Week 7 - Framing

We watched a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's film Rear Window and then we made a storyboard for it with focus on framing. The windows often acted as frames within frames, making it more interesting.

Week 7 - Life drawing - painting

This week we did painting with acrylics.I like acrylics because of how you can layer them, but I've never worked with them this fast so I'm not really happy with my results.

 For the first two paintings we could only use two colours + white. I was using blue and yellow, but because I very smartly only prepared one brush by the end I was working with various shades of green. 

 Here I've also attempted a bit of a background, but maybe I should've spent that time on fixing anatomical mistakes. 

 For the last two paintings we could use more colours. I've picked violet and blue for shadows, ochre for light areas and I've tried to do the midtones with some kind of reddish-pinkish accident of a colour but gave up on that plan after about three brush strokes. I thought using more colours would make it easier, but it just slowed me down.

I feel like I've had a lot more control over what I was doing. Not necessarily meaning it's better, but I was feeling a bit less stressed and my work was a lot less chaotic. I know that we don't have to draw the foot when she's sitting like this and can only focus on her back and I also know that I always get the foot wrong but I am determined to try it till I get it right. 

In general I think that I sometimes freak out too much about not having enough time and I chaotically try to get as much done as possible and then I have to go back and fix everything because I've screwed up. I've also noticed that I tend to squish her a bit, for example in the first painting. 

Week 6 Homework - Lighting and chroma keying

We did this together with Karolina. At first we had some trouble setting up the lights and getting everything to work together, but we figured it out (mostly). We wanted to play around with the lights a bit, there ended up being too much light on the green screen making it hard to key out later, but I'm sure it could've been worse. 

Link to video

Here's the edited version. It's not very good, but at least now I have some experience with the software. 

Link to video

Week 6 Homework - Cafe drawing

This week our homework was cafe drawing...or any speed drawing of people really. I was both happy and worried about this because I always feel so awkward drawing in public spaces, but I know that I can only improve if I practice and if this wasn't for homework I just wouldn't push myself to do it. I do like some of these, but I think I draw too many unnecessary lines and that slows me down. 

Week 6 - Life drawing - tonal drawings

We've started this lesson with 5 quick drawings, then we did two 5min drawings which we were supposed to create using only/mostly tones, not lines. After that we focused on tonal drawings. I think the works from this lesson are amongst the worst of my works. They are not all horrible, but they are not exceptionally good either.

 This one was supposed to only use black and white, no midtones (at least that's how I understood it). This one is a disaster. It doesn't fit proportionally...at all.

 This one is a bit better I think. I've tried to exaggerate the shadows and lights even more than in the last drawing. I kind of like how contrasting it looks. 

 This one was done with hard pastels and it's a complete fail. It's all just scribbled, I didn't really know how to work with them so shading is just not happening. The proportions are all wrong, I don't even know what is the worst part. It looks like I was on three kinds of drugs, definitely not my best work.

This one is a bit better but I could've chosen more contrasting colours because now the difference between light and dark is almost lost.

 I'm not very satisfied with this one either. I should've started with darker shadows so I wouldn't have had to go back to them so many times. The proportions could've been worse considering that I couldn't erase the sketch, but I wouldn't consider it a very good drawing/painting. 

Pixilation beat board

For the pixilation project I will be working with Karolina. We have already agreed on a story and this should be our beat board. It shows the key moments in our story, the theme of which will be an apocalypse.

 The first 8 frames are the beginning, they show the preparations (order may change later on). The following 6 frames are the middle. There are less frames than in the beginning, but the scenes will last longer so it should all be in balance. The last two frames are the end - where everybody's dead. 

We plan on shooting the whole thing in our hometown during the christmas break as we know the locations there better

Me:

Karolina:

1,4-me, 2,3-Karolina

Week 5 Homework - subtractive tone self portrait

This week our homework was to make 5 subtractive tone self portraits - 3 portraits and 2 whole body drawings. 

As advised, I've tried playing with some facial expressions and got some very creepy results. 

 For the first drawing I've hung the light above me and went for rather neutral expression. I like the overall look of it, but I can also see that the eyes are uneven and a little too big, the nose is too narrow and the shadows around the eyes are too sharp. 

 Here I've had the light on my knees which made everything so much more difficult because it was moving constantly and changing the shadows. Also smiling like this for around 30 minutes is not easy either. I like this less than the first one, I feel like I could've done a much better job. It's not very proportional, one cheek is higher than the other, eyes are too big again and it all looks kind of poorly done.

 My favourite part here is probably the mouth, though it is not placed correctly. My left eye is too low I think and at a wrong angle. I honestly hope I don't really look like this.

 These two were a bit of a problem since I don't have a big mirror, but I've figured out how to make it work. This first one is me sitting on my bedside table. The hardest part was drawing my left hand because it kept moving as I was drawing with it and so the shadows and negative spaces were always changing. I think this is maybe better than the portraits because I wasn't focusing on so many details. 

This one has a lot more anatomical errors than the previous one in my opinion. Again, drawing my left arm was very difficult. But I think the shadow on my right leg turned out quite good. 

I have some mixed feelings about this exercise. On one hand, these were actually a lot of fun to draw, on the other hand, the results are not all that good. I'm still not used to this way of drawing. My favourite ones are the first portrait and the sitting one. I definitely still have a lot of room for improvement.

Bristol zoo trip

Sketches from the Bristol zoo trip.

Week 5 - Leaf

This week we had to animate a leaf blowing in the wind. I've started my animation with the leaf on the ground because I thought it would be interesting to see it just kind of shuffle on the ground before being picked up by wind. I've coloured one side of the leaf so it's clear that it's turning and twisting because otherwise it might go unnoticed as the leaf moves pretty fast.
Here are some sketches I've made for the trajectory and movement of the leaf.

I've tried to focus on timing and make the leaf speed up/slow down at the right moments. The slowest parts are at the tops of the loops, after those the leaf picks up speed and it almost stops at two points (It was supposed to boil for longer but it looked kind of like the animation got stuck so I've decided shorter boil is better than wrong looking boil).
This was fun even though sometimes I didn't really  know how to twist the leaf the way I want to. I can't say I'm not happy with how this turned out, but I'm sure I could've done better.

Week 5 - Life drawing - subtractive tone

This week we focused on light and shadow. We covered the paper in charcoal and then erased the lightest areas, added the darkest areas, ... I've never done a tonal drawing this way so this was new and challenging for me. I feel like these were definitely some of my weaker works.

 The first obvious problem here is the composition. The figure doesn't fit on the paper and the proportions are all wrong too. I guess I've ignored accuracy while trying to focus on getting the light right. I'm also aware that I wasn't really drawing the figure as a whole which was probably the main reason for the disproportionality. 

 While working on this I felt like it was going pretty well but now I'm not so sure. The shadows could've been darker and there are almost no midtones, making it look flat. 

This was the last, 20min drawing. Aside from the rushed background I think it turned out ok. Still a lot of things to improve, but at least the proportions are better than in the first one. 

Week 4 Homework - The Accountant

This week for homework we had to design a set with the title "The accountant". I knew right away I didn't want to do just a normal office. I've considered several ideas and settled on the hell's accountant office which contrasts Karolina's heaven's accountant. 

I wanted the office to look more luxurious rather than just dark and scary because if someone has golden floor in their office it's definitely demons. 

I really enjoyed this homework, it was fun coming up with a set and even though I'm sure I could  add a lot more details if I spent more time on it I'm quite happy with how it turned out. 

wall candle holders

 the accountant's hellhound