Imaginism Workshop Day 6

Today was our  first day off, as well as the first day warmer than 65 degrees. I was pretty thankful on both accounts. Though, we still spent a sizeable amount of time drawing cubes!

Thierry took us all to a Canadian State Park (I guess it would technically be a Provincial Park) along a river with a bunch of hiking trails, forests, and waterfalls. This was a fantastic opportunity to gather foliage and terrain reference photo's as well as finding textures to incorporate into digital painting brushes. 

What a bizarre folke tail. I'd like to turn it into a comic or a series one day.

Do you see the wizard?

We then went to a really unique shaped beach  where everyone else seemed to be 10 times more tan and attractive than me. 

To serve my own ends, I've cropped pretty people out of this photo.

Lastly, my Art of Book of the day was: "My Nieghbor Totoro." This is a fantastic book that I plan on including in my collection one day. There are some really interesting bits where Miyazaki describes the methods of reverse painting on the cells. I often forget that this movie was made before the dawn of super technological animation. The storyboard water colors in this book are also beautiful. You can tell that these guys were masters at composing a shot. Every visual idea is very clear and very well organized.

Imaginism Workshop- Day 2

Today was our last day with Bobby and Kei at the workshop house in Montreal, so we made the most of it.

The first 4 hrs of our day was spent learning about the business of art, running a studio and stories successful artists. Basically they all boil down to the same thing.  Work hard. Work really really hard. And, never burn bridges. Karma is a bitch.

We spent the second half of the day learning foundations. We started with thinking structurally, and then lighting. Bobby then taught an easy way to think about drapery and what it says about the structure under it. Lastly, we put the two together by lighting drapery.

Unfortunately, there isn~t  much to show you guys for today, but we did go to a fantastically tacky restaurant for a farewell dinner. We ate in an ice cave!

Ice Cave!

With a fountain!

The Tables were mirrors

I discovered poutine. We need to bring this to the states.

Tao's desert

Paul bought us all ice cream with fireworks.

Imaginism Workshop Day 1

Today. Bobby gave an awesome 3 hr talk covering the history, present status, and future of the art industry, as well as strategies for going viral.

Afterwards, we started learning photoshop. None of us here are photoshop experts, so this was a very valueable lesson. The instruction was very intuitive and easy to follow.

Personally, I~ve always been intimidated by the program because of the steep learning curve. I~ve always used Sketchbook Pro in the past. I~m really excited about how quickly I~m picking up the tool.

The first lesson was to take this image of an elephant that was provided for us, then use color grabbing and the hard round brush to add wrinkles.

The Given Image

I~ve made him wrinkly

Next, Bobby Demo~d panting a face and his approach to making an under painting. We all painted an old man.

Reference

This is my very first painting in photoshop

This is Bobby~s  Painting.

At the end of the day, Bobby Chiu, Kei Acedera, and Thierry LaFontaine took as all out to see The New X-Men Movie in Montreal. Talk about a great day!

First Impressions of the Imaginism Live workshop

I drove to the Imaginism Live Workshop yesterday. I live in Ann Arbor, and the workshop is in Montreal. Needless to say, it was a long drive. It was already worth it though.

Everyone here is so inviting and down to earth. I instantly felt like part of the group.
As for the house; it's beautiful. Everything is clean, new, and we all get our own bathrooms. The facilities get an A+

The whole house is crawling with sketchbooks, reference, and art of books.

There is art everywhere. And it's all great.

This is my morning view

Tomorrow is the first day of class. I've been warned to get ready for some intense training. I'll check back in here soon.

Get Some Free Stuff!!!

Are you looking to dabble in digital painting/ inking, but don't want to drop a thousand dollars on the adobe creative suite? Well, you're in luck.

Sketchbook Pro from Auto Desk and Schoolism are teaming for an art contest. Regardless of whether or not you want to enter, you can download a free light weight version of sketchbook from their site. Some of the bells and whistles have been disabled, but it is still a great deal. The program is very intuitive, and you'll bee off to the races in no time.

If you're thinking about jumping into digital art but aren't ready to shell out for and expensive program or face the brick wall that is photoshop's learning curve, then check it out.

http://www.sketchbook.com/news/from-pencils-to-pixels-share-your-story-on-a-digital-canvas.html

Helpful Resources

In this technological age, it seems that well all collect a little horde of blogs, videos, and websites. Here are a handful of mine.

Schoolism: Inspirational interviews with industry professionals, online schools and the chiu-stream
http://www.schoolism.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYeDibhb-hs

Chris Oatley's ArtCast: philosophy, tutorials, interviews, and cheerful ramblings.
http://chrisoatley.com/category/podcasts/

Paper Wings Podcast: philosophy, tutorials, and interviews. (All focusing on comics and the creation there of.)
http://paperwingspodcast.com/

Adventures in design: The business of print making.
http://www.aidpodcast.com/

Writing excuses: 15 minutes podcasts that cover everything you need to know to become a storyteller.
http://www.writingexcuses.com/

Write about Dragons: Brandon Sanderson's Creative Writing college course, online......for free!!
http://www.writeaboutdragons.com/

Muddy Colors: Artists and Art Directors talk about things you didn't know that you've needed know until after you've read the blog.
http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/

Skottie Young's Blog: Because it updates all the time, and everything in it is awesome.
http://skottieyoung.com/

The Self Absorbing Man (AKA Paolo Rivera's Blog): Tons of Great comic book related tutorials.
http://paolorivera.blogspot.com/

Proko: A fantastic resource for understanding the human figure. There is a ton on content here!!!
http://www.proko.com/

Figure and Gesture Drawing: A free site for practicing hands and Feet. (Thanks DemonJack, this site rocks!)
http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/hands-feet-practice/

Tutorial for scanning line art
http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/tech/Line_art/line_art.htm

FZD School: A fantastic youtube channel for digital artists. There is a mindblowing amount of content on this channel. Like, put off art school for a year and work through these episodes. (Don't quote me on that)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1McYZX6KScg

Mark's Drawing Tutorials: This first video on the basics and understanding 3D geometry in terms of elipses is great. It will make your life easier.The other stuff is great too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk84EpHmZKQ

Will Terrell's Blog and Youtube Channel: Life philosophy, and the most cheerful voice you will every find. I listen to this guy just to get into a happier mood.
http://willterrell.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/willterrell2001

Stephen Silver's Youtube channel: How and why to tell your clients to PAY YOU!
https://www.youtube.com/user/silvertoons


I have many many more, but I don't want to give you an information overload.

Que The Montage Music

When I interviewed for the Schoolism workshop in Montreal this summer, I asked Thierry what I should do to prepare. Should I learn photoshop? Study anatomy? What about perspective? How about color theory. He said that the best thing I could do before the workshop was practice painting from life.

I don't really own anything worth painting, so I went and bought some fruit. I've never really worked with water color or acrylics. So, this was a fun little experiment. I will do more of these soon.

This is a pear in acrylic

And an Apple in water color

Coming soon, squirrels.

Gesture Drawing Week 3: Silhouette

Week 3 of the schoolism gesture drawing course was silhouette. This was by far the most difficult and time consuming week of the course so far.

The lecture follows logically from last weeks lesson on shape. The silhouette takes the directionality of the line of action and the balance of the shape and melds them together to make a recognizable human form. The goal of your silhouette should be to convey a sense of direction and balance, but most of all, it should be readable as a human pose. Even though it is a flat 2 dimensional shape, the viewer should be able to tell what the subject is and what it's doing. This becomes a problem when the pose places limbs in front of a body or has a lot of foreshortening. To combat this, Alex recommends that you ad negative space where you can, and rotate the model in your minds eye so that you can mitigate limbs being obscured by the body. This is a very useful but difficult skill to learn.

This lecture follows the pattern of the previous two. A short introduction of the topic followed by one 20 minute session of one minute poses where Alex talk through his process then closes with a second 20 minute video were you draw the poses.

The most infuriating part of this lecture was the critique. A reoccurring problem with this course is that it taught by Alex Woo, but critiqued by Louis Gonzales. I understand that this is an art class, and there is never just one way to do anything. However, it is annoying to work with one set of recommendations guidelines and goals, and then be critiqued for doing exactly what the instructor told you to do. This week's lecture was a prime example. Half of the lecture was focused turn arounds. However, Louis immediately side it was a mistake to rotate the model at all and I should have spent more time exaggerating the pose.

This weeks homework included the following parts
1-2 hours of life drawing focused on silhouette
2-Draw the silhouette from 10 picture of your choosing
3-Draw the silouette's from the second 20 minute session

Here are my submissions. I've practiced and included #3 multiple times.

Gesture Drawing Week 2: Shape

Week 2 of gesture drawing is titled "Shape." This lecture flows naturally from last weeks discussion on the line of action. The line of action implies direction and motion of your figure. Shape takes your gesture drawing one step further. It implies balance and weight as well as direction.

The instructor conveys the ideas of the lecture clearly. The Structure of the class is the same as week one: A brief discussion on the topic followed by a twenty minute session of gesture where Andrew talks through his process, and then a second 20 minute session of gesture drawing.

The critique was a confusing. The two instructors disagreed on whether the shape should be humanoid, or abstract.

The homework is:
1- The drawings from the second drawing session
2- 2 Hours of life drawing with shape
3- Find 10 pictures, and break the figure down into a single shape

Here is my submission.

Gesture Drawing Week 1: Line of Action

The first lecture of gesture drawing focuses of the line of action. In terms of delivery, the lecture was very coherent and well thought out. However, the concept of the line of action seems to be a bit fuzzy at the best of times, and while the explanations were easy to understand, they weren't always internally consistent. For instance, Alex Woo mentions that the line of action is not a contour or outline of the shape. However, I was advised to make my line of action something I could use for the rest of the gesture (which is another way of saying outline) by Louis. I think this is just an inherent issue when an art class is taught by two teachers. I don't think that either is wrong, just different.

The lecture also includes two 20 minute gesture drawing sessions made up of 30 second poses. This is a great resource in and of it's self. I drew threw them both several times just to unwind after a long day at the office.

The homework this week came in three parts.
-2 hours of live cafe gesture drawing
-Overlay a line of action for 10 pictures of your choosing
-Draw the lines of action for the second 20 minute video.

The cafe drawing and video drawings wouldn't make much sense without the reference, so I'll post the overlays.