GoGo! Accountability

[Joe]

Hey daggers

Man, I've been getting lax with my studies. Thinking what I need is a crisp new thread, dedicated just to studies with some mandatory upload days. get some of that positive momentum flowing 

gonna keep most of my waffling in spoiler tabs, so y'all don't have to spend hours scrolling  

Spoiler

THE PROBLEM

I'm leaving the structure of my study solely to the courses at Schoolism, trouble is, for the whole six months I've been subscribed there i've not completed a single course. There are a few reasons that I can think of as to why, namely:

• After I finish work I cant be bothered to pick up the pen again and start studying
  
• I have a tough deadline and the schoolism course gets thrown out the window in a rush to complete a job
  
• I'm not happy with the work I've done, and just repeat the same lesson ad infinitum
  
• I'm arrogant, so I intentionally over complicate and overthink the course to the point I can't completed it, when in reality it would have been a big enough challenge to begin with.
  

They all lead to me falling behind, not getting the right amount of work done and restarting. it'll drive me to the point of insanity before long but that is where this thread comes in. The one goal is to submit the required amount of course work every week, it doesn't have to be perfect and I don't have to be happy with it (because I never will be), I just need to hand it in. we're going slow and steady with this people, sloooow and steady.

THE SCHEDULE

I'll be uploading the new course work every Sunday and then setting up my following assignment on the Monday 

I'm currently working through a Realistic Portraits course by  Jason Seiler which I'll start again from scratch this week.

Week 1 Assignment:

Draw two celebrity portraits using the Loomis head construction method and the grid method.

From what I can tell, the teacher doesn't put on any importance on these methods as being the 'correct' way to draw a face. it's mostly a lesson in developing the patience to measure proportions properly and being all meticulous. the methods are just possible frame works. 

I'll be upload my work on Sunday 28th.

And finally, heres a bit of art, just so this aint a complete waste of your time:

Some Faces from imagination

   

and some eye studies from the last time I tried to complete this course 

(the link in my signature is to my old sketchbook if any of all wanted to check it out)

 

[Joe]

Realistic Portrait Assignment - Week ONE

Lady on the left is Garance Marillier, from the film Raw, She was drawn using the Loomis Head construction. Chap on the right is Alexander Gustafsson, He was draw using a grid (I left it visible in the reference image)

I'm in a bit of a rush, so I'll come back and add some notes during the week (I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss my first  upload deadline). feel free to leave some crits, the main goal of this assignment was to slow down and gain the patience  to measure accurately and get a good likeness.   

Realistic Portrait Assignment - Week TWO

Assignment for this week is to sketch 25-30 eyes, focus on getting a bunch or different angles/ expressions and characteristics and two fully rendered eyes. 

I've got about 2 hours a day I can spend on this, so roughly 4 eyes a day, 30mins max per drawing. I'll be uploading it on the 4th Feb

[Joe]

Swing and a miss, 

15/25 eyes sketches done 

[Artloader]

Great stuff Joe, keep up the discipline dude!

[Joe]

Last of the Features 

Week one covered basic proportions, week two focused just on the eyes, now on week 3 we're cramming the rest of the features in and drawing up some noses, mouths and ears. 

Contained my rambling in the spoiler below 

Spoiler

After spending a year or so doing nothing but 3D and photobashing it's been good getting back to some plain old drawing and painting with this course. Felt like I had to relearn how to sketch digitally. Figuring it out for a second time is definitely helpful, having a little bit more experience I'm making more deliberate choices rather than just downloading 100s of brushes off the internet and winging it. They aint perfect and I've still got a lot too learn, but man, I'm just happy that I managed to get them all done and I'm mostly staying on track with this course. 

Week 4

This is the one i've been wanting to get too, it covers value and (more excitingly) the Zorn palette. Colour has forever been my biggest weakness, I'm so hopeful that striping down to just 3 colour palette and approaching it in a more structured, traditional way i'll get a good base to relearn how to paint from the ground up.

