A Little Tour of Haymans

I have my two classes in Haymans Hall, a brand new Illustration building at SCAD, Savannah that opened up at the start of this quarter. From what I hear, it is a major improvement on classroom space and work area for students.

I don't have a picture of the outside yet, but I have several of the inside and you can see why. It's a mixture of Pee-Wee's Playhouse meets contemporary art installation.

One of two walls of denim clothing.

Luscious lip paintings.

A mural of the first chair of the department whom the building is named after.

Last Friday, there was a Haymans open house where the public were welcome to see the building and attend live demonstrations by Illustration faculty.

Epic doodle wall.

Live model in Victorian attire.

Lots of children's books created by SCAD students on display.

A little panda family. One of several 3-d pieces made by students for children's books.

Drawing Assignment 1: Still Life- Travel

Let's go back in time for a moment to my first assignment for my Drawing for Illustrators class. The theme for the assignment is "travel" and my mission is to create a still life drawing with that theme...

One step before my thumbnails included a little brain storming sheet where I wrote down a a list of different travel items as well as traditional still life items. I combined those two to discover several possible concepts for my image. I go with the items at my disposal: my clothing, purse, bedroom furniture. Limited to those items, I narrowed down my options and started making thumbnails:

 

In my thumbnails, I arranged my belongings in different ways to represent different narratives and/or symbols. My professor makes a couple notes on some of my drawings, but we both agree that the last three thumbnails are the strongest compositions.

I go with the middle concept for its dynamic "drop":

Next, I replicated my thumbnail as best as possible with my photo reference:

The photo above is one of about 4 different photos I used for my final drawing:

Sexual Assault Awareness Poster Process

I'm entering a sexual assault awareness poster contest with a piece that has a heroic spin on it.

The line drawing was a little hard to see in the photo I took, so I give you first the color comps for my painting. I decided blue and red would best read as "hero", so I experimented with cooler and warmer versions. The bottom right seemed the best fit. Having the colors closer to primary red and blue seemed the most appropriate.

I'm working with gouache and start with a light wash over the figure. The wash puts a layer between you and the pencil lines so that they are less likely to rub off. Also, It benefits seeing the edges of the figure more clearly. I don't worry about the wash being uneven and having little blooms here and there since I have many more layers to go. Also, gouache lifts off the paper with water much more easily that watercolor, so I don't have to worry about areas being too dark in the areas of the figure receiving the most light.

With both the hair and the skin I work transparently. There are just a few highlights where I use opaque white paint.

I had the shirt "finished", but a wise classmate of mine pointed out the monotony and formlessness of the folds. I took new reference photos and started over. The shirt is the only place that I worked opaquely, which started out as a transparent painting might, but I used more paint and less water as I proceed with each layer. Once I got to a thick level of opaqueness, it was really tricky to add just the right amount of water that allowed me to blend in the new layer. Too much water and you remove all of the hard work you've done in previous layers, which I encountered frequently. I don't know how Harry Anderson did it.

Almost there! I just need to clean up the scan and add text.

SCAD Grad Week 2 and 3 Sketches

 

What you are seeing are all drawings from life. The top two sketches were done during my Drawing for Illustrators class on a little field trip to a local coffee shop. The bottom two are part of a homework assignment that called for 3 still lifes composed of 4 different objects. The still life on the right is made of a skewer, a piece of tape, foil, and Sculpey. Yep.

Here's the third still life.

Dances with Watercolor

Here's a nice juicy post for you! I've completed my black and white portrait assignment for Illustration Techniques. Here's a little bit about how I got there:

I have a couple scribbles even before this stage where I made stick figures that imitated some key moves in Fröst's Hillborg Clarinet Concerto performance.   When I had a better idea of where I was going with this ridiculous pose, I made the thumbnails above to try and capture the essence of Fröst. The second thumbnail had the most interesting composition and the noodley hands appealed to me. The more developed drawing just underneath was my last step before drawing directly onto my watercolor paper. At this point I had taken my reference photos and wanted to see how adding an effervescent streamer of symbolism would work with the more developed pose.

The sketch. The clarinet is no longer pointing down and there is some breathing room between the mouthpiece and right hand.

I put down a wash in the background to see the edges of my figure a little more easily. The head is fairly developed at this point. At the wise suggestion of my teacher, I brought the mouth down a notch in expressiveness. A good call there.

Here is how I worked the flesh areas. I first wet the entire area hand, then dropped a really light wash that covers everything but the areas I want to preserve as white. I can always go back in later if the whites end up being too bright, which they do. The technique I use most is laying down a light layer of watercolor when the paper is completely dry. Removing most of the moisture and pigment from my brush, I drag out the edges of the layer as it dries to make a gradual diffusion of the edges. This gives you more control than working wet in wet, but you really have to work fast.

Upper left: I'm checking out what it looks like to make my background a little darker. I like what I see. Upper right: As far as I know, I'm finished with the flesh and folds. I go in with gouache for the background. Lower left: everything is "done" except for brushing in the linework for the hair and clarinet. Lower right: After a class critique, I go in and make some areas of the shirt darker. I also go back and try to develop the face a little more to match the detail of the hands. I rub the paper raw, so I actually end up using some 4b pencil and white charcoal to help with the modeling of the face.

SCAD Grad Week 1: Shiny Stuff and Frosty Faces

I have completed week 1 of my graduate studies! The only time I remember being so involved in the art-making process was when I was in elementary school, dedicating many hours to the high priority of drawing all 150 Pokémon (Gotta draw 'em all!).

This is my first sketchbook page for my drawing class. The assignment was to draw 5 things made of different materials, so I rendered porcelain, fruit flesh, paper towel, metal, and human flesh. I'm always telling myself how important it is to practice drawing. Even knowing how powerful practice is as a musician, I never made an effort to draw regularly. Now I have no choice! That's probably a good thing.

You are looking at the visage of concert clarinetist extraordinaire, Martin Fröst. It is a caricature, but I'm hoping to get a little more extreme on my final piece. This assignment is a practice piece for my illustration techniques class where I am trying out a new line-work and realism combination technique before I dive into the final piece. I think I will use a dark grey for background and lineart instead of black to prevent any washing-out of the flesh rendering.

Eastward Beyond the Clouds

It has been an epic two days as I flew from California to Savannah, Georgia. The flight was smooth and with the stress of boarding the right plane at the layover behind me (I almost took a plane to Kansas), I made some sketches in my moleskine whilst above the clouds:

 A design next to my packing list. It may see further development.

Some quick line drawings of clouds I saw out my window.

A quaint crumpled napkin. 

More in store as orientation weekend at SCAD begins!