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..

Schoolism week 3 | Virink daily challenge

While my awesome classmates from FZD are having their final presentations and their last day at school, I am slowly working my way through assignments for Nathan Fowkes's classes. This week on Designing with Colour and Light we had to create a composition and rework it several times with different colour\lighting scenarios. Even though I already see some mistakes that I hope Nathan can help me correct (as well as find more mistakes), I am quite happy with how this turned out.

  For Pictorial Composition class we needed to create 10 different compositions with simple bold value statements. I'm trying not to let my perfectionism prevent me from trying something new. I noticed, as I struggle, I tend to reuse the same principles over and over again, and focus too much on technical side of things, rather than on the overall read. Note to self: a good exercise would be to try make quick compositions with simple abstract shapes, without reference to any real life objects, and do more master studies.

Now to the second part of the post with more words and no pictures. There is this Russian art community called Virink, and now, for the second time, they are starting an initiative of daily challenges. For a small fee, every day for an entire year Virink team is going to be sending subscribed members a brief, which may be a short story, a sentence or a couple of words, according to which you need to make a drawing\painting\whatever you feel like, and post it in the daily challenge thread on their website. I haven't used their services yet, but I feel like it's a great idea, so I decided to subscribe! 

The beginning of my Schoolism journey

First works I did for Nathan Fowkes's classes on Schoolism: color and compositional studies and a Dreamworks 3d rough cut paint over. Every week Nathan is spending from 20 to 30+ minutes critiquing an assignment - painting over, showing and explaining things you could personally benefit from. Meaning, for me, it's 40-60 minutes of individual critique per week, since I'm taking two of his classes. It's the most I've gotten since I started taking online classes. I'm super impressed with the quality of information, and excited for the upcoming weeks! It seems that even after just a week of daily colour studies, painting has gotten easier. Magic of mileage!

As this blog is an honest collection of what I do to track my progress - here are my quite bad compositions on "unity with variety". Hopefully looking back at these in a year I will have some better works to compare them to :)

First attempt to designing a character or 8 weeks of reasons to study anatomy

We had to rebook our flights, and I'm deprived of my working space for several more days, so it's time to share some more works from the past term, while I have not done much new stuff to publish. 

Character Design for Films and Games with Marco Nelor was a great great course, but a very challenging one. I actually received an email from CGMA coordinator yesterday, saying the CGMA team was very impressed with my group's works (most of them were awesome indeed!), and they want to feature some works (including mine) in their Blog. I don't know any more details, but I will post a link here if this happens.

This course went hand in hand with creature design course I shared works of before. Thubmnailing, line work, head studies, some prop design, leading to a final presentation. Through most of the 8 weeks, both Marco and my inner voice was repeating - anatomy, anatomy, anatomy.. It is a true challenge designing a character when your poor anatomy knowledge constantly pulls you back. I still consider it a good start though. So much to learn, so many things to get better at!

So, here he is, Sargas, maori inspired melee warlock. Probably the most challenging type of character I could choose for myself out of a "client brief" apart from sci-fi heroes.

Create your own fantastic beasts' sanctuary

So while I am away in Russia, spending long 10 days of public holidays with my family and friends, I wanted to share some works I did for my past term at CGMA.
First off, Creature Design for Films and Games with Bobby Rebholz. We did lots of thumbnails and reference gathering, head and body anatomy studies of real animals as well designing muscle structure of our own creatures, skull and head studies and designs, for it all to lead to our final presentation on week 8 with only our one chosen creature. These are just some selected pages out of many we had to submit during the 8 weeks of the course.

Gesture drawings

So as my term at CGMA ended, I decided it’s time to get to studying anatomy more seriously while I have time before my classes with Nathan Fowkes start on Schoolism in the beginning of January. I had quite a hard time during my character design class because of lack of practice and knowledge of anatomy. I'm not a complete beginner, but what I know is just definitely not enough to feel comfortable designing and, more importantly, painting characters with lots of skin showing. I decided to start from the very start - gesture drawings, devoting every next day or so to a new topic. So here’s the first results: quick 1-2 minute gesture drawings. Most of them are done digitally, and some traditionally while watching Arrow.

Note to myself: “about to” poses are easier to exaggerate, and they look more understandable; S-lines; focus on the inside-outside direction of lines, on the impulse of the movement, rather than on the outline.