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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Online Portfolio!

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!

Old post short title

First an apology, I have been neglecting this blog and my art of late. I haven't been able to finish things or follow through with ideas and its been really frustrating; there has been a personal matter that has been really stressing me out recently also. I'm trying to follow Neil Gaiman's advice that I should use the bad times to "make good art"  but so far I've only managed pretentious scribbles and other rubbish.

thanks for taking the time to look :)

Sketchbook update

I didn't like how the design for the White Walkers and tried to get my image from the books on paper. Something like the figure above. 

Miscellaneous sketchbookery. I got some cheapy fibre pens so I could add a bitta colour into stuff. Limited palettes show I'm not a master of colour choices lol

Visual Diary

Hopefully I'll be able to get into school to get proper photographs of the exhibition this week, but for now, I've polished up my visual diary on tumblr so its nice to look at! http://www.kitesail.tumblr.com is where I post up to keep a record of, all the art pieces and animations, games and films- everything visual that I found inspiring and interesting.  

In the mean time, here are some doodles from my sketchbook!

 

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

 Alt

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.
-Alt