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.

Imaginism Workshop Day 11: Painting Realism

I like to start my days at the workshop with a morning bike ride. The Montreal workshop is on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, and it took me 2 weeks to find the nearest town. The scenery here is so peaceful, even on cloudy days. 

We are literally surrounded by cows.

This little creepy character is painted on a bunch of windows here.
I have no clue why.

This old cathedral is smack damn in the middle of town.

This house was built in the early 1800's.
There are a ton of old farmhouses dotting the
country side.

This tree loves asparagus 

Today, T started teaching us about painting photo realistically. There are a list of steps and conditions that you need to satisfy to fool our "dumb dog" brains into thinking that they're real. 

We focused again of painting cubes a spheres.

Reference cube

My cube

Reference sphere

My sphere. *Damn it looks so fake now that I look at it again.

Lastly, my Art book of the day was Kung Fu Panda 2. I had low hopes for this book, because it was for a movie sequel. However, there was a surprisingly large amount of good info in this book. The rigging for the new villain, Lord Shen, was particularly interesting. This is another one that I want to add to my collection.

Imaginism Workshop Day 10: Moving on to contrast

We've finally vanquished the malevolent horde that is the cube heads. Though, I'd bet money we haven't seen the last of them. Actually, I found my self imagining Large office buildings as 1x2x1 1/2 giant heads as we dropped Diana off at the airport. It's a pretty good way to make use of time spent waiting.

We've finally moved into the world of value and contrast studies, which aren't always the same thing. I've also learned that  Bouguereau is the shit! Every time we learn something new, it turns out that he mastered it over 100 years ago. The fact that there were artists who derided late in his career amazes me.

We did 2 contrast studies from him during class.

I know that they don't look the same, but squint your eyes
and moving far away. It's magic.

These are kind of like the "find the sail boat" puzzels. 

Lastly, for our home work, we did 20 more contrast studies from Bouguereau and copied this picture a cube.

The cube provided

My painting of the cube provided

Here's my homework submission

Lastly, my Art book of the day was for mega mind. This is another movie that I wrote off, but now really want to see. There was a lot of thought that went into the narrative that I didn't realize.

Imaginism Workshop Day 9: Battle with the cube heads

It's the return of the evil cube heads! We critiqued our 50 heads from yesterday, and then did 50 more. Not the sexiest drawings in the world, but still super useful. I've started dreaming about cubes.

This is what war looks like.

Here's my second submission.

                                 
  Sadly, T's assistant Diana will be leaving us to go back home to Mexico, and she won't be coming back until we're gone. So we ate many many tasty crepes. Because, that's you do in French speaking Canada. You eat crepes.                                            

The best crepe of the night

                                                 

Imaginism Workshop Day 8: Revenge of the cube heads

The theme of today's class was the human head. More specifically, visualizing the human head as though it were a cube. The dimension are 1 wide by 2 tall by 1 1/2 deep. Thierry made little heads on sticks for us to practice on.

I named my head on a stick Murphy.

This is my head on a stick. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My head on a stick is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

My head on a stick, without me, is useless. Without my head on a stick, I am useless.....

You get the Idea. We drew at least 50 of the damn things. I think I clocked out at 75 at about 1-1:30 a.m.

                                     

                                     

Today's art book was for Puss in Boots. Here is another movie that I never saw because I judged it prematurely. I thought "Oh man, I can't believe DreamWorks is going to try and milk a spin off from Shrek." After reading this book, I have changed my mind. The lighting and color compositions for this book is  are incredible. Every image is beautiful. Nathan Fowkes worked on this movie, and he also offers a schoolism course: Designing with Color and Light. It's already booked through next year, but I will certainly take it at the next opening.

Imaginism Workshop Day 7

Greetings again from Montreal. Today was another day off, but there was still quite a bit to do. After my morning bike ride, I found this reflection pool right next to the house. The lighting here is so nice that a painting of this place is on my bucket list

However, there is an unholy amount of mosquito here. I saw them lift
 Thierry up off of the ground once, and nearly carried him away.

My Art book of the day was by Stephen Silver. He's the character designer for Kim Possible and Ben 10 among other things. He's also opening up his own independent art school called The Silver Drawing Academy.  One thing that struck me is the attention he pays to his silhouettes. Every single one on every single page is clear and readable. Towards the back of the book are some more figure drawing sketches that are not in Stephen's "trademark style." Those were the most interesting for me.

The most truthful thing that I can say about T is that he loves burgers. We had them for lunch and for dinner....because we're men! And men eat burgers, damn it!

This is the butchers shop that we got our organic grass fed beef. This little guy here was delicious.

Here's a little doodle. It's Link, who is very tired and he has no idea
 how he's supposed to reach the heart on top of this huge block.
I may revisit it and try to make it stronger.

Practice drawing more women

Diana did these great sketches too. I hope she shares her thoughts on feminine heads and faces later on.

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.