09-04-2015, 04:46 AM
@Mayenla
Thank you! Haha, I'm glad my rambling can interest someone. I'm glad to hear that you're able to approach art with more of an open mind!!! I definitely like to think that the worst mark you can make is none at all. Everything else, you can learn from. c:
@Adam Lina
Thank you so much, man! Haha, yeah, for sure. I want to try doing a bunch more portraits, so we'll see how those go. c: Once I'm more comfortable rendering dimension and texture clearly, I'll probably play with fancier tricks a little more.
HMMMM as for insights... well, it was mostly the same good advice you'll get from any good artist.
Jung Gi Kim - If you haven't I totally suggest watching THIS! This isn't the lecture I was at, but in many ways I think this video is more informative. It was cool to see him in person, though. One of the coolest things I learned at the lecture was probably that Jung Gi Kim is kind of lazy (not on any average person scale, though.) He can't focus well, so his working style is probably a product of not wanting to do all the under construction/wanting an immediate result. Watching him do those MASSIVE beautiful wall drawings definitely made me think he's a guy with sharp focus, but really I think he's a really funny guy with clarity on visual expression. He drew batman taking a shit.
Marshall Vandruff - The big one from Marshall was to do simplified, 3-tone value studies from compositional masters like Howard Pyle. 90% of what he lectured about was what you will learn about composition/design from Creative Illustration0 by Andrew Loomis - which is a book he heavily recommended along with Picture This by Molly Bang. As I'm sure all of you know, design is one of the hardest subjects to learn about because its heavily subjective and various processes are kind of poorly documented. If you haven't, read Creative Illustration because for realsies, that book is eye opening!! I'm learning so much from it myself; it's basically 2D art bible in everything that it covers. And it has a pretty decent section on design.
Nathan Fowkes - To be totally honest, I almost passed out during this lecture. Nathan Fowkes is talented and all, but the lecture was over all pretty basic and boring. This was "Visual Storytelling," and the big takeaway from this one is to always focus on clarity. If you want to be a good character designer, someone should be able to look at your character illustration and instantly tell what kind of person they are, who they are in contrast to their friends/enemies/environment, whatever. Except where it is explicitly necessary for miscommunication, you should always choose the visually clearest route. As artists, that's what we're really designing. Visual clarity, to express a thought.
I doubt that was extremely insightful for you guys...
oh! Wait! I just remembered the best tip. This was from Marshall Vandruff's lecture.
Art, and design, at it's core, is simply the design of contrasts. Contrasting marks, contrasting ideas, etc. Comparisons are the core of communication - "a pebble is like a small rock," "That man looks like a woman," etc. and our brains rely quite a bit on comparing things in order to understand it. If you want to make playful, funny, insightful, clear artwork... base it on visual contrast and comparisons! I think a lot of artists try to avoid the playful part of their brain that says one thing is like another because it feels childish - we tend to try to go towards more subtleties. We edit ourselves while drawing and say, "oh, that looks too much like a square, so I'm going to make it look less square so people won't think it's a square," but we end up with shapes/images that aren't really squares, but they aren't really anything specific, either. It's way better to be clear and silly than ambiguous.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ok! So I've been saying I'll draw more animals for a while now, but I never seem to get around to it. =v= Before I dropped out of college (did I mention that I left art school before now...? Well, I did.) the Animal Drawing class was one of the few left with a unique curriculum that I felt would really benefit me from taking. So, a friend who is currently in the class is passing on the weekly assignments to me and I'm following along.
This week was 5 animal "Breakdowns" to compare the similarities in anatomy. These are ugly and I'm not posting them HAHA
And then 10 drawings of the "Animal of the Week" from photo! This week is Camels.
![[Image: tt8jhUO.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/tt8jhUO.jpg)
I know there's also a big component for life drawing, so I'm gonna get a zoo membership and go draw animals from life occasionally, too. (Whenever my friend does it.) There's also creature design and stuff -- I'm just gonna follow along for all of it, basically.
Speaking of life drawing, free life drawing at the local art school starts TOMORROW evening and I'm so stoked!!! \m/ Aw yeee life drawing. Unf unf unf. I've been waiting two weeks for it to start up. I have some pretty ambitious life drawing goals, so I really want to hit it hard.
