Hero's Journey

With out big move back to Moscow getting closer, there's a lot to do, and the time is flying by. There's just 3 weeks left on my courses with Nathan, and they are going to be devoted to 2 final portfolio works (one for each class).

This is a piece based on a story I might use for my portfolio project (as well as the picture itself) - a hero journey of a teenage boy in a magical world. It is a remake of a thumbnail I did for Kalen Chock's Environment Design class I took during winter term. As it was done for my composition class assignment, I focused more on compositional side of things, and tried to keep in mind all the new info on colour and lighting. 

*The zoomed in version looks nicer 

So just to compare - the left thumbnail was done in the end of November, and even though the point of assignment was different - creating a composition with simple shapes, limited tools and clean statements - it was around the top of what I could do in terms of colour, composition and painting environments. It is simple and nice, and I still like it, but I'm very happy to see improvement 2,5 months later. It means the progress is there, and I'm on the right track!

Here's a painting done on a base of a Dreamworks layout done traditionally for their Prince of Egypt (? I might actually be wrong with this one). This week, creating a strong sense of atmosphere in the environment was out main goal, and it was a lot of fun. 

Another topic we worked through on our composition class was introducing a sense of balance and rhythm into a composition. A very useful exercise I got to know from Nathan is trying to find visual and psychological balance between any 2 objects or images. There's so many nuances to take into account, and it seems confusing in the beginning, but it gets easier with practice.

P.S. I noticed this week that working in a complete darkness with curtains closed affects the contrast and colour balance of my works a lot, hope keeping the room lighter would help going further. 

A Cat in a Hat

Here's my homework for this week's Light and Colour class. We had to create an illustration and go a bit further with it than a colour script painting. I think I am at the point now where I got so much amazing useful information, my whole understanding of how colour and light work changed, but in practice my old habits still persist, and some important stuff just slips away. If you are learning, like me, you must know the feeling when you know something's not right about the work you've just done, but you can't quite figure our what exactly. Sometimes tweaking adjustment layers can suddenly make things better, but sometimes you just let it be. And later, when someone points out this little detail that you overlooked, you feel like it's so simple, you just don't understand how you didn't notice it before. Well, I find it really, really exciting to be at this stage :) Every week there's something new I'm trying to focus on, and hopefully with time it will just all come together. 

This week's challenge topic was dynamic anatomy sketching, which I thought was great, so I went back to Michael Hampton's lectures and his book. I started with more sketches, and some construction drawings, before I'd go on to more detailed body parts and muscle studies. This was a lot of fun! For me quick timed gesture sketches are a great way to relax.

P. S. After watching a video from my lovely FZD ex-groupmates' graduation ceremony, I decided to go back and look at my FZD entry test, and the works I've submitted as my "portfolio" to get into the school a year ago. It made me see the progress I've made in a year, and I'm ready to jump into some more work! 

Another week, another challenge

So, this week I realised how good of a choice it was for me to take both composition and colour and light classes with Nathan in the same term. The two courses go hand in hand, and I seriously feel how what we do for one class (and the critique I get) helps me with the homework for the other. So if anyone is thinking about taking these courses anytime in the future, consider taking two at once if you have enough time in your week.

For the composition class we had to create 6 compositions (3 colour, 3 b&w, 3 with no people or characters, 1 with no man made objects) aiming at designing contrast at the focal point using particular types of contrast given to us in the lecture. I've been also trying to fight my sense of value, as the paintings I do usually have quite low contrast, and I tend to stick to one value range.

For colour and light we needed to create a composition, and rework it 5 times to convey a particular mood. It's incredible how much thought went into actually putting emotions into words. I was also trying to focus on committing to reflections from environment on the objects.

The daily challenge I mentioned in my last post turned out to be a pretty interesting experience (although I've skipped more days than not so far). Instead of just practicing drawing (as most participants do), I'm trying to do very short design and presentation challenges somehow connected to the topic given. One of the topics was "ribbon". So here's what I did.

Have a great week ahead everyone!

PS. Yesterday Seb gave me a 5000 colour puzzle (CMYK colour gamut, 5000 shades). Now that's a challenge..