A bit of figure work today, although technically I did it yesterday. I can't fit this paper (12x18" newsprint) on my little scanner, so I wanted to wait until I had some daylight for digiphotos. Seems to have come out okay, though.

Haven't been doing as much as I'd like this week, which is odd since I've been doing lots of drawing in the Summer Animation Workshop with Ian Jeans. Ian's gesture technique is a lot different from what I'm used to, which is hardly a surprise since the only real instruction I've had on how to do gestures is reading about it in the Vilppu book, and a short description of the same thing from Paul one week in P&P class. In Life Drawing this year, all I got was "here's some examples of gestures, now do it", which was no help at all, so this is pretty handy.

In any case, here's some attempts to put Ian's method into practice, as well as trying to tie it into the Vilppu stuff I've been doing by way of bendy boxes. I must say, I'm finding it appealing and it seems to bypass some problems I've had with the figure in the past. Who knows, maybe this is how I'll settle on doing it in the future. I could do worse.

From Life

Clearly it's been too long since I posted. But summer is here, and with it a lot of free drawing time, so hopefully I'll be able to provide some worthwhile work to show you all.

So first things first, I managed to pass first year Animation! Whee! Which doesn't let me off the hook or anything, it was way too close for my taste. That means this summer is going to have a lot to do with bringing my skills a lot closer to where I want them to be. To do that, I've been starting to work my way through the Vilppu Drawing Manual, in an attempt to make my basic drawing skills stronger, as well as doing a lot of life drawing.

That out of the way, here are some selections from this week's sessions at Sandy Hill and the life drawing club that's running at the school until mid-June. I'd love for it to keep running all summer, but we weren't able to get enough sign-ups. Totally disappointing, I was hoping to see a lot more familiar faces.

Not that something like that's gonna stop me.

Not sitting idle

Well, I'm still sitting idle more than I should, but I'm trying not to entirely. I'm not gonna get better unless I draw a lot, and I've got a lot better to get. I've seen where animation students can get to by third year, and that's what I've got to shoot for.

Eh

Couple of pages, but not pleased with them.

Not the same

Two pages today, although I really should be doing more than that. Technically I'm still on holiday, but just as technically artists don't get holidays. So I'm allowed to feel like I'm not accomplishing much.

In any case, it's a study in how far along I am. The first page is my work, from photo reference. Certainly not my worst work, and just as certainly a damn sight better than what I was doing a year ago, or even six months. Or even two. The other is a page of "master studies" of famed artist Alphonse Mucha.

You can tell one from the other by the MASSIVE DIFFERENCE IN QUALITY.

What this tells me is, as far as I've come, there's a lot further to go yet. If I think I've gone half of half of halfway, I'm fooling myself, and I've got to work a LOT harder.

Thus endeth the lesson.

And so the old year passes

Not so much with a whimper as a whisper at my place, but that's nothing new. Not a lot to pull me out of the house at the moment, what with most of my life revolving around art and school, which are pretty much the same thing of course, and trying to spend as little money as I can. But it's good, I got to open a lovely bottle of French Merlot that's been aging since July, when we first started going to the bottle-your-own place. Very nice, indeed.

So tonight's the night for resolutions, and usually I don't bother. I perform much better when I don't put specific expectations on myself, but this year I'll make one. Only one, though, I'm not gonna go crazy with this stuff, y'know.

My New Year's Resolution is: draw a hell of a lot more this year than any year in the past.

That's it, really. Just draw a lot. And what with the winter term at school staring me in the face, it's pretty much a given anyway. But hey, I'll take what I can get.

Two pages of sketches today. Hope you like.

So yeah, Xmas

Pretty standard for me these days, really. The only physical presents I got were from my mom, and it was the usual routine of watch I probably won't wear, blouse that's too small and an assortment of little stuff. Some decent earrings, which I appreciate, so that's a start.

The big surprise was she sprung for an iPod Nano. Seriously, I was floored at that one. I was further floored when I tried to set the thing up and found that (a) I had no choice but to use iTunes, and I object to having to install special software just to run an MP3 player, and (b) just how non-intuitive and pain in the ass iTunes is. The whole synchronization thing is an awful way of running things, honestly. The site doesn't explain it very well either, so I pretty much wasted a whole afternoon on all that. Finally managed, so thank heavens for small mercies. It'll come in handy this winter.

So between that, company, and just plain flaking out the past couple of days, I haven't got much to show. Here's a page though, which I'm actually pretty pleased with. More work needed of course, but what else is new?

So about Christmas...

So it's hardly a secret that I'm not really on board with the whole Christian thing. I mean, it's cool if that's your thing, but it ain't really mine. So for a long while, I haven't been doing Christmas at all. It's been Solstice, if anything, especially when I was a lot deeper into paganism.

But you know, I've been drifting back to neutral again lately, probably since I never really got involved with the pagan community up here. So it's been more the quasi non-religious/Buddhist/vague paganism/animism melange that seems a default state for me. And what with Christmas upon us, I have to ask myself, do I do Christmas?

