Month: April 2014

Ok- so today I don’t have an artist- not that I couldn’t find one (Jon Foster– go check him out). I just haven’t had time all day to do any more research beyond ‘go look at his amazing stuff’; but I have been working in my figure drawing sketchbook today.

I’ve been having trouble filling pages in my sketchbook because I take to much time on each page- a friend of mine has suggested several times that I just set a timer. Today she said it like 15 times so I sheepishly agreed- largely because the end of the semester is rather quickly approaching and I’ve GOT to fill up my sketchbook.

So I did five 30 minute sketches today, and surprise surprise, putting the time limit on myself actually made me work faster… go figure… and I mean that in more than just- I had to stop when the timer went off- but I actually started putting down the shape and figure a lot faster because I had to get it done in a certain time limit.

What I learned today: If I want to get to be a better artist I need to time myself so that I am pressured to draw better and faster. Weird huh?

Well- here they are- the 5 from today.

They appear in the order I did them- as you can see the images improved in some ways as I went farther (in others not so much…) I also learned today (and this is something that became really obvious when I scanned them all in) I need to measure the head better- granted I wasn’t going for strict realism… but my heads are still WAY To big for the bodies. SO that’ll be something I’ll work on tomorrow.

‘night all

~Alicia
This one was hard because I didn’t know any artists that had a first or last name that started with E… so I did some research and discovered Erwin Madrid (here is a link to his blog, and here is one to his website)

Once again he is an artist with a LOT of variety in his portfolio- if you go to his website you’ll get to see that he’s worked on various movies, comic books, children’s books and he has a lot of his personal work on there. It is all really well done and totally dynamic.

So for today’s sketch- after searching through his website for a bit I found myself returning to this piece over and over again.

Not only was the art beautiful- but I really liked the narration of the piece- it’s the kind of image that makes you want to read the book that it is in. A few quick technical things that I really really like about this piece. First off is the perspective. He uses a dynamic 3 point perspective to move your eye from the primary focal point (the princess’s face) down into the village and then back up again into the tower. He is also another illustrator that uses simple shapes and value (light vs dark) to direct the eye and create the illusion of depth. Granted all artists use shapes and value to communicate in their work- but compare Madrid to Donato (who I shared yesterday) and you can totally see what I mean by using simple shapes. The princess here looks like a girl- and you can believe that she has form and structure despite the fact that the shapes used to make her are pretty flat.

My sketch was defiantly inspired by this picture- though while I was trying to incorporate his style, I let more of ‘me’ shine through as well. I don’t have a particular style necessarily- but I am learning that I have certain ways of putting down my lines and certain shapes my eyes are attracted to. It has been really cool to discover that- and in part it is because of this project.

I also was playing around a little more with the idea of visually developing the character- hence the facial expressions. Once again- I think I’ll come back to this sketch at a later date.

Until then-

~Alicia
No personal sketch tonight- as much as I would love to do a sketch imitating Donato’s work- I don’t have the time to even come close to getting it right. SO I’m just going to share my admiration for this artist. Perhaps sometime this summer I can attempt to imitate his way of drawing (or even painting).

SO on to the bit I have to say. Donato Giancola is one of my top 5 art heroes. I’m quite obsessed with the way he draws and paints and hope to some day come close to his level of expertise.

I discovered his art in part because of another obsession of mine. The Lord of the Rings (the books of course; I read them when I was 10 and have been in love with JRR Tolkien’s work ever since. Before you ask; yes I’m a Tolkien FANATIC (or snob as some have called me) and I thought the movies do a decent job of capturing Tolkien’s world. I’ll leave it there though- because I could rant for HOURS about all things Tolkien…) I’ve since discovered his repertoire of paintings is so much more encompassing than that of my favorite fantasy series.

The things I love about Donato’s work. He uses line spectacularly. By that I mean- he knows when and how to draw lines quickly to show movement and when to draw them slowly and deliberately to show strength. He puts down line weights so you can see clearly what is near and far- and naturally he does all of this within each character or element of his drawings. Below are his sketches- and you will be able to see quite clearly why I didn’t want to throw an imitation of my own together in the limited time I have for this blog.

