The Lamborghini Gallardo

I'm glad to be back at RIT, especially as a senior.  It's already becoming an unforgeable year.  Just being able to see my friends every day, spend time with my girlfriend, and live with my 'bros' for one more year makes this year the most exciting.  When I think about high school senior year, I don't remember myself working on projects for art class at all.  All I remember are the fencing practices and art club meetings and just having fun.  So I should probably try to do more of that.

My arm hasn't changed but I saw Cortland's very best Dr. David Boyland today.  Without a doubt, he says that all of my arm problems are caused by my lower back weakness and that I can avoid surgery if I can strengthen by back.  Of course that was encouraging so I will be implementing his specific training exercises for the next few weeks.  

  

The following is a product illustration for an advertisement.  This one took a VERY long time, but it taught me a lot about Photoshop painting.  I've always liked long, dragged out, challenging projects.  Those are the ones I improve from the most.   

Thanks for dropping by and feel free to leave any comments!

T-shirt Painting

Here's a commission that I've been working on over the last few weeks of summer. It's 100% photoshop painting.  I started making my own brushes and that's helped me paint the way I wanted.  The shield was created using the pen tool.  Thanks Professor Chad Grohman for giving me advise on Photoshop painting.  It helped a lot!

Now it's time to get it printed on the t-shirts.  I hope it comes out good!

Let me know what you guys think. Thanks!

The Zoo Murals

They really liked it!  We spent 23.5 hours at the zoo painting away at 2 5ft tall exhibitions at the Seneca Zoo from August 2nd to the 5th.  Shin Wakabayashi and I were stunned that we actually pulled it off in one week and now the zoo wrote a blog entry about us on their website! CHECK IT OUT!

Thanks also to Amber Gartung for stopping by and lending a hand!

                  

      

                  

Fencer 2

I wanted to try a tighter drawing with my opposite hand.  It's still a little shaky but it came out better than I expected. Thanks Jessica Crawford on the previous painting, I changed the lips up a little bit.  They WERE a bit scary. haha

Thanks everyone!

The Digital Fencer

I'm finally understanding digital painting.  I've been working in all sorts of traditional mediums for most of my life so far and switching to Photoshop painting is a bigger change than I expected.  It's when I stopped forcing it to work like I was painting with a paintbrush & water, using the many layer options,etc, and accepted the medium for what it was is when it started to look a whole lot better.  Traditional painting will always be my thing but I can't help but try some digital here and then.  

This is left-handed still.  My right arm is slowly coming back after 3 weeks of OT.  For some reason it's taking longer than usual for it to heal, according to doctors, but I was able to play some Badminton with it yesterday!  I probably shouldn't have but I'm not experiencing any bad repercussions from it so it must mean it's getting a lot better!

Below is the final and a close-up of the head.  And under that is the pencil drawing that I painted over.  

Let me know what you think and if you have any advice for me.  

Thanks!  

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New Experimental Work

I've been keeping myself busy with lots of drawing exercises and playing around.  The following are all experimental drawings except for the line drawing of a friend that I drew with an upside down reference.  

Thanks for dropping by. 

Strange shift of the brain?

I started reading, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards today.  So far, I've only read her theory and her research on the right side of the brain and I can already attest to how different each hemisphere is.  After a couple of months of drawing lefty, I noticed how I now skip many steps while drawing compared to how I drew with my right. I don't know for sure if the left hand uses my right side of the brain "better" but all I know is that my right brain is liking in more.  For example: when drawing portraits I usually would make light sketches of the round skull, the vertical line from forehead to neck, draw lines from ear to ear, perhaps a couple of lines from the ends of the nostrils to the ends of the mouth, etc.  From here I would do more and more value guessing and shape guessing until there was enough information on the page for me to really start.  But now, I just don't have the tolerance for all those steps and I just "go for it."  My methodology changed from "let's plan and take each step one at a time," to "let's get it right the first time!"  As a result, these portraits have never taken more than 2-3hrs.  So somehow my perfectionism has disappeared.  Now this could also be because of my sudden interest in blind contours in February or my timed bird-gesture-drawings-so I can't be sure.

The portraits so far have not had likeness successfully accomplished but I think that also is getting better with practice.  Perhaps a balance of my right and left hand drawing is necessary.  If you can guess who this guy is then I'll give you a......ehhh...idk......a....handshake! lol    

One More Portrait

Here's another one I did a couple of days ago.  I've been trying to make more of these lately but sometimes the left hand doesn't cooperate very well.  Keep practicing, thats' what Mr. Wakabayashi said. :)

4 Old Men

This summer, I'm just going to use my left hand only.  So after doing some blind contours, I attempted to do a couple of portraits in charcoal. They turned out better than I expected:

The Summer Has Begun

Alright, it’s summer!  The last summer of my life!-that is before college ends and the real world begins. 

So here’s my situation: I’m not going to be able to do much art this summer because of my tendinitis on my right arm.  Therefore, I’m going to focus on relearning to draw, and possibly paint, with my left hand.  This summer, I want to get prepared for next year’s graduation.  I want to hit the ground running!  So I plan to read up on a couple of marketing books as well. 

Once again, I’m going to use blogspot to track my progress.  This time, I will only post if I have made significant progress or improvement.  I dislike putting up bad work-so I won’t!   

Also, I’ll make a deal with you: if you comment on my blog, I will not hesitate to make comments on yours.  Please share your opinions and suggestions as I go.

Let’s get started shall we? 

The Final Spoonbill

 After another hour or so.

And then the finished piece.  ~6hrs in total.  By making all those gestures initially, it not only made the painting process faster, but I was able to emphasize the bird structure as it is about to flap it's wings.  

Starting a project

It's time I started a project.  I first selected the poses that I wanted to illustrate and then did a couple of 1minutes in pencil and 5mins with acrylic.  Then a 20min color study.  Now that I'm back in the mindset of gesture I chose the last bird to finalize.  

Here's 30 minutes of gesture and value painting on a 8x11" scale.  

And then 50 minutes of painting.  More to come tonight.

 The one on the top right is my first 15minute paintings.

I focused on the spoonbills only on the next page.  I painted the 1min gesture over and over until I was able to capture the most info within that time limit.  Eventually, I moved on to some 15min versions and a 20min.  The bottom right is my most successful bird so far.  

Wing Anatomy

It was time to study the wings.  The more I know the better I can draw them.  

I've had some confusion on the bone and muscle structure of the wings for some time now.  As you can see below, the arms do not attach to the outer lining of the wings when it's outstretched.  Instead, the humerus and radius/ulna are still slightly bent and there is a flap/ligament that connects from the shoulders to the "wrist" of the wing.

I think I found something!!!!

I learned so much today through these exercises.  Today was a good day.  The first few just didn't work out.

I started with 5minute gestures first.  Well, the 2 on the bottom worked but it was hard to get into the mindset.

So I went back to the 1 minute gesture drawings to get warmed up again.  #160 worked out well here.

Then I went back to the 5 minute gestures.  Still not so great. It's hard to get proportions correct while still trying to establish the force and gesture of the birds.

I took a break and came back later in the day.  I realized that every time I do this, I need to do 1minute gestures first, and then move on to the 5 minute.  This time, I decided to try something new!  A few weeks a go, my doctor told me that my right arm (my drawing arm) got tendinitis.  This was caused by me having to draw so much for college classes as well as fencing on the side.  It turns out that fencing and drawing uses the same exact muscles in the arm so therefore, those muscle became overused.  So I've been wearing a cast and that helps stop the consistent aching.  The only problem was that I could no longer draw.  Any activity that requires me to add pressure to the paper(which is most dry-media) will result in pain.  On the other hand, I found out that I can still paint, which is why all these studies are in acrylic.  Thanks to the bristles on the paintbrush there is practically no pressure/stress on my arm.

Besides that, while I was waiting for an appointment with the doctor, I decided to start training my left hand.  I guess I'll post some of those up here soon.  I was influence by artist such as Frank Frazetta who went through the same problem, tendinitis, at some point in his career and trained his left arm as well.

So what's the big deal?  Well, what if I drew in the proportions of my bird studies with my left hand before I paint them with my right hand.  I can't use a pencil with my right hand.  Otherwise, I would have just done it with my right hand.  Here they are!  I was able to draw the proportion lines and paint the gestures within the 1 minute time limit as well-I didn't think it was going to be that easy at first.

 After my 1 minute gestures, I moved on to the 5 minute one immediately.  I still have a lot to work on but this makes things a lot easier.

 And this is my favorite page so far.

More

More in the order I've done them from today. The first 2 are 5mins and the third is a 10min. 

 #25 worked out the best because I was able to capture the gesture in the limited time as well as get the proportions correct. It's absolutely difficult to do both.  

Slow Progress

 So today I started with gestures again.  I felt I needed to get into that mindset again.  After doing all these one minute gestures, I just started to see things quicker and apply it faster.  I felt that I had to paint my subject as soon as my eyes experienced it.  For example: When I look at a bird, the first initial second gives me the overall gesture.  So I paint the gesture line.  Then I look again and in another second, I see the next bit of information.  So I put that down and it continues till time runs out.

I then decided to explore my painting method once I was in this mindset .  My goal here is to start with the gesture and then create a full-value painting with that one dark color while still maintaining the overall gesture.  The time limit here is 5mins.   

And then just because I was impatient, I tried a ten minute.  I learned that I need to look into my line and brush stroke confidence.  

Anatomy

Next, I decided to look inside and find out what these birds are made of.  The following is a skeletal drawing based off of my research.  Like plenty of other animals, they're not too far off from the human skeleton.  If you were to cut off everything past your ribs and attach smaller versions of your legs to your spine, you'd be pretty close to a bird!
I never knew this but birds have an enormous sternum called a Keeled Sternum covering most of its chest/belly area.
The femur(upper leg bone) is partially visible from the outside but is mostly hidden within the body.
The wings looks very similar to arms except their humerus is shorter, and their metacarpals and phalanges are extended.

More Gesture Drawings

With the 1min time-limit I had, I tried to really focus on finding the most important lines.  These are much better than the rest. 

I stopped at 129 for now.  I'll need to do a lot more later.