Figurative Concepts: Final Class

"I attribute my success to this: I never took or gave any excuses."

- Florence Nightingale (via Nicolas P. Villarreal)

The final collection of drawings from my Figurative Concepts class:

And here are a few pages from the week before:

This was a great class.  It was nice to be able to look back at my work from Head Drawing and Clothed Figure Drawing (from my first semester in Fall 2009) and see how far I've come.  I hope I can carry the momentum and knowledge over to Fall's Clothed Figure 3 class...but I'm sure I'll completely forget it all over the summer.  If you don't use it, you lose it. :^\

Figurative Concepts Final

The final project for my Figurative Concepts class was to draw a clothed model.  Done it before (in Clothed Figure class), will probably have to do it again (in Clothed Figure 3 next semester).  I can't say I was too thrilled to have to do this--it probably didn't help matters that I stuck with the same reference photo shoot I had used before--and I have been itching for this semester to be over for some time, but I powered through and came up with something I like to call "Good enough."

Here's the final, matted work:

Meh.  "B" work, at best.  And Nicolas will know it, too.  Here's the reference photograph, taken by me back in 2009:

And here's the Animated GIF of Progress:

Let's Get Political?

We got to do two one-hour poses in Figurative Concepts this week, which I always find fun.  I'm a bit rusty with longer poses, so the focal point isn't as clear as it should be.  The model really liked them!  He even said I've got a future and that he wants to be in my comic book.  Not sure what comic that is...he also said that he looks like one of Moammar Gadhafi's men and added "No wonder they wanna kill him."  I laughed, as I assumed it to be a bit of topical humor.  Anywho, vine charcoal, 2B charcoal pencil, and smooth newsprint:

Character Design, Weeks 12, 13, & 14

Three weeks of in-class Character Design sketches:

Your age is showing...

For the last new assignment in my Character Design class, we had to show a character's age progression from toddler to child to adult to old person.  Since I've been busy with the maquette that I also have to do for that class, I didn't have much time to toy around with this assignment.  So I went with something simple and graphic, inspired once again by the awesome Aurore Damant.  I really enjoy her simple style and shorthand for anatomy.

 All drawn and colored in Photoshop based off of this quick sketch:

That's [Also] So Bouguereau!

Once more, my Figurative Concepts homework was to copy a master painting, and once more, I chose Bouguereau.  This time, however, we got to keep the clothes on.  [click here to see previous, nude attempt]  Unlike before, however, I really didn't have the time (or desire) that I had once had.

This time, I chose Bouguereau's Little Thief painting from 1900:

(She stole the pear, I guess.)

I believe I spent a little over 10 hours on this one, though not as consecutively as before.  I ended up with this:

Most of that time was spent on proportions (proportions, PROPORTIONS!), which I think are pretty much correct.  At least they were before I had to rush the value and started adding details/folds too soon and had to go back and try to adjust values without losing detail...and it just became a real mess.  Truly wish we were given more time on these things.  I mean, one week to draw 30 sketches in a park and then one week to copy a master painting?!?  Very frustrating.


Anywho, I again took pictures of the progress as I went along and compiled them into an animated GIF, for your viewing pleasure:

Figurative Concepts, Part 3: The Clothed Figure 3 Preview/Clothed Figure Drawing Flashback

The last five weeks of my Figurative Concepts class are dedicated to studying the clothed figure.  Knowing that I'm going to go through an entire fifteen weeks of clothed figure next semester (since I will be taking "Clothed Figure 3"), I can't help but feel a tad uninterested.  Let us not forget that I had also taken a clothed figure class my first semester here (called "Clothed Figure Drawing").  So, yeah, here are some more clothed figure drawings to add to that pile: