Imaginism Workshop Day 25: Silver Originals and Onions

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. Stephen Silver had to leave to go back home today. Though, not be for we pestered him to draw original Caricatures of us! Score!

It never hurts to ask.

Stephen also gave us all signed prints. What a nice guy.

For the rest of the day, I worked on my painting, and decided to knock out a second fully rendered character concept while I'm here. My goal is to do 2 every 3 weeks until I have 100. It might be a bit lofty, but we'll see.

Imaginism Workshop Day 24: Life Sketching and Poutine with Stephen Silver.

Today Stephen Silver graciously gave us a morning lecture about the art industry, character design, his life, our life, and just about everything in between. It was very very cool. I think it's going to be difficult to go back to the real world and my regular job after spending so much time on art and meeting so many motivated and successful people.

After that, Stephen wanted to see what all the fuss was about concerning some dish in Canada called "Pooh-Teen." See? I bet Stephen Silver reads my blog too.

So, we went to our favourite poutine shack, but my body couldn't handle any more starch/cheese/gravy stomach bombs, so I opted out and did a handful of caricatures of the patrons while we ate.

When we got back, T showed us about the next step in our Acrylic under-painting. Picking out the highlights.

Since my piece is set almost entirely in the light, I could skip this step and move into color. At this point, words cannot express my new found appreciation for digital painting. I think longingly back to my time spent with the color picker and the opacity control. *sigh*

And lastly Franklin the Duck returned. Though, I think our duck dinner left an impression because he brought along his crew Mafioso style. They were quite menacing so we GTFO.

Imaginism Workshop Day 12: Flat Tires, Fast foods, and Drawing Nudes.

Today started off well. I got a flat tire on my morning bike ride about 7 miles out. I guess those Continental Gator Hardshells were worth every penny. So, my bike Flo and I had nice relaxing (long) walk home.

A man and his bike - Happiness

However, the weather looked like something out of movie. The lighting on the quiet neighbouring farms was so nice that I had to stop for a minute and take it all in. 

Unfortunately, the picture doesn't quite do it justice.

During class, he reviewed the essence of spheres and the various ways that they reflect light. Our homework for the weekend is to graduate to cylinders and combinations of shapes, which I'll post when I'm finished. Upon my special request, T gave us extra home work for decomposing Bouguereau's nudes into boxes. Have I mentioned that Thierry love boxes?

T's example

We also went out to the food festival. The first Friday of every months a ton of food trucks in Montreal gather near the old Olympic stadium and people come from all around.

This is my first experience with Canadian Dollars.
They're made of plastic, AND they're see through!
If I didn't know any better, I'd say they weren't actually  money.

This is the old Olympic Stadium

The Food Festival was packed. Tao and I waited in line for 50 minutes to get a cup of Vietnamese noodles! I gave up on waiting, because we were going to miss our movie, but Tao persisted. And so, noodles were had. Thank you Tao.

The crowd at the food truck festival. Rumour has it that there
was a truck selling $80 Poutine!

While we waited, Tao and I got some life drawing in from the people in the crowd. 

Lastly, we saw Maleficent. It was pretty, but the story fell a bit flat for me. Angelina Jolie's new cheek bones screamed at me for the whole movie.

Mighty Good Sketching! 4/12/14

As always, here are my life sketches from this weeks session at mighty good.

When I started doing this, it was a struggle to get out there. It seemed like there were a million other more important things to do on a Saturday morning than "doodle" some people at a random cafe. However, it's become one of the highlights of my week over the past two months. 

I've been tossing the idea around in my head, and I'd like to start getting a consistent sketch group together. I've gained a significant increase in confidence by making this my ritual, and I'd love to share the experience. So, here's the official call to action. If you like to draw, eat delicious scones, or creep on total strangers, come join me at Mighty Good coffee from 10 am -Noon on Saturdays. Let's make this a thing. 

This guys computer was way too small for him. 

I've noticed that most of the people that I get to draw have really tired/ drawn/ stressed out expressions. This guy caught my eye. I don't know what he was reading, but he was tickled pink.

Mighty Good Sketching 4/5/14

My apologies for the late update everyone!

Here are my sketches from this week's life drawing at mighty good. Nothing too special happened this session. Though, I did try a cinnamon scone instead of a cherry one. That was earth shattering in it's own way. Though, I suspect less interesting to you.

This guy was a bit strange. He sat like this with that sneer for 10 minutes. I don't know why, but I think he has the tortured soul of a true artist. Or a broken arm......and no health insurance. 

This second sketch might not seem like a big deal, but it was a major milestone for me. This is a regular that I see every week, and every week I try to draw him. This is the very first time that I feel that I've successfully captured his character. I have dubbed him turtle man in my head.