And yeah, I guess I do. At least to the degree I do any holiday.

See, what really decided me was looking back on being a kid and realizing that religion was never an inherent part of the holiday for me. The closest it ever got was one Christmas service I went to in elementary school (and was bored to tears), and the usual Charlie Brown Christmas and assorted lesser specials of the day. So when it came down to it, religion wasn't part of it. Family was, friends were, general good feeling and happiness was. So in the end, what's keeping me from enjoying this time of year?

Nuttin', dat's what.

Holiday Time

So school finished for the term on Friday, leaving me to my own devices for three solid weeks. Which would make for a nice break, if the last animation assignment hadn't taught me that I have to improve my basic drawing and sketching skills a lot. My instructor says I'm where I'm supposed to be for a first year, and that I have strong draftsmanship skills, but that doesn't mean I'm a good artist, at least in my own eyes. So the next three weeks are going to follow a simple, direct plan:

Draw like crazy, and it doesn't matter what. The sketchier the better, so long as it's got structure.

That's pretty much it. No particular goals, other than sheer volume. Just getting used to drawing all the time, sketching and experimenting and just plain learning through experience. Which I should have been doing last year. But to hell with that, I'll do it now and do well at it.

So here's three pages from today, mostly studies from people I think are pretty damn good and want to emulate. Needless to say, none of them are mine, and if you can identify them all, congratulations. Apparently you're me.

Eight Days

You know what's wild? I start school on the same day that 9 comes out in theatres. Totally can't wait for that. And the Ottawa Animation festival is coming up soon too, so I might get a chance to see Cordell Barker's new film, Runaway, and the release of the Astroboy movie a week after that.

It's a good time to be into animation.

But school's creeping up fast. Tonight was the last Sketch Night of the summer (they don't happen during the school year), and tomorrow will be my last Wednesday night life drawing for a while. Gonna be a whole new kettle o' Pisces, starting in a little over a week.

Only one pic for you today, a bone beast girl I made up tonight. Her name is Darla, ain't she sweet?

Chop Socky

Ran across this wonderful post over at Scans Daily today, and got inspired to go look for some of that awesome 70's martial art film action. You know the stuff, awesome fighting, total crap translating and acting, slight pretense at plot. So I wandered over the YouTube in my search, and they had the entirety of Master of the Flying Guillotine. Awesome! Had a blast this afternoon watching it, and I might just do the same thing with Fist of the White Lotus tomorrow.

Because, y'know, embroidery-style martial arts rule.

Only one page today, a bit of fanart of Auhula, apprentice hippogryph master at Forest Song in World of Warcraft (and thus (c) Blizzard Entertainment).

She's not playable. She has no lines. And yet, I'm a fan.

Go figure.

This guy are sick

Not really a lot to say tonight. One more life drawing class at Sandy Hill before school starts again, I'll have enough to do after that. Besides, I'll get a four-hour block of it every Monday afternoon, so I figure I'll be good.

Finally found out when orientation for the Animation program is (Monday), and immediately decided not to go. For one thing, it's largely aimed at students new to the college, and college in general, while I've been at Algonquin a year already and this is my fourth run at post-secondary eduction. So I'm pretty familiar with it all. But the more important factor was that students attending the orientation have to attend two breakout sessions. And on my personal scale, "breakout" and "fun" are at opposite ends. So no thanks.

Anyhow, I'm just hoping for my student loan papers to come tomorrow, so I can run in on Friday and get them signed and otherwise taken care of. I'll need to update my student ID anyhow, and put some food money on it anyhow (if you use it like a cafeteria debit card, you get 5% off everything). So it's worth the trip. I've already got my locker paid for and the lock on it, so at least that's one fiddly little errand taken care of.

So in any case, here's my daily Preston Blair stuff and this week's life drawing. I especially like the attitude in the last one.

Endangered Species

Took the day off yesterday, but it's back on the horse again today. As I'm sure you can see, looking below. One interesting thing though, I went back through my day planner to see just how many pages of just gesture drawings I've done over the summer. That's only the 30 and 60 second speed drawings, a few of which I've posted here and there, but most of which are just disposable practice. Here and gone. What surprised me though, was the volume.

325 pages. Most of those with five to seven drawings each. In less than four months. Holy crap.

I'm beginning to believe it when people say I'm dedicated. The scary part is, I'm going to have to exceed that once I start classes in September. I've made a lot of progress already, now imagine where I'll be after 8 more months of even more intense work.

In the meantime, here's some more Preston Blair studies.




So I play World of Warcraft, and it's a lot of fun. Especially given the improvements that have been made over the years the game has been around (can't wait for Cataclysm!). Anyhow, I saw this awesome Draenei (aka Russian Space Goat) NPC, and I totally felt the need to draw her.

Well, I ended up drawing a totally different Draenei girl. But hey, it's all good!


Draenei are (c) Blizzard Entertainment, in case you're wondering.

Yum yum

If you're a fan of comic art at all, then the fact that Pierre Alary has been posting pages from his upcoming adaption of Moby Dick lately. You can go check it out at his blog.

