Week 9(2) - Hive

During the last lesson we made maze books and went sketching to the Hive. I'm still not completely comfortable drawing in public, which makes it hard to focus sometimes, but I'm getting used to it. I mostly focused on people in the library, but I have some sketches of other things as well.

In general, I don't think that my sketches from this lesson were very successful.

The person disappeared before I could get any more done.

I wanted to draw the ceiling, but something went wrong in both attempts,

I tried to draw the silver shape, it wasn't going too badly, but I think I should've just left it as line drawing instead of trying to quickly shade it because it doesn't look very good.

Week 8(2) - Riverwalk and recompositing nature

This week we went sketching around the river. I was trying to look for some interesting compositions that could be improved by adding elements, but I also sketched things that simply caught my interest somehow. I enjoyed combining different elements into one drawing, but now that I'm thinking about it, I could've used colour in at least one of them.

I drew some thumbnails of what I wanted to draw. I ended up changing some things that just weren't working as I'd imagined.

I liked the staircase as it was, but figured it could look interesting with some kind of gate. Then I came across these things on the railing and used them as a sort of a gate. I think i should've placed the posts a bit differently because like this they don't really line up with the staircase, which makes it obvious that they were originally not there. My main goal was just to make it look more interesting, but it would've been nice if it looked believable. Maybe it would help if there were some visible shadows. 

I thought the wall with the wires on top and spiky things above the door looked a bit fortress like, so I added some pillar ruins on top and added a chain that I found on a railing somewhere. I also removed a trash can because it was ruining the fortress atmosphere. 

This one is probably my least favourite of the four. I didn't think about it as much as the others, but it's the only one that could look like it wasn't altered. 

This one is my favourite. At first I was afraid I'd gone a bit overboard, but when I saw the cathedral tower sticking out above roofs I just immediately thought about how it could be sticking out of the river. I've used continuous line, though I did a quick sketch of what is going to be where beforehand because I didn't want to risk drawing it without planning. 

Week 7(2) -

We started the lesson with some quick warm up sketches. I feel like I'm getting a bit better at capturing the pose even in a short time.

Here we drew the model 3 times from 3 different angles. It was very confusing at times, I didn't always know how exactly what I'm drawing looks like because it was mixed with the other drawings, but it was an interesting exercise. 

For the last two drawings I decided to work with coloured pencils, because I wanted to work in colour and work on shading. The first drawing didn't turn out too well. There are some relatively good parts, I think the legs are kind of good, but then the head is completely wrong. It is wrong proportionally, I don't think it's even positioned right, but because coloured pencils are hard to erase I could only try to draw over it to correct it, but even if I got it right at some point, it is now lost in the mess of lines. 

The second one is definitely better. There are still a lot of things that could use fixing, but at least it looks almost finished.

Week 6(2) Independent study - movement

For this week's homework we had to draw 4 movements.

For primary reference I watched my friend put things on her shelf. I've noticed that I often draw different poses in different height, making it look like the figure is jumping or something so I should probably work on keeping the drawings in line.

For the second drawing I wanted something a bit more challenging so I asked my friend to climb on the desk and jump off a couple times so I could try drawing that. Some of the poses look quite good, but I think the jumping itself is not very dynamic.

For secondary reference I first chose a video of my cat playing with something. That proved to be just way too fast to capture, so I tried slowing it down a bit, but it was still too fast. I tried drawing it anyway, but I feel like it was way above my skill level. 

The second drawing is part of a contemporary dance video and it was slightly less difficult than the cat, but I still struggled a lot. Next time I should probably pick something simpler to start with, even though I did manage to draw both the cat and the dance. 

Week 6(2) - Drawing movement

First we did some quick warm up sketches. I think I'm actually getting a bit better at these.

I did't know if I'd be able to catch the poses while the model is moving, but I've managed. I felt like I was overworking the drawings so I did two very quick sketches of some transition poses.

 

I couldn't see the whole line of movement because of how my easel was turned, but I drew what I could see. I found this very difficult because the poses were changing all the time and I had to work very fast, but I think I've managed to get a good result, at least for a first attempt. I've noticed that I tend to keep working on a drawing even when it sufficiently shows the pose and that can make it look static.

