Charcoal Life Dump

I discovered that I love using compressed charcoal. I think it frees me up in a way that pencil or chinagraph doesn't. I also prefer the aesthetic of it. Maybe I'll keep up with it, and screw the damn chinagraph that I've been wrestling with for the last year.

Life Dump

First update since second year, and guess what it is?! I hope the brightness/saturation is ok, having some calibration issues at the moment...









So, yep. Been a good term so far. Not regretting any decisions; Maya is my new best friend. Getting into the swing of things with the drawing, learning, writing, animating. :) All is good.

Tigrrrr.

Maya!

Maya used to annoy me, but now we're quite good friends.

For my old man

Last week my wonderful cat Monty died. I still find it hard to deal with the fact he's gone, but painting this helped. He was special to me - my old man - and truly a beautiful cat. He had a good long life though for which I am extremely grateful.


Inspired by the amazing Marta Nael. I have been getting back into painting more over the summer; learning lots and having fun. I'm always slightly too tentative though so attempting an Impressionistic style like Marta's encouraged me to be a bit more free and expressive. It's kind of appropriate :)

Layout

I am by no means a layout artist, so this was possibly the most challenging thing I've done in a long while but what I've learnt from it has certainly been invaluable. I can't say I'm 100% happy with the result but it's been a long time since I used Photoshop in this way, and looking at my old digital pieces and this, I see a lot of improvement! Anyway, this was a final project for one of our assignments at uni - only 4 days and the first year will be over. This makes me sad. But the prospect of being able to sleep properly, and unlimited time to study what I want/need to study, makes me excited!

Lotsa Lotsa Life Drawings

Yep, as a result of not scanning for ages, I now have loads I want to share! Most of them are from our costume sessions, which are really great fun, I always enjoy them whenever I go.

A more refined life drawing, done during a session where Peter Parr, a former tutor on the course, was teaching. I learnt a lot that day, he was extremely inspirational and such a good laugh! I recommend you look him up, or check out his tumblr: http://peterparr.tumblr.com/

One thing that Peter Parr taught me, and that I'm desperately trying to improve on, is my line quality. All too often I'll rush in with thick lines and completely kill any sense of form or three dimensionality. In these, I tried to spend more time observing and thinking about the quality of the line that I put down, and maybe it's just me but I think it's helped. If only Parr could come teach me every day!