GRAPHITE. Yeah, it's great.

In class drawing, 3hrs down, 3 to go.
Drawing final progress....

and that's about it for now :)

New School Stuff

In class drawing, black and white charcoal on toned paper, 6 hours. Head- upper right- is too big and bothering me, when I end up cutting this down to size I'll probably crop it out to a degree.

Drawing Class Final very much in progress, graphite on illustration board. Don't like what's going on on the right hand side of this section, so I still need to play around with it more (later on when I have more done I am going to play with cutting and tearing up the illustration board). This is one of those projects where there's going to be a good bit of permanent experimentation, so have to play it safe until a certain point....
Painting Class, yeah. Had to do 3 self portraits, could be different if we wanted, but I chose to stick it out with the same image. The one above, is done in oils and has a few things I want to fix up before turning it in. There are a couple sections that I really like on this one though, detail shots below.
I really love being able to get an object down clearly and well in a few simple brushstrokes. Impressionistic to a degree perhaps, but I feel I learn the most about color, light, and how they interact when I simplify everything into those few key shapes :) The durpy yellow dinosaur was a little over 10 brushstrokes I think, and is probably my favorite part of the whole painting XD

I am going to play with the tinfoil meteor a little more but the paper flames- wish I could paint things that looked like that more often!
^Acrylic version, uh, yeah........

^and digital.......

Let me just say that procrastination comes back with a vengeance and I am not at my best painting-wise at 4:00am.
After a full year at college I think I finally got the idea that procrastination=bad through my thick skull- started on drawing final right away and plan to keep pushing along on that and my other projects at a consistent rate in order to avoid a finals week from hell.
Speaking of learning things from school, this years been one hell of a ride. The funny thing about art though is that through learning none of it is solid facts, it's more like grappling intuitively to find the best composition, color scheme, idea, style, etc........nothing is set in stone which makes it easier and harder all at the same time. Definitely looking forward to next year and learning more, but there isn't going to be an art cut-off day so to speak when college ends next month. I'm planning on making summer just as challenging and I have to create a decent number of things for the art show in East Aurora. Then there's the side project Katie T. and I have going (still generating ideas mostly at this point and researching, hope to get some visual work going soon *crosses fingers*). That's about it for now though, should have lots of updates continually here from finals.

Minor update- classwork.

A few pieces for classes
2D essences- Snow Monkey, Horseshoe Crab, Armadillo, Secretary Bird, Komodo Dragon.


Part 1 of 2D Final (pencil rendering- hoopoe.)

Drawing (in class model):

and current drawing class hw- replicate a master drawing (I'm actually doing a lithograph- Delacroix's Mephisopheles flying over Wittenberg in graphite).

Blog?

Figured I'd give shot at the realm of blogs and create a new place to dump my art stuff. And other junk on occasion.
So yeah, today and yesterday three phenomenal artists came to visit CCAD. Eric Spray, Mark Sullivan and Brian Matyas gave a presentation Friday evening and today, they gave one demo apiece from 9 AM through 5 PM. It was exceedingly informational and inspiring and after dinner I promptly came back to my room and played in photoshop- using the techniques Brian Matyas used in his demo. Could be a lot cleaner and could use a lot more attention but it was fun to play around and loosen up.
Here's to hoping I actually update this regularly.