I had much difficulty with it though. But much less than if we just jumped into colour.

Many of the studies are unfinished, and I believe the actual learning process was emphasized as most important. Seeing that you are learning it, and taking time to put care in something rather than finish up quickly and have it be technically incorrect and not taking much away from the experience.

STUDIES ON TONED PAPER WITH CONTE AND WILLOW CHARCOAL

A copy of Albrecht Durer's 'Study of a Drapery' on grey tone Canson mi-tients paper with black and white conte.

Tonal bag study.

Part one of drapery study.

Finished Drapery Study.

I hated drapery in this class, however, like anything that is exceedingly difficult I knew I was about to change how I saw things. I was right, because I've done a drapery study since and loved studying the folds and soft shadows.

Part one of Self Portrait.

 So many errors in the point to point drawing. Some of which I was able to see, and some of  which I noticed after I completed the drawing.

Self Portrait

The finished me.

Detail.

Skull Study.

LIFE DRAWING

Construction Figure.

Construction figure.

Head Construction study in my sketchbook.

Ear study with cross contour lines.

Head Construction with cross contour lines.

1 minute Gesture

 1 minute Gesture.

7 minute Quick Contour study.

Watercolour Modelling study.

For now this is what I have to share with you from my first year in college. 

Comments and critiques are encouraged and welcomed!

Thanks for viewing!