Recent Studies, Recent Art

Sorry for the lack of blog updates these past months! I decided early this year to focus my efforts on learning and creating more artwork to add to my portfolio, stores and Instagram pages. I’ve also been helping out an animator with an informational video on a tight deadline. I’ll talk more about that in an upcoming post.

In order to produce more personal work, I began to set some time limits for myself for each piece and, as a result, I became much more efficient and produced more work in a few months than I did in an entire year. I realized a lot of what slowed me down in the past was overthinking things. Don’t get me wrong, I occasionally still do but I’ve been trying my best to push past it. I totally get that ubiquitous t-shirt phrase, Don’t Overthink It.

Letting go to draw whatever came to mind and trying out whatever style was also very freeing—I was coming up with ideas far more often. Too often, sometimes, but that’s a good thing, right? My main struggle these days is I have trouble trying to stick to a single subject matter and style because I love to explore. It would be nice to be recognized for my style. I’m not sure if I have one yet. Maybe one day.

Because I’m constantly trying to increase my knowledge of technique, I followed some tips I picked up from my Schoolism classes and I started to do more light studies, studies of animals, action poses and backgrounds. I began to notice improvement to my finished pieces which I’ll save for another post. I felt like I was able to produce them a little more easily than I had in the past. Although I was pleased at how some of them turned out I know there will always be room for growth. I did start to think: Wow, did I really do that? There was a time when I would make numerous studies and still feel like I wasn’t advancing. I was embarrassed to share them so often I didn’t. To me they weren’t good enough—I made the mistake of comparing myself to others. We are often hardest on ourselves, right? I’ve since changed my perspective and instead try to learn from those artists I admire. Below are some of the studies I’ve been doing this year.

Light Studies:


Exploration of Shapes, Expressions and Line of Action :

Landscape Studies From Photos and Paintings:

Animal Studies:

Thanks for looking!

Schoolism - Gesture Drawing Week 3

This post is a little delayed because I took some time off during the Toronto Film Festival. The film festival is a lot of fun, particularly the Midnight Madness portion, but can be a little exhausting with a lot of late nights!

Week 3 was all about creating strong readable silhouettes. For the first assignment we went through timed poses of 1 minute each which seemed a luxury after the previous assignment's 30 second poses. That is, until I realized that a lot of the poses would not make strong silhouettes without some modification, and it often took me a few tries to get it right. I admit that I often went over the allotted time which was a little frustrating. Regardless of my failures, the bright side is that I am drawing much more and so many more poses that I feel that I'm learning at a faster rate.

For the second assignment, we created silhouettes from either 10 photos, movies or pieces of art. I chose to do a couple more because I was having so much fun. I really enjoyed learning from these, especially Joe Quesada's Daredevil and Avatar's Korra. It's hard not to be motivated with such interesting and dynamic poses!

The final assignment was more café sketching but this time using silhouettes. Because of my upcoming project involving a cat and because I've been a little under the weather this past week, I chose instead to draw my little honey-bun, Dax. :)


Schoolism

I signed up for Schoolism art classes that I hope will help me improve and grow as an artist. I'm going to post some of my completed assignments but because these are paid courses I can't go into great detail about them but I hope you get some sense out of my description.

I decided to start with Art Fundamentals with Thomas Fluharty because he's an amazing artist and I felt that it would be a good refresher course. I am also planning on taking his oil painting class later on. 

Below are my completed assignments from last week, Week 1, on the subject of Seeing. The original images were in colour and I drew and painted greyscale versions. I tried to get as close to the originals as I could. It was certainly tough with all those details! For the giraffe, we were also encouraged to add in a painted background. I kept mine loose so that I would have enough time to start Week 2 lessons. 

A comic cover in progress

The humidity has driven me indoors this weekend so I've taken to working on some art obligations.  One of them is for a friend's cover (The Body of Nadia Shakir). I recently got a new Cintiq and there is a bit of a learning curve. I was delighted to discover a felt-tip nib which made drawing feel a little closer to the real paper and pen experience than just a stick on glass. Anyhoo, below is the image I'm working on. This will be my first solo cover. I hope I don't mess it up. Wish me luck!  o_O

Dog portrait: step

While taking some time off to attend the Toronto International Film Festival, I had some time to work on the dog portrait and thought I'd share a close-up of the face. At this stage, I've started to add in the details and once I'm satisfied with the general direction and shape of the fur, I will soften some areas while leaving some with higher detail.

On another note, I've been painting a skeleton while waiting in line for the movies using Sketchbook Pro (iPad version).  I'll post it when it's finished.

Dog portrait: step 1

I've been commissioned to paint another dog portrait and this time the breed is a Collie-Samoyed mix. As I have a short time frame to complete the portrait, I've decided to try something I've read some artists employ in their process, and that is to create a model (yes, I know it sucks ) for the purpose of determining the best lighting and for my reference.  I've begun the rough underpainting in greyscale.

Sabrina close-up

A wet miserable day is perfect for painting.  Wish I didn't have to go eat now.  I'm so in the zone. :)

Sabrina - step 3 - paint

Before getting too involved in the details, I've laid in some flat colour with which to show the client. I've added the pillow colour and flooring on different layers so that I can make quick changes should the need arise.