Crazy Friday Update

Hi everyone! This week turned out to be extra crazy. I did manage to draw and paint a little bit. My goal was to draw 6 to 10 muscle figures to catch up on the last week on Analytical Figure drawing which I've missed.

I managed to draw 2 figures, 6 thumbnail paint studies and started working my way through the 1out of 4 Scott Robertson DVDs. The Robertson stuff is perspective drills (cubes, cylinders and perspective grids), so I'm not going to show them this time.

I'll try to draw 4 more figures next week. That should give me some sense of closure.

I'm trying to simplify my thumbnails where the final image looks like an abstract construct with impressionist colors, but when shrunk, it should feel like a photograph. It's getting there. Controlling values, temperature and saturation all at once is quite hard, but should allow me to makes some cool work when I get the process down.

End of Spring Quarter 2013

Spring quarter is over. Made some solid improvements across the board.

Learned a lot in Michael Hampton's anatomy drawing class and Derek Kosol helped me figure out some of the bigger problems I had with design and painting. Found out what I need to improve, so I will dedicate the next quarter to perspective, value and painting. I'm also taking the next Michael Hampton class.

Here are the 2 portfolio pieces for my Principle of Design Process class with Derek Kosol. I used a piece from week 1 and week 6 to show my overall progression.

I made some more improvements to the demon at the end of week 8. My painting is still slow, but at least it's beginning to make more sense now.

Weeks 6 and 7 of 2013 CGMA Spring Quarter

The more I learn and the further into the quarter I progress, the more unsatisfied I become with my drawings.

But I did learn to stop criticizing my art while I'm working on it. That was a huge breakthrough for me. I finally freed up huge amounts of energy which I now use for work and creativity, rather than personal drama and self-bashing.


Now I spend my days patting myself on the back when I sit down and work, and spend the rest of my time trying to find fault with any and all of my completed projects.

So far, this new approach has been bringing good results. Yeah, I'm a bit too complicated and quite an asshole. I know.

Derek Kosol explained to me, and I finally understood, why it's important to keep values close together in a painting - it's to keep the underlying compositional value framework intact. Woot!

I also learned that the most important thing in anatomical drawings is to memorize and understand the points where each muscle inserts into the skeleton. Once that part is handled, a relaxed muscle can be rendered as a surface with minimal curvature (flat), while a flexed muscle can be rendered as a blob (sphere).

Michael Hampton (my analytical figure drawing instructor) is brilliant: his artwork and his teaching method are equally amazing.

So that's my batch of good news for this update :)

Here's some new stuff for my CGMA classes: