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

Oh. Its you. It's been a long time. How have you been?

Haha, excuse my Portal 2 reference, but it has been just shy of a year since I last updated this blog. Things got a bit hectic there towards the end of last year, with moving house, living with friends and moving back, then my application for the MA didn't go through for February. Since then, however, I've been trying to draw and print more, so that I can re-apply for the same MA in September. I now have life classes twice a week, one being a regular fine art untutored session, and the other being 3 hours of fast paced gesturing and sketching; a tutored club in the University of Ulster for Life drawing in Animation.
Printmaking got set aside while I've been focusing on strengthening my anatomy and drawing technique, but with the R.U.A's annual exhibition open submission date looming, I'm thinking of a few new plate ideas- perhaps I'll get three pieces in, who knows?

Portfolio wise, the previous content wasn't close enough to the requirements for the course, so between now and August, I plan on developing on the things which I lack. Namely, Character design, weapon/vehicle design and environment concepts- with several variations thereof.
To this end, I've chosen a short story I wrote when I was younger to be the setting that ties my designs together. I think it'll do the overall portfolio good to have some connecting theme, and to give myself an anchor as to not get too bogged down with small details.

Thats it for now! If you wanna check out some of the work I've done since I started my life drawing classes, check out THIS LINK RIGHT HERE. It will take you to the tumblr tag "Sam's draws" on my non-srs-bsns tumblr.

Thank you for reading!

Akropolis final state

I've not had much time recently to update with all of the preparations for the exhibition and between that and working on the visual diary/extended essay...well Time has been short indeed. Ive decided to name the three towers Metrolpolis, Cosmopolis and Akropolis/Acropolis- Im not sure which spelling is the English and which the Greek. Chosen because they're all general terms for types of cities and my images for this each have  certain type of city about them.

I've got the moon from Majora's Mask stuck in my head reminding me that time is growing short. :I


still to do

• Essay
• visual D.
• Portfolio [got plenty of things d.w]
• name cards for each print
• business cards
• sort out mounts
• If the chance to work on the Aluminium plates presents itself, seize it. :I

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Checkpoint!

Tower Plate #1 

I've finished drawing/etching this plate.(the 2nd picture) All I need from it now are some good prints I can fill my portfolio with and get one excellent one for the exhibition. It was certainly a pain though, the first time I drew into the ground, my needle wasn't sharp enough and it was only after i had etched it and taken off the ground and printed it, did I realise the lines weren't deep enough. So I redrew it twice and then went through the process of; draw line art> etch 5mins>draw foreground in>etch 10 mns>draw and detail center tower>etch 15mins draw background walls+details > etch 10mins.  

Tower Plate #2

The other plate. It ended up not really being so much a tower as a towering castle. But all the same, I kept the same sort of line-only style so that it would look something similar. I found myself thinking in this one "mmm....heres the market" and then "no, that size of hourse is impractical to the peoples means!!" haha Perhaps thinking about it far too much. The last photo of this is a bleed print - a print taken by putting down pieces of paper which are smaller than the plate so that you dont usually get the embossed border around the print. I was mostly just trying out colours on tan paper.  The drawing process of this one was somewhat different. I researched a ton by looking at various concept arts; Guild wars 2, Prince of Persia, Lord Of the Rings (Minas Tirith/helms deep) and just generally trolling about the internet for related images-Can you say "tower of babel"? And I grounded/drew it all up as one. then gradually added details like the rocks and roofs of houses. The water and shadows to the right (on the prints) were left til last. 

I have a third plate in the works with me over Easter, hopefully I'll get into the studio in two weeks and get it etched and finished. And along that, I have a selection of small aluminium drypoints.

In non-exhibition and more about after university news, I've found an MA course I'd like to pursue- Concept art for Animation and Video games at Teeside University, Middlesbrough. I'm not sure if I've missed the application deadline for it though, as I only found it recently.
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A quick update with what I've been doing

The Tower IX- 3rd proof

The tower plate is coming along, slowly but I'm definitely making some kind of progress with it. Tutor would rather I avoid aquatinting all together. So that means I have a lot more linework to be doing. Oh well.

The Hermit - Time

A quick drypoint a did a few nights ago. I've not done aluminium drypoint in a year and a half at least. So this was just me trying to remember what worked and what doesn't. I quite like how the lines come up so chunky and almost smoky.  I plan to do a bunch more of these, if not for the exhibition , just for the experience.

Finally heres a few pages from my sketchbook recently. I had a bit of a regression to looking at Avatar: the last airbender concepts and stills, so these few pages are mostly martial arts poses.

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Tower proof

Just to show the Tower as it stands in it's first proof. My scanner isn't large enough for this, (the plate alone is about A3 in size) so I had to take a photo. 

Also, I didn't etch it long enough to get the background details in as much as I wanted. So I'm going to re-ground it and try again tomorrow. Hopefully more progress on this to show then.

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