Disco Fever '98

The last week had me succumbing to winter depression. I was very tired and had extremely little energy to work or perform any task other than watching TV shows on my computer. My phone calender is now telling me I have 44 days left to complete my portfolio and hand it in. I must admit I am a bit panicky about that. XD

Every time I have looked at other application portfolios I have been flummoxed. I have skill with a pencil - but drawing and character design are arts that I have been practising properly for little more than a year now. Digital painting is an entirely different matter. Many of the portfolios I've seen in progress appear much stronger than mine, and I have friends who are younger than me who've been using photoshop for more than 5 or 6 years. This is where I start to feel old and regret not spending more time drawing in my formative years. I just hope I can make a strong enough case for myself come the application to TAW. Being a vagabond for another year doesn't really excite me.

Hence I am watching some videos on digital painting and trying different techniques in order to try and rack up some experience. Here is a speed painting I did of an owl I found on Google. ;)

Until next time!

More WIP

These last few days work on my portfolio has continued. :) I'm now painting a background. This is one of the first times I've painted a background digitally without a sketch to support it, and also in full colour. It is quite a challenge but I am happy with how it is coming so far. There is still much to be done though.

This was just a fun sketch that will probably end up in my Freestyle section if I don't have anything better by then. This was about 40 minutes of work. Good fun. :)

Stay tuned for more as the weeks draw onwards!

The Return of the Jedi

Hey hey!

While I continue to make records on how long I can leave this blog unattended (2 months! Wow!), I have actually been working pretty hard!

Lately I've had to move apartments, shortly after I finished my second semester of The Drawing Academy. To be honest my teacher and I had a massive falling out that left me with little impetus to draw or be creative in any form. I have also been without internet at my new place (I am using my phone to tether internet to write this now!) and it has taken me a few months and the Christmas holidays - along with the steadily encroaching deadline for my application to The Animation Workshop - to get back into the game.

But now I am here and I am learning digital painting, Danish and character design at Mediaskole, while I compile my portfolio.

The portfolio has several sections that I must fill in. I need to have:

• 8 Character Designs
• 6 Backgrounds (3 indoors, 3 outdoors)
• 4 Perspective Drawings
• A Storyboard
• 8 Life Drawings
• 8 Freestyle Drawings (This is the 'anything goes' part of the portfolio)

Right now I have been working mostly on backgrounds and character designs. I have many, many short sketches and ideas, but here are three of the most developed ideas:

This is the first of eight character designs that will be going into my portfolio. ROBO-47 is a malicious steam-powered robot bent on destruction!

This is the second (incomplete) character design. This is The Stranger, a supernatural cowboy who collects the badges of sheriffs he defeats. ;)

This will be the third character, or, time permitting, he will be moved to the freestyle section if I have a better character. This is just an alien critter, no particular story to him. ;)

I will actually be producing a lot over the next few months. I have to have all those drawings handed in on the 15th of March, which means I am working hard and producing a lot of content at the moment. Hopefully this means my blog will pick back up again! ;)

Until next time!

Super Haitus Over!

I realize that my blog has gone unattended for more than a month. :/

This is largely due to a class trip to Amsterdam, a lack of good drawings to upload and my dissatisfaction with my artwork in general. I've been in quite a large rut lately (artistically), and this has discouraged me from producing worthwhile drawings or even feeling like writing on the blog. Luckily Amsterdam cheered me up and now I have a Dungeons and Dragons campaign with some friends to look forward to - which means that digital works of that nature will probably become commonplace on this blog.

Today I'm gonna start with my new character for the Forgotten Realms campaign we are starting tomorrow: Feki Quartzbeard.

He's a Dwarven cleric! A classic class-race combo. This portrait and the following image are some of my first solo exploits in Photoshop, so I'm fairly proud of them. Getting to grips with colour and light (issues that are not too important to our particular discipline of figure drawing) is exciting and challenging. :)

And that's it for now I'm afraid. :P I am working a lot more digitally lately, and soon I will be putting together my portfolio, so things should heat up then. In the meantime, I'll be working my way through the last few weeks of TDA.

Cheers!

Pencil Croquis Sketches

I have this habit of forgetting to update for quite a while, but when I do there is so much to post!

Hence my second update of the day, this time some of my preferred croquis sketches from last month. These were done with a soft-ish pencil. I've had to run them all through photoshop, since they are too soft on the scanner. Sadly that means some of them are rather dark and the lovely cream of the paper is now just a grey. Still; drawings!

I think it's important to mention that these are very short drawings: between 30 seconds and 2 minutes usually. The longest pose here is five minutes. Enjoy!

Golden Oldies

The last week has been extremely busy for me, needless to say I am sorry for the lack of updates. :P I have plans to photo all of my long studies this weekend with a fellow classmate - so those are on their way. In the meantime I thought I'd upload a few of my really old images in a kind of retrospective from the beginning of TDA.

This was one of the first drawings I remember doing at TDA. It has nothing to do with classical figure drawing, but it's fun to look back at. Note that I couldn't even draw a full, standing figure at this point. Those were the days.

This is the earliest surviving croquis I have from TDA. It's from the end of my first week there. I think we can agree I've come a ways since then.

A seemingly complex object like the foot becomes charmingly simple once you know enough about the bones. This is an old short study I did way back when. After this, I could draw feet.

This is the first long study I ever did at TDA. It's 45 minutes of OUTLINE. Once again, incredible to look back and see how far I've come in the 9 or so months since.

And last but not least, a small colour character drawing I did while I was training with Glen Vilppu. Unlike the earlier drawings, this is more just for fun. :)

I'll be uploading some croquis drawings over the next few days. Mads Peter had us working with pastel for the whole week, so I have some unique studies to show you.

Until next time. :)

Pastel Croquis Sketches

These are some short sketches using pastel that I made at the beginning of the semester. Soft black pastel and cheap paper were involved. ;)

Also included is this little snippet of a morning we spent framing the model and drawing her with abstract shapes, so we could better understand composition and form. As you can see, in these sketches I had problems framing the model correctly the first time, but I still find the drawings charmingly abstract.

Until next time! :)