151 replies to this topic

[Puffin]

So, finally got around to taking pictures of some of the artwork I wanted to share from this semester. These are all pieces from Drawing II and Painting I. A few of the assignments in each may seem a tad repetitive, since I had the same professor for both classes (I ended up doing now one, not two, but three self portraits all in the same week... -_-")

 

My own favorites from these would probably be the Abstract Pastel and Ink (we had to find creative ways to use our supplies, after drawing on the paper in ink, I ground up pastel and blew it onto the paper and it stuck pretty well to the ink, making this soft, powdered appearance over the black splotches- I really wish I had a better picture of this one, actually, but it kept coming out bleh), Systematic Dice (we had to set ourselves some rules and then draw accordingly, I broke the area up into nine boxes, then with every box I rolled a die to decide what kind of mark I'd draw- straight, wavy, jagged, dotted, ect- the mark could extend into the adjacent boxes, but it could go backwards into previous boxes. It was fun and I'm tempted to do more of these), Mask and Prism (This painting, as well as the Mirror and Scarves, Banana and Mango, were all done using only a pallet knife. No brushes. I'd never done that before and it was pretty interesting. I kind of really like the technique, but of all of them, my favorite was this one, since I just really love the balance of the colors), Mouth of the Creek (based on a photo I took of the creek where  go hiking frequently. I love this place and this photo really sucks in comparison to the painting itself) and finally, Return to Fate. That last one was my final for painting, and I just really, really like it. The colors were meant to be more somber originally, but the weekend I spent painting it was especially stressful, not only because of my animation final, but because there was some trouble with my sister and the family and it was just awful. And, for some reason, whenever i'm emotional while painting or drawing, things come out really, really colorful. In the end, I really like how intense the colors are.

[Puffin]

This summer has not been a productive one for art. In fact, over half of these drawings were all done last semester, so I'm really cheating by even including them in my summer art dump.

For the ease of uploading- and so you guys don't have to open, like, a billion tabs- I put most of the drawing into two sketch dumps.

Also put all my school work in a separate list, cuz yeah, that's getting pretty lengthy and I like to be organized.

[Puffin]

blah, blah, blah, new art.

[Stars]

Blah, blah, nice pictures, blah blah, hooray for Carson~

[Puffin]

Hey guys, I need feedback on a specific picture from the past! This picture, actually.

 

I'm writing a paper on this picture for one of my classes and I'm curious as to what the opinion of the general audience is on the various elements pictured.

 

Here are a couple of prompts if you don't really know how to critique or want an idea of what I mean:

• What gender do you think the child pictured is? (boy, girl, androgynous?)
• What do you think is the overall mood of the picture?
• What kind of emotional reaction would it give you, if any?
• What strikes you as interesting in the picture? Where is your eye drawn to the most?
• What would be your take on the weather pictured?

[kspr]

it looks wistful. like the person realizes their life is futile, and they'll get drawn under the waves sooner or later. the boat is big for one person, and with a sail that small, i get the feeling that this person doesn't have any control over their life. im drawn right under the bow where all the waves look like they converge on a single point. the weather reinforces the feeling of being trapped by fate since it takes up the whole sky.

[Stars]

• Androgynous boy
• Melancholy
• Ambivalence
• What strikes me most about the picture is that, despite the intensely rolling waves and the fantastical fish, the person in the boat looks so disinterested. It makes me think that this boat ride has either been going on way too long, or there have been multiple trips with similar sights in the past. Perhaps he or she has been stranded for some time now and is mildly envious of the fish who can go wherever they please and aren't subject to the whims of the wind. Whatever the case, none of this is new or engrossing to the person in the boat.
• The waves and the balloon/lantern strongly imply that it is strongly windy. The overcast sky implies that either a storm is coming, or one has recently ended. If there was a recent storm, that could be another reason the person in the boat looks so worn out. Instead of being bored, maybe (s)he's simply resting after struggling against the weather for a while.

[BottomGuy]

The child feels like a boy to me.  I cannot place my finger on why I get that feeling.  The mood of the picture feels very joyous save for the boy who looks so depressed.  The world looks so wondrous with the rolling waves and fantastical creatures,  but the boy does not care about that at all. Reminds me of times where I have had reason to be happy but I feel depressed despite it. It makes me feel sad because the boy looks so depressed.  There is something about seeing someone sad and not knowing why they are sad like in this drawing. He should look excited being surrounded by all these wonderful things and riding along in the boat. But no, something is making him sad and it pulls me down, too.  My eye is drawn to the topmost creature jumping out of the water. I think it is because it is out of the water.  Everything else is under or in the water except for that one creature.  For the same reason my eye is then drawn to the lantern floating away. It took me a few moments to even really see the child the first time because they are so minor compared to everything else going on.  When my eye does go to the boat it always lands on the bow with the little mermaid and hanging lantern.  In general I tend to focus on the left side of the picture.  There are more small and separate details than on the right with the large boat and big sails.  The weather comes across as being very windy because of the clouds.  If the clouds were gone I would say it looks like a bright day outside, which would have played even more into the bright cheery setting that the child cannot enjoy.