Art, thanks a lot man.  Daggers is definitely helping me stay focused on getting the studying done

Storyboarding 

Briefly switched over to Kris Pearn's storyboarding class this week too as I was asked to work on a short storyboard. I'd done work for this client in the past and was happy with what I'd done so he was willing to risk seeing how I got on doing the storyboard. He's gonna put it altogether/ add directions himself so it probably wont make much sense, but here are the illustrations I did for him (he wanted them to be as clean and finished as possible so he can also use them to promote on twitter)

 

if y'all have any critiques, have at it. i'm looking to learn as much as I can. 

[Tygerson]

I really like how you are getting to know each feature of the face, and the variety there can be.

[Joe]

hey daggers

Just finished up week four of the realistic portraits class, assignment this week was to complete two portraits, one just concentrating on values and the other in colour using the Zorn palette.  

I've always had massive difficulty with colour, really struggle gaging the temp, hue and value, I really just dont have the eye for it, at least not yet. Definitely not happy with the  finished study here but I inched forward a little bit, getting slightly more comfortable judging and with the mixing. 

Below I'll add palette/reference and some process shots, along with a couple of attempts if anyone is interested 

Spoiler

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 Tygerson, it was a lot more fun than I thought it was gonna be, but damn, trying to measure mouths without any of the other features is a pain

[Joe]

Day late on this one

Penultimate week of the course was all about hair. Soft brush, transfer and size controlled by pen pressure and many many layers. I'll add the process and reference files later in the week

Final week covers style and artistry and is the one i've been looking forward to the most. Proper happy that i've almost gotten to the end of my first course 

 

[Tygerson]

That's a really striking portrait there! If it was a real person, I hope he gets to see it.

[Artloader]

Wow chap, your hair looks amazing! Not yours personally (although maybe it does) but the old guy and the girl in the blue dress have awesome hair! Keep it going fella!

[Joe]

Tygerson: real person, no idea who he is though, I think that he might be a German comedian... possibly. I was just scrolling though some portrait photography looking for some somebody with interesting hair and a beard. his crazy wispy locks definitely won out

Art: haha, far from it! i have a rocking a 70's housewife style perm looking thing at the moment. cheers dude. 

Tripped at the last hurdle 

Made it to the final week of the course but keep failing to finish it. already a week late and a long way from the finish line. 

So the final lesson is all about style and aesthetics, and, as somebody who doesn't particularly like much of their own work from an artistic view point (Quick self review: paintings pretty good but it's hella bland) this lesson has been quite a struggle. Not saying what I paint is aesthetically terrible, just not my cup of tea... which is a pretty weird situation to be in.

probably not that uncommon, Sinix has an interesting video, Realism vs Appealism and he mentions something about not wanting to venture too much in to classical art learning for fear of it dragging his art further away from a style he likes. 

tricky part is leaving the path of absolutes: is this value the same as the reference, is the distance between point a and point b correct...into the much more subjective world of do I think this looks good or not, and sadly my design sense is a malnourished, cowardly child. 

I have a lot to strengthen in this arena, so I'm not too bummed about being stuck here for a while longer, it's gonna be quite a grind though to undo the years of design neglect. 

I decided to work on a few different portrait at once so I can experiment... i'll probably do a lot more before I'm happy to more on. so here are the Wips (not that for along, I took a little time off to paint a portrait of my nephew as a gift)

soooo

Portrait 001

looking to make this with big chunky brushstrokes, want the paint to look thick.

I retried the colour from scratch on this one, to better match the reference... just to see

Portrait 002

Looking to hit that old oil paint style where the skin looks like porcelain 

Sketch

Underpainting

Portrait 003

 

For this one I'm really gonna push the colour, thinking of starting out with a magenta/cyan underpainting and take it from there. 

Other work

Here is the painting of my Nephew, 

And a rework of an earlier portrait 

cheers!