This was, in my opinion, my most successful movement drawing. It captures the important poses and there aren't too many unnecessary lines so it looks dynamic.

For the extended poses I've decided to focus on some details first. Because we were doing quick drawings before I was still trying to work as fast as possible and I had to go get another paper. I did some continuous line drawings and a silhouette.

                                   

For the next extended drawing I slowed down a bit. I tried to only use blocks of colour and as few lines as possible. I'm not very satisfied with this drawing, the foreshadowing seems off, some parts are shaded completely differently than others and as a whole it just doesn't look like a good drawing to me. At the end I did a detail of her hand.

Week 5(2) Independent study

This week our homework was to use the techniques we used in class. 

For the continuous line I drew my room. I slightly squished some things to get as wide an angle as possible. It doesn't look very three dimensional because I kind of forgot to draw the corner as a corner, but there are some parts that I like.

The other picture I drew from a photograph of me sitting on a rock. I thought the group of rocks would work well for this as they clearly indicate foreground, background and middle, but the figure is a bit lost in it all. I probably should've distinguished it more from its surroundings. I like how the charcoal creates a sort of natural rock texture, though.

Week 5(2) - 3 dimensional form

This week we focused on depicting 3 dimensionality with light and shadow. 

We started with two continuous line drawings of the whole space. I don't like how the first drawing turned out composition wise. Half of the room is not even in the picture and the other half is weird as well.

The second one is a bit better I think. I worked slower and took more time to look at where things were in relation to other things. 

The other 3 drawings are all on toned paper. We weren't supposed to use lines at all, only blocks of dark and light, which is always very difficult for me. I don't like working on shadows first, then midtones and then light because usually I kind of work on all three in turns and dedicating specific amount of time to just one at a time doesn't really work for me. 

I feel like the transition between light and shadow is too harsh here, even though there were parts where they really were like that I should've blended them better to make it look more natural.

Week 4(2) Independant study - Experimental image making

This week's homework was using the textures we made in class for more experimental images. 

Just like in the lesson, I looked for parts of the texture that already had at least partly the shape I was looking for. I wasn't really sure what I was doing, so I just did what came to my mind first and then played with it a bit. 

I ended up with Mel being attacked by giant birds and Mel riding a kiwi because honestly, they look like you could ride them if they were bigger.

Week 4(2) - Experimental image making

First thing we did was make some texture papers with acrylics and charcoal, which we then used later. 

Drawing animals was a nice change, even though having more objects to draw is always a bit challenging.

This one was a continuous line drawing and even though the proportions aren't right and things overlap even when they shouldn't I like the overall look of it. I think I'm slowly learning to accept that some drawings are just not meant to be perfect.

The last drawing was very experimental. We used the textures we made before and used them in combination with dry media. I tried to find shapes in the textures that already resembled the shapes of the animals and use those instead of sketching the animals at some random place on the paper. I also found a part that looked a bit like hair outline so I used that too. I wasn't really sure what I was doing but the result is kind of good. 

Week 3(2) Independent study - atmospheric drawings

For homework we were supposed to make 4 drawings with scary or dramatic atmosphere. I didn't want to focus on details, but rather the overall atmosphere of the piece because what I think often makes things scary is an element of unknown and I wanted to achieve that by including as little detail as possible without making the drawings indecipherable. 

My first drawing is of a window at the cathedral. I'm not very happy with how it turned out, but I wanted to see what it would look like without smudging the charcoal.

The second drawing is a building I can see from my window. I wanted to try not smudging the charcoal one more time. It does have a bit of a grainy, blurry old photograph feel to it, but it wasn't the effect I was looking for.

The next one is the train bridge. I liked the reflection of the lamps on the wet ground and how the inside of the arcs is the only thing that is illuminated. 

The last one is just a street and some lamps. Again, I liked the reflections on the ground. Obviously, I could see the surrounding houses, but I thought it would look more dramatic if only the lamps alongside the road were visible.