Secondly, Noah Bradley put out the first lecture of his art camp class on youtube for free. It clocks in at a whopping 2.5 hours and is well worth the time it takes to watch it!

Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQfF-P70V2Q

Life Drawing at Mighty Good: Are you really sucking more than usual today?

Have you ever had one of those days where everything you draw just isn't that good? It doesn't necessarily suck, but it's just not up to snuff. Maybe it happens at the best possible time. Like when you're drawing in front of you friends, or even better, in front of a bunch of curious strangers. It's so tempting to say "I swear I'm good! Or at least, better than this!"

I had a day like that yesterday. It got me thinking about something I had heard in Chris Oatley's ArtCast ( http://chrisoatley.com/category/podcasts/ ). Chris Mentioned that students and new budding artists seem to be more afraid of or even paralyzed by failure. 

I admit that I'm guilty of this. It took me a year to get around to drawing a 3 page teaser for my comic idea. All because I knew that if I started right then it wouldn't be good. There is so much to learn right?! I have at least 10 great books about the best way to layout your panels, and another 3 about proper story telling. Oh yeah, then there's that great podcast about character development. Wouldn't it be hasty, or even irresponsible of me to start before I learn all I can about it first?

I think this mindset is a product of two things.

First- There are two types of artistic growth that are necessary to "level up." The first is an increase in skill....duh. Ok, that's a little obvious, but the second is the ability to discern when something is right or wrong. This is analogous to a chef refining his/her palette to detect when flavor of their meal isn't quite there yet. Maybe the soup needs some more salt and a bay-leaf. Or, a musician's ability to detect when they're flat or sharp, or slightly out of time. Artists go through the exact same process. I think the ability to dissect your work is necessary to consistently improve and deliver. The feeling I was having was do to growth in the second type of learning that exceeded my skill in the first.

Second- The internet. Yes, let's blame everything on the internet. My dog sheds everywhere. That's the internet's fault too.

I think that the fear that Chris mentions is a vicious cycle between these two things. The internet is so accessible and chalk full of tutorials that we can research art forever without putting pencil to page. This, in turn, increases our ability to discern good art way above our ability to make it. We'll start a piece and immediately think that it's terrible. So what do we do? Go straight back to the internet, because we haven't learned enough yet to attempt the piece that we started. 

Around and around we go.

So, what should I do to beat this thing? Well, I went to the internet. (Irony noted). Everything I found told me to just do the damn thing no matter what it is. Turn my internal editor off. (He's an ass hole anyway). Looking at art on the internet only increases that second type or skill. Putting pen to paper will increase the first one.

So, here are my life drawings from yesterday. Not perfect, but at least they're done. 

I also have the first page of pencils finished for my comic. I'll throw those up later today and prove that I'm not a total hypocrite. At least, not all of the time.

Sneaky Sketches at MightyGood: Round One

This was a great week for finding new resources for illustration. I stumbled upon Chris Oatley and Noah Bradley's websites and podcasts, which are all about creating comic books and the business of freelance illustration. Many of their talks can be found on youtube as well.
http://chrisoatley.com/
http://www.noahbradley.com/artcamp/
They also both host art schools of their own. One day soon, I'll attend and post about them here.

I also found Will Terrell's youtube channel. Among other things, Will is a fantastic Caricature artist. His channel is filled with great life lessons, art pointers and demos of his own sketchbook. He has a very bubbly personality that is just plain fun to listen to. I couldn't help but to smile.

In one of his videos' he recommends trying out a midtone sketch book. I picked one up yesterday and tested it out by sneakily drawing the patrons at Mighty Good Coffee. It's a great way to unwind before starting your weekend OT.

This man gazes sorrowfully into the distance. They ran out of scones....

This guy was contentedly doing his weekend sudoku.

I'm new to drawing moving targets, but this was a fun exercise. I'm going to do this every Saturday from here on out. I can't wait for the next one.

A short aside from Schoolism

So, I've been at this for a couple of months and have so far spent approximately $1400 on schoolism courses. It feels kind of strange to talk about money so blatantly, but I figure that it's an important topic for you the reader if you're considering trying these courses yourself.

You're probably wondering "is it worth the cost?" "Are you getting better?"

So, I thought you'd be interested in some of non-schoolism work. This way, you can decide for yourself whether or not I'm improving.

Here are some life drawing sessions from the past week or so.



Life Drawing at Mighty Good Coffee ~Ball Point Pen

Life Drawing at Work ~Ball Point Pen

In fairness, I should note that I am not working on Schoolism alone. I'm also spending a significant portion everyday work on Bridgeman's Guide to Constructive Anatomy and Assorted books by Andrew Loomis.