Art 1 Conclusion

Final grade for Art 1: 100%!!!!!

Yay! My first perfect score! And many more to come. I am so glad I decided to go to Full Sail online. I am totally in my element here. It leaves me with an unknown future, as there are no game companies around here, but I am going with the flow. Who knows, since I'm doing so awesome, maybe I'll make a totally hit indie game and rocket launch my career in the middle of my schooling and not have to go anywhere. It could happen. I won't prevent it, that's for sure.

To further my boasting, not only did I get a perfect score this month, but I also got the Course Director's Award for my class in Art 1! Not entirely sure what that means, but I am overly proud of it. I tried really hard in my art class, okay?!?!

Anyways, the above image is my final project in all of it's glory...Haha, just kidding...about the glory part. It is my final project, though. I like the way it turned out a lot! My least favorite one is the busy Times Square one. But oh well. It's good. I got a 100%. So it is good.

Okay, back to work for me! Got some 3D modeling to learn!

Decisions, Decisions...

So I am having a hard time deciding what to do for my final project in Art 1. It's a perspective project, so I need to create depth through either linear perspective or atmospheric perspective, or both.

Originally I wanted to do a sort of fun, whimsical cartoon-ish digital painting. It turned out something like this:

I mean, I like it, but I don't... I want to finish it...but I don't. I don't know. I just don't feel like it's great for this week's project. I like it, but not for class, I guess is what I mean.

So I decided to go more for realistic. I have started trying my hand at digital "speedpainting." It's not quite that speedy yet. Took me about 3 hours. But it looks pretty darn awesome, in my opinion.

Unfortunately for my sense of having a life, this is meant to be a part of a four-piece set. I have to go out with a bang, right?!

Latest Project

Here is my finished texture project. It is closely based off of a screen shot from Skyrim. I had fun doing the trees in the distance and the rocks as well. The bigger trees were more annoying though. There's just so many of them! But the goal here was to create the illusion of depth through texture. How did I do?!

Loki helped, I'll admit it.

Well, I just got some feedback from my instructor that I should try and push the details in the foreground to help the illusion of depth. Hmm...I bet he means in the water. Maybe I could add some floating leaves on the surface of the water. I had a lot of trouble getting the water to look...watery. I don't know if I could get the details any better there after all I've done to it. I'll see what I can do. I'm really short on time. 

In other news...I got a 100% on my last project, the silhouettes! Yay! Still got straight 100's in this class. Working hard.

Guess I better keep working on this drawing if I wanna keep it that way...

Week 3 Exercises

This week we are learning about textures, patterns and lighting. So of course we had to do a basic value drawing. There were five exercises this week, which took me by surprise because there has usually been three.

This exercise was way more fun than I thought it would be. No lines allowed here, it had to be all value surfaces. I'm pleased with how it turned out, except for maybe the top left area.

This one is pretty self explanatory. I think I did pretty good here. We had to do it first with an H pencil and then again with a B pencil. The H drawing did not turn out so well, I just don't do well with H pencils. I don't like them.

Here is the H. It's a lighter pencil obviously but it's too hard to shade.

This one was fun! We had to pick from a list of adjectives and then a list of nouns and draw it. I picked "rusty" and "toilet." I guess you could say I've had some influence from Silent Hill in my day.

All in all, I'm impressed with myself for getting all of this done in one day. I was determined, especially after I accidentally had to hand in my work late last week. I am definitely going to hand my work in extra early this week. 

Oh! And there was one more exercise. We had to take pictures of five eggs in different lighting to create different moods. Here they are.

Art 1: Project 2

This is my second project for Art 1! I am pretty pleased with it, and it was a lot of fun to make. We were instructed to portray a scene with drama and emotion without the use of value or anything like that. Only line and shape in black or white.

I don't know why I chose this particular scene. It just sort of popped into my head when I was trying to come up with an idea for the project. So I just went with it. Creating the actual figures in the image was pretty easy and didn't take very long. The part that I spent the most time on was in rearranging everything and adjusting the size and shape of things to create a well balanced composition.

I most wanted to capture the feeling of fast movement in this piece. So I hope it travels your eye around and about the picture quite quickly. I know it does mine but maybe that's just because I've been staring at it for days and I'm constantly looking for things to change or improve.

Project 1...Finished!

Whew! I was working on this damn still life for about four days straight. Glad to be done with it...

The fabric was fun to do on the left, frustrating to do on the right. The camera also gave me a bit of trouble, but the detailing was actually pretty fun to do. I think the hardest part was the texture on the little statue. But all in all, I'm pretty pleased with this.

I just realized I haven't signed this. I need to come up with a nifty artist signature...

Inspirer: Kara Walker

Kara Walker is my newest inspiration. At first glance, her work would seem simple, or perhaps even playful. But with close examination, the viewer can find that her work really is complex, emotional and deeply disturbing.

Sex and violence and racism are all portrayed shamelessly in her massive cut paper murals, through nothing more than silhouettes.

Her eye for shapes is admirable and I hope to convey as much feeling as she does in my next project. In the project I have to do a black and white scene using only silhouettes just as Walker creates. Her inspiration was really something to me, so I thought I would share.

Here is an interesting interview:

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