Tried baking bread in the crockpot today, results were pretty decent and it didn't heat the kitchen up like regular bread baking, but I dunno. Seems a lot of trouble to go through for the result you get. I'll probably just continue to bake bread the usual way as winter comes on. The process I use gets good results, and in many ways it's a meditative exercise. I'd hate to miss out on that benefit just for the sake of putting something in the crock.

For art today, it's something a bit unusual. My boyfriend's birthday was last month, and seeing as I've got no money to speak of this summer it was rather a challenge to decide what to do for him. Well, he conveniently made an open challenge around that time to make an anthro version of the gunships from the game Half Life 2. This is what they look like, so you can see it was a bit of a challenge. Well, it took a few weeks, but I finally managed to get my skill up to the point where I could create something that more or less looked like what I imagined. Hopefully, he'll like it.

Good news, everyone!

Well, just me. My student loan was approved today! Yippee!! I can breathe again! Given school starts on the 9th, I was getting a wee bit concerned. Now all I have to do is wait for the paperwork, take care of things with the school and I'm all set for the fall.

Biiiig relief.

Here, have something cute. More Preston Blair, blah blah.



And as promised, nekkid laydeez! Would you believe these are the same model?

One week

Not really new art this time, but I realized that one of this week's Sketch Night pieces was based on the same Dean Yeagle sketch I worked from last week. So I thought I'd do a quick side-by-side.

That's a big difference for only one week. I wonder where I'll be a week from now?


I also want to share this great animation by Jackie Lay of Tom Waits' Eggs and Sausage. I loves me some Tom Waits, yum.

Eggs and Sausage from Jackie Lay on Vimeo.

Ponyo!!

So a bunch of us went to see Ponyo tonight, and it was great! As expected of Miyazaki, of course, but it was great to see his work on the (relatively) big screen again. Well worth watching if you like family films at all, although it doesn't have the deeper themes of stuff like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke. It was more like a fond call-back to the simple, sweet stories he'd done in the past, like My Neighbour Totoro.

It was also the first time the bunch of us who became friends back in Pre-Animation had gotten together since the wrap party at my place. Pity Kris didn't make it, though.


So as usual, Preston Blair studies. Only one page today.


Sketch Night at the school tonight. So I applied my new style to a piece from a Dean Weagle sketchbook and one from another book the artist of which I can't recall. I'm really getting to like this, and I'm learning all sorts of things I didn't expect.



Beware the NUNJA!!

Silently kicking ass for the LORD!

Yeah, someone came up with the name, and I had to draw it. Sue me, why don't'cha?

The meaning of the fast progress

I dunno what it is with me these days, but I've kinda gone a bit crock pot nuts. I guess a big part of that is finding this site with enough slow cooking recipies to keep me going for ages. I've already made shepherd's pie, tamale pie, Spanish rice cassarole, sausage with potatoes and spiced potato wedges, and I've got plans to try baking bread and checking out the rotisserie-style chicken recipe. Certainly I can't fault the quality, it's all been fantastic and no more difficult than any other dish. Less, I suppose, since there's a lot less prep and fussing involved for a lot of dishes. Even better, the energy costs are way less than the oven, and it doesn't heat up the house. Win-win-win, I say.

If you've got a crock in the house you haven't used, pull it out, there's so much you can do with it. Hmmm....a hummus recipie....

Er, yeah. Pictures. That's what you're here for, yes?

So the first couple of pages are more Preston Blair studies, mostly head shapes. I'm still trying to get the hang of drawing an egg shape that's not just an oval, but I guess it'll come in time. Then again, since it's mostly just a guideline it might not be terribly important. We'll see over the next few weeks.

After that, are a page of 60-second gestures I did this morning. I've started to feel like pushing realism away for now and start getting down and dirty with the anatomy. So we're talking bending stuff, twisting it, having all sorts of fun. Did those two sketches at the bottom there tonight, and they were an absolute ton o' fun. More tomorrow, with luck!

Things continue to be fun at Pastor Tom's All Night Whackaloon Warehouse and House of Pancakes, what with him generally melting down and tossing personal insults at anyone who ever looked at him funny, then bragging about how great Christianity is doing. Watching the clowns is always a fun pastime, but sometimes it's interesting to see what the adults are up to.

The adult this time is rather an interesting one. The Thomas Society, one of the rarest of rare breeds, an evangelical Christian who embraces doubt and actually interacts honestly with the world around him. He's well worth a read, so go check him out.

Oh, and Honest Tom hates him, so what better recommendation you gonna get?

Drawing today is a mixed bag. First is a couple of pages from last night's Sketch Night, drawn from any number of sources. The only one I remember for sure is some of the Dan Weagle sketchbooks, but who knows what all else is in there.



Next are studies from a couple of pages from Preston Blair's book, Cartoon Animation. Expect to see a lot like this over the next few days.


And finally, two pages from tonight's life drawing session at Sandy Hill. Haven't drawn a male model in ages, so it was a bit of a treat. I was a bit scared last week's successes were a fluke or something, but apparently I actually am getting better. Who knew?