Beat board - Nullibicity

Week 4 - Digital painting

In preparation for this lesson we had to get some photos and sketches of Worcester. 

We turned one of the sketches into lineart and continued working on it in photoshop. This isn't my preferred method of digital painting, but it was fun to try something different. 

Here are some progress screenshots:

And the final result:

I used some textured brushes to make the stone look less smooth and played around with layer blend modes to give it the effect I wanted.

Then we drew one of the photos.I only traced the general outline and then continued as I normally would.

I started with basic colours taken from the original photo. 

I sampled the darks/midtones/highlights from the original photo, but I didn't like them so I adjusted them slightly.

This is the final result. I could've added more details, like wood grain and shaded the iron better.

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 3 - Brushes

This week we were making brushes out of drawings we've made. 

shapes/eyes

 hands/feet

 jagged/swirly

 wavy/straight

 messy/splatter

legs/arms

 stripes/spots

here are the resulting brushes:

 I like how the eyes have a kind of spiky/scaly effect. 

Then we were supposed to create a creature using these brushes. 

I've used mostly the eye brushes because with the right spacing they had a nice texture for some kind of reptile. 

I used some of the splatter brushes for the background to give it a bit of texture, but not too much so it wouldn't clash with the creature. 

I've used the eye brushes because as I've mentioned before, they have a spiky kind of effect. 

finished piece: 

 I've made another quick drawing using only one of the brushes. This version seems a bit more grounded in the background because I had more control over the position of it's front legs.

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.