In his paintings he builds on these amazing drawings to create these living pieces that use light and texture to show so much emotion. I cannot help but feel like there is a deeper story to each of his works.

I hope you enjoy this little post and check out more of his work!!

~Alicia
The illustrator I chose for today is Chhuy-ing. This woman is INCREDIBLY talented- I can only imagine how hard she has worked to obtain the level of skill that she has. (below is some of her art I took from her blog)

One of the things that I love about her is that she doesn’t have just one ‘style’- sure you can tell that the pictures that she has drawn are by her- but they look so different one to the next that it is hard to say that she draws all eyes or all figures in a certain way- instead she draws very much to fit whatever it is she is working on. I highly recommend checking out her blog.

So when I went to do my sketch based off her style I had a bit of difficulty- since she does so many things I kind of just looked through her gallery and her blog and drew something based off of how I felt afterwards. I used this photo from pinterest as reference; it was surprisingly difficult- what made a good photo did not necessarily make a good drawing- so I stylized and changed little things to make it look better as a drawing.

I inked the sketch tonight because my scanner seems to have difficulty picking up the pencil and I haven’t really liked the scans from the last two days.

Good night all;

~Alicia
It took me a bit of searching to decide on which artist to share with you today; but after going through many artists I love that have names that start with the letter B, Brittney Lee stood out to me the most.
I love this girl’s work! She has a very enchanting illustration style that I’ve found appealing for a long time. The first thing I’d ever seen from her was a portrait of the little Mermaid from Disney’s movie- done completely with flat shapes and paper! You can look at that piece if you click on this link. I instantly fell in love with her use of shape and layering. It is absolutely beautiful. (also she did costume designs for Frozen)

SO I decided to try to do a sketch using her style as an influence. I had to have some sort of content for my illustration- so I looked up one of my favorite french fairytalests (I’m claiming that as a real word). Madame Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. She wrote the original Beauty and the Beast- though not the one that became famous (that is a whole different story). I thought of doing figures from Beauty and the Beast- but I feel like it is WAY over done- so I found another story she wrote called ‘Aurore and Aimee’. I could not find a good English translation of it- the best I found is Here and appears to be a student translation of the story. The story is simple but seems like one that you could ‘break’ and have a lot of fun with in a retelling. I’m not writing a book- so I didn’t do that- I just drew the sisters from the story.

I wish I had more than an hour to spend on this (semester ends in 4 weeks- so most of that homework is taking priority over the blog at the moment- though I am trying to combine the two a bit). I think I got a lot more of Britteny’s style into the face of Aimee- although I think Aurore was the more successful design of the two. Like just about everything I’m going to be posting this month, I want to come back to these characters after finals and flush out the details better and maybe even bring them up to the level of color illustrations. One of the challenges I found in creating the two characters was getting them to look good and evil and also costuming! During the course of the story both girls end up becoming queens of different countries- so I tried to make their outfits correspond with both personal demeanor and country. I feel like Aimee’s dress should be far more decorative than it currently is… For sure will be revising these characters after finals.

Well that is it for today!

~Alicia
Ok- so I’m starting this really last minute. I’ve got to back up a little…
So- I’ve been threatening to start a new blog for my art for awhile now and I haven’t been able to ~~find~~ make the time to do so. Well my sister in law just started this challenge for April and I decided to look into it- and low and behold; it is kinda cool.
With finals looming I’ve decided to do a daily blog post going from A to Z for the month of April. For those who have never heard of the challenge their is a link on my side bar that will take you to the main page so you can read about it.

I’ve decided to tackle this challenge with an artist and a sketch reflecting that artist each day- assuming I can find an artist I like that starts with that letter. If I cannot or do not have time to research an artist I’ll just post a sketch. Which is what I’m going to do today… since it is nearly midnight and I’m just now sitting down to write out this blog post. So I’m being lame today and just using ‘ART’ as my entry. Since that is what this blog in general (beyond the challenge) will be about… well I figure that it’s a safe place to start. Tomorrow I’ll be more prepared and less last minute.

Also- here is my sketch for the day- it’s actually an older one (a month old) taken from my figure studies sketchbook.

Until tomorrow! (also I promise this will not be as disjointed tomorrow as it was today!)
~Alicia