Life drawings & Etching update!

So despite the weather's desperate attempts to prevent me from getting to life drawing last Thursday , I still managed to get there if a bit late. The rest of these will go up on my facebook page but heres a couple that I quite liked. 

As for print work, I've started the first of two (perhaps more than two) plates for a new series of prints based on Zodiac characters and the constellations that their 30° divisions of space as seen from earth. Starting with Libra (the sign rather than the constellation), in his cloak are the constellations of Lupus, Ophiuchus, Scorpio, Virgo, Hydra, Serpens Caput and Centaurus. Somewhere else on his figure will be the astrological notation for libra ♎.   

First, I drew up some quick thumbnails and silhouettes in my sketchbook, did some research on the constellations in each sign's domain and tried out different poses and places for the star field to be placed- on the cloak, hair, skin, shawl, dress etc.

Then after drawing it up in Photoshop to my liking, I printed it out A6 size (same as the copper plate) and traced it onto the plate with the needle. Then, as shown in the image above, I laid down a light rosin aquatint and stopped out all the areas I wanted to remain clean with varnish- the background, the mantle and the constellation points.

5 minutes of etching later, the plate was ready for another round of stop out varnish. 

And after 2 printing proofs this is where it's at. I'm quite happy with the result though I should have let the aquatint be stronger on the cloak since it isn't quite as graphic as I expected. Next week I intend to re-aquatint it so that this time I get a light shade over the figure as well as the cloak, and also to deepen the tones in the star field. The 2nd print will be Virgo but more on that next week.

Dragon Age Inquisition comes out pretty soon, so I channeled my excitement for the game into trying out the official artwork's beautifully stylized Tarot cards. It was a fun exercise and in the future I might be tempted to include more abstract shapes within my work.


And finally, I've got some prints available to buy in the Belfast Print workshop Gallery , should you be in the city and want to see some of my older prints. There are several artist proofs and unique prints (non-edition ed) that I will be adding to my Etsy shop in the coming weeks so look forward to that! :)

-Sam

Printing and back in business!

Since coming back to Northern Ireland and completing my degree, it's taken me more time than I'd like to get back to working on projects and drawing but things are starting to settle down now. My formal graduation ceremony will take place in a couple of weeks back in Middlesbrough. Sadly, my laptop has been off with Dell for 5 weeks since the start of October for repairs and my digital painting practice has been suffering. On the other hand, I'm back 100% at the weekly life drawing classes and a new stone lithography class run by the Belfast Print Workshop.

Over the next five week's I'll be able to document my (likely eventful) journey of learning Stone Lithography and on through with my plans work in progress shots for a new series of etchings based on constellations and the zodiac signs.  I'll be taking whatever prints and odd pieces I have left in my drawer here at home down to the gallery at BPW to try and get something for them, rather than let them waste away in my studio, and others will soon appear in the etsy shop link to the top right of this page (how very exciting!).

Now for a visual catchup of some of the kind things I've been drawing (and making!) in the last couple of months!

-Sam

5/11/13 life drawing & Digital processes

This week I brought a watercolours set with me to evening lifeclass. Mostly because it's been a long time since I've worked brush in hand, but also because I'd never used that particular medium for quick, loose drawings. Certainly got some nice marks, but I need to invest in a wider brush, and less absorbent paper- I was looking for a messier more of a wash kind of effect, but the brush was too small and the card too quick to soak up the water. At the start, I tried to get the gesture down in conte first, then paint the volume/weight in with the w/colours, but this didn't really work out in the time we had, so I restricted my palette (cobalt and crimson) and left the conte out of the process. One step, no longer evident was drawing everything pretty quickly with water before putting down paint, then adding pigment to diffuse in the wet card.

This morning we had a workshop class on refining digital practice- starting with a quick thumbnail and speedily working it up to a firm idea, but not getting chained into details- 20 minutes spent, tops. 

I went to an old idea I had during the summer for the practice thumb, the key principles being a clear sense of depth/perspective, solid composition, and quickly using gradients to try out different colour palettes for the potential painting. 

-Sam

Life drawing for concept artists; week 2

First off, I received some great feedback from Dave on the Gryphon skeletons and also to further the assignment for next week by creating a muscle map on top of the skeleton (front and side views); paying attention to where the bone pushes through the muscle and can be seen through the skin, eg pelvis.

•  Size of the skull with regards to how intelligent I want it to seem
• Wingspan to bulk of gryphon
• define wing bones/scapulae/clavicle -sternum from a front facing view
• begin to think of possible plumages and how the feathers join with the fur
• Tail variations, though a long tail presumably for balance.
• Movement; How would it walk/fly?

Next, Maggie took us for two hours of life drawing, similar to last week's class, with an hour of short fast poses and a final 50 minute costumed pose, with a focus on details and intricacies. 

 (click to enlarge)

Since we had much more time for the "long" pose, (50 mins), I decided to thumbnail it out and get the general angles and placement of the figure sorted before I dove in on the actual page.

Its scribbly and messy but it definitely helped me register the whole figure, not to mention solve a few problems early on, rather than having to fight it out at the larger scale. 

(50 minute costumed pose)

As a change of pace, we then visited the Maggi Cullen exhibition Constantine gallery in Middlesbrough Tower for an hour, with the instruction to pick some of the exhibits and draw from them.

"Morris Men" - Maggi Cullen

-Sam

Drawing for Concept artists, week 1

Yesterday, we had a 6 hour class titled "Drawing for Concept artists", and as you might expect it focused on drawing ability. For this class, the Games Art (MA) and Concept art (MA) are joined together, so we started by giving short presentations of our work up until now as introductions. Then we had to show 8 nudes (of varying weight/race/gender/age/pose) that we'd drawn from imagination- My attempt is below.

Then we had a life drawing session, and it was ...definitely different, at any rate. I'm now pretty glad I kept the sessions with Claire and Michael up over the summer. Especially one exercise, when Maggie, the tutor, played Macklemore through the soundsystem and asked the model to walk/dance to the beat in a circle, giving us only 5 seconds at the most to get the gesture down before she moved again.

 I just grabbed a conté randomly when we started so these didn't come out the greatest when I photographed them, well enough to get the idea across, I hope.







This next exercise involved the model walking forwards but each step drawn needed to be connected by the previous foot- I think  like the 2nd one the best, though I didn't manage my space properly and didn't fit in the feet.

The next assignment for this class is to draw about 3 sheets worth of skeleton designs for a fictional creature, the kicker is that no matter how fantastic the creature, the skeleton must work. But I will cross that bridge when i come to it- probably after I've finished the Blue Beetle assignment for tomorrow's Character & Environment Design seminar.

- Sam.

This week's life drawing!

This week I was trying a different approach. This class is structured to be untutored and the poses are usually a mix of long and short. Previously, I've drawn messily in conté and then smudged it together for a colorful mess, which while usually looking good, is a lot of fun to explore. This week I wanted to do something more restrained and also something without construction lines. So using a 0.2 fineliner pen, I drew Clare from various angles and tried to get the form and proportions down before blocking in some shadows. I think i need to work on the lines of these shadows though since they leave the figure looking carved or angular. 

Next are some more random sketchbook pages from drawing in the various Clements coffee shops around Belfast! Drawing with a morning coffee is an excellent thing! Also some drawings of various fantasy and not so fantasy weapons, I was playing with designs for more silhouettes for my Oculus Sclera project (Which I will write up and explain in their own posts! If you're interested in worldbuilding, maybe you'll find it interesting?)

I'll be back on thursday, or sooner! With more sketchbookery and mmmmmmaybe print designs! Woohoo!

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