Mother Dearest,

Guess what I've been doing since 4:15am!  No, not sleeping--that stuff's for non-grad students.  Since I didn't have the focus to accomplish my Figurative Concepts homework yesterday, apparently my sub-conscience decided to reschedule the task.  After tossing and turning for about an hour and a half, I finally just got up and drew a portrait.  What a way to start a day!

So, the assignment was to draw a portrait of a friend or family member.  Family to the rescue!  The Georgia wing of my empire banned together, set-up their own lighting, and photographed each other.  I've only had the time and motivation to do one so far, but more may come as I find time.  I do enjoy the process and always see the need for improvement.  In any case, I present to you, my Mother:

Photograph © 2011 Tiffanie Wright. Used with permission.
Lighting by Dave Lowe.

Character Design, Week 7

In this week's Character Design class, we took a field trip to Africa!


...in our minds!

Seriously, though, the model--who was African-American--went all tribal on us with a cool fur/hide outfit and spears and bowls and baskets and all that other stuff that we associate with that wild, wild place called Africa.  It was like National Geographic in that room!

Hmm...just realizing that I really need a cheetah in there somewhere...

Inspiration: Aurore Damant Edition

This week's Character Design homework was the last one where we had to copy the style of an established artist.  While Mr. Buffington gave us free reign with our artist choice, I decided to head deeper down the cartoony rabbit hole and went with Aurore Damant.  Aurore lives in Paris and works as an illustrator and character designer (she worked on Amy Poehler's "The Mighty B!" series).  Very cartoony designs.  I was so inspired by her illustration work that I went all out with my three full figure drawings and colored them in Photoshop!  I think they turned out alright.

The previous week's artist was Colin Jack.  I really enjoyed his sketchy approach to rendering.  Apparently he actually does all his digital work in Sketchbook Pro, which is a program I recently purchased through the Mac App Store AND LOVE!  I didn't have the time, though, to really explore his style like I would've liked to.  Regardless, here are a few pieces from last week:

My Political Cartoon

On Thursday, I was on the school bus heading to class, and the bus comes to a dead halt at Market Street.  Why?  Because a group of people rallied a protest march (I couldn't see over what) and traffic was stopped.  The whole thing lasted an eternal four (4!) minutes.  The bright side?  I got to class an conjured this doodle:

Sharpie Pen and brush pen, with some warm grey Prismacolor markers for value.

A Return to Form (Shadows)

I loves me some classical drawing.  There, I said it!  After five weeks of nude figure drawing, we have new course headings in my Figurative Concepts class and are now spending five weeks on portraits before five weeks of clothed figure.  And we're doing them the classical way via sfumato and such.  Like Da Vinci (no, not the code...well, kind of the code).  We are actually using the methods described best in the William Maughan book, The Artist's Complete Guide to Drawing the Head, with pastel pencils and the all-coveted Velvet Gray Paper.

My first semester at The Academy, I had Mark Tennant's Head Drawing class (check out his website--guy is amazing).  It kicked my butt.  Hard.  Especially the last five weeks with oil painting.  But it is probably the class that I learned the most in, certainly when applied to life drawing.  Now I rock out head proportions.  Hard.

That having been said, here is my pathetic attempt at a portrait drawing today.  Ugh...

Hopefully the next four weeks will be more in my favor.

Three Weeks of Character Design Sketches

Apparently my Character Design class consists of drawing a bunch of sexy chicks in cool outfits.  Needless to say, it is the Greatest. Class. Ever.

The last week was especially cool, because the model asked to take pictures of some of my drawings to post on her Flickr and Tumblr sites!  There's a new honor for me. :^)

That's So Bouguereau!

This week in Nicolas's Figurative Concepts class--and this is only week 4, mind you--the homework was to copy a Master painting with charcoal at 18 x 24".  (!)  Luckily for me (but most unfortunate for all those first semester students I am in the class with), I have had practice doing such things from my other Fine Arts classes.  Of course, those were just drawings, not paintings, and we often had multiple weeks to tackle the more difficult and elaborate ones...but yeah, so one week to copy a Master painting.  I went with Nicolas's favorite painter, William-Adolphe Bouguereau.  This guy could paint a foot that looks more realistic than your own foot.  And he did!  And it hangs in San Francisco's own Legion of Honor.

Anyway, I digress.  I chose Bouguereau's Elegy painting from 1899:

After spending somewhere between 11 and 12 hours on it throughout the week, here's what I ended up with:

Sorry the image looks warped around the edges.  We were to focus on the nude figure, which I did.  I had to render some of the background so that you could see the relative value between it and the figure itself.  Lots of nit-picky things that I'd change if I could do it over again or at least spend more time with it.  Still good enough to impress all those first semester kids in my class, though.  And really, that's what it's all about.

Also, just for fun, I took pictures of my work throughout the 11-12 hours to show my progress!  From a quick sketch to refining the edges to making corrections to redrawing to more corrections to more redrawing to rendering to rerendering, etc. until I have the final piece.  Enjoy!