Thank you! Haha, I'm glad my rambling can interest someone. I'm glad to hear that you're able to approach art with more of an open mind!!! I definitely like to think that the worst mark you can make is none at all. Everything else, you can learn from. c:
@Adam Lina
Thank you so much, man! Haha, yeah, for sure. I want to try doing a bunch more portraits, so we'll see how those go. c: Once I'm more comfortable rendering dimension and texture clearly, I'll probably play with fancier tricks a little more.
HMMMM as for insights... well, it was mostly the same good advice you'll get from any good artist.
Jung Gi Kim - If you haven't I totally suggest watching THIS! This isn't the lecture I was at, but in many ways I think this video is more informative. It was cool to see him in person, though. One of the coolest things I learned at the lecture was probably that Jung Gi Kim is kind of lazy (not on any average person scale, though.) He can't focus well, so his working style is probably a product of not wanting to do all the under construction/wanting an immediate result. Watching him do those MASSIVE beautiful wall drawings definitely made me think he's a guy with sharp focus, but really I think he's a really funny guy with clarity on visual expression. He drew batman taking a shit.
Marshall Vandruff - The big one from Marshall was to do simplified, 3-tone value studies from compositional masters like Howard Pyle. 90% of what he lectured about was what you will learn about composition/design from Creative Illustration0 by Andrew Loomis - which is a book he heavily recommended along with Picture This by Molly Bang. As I'm sure all of you know, design is one of the hardest subjects to learn about because its heavily subjective and various processes are kind of poorly documented. If you haven't, read Creative Illustration because for realsies, that book is eye opening!! I'm learning so much from it myself; it's basically 2D art bible in everything that it covers. And it has a pretty decent section on design.
Nathan Fowkes - To be totally honest, I almost passed out during this lecture. Nathan Fowkes is talented and all, but the lecture was over all pretty basic and boring. This was "Visual Storytelling," and the big takeaway from this one is to always focus on clarity. If you want to be a good character designer, someone should be able to look at your character illustration and instantly tell what kind of person they are, who they are in contrast to their friends/enemies/environment, whatever. Except where it is explicitly necessary for miscommunication, you should always choose the visually clearest route. As artists, that's what we're really designing. Visual clarity, to express a thought.
I doubt that was extremely insightful for you guys...
oh! Wait! I just remembered the best tip. This was from Marshall Vandruff's lecture.
Art, and design, at it's core, is simply the design of contrasts. Contrasting marks, contrasting ideas, etc. Comparisons are the core of communication - "a pebble is like a small rock," "That man looks like a woman," etc. and our brains rely quite a bit on comparing things in order to understand it. If you want to make playful, funny, insightful, clear artwork... base it on visual contrast and comparisons! I think a lot of artists try to avoid the playful part of their brain that says one thing is like another because it feels childish - we tend to try to go towards more subtleties. We edit ourselves while drawing and say, "oh, that looks too much like a square, so I'm going to make it look less square so people won't think it's a square," but we end up with shapes/images that aren't really squares, but they aren't really anything specific, either. It's way better to be clear and silly than ambiguous.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ok! So I've been saying I'll draw more animals for a while now, but I never seem to get around to it. =v= Before I dropped out of college (did I mention that I left art school before now...? Well, I did.) the Animal Drawing class was one of the few left with a unique curriculum that I felt would really benefit me from taking. So, a friend who is currently in the class is passing on the weekly assignments to me and I'm following along.
This week was 5 animal "Breakdowns" to compare the similarities in anatomy. These are ugly and I'm not posting them HAHA
And then 10 drawings of the "Animal of the Week" from photo! This week is Camels.
I know there's also a big component for life drawing, so I'm gonna get a zoo membership and go draw animals from life occasionally, too. (Whenever my friend does it.) There's also creature design and stuff -- I'm just gonna follow along for all of it, basically.
Speaking of life drawing, free life drawing at the local art school starts TOMORROW evening and I'm so stoked!!! \m/ Aw yeee life drawing. Unf unf unf. I've been waiting two weeks for it to start up. I have some pretty ambitious life drawing goals, so I really want to hit it hard.