[Glaciermage]

Oh boy. I am not one to critique art. I'll put my lame answers in spoiler form so as not to sway anyone.

 

Spoiler

• What gender do you think the child pictured is? (boy, girl, androgynous?)

It could be androgynous but something about the nose/eyebrows/haircut/hair length says to me that it is a boy.

• What do you think is the overall mood of the picture?

The mood is serene/peaceful. The expression on the (boys?) face, the unicorn dolphins, the floating balloon all suggest to me that there is a peace there, even though the world around is turbulent and the opposite of peaceful.

• What kind of emotional reaction would it give you, if any?

It is very calming to me. You know, because of all the serene/peaceful look at last question.

• What strikes you as interesting in the picture? Where is your eye drawn to the most?

I look at the child's face. That is what I focus on the most.

• What would be your take on the weather pictured?

Storm clouds/ dangerous seas / balloon floating away / all suggest that a storm is in the brewing stage.

 

 

[Monkeydog]

I was going to write something but everyone else's is so good. :(

 

What gender do you think the child pictured is? (boy, girl, androgynous?)

Male.
What do you think is the overall mood of the picture?

Sadness. Moreso one of loss.
What kind of emotional reaction would it give you, if any?

It feels like the climax of some big adventure, right as tragedy has struck, or something has been lost. The fact that the child looks sad and isn't amazed by his surroundings makes everything around him feel so mundane, despite how epic and amazing it all looks.
What strikes you as interesting in the picture? Where is your eye drawn to the most?

The waves. Not only are they fantastical and kind of merge with the boat/fish surrounding, it kind of represents the narrative I have in my head, that it's the downward slope of a story mixed with melancholy and thoughtfulness.
What would be your take on the weather pictured?

Somehow, when I look at that picture, it looks like the weather is conspiring to do something. Like something is building up in those clouds, centered around the way they're blowing. They don't look exactly threatening, but they do look like an ominous portent.

[Puffin]

Thanks, guys. :3 The range of reactions is interesting, and even more interesting to me is how many of you do get exactly what I was going for. When I initially finished this picture, it seemed no one really even saw the depressing elements in it and were entirely distracted by the more lighthearted aspects, so it's neat that you guys all caught onto it.

 

 

Edit: For anyone who might be curious, I decided to share the paper I wrote on this piece. It basically explains the elements of the picture, why I drew it, what influenced me, ect. So, here it is, included in the spoiler (also, it's short, only a page or so long).

 

Spoiler

Sailing is a stand alone picture I drew at the end of a two year relationship. In addition to that, my last remaining grandmother had passed away in the last year and my grandfather was deathly ill, so at this time I was dealing with a lot of depression, anxiety and bitterness from the loss and from my relationship. Sailing was meant to vent my feelings at the time, while also attempting to get myself to draw seriously for the first time since that relationship had started (I rarely drew anything during that period). However, I have a tendency to be secretive and I don't like drawing out my feelings in any literal sense. So, to conceal its meaning, I purposely made the setting feel a little like a fantasy. The reason I went for that route in specific is from my own history of escapism as a means of coping with my problems. During this time frame, I actually hadn't been coping via escapism (a part of the reason I hadn't drawn much, either), so everything had overwhelmed me. To represent the overwhelming nature of life, I drew this picture on an 18 x 24 inch paper, which was the largest I'd ever worked on at the time.

Sailing pictures a child riding in a boat through stormy seas, with an overcast sky that could be either a storm approaching or passing (this was left ambiguous since I wasn't sure if things were really going to get better at this point), with the waves are all converging on one point. The churning waves are meant to represent the turbulence of life and the uncertainty of what lies ahead, but despite the implied storm the boat had weathered through, I left it intact and unharmed. My reasoning for this was that even if I was in a bad spot at the time, I knew that I'd get through it safely, no matter how tired and depressed I was as a result, like the child in the boat. A compass rose was drawn on the sail of the boat, to remind me that I wasn't directionless and lost. Swimming and gliding around the boat are these whale-flying fish creatures with unicorn horns (a blend of animals I like). When I was sketching the idea out, originally it was just the child in the boat, alone. I knew I wasn't alone, with the support of my friends, so it didn't feel right to make them alone, either. The last additions to the picture were the lanterns, the mermaid on the bow of the boat, and the paper lantern flying through the air like a balloon. These are all little things I love, that I can't help but get a little happier when I see them. They were included around the picture to give a sense of hope and lightheartedness. My stand in for the picture is, of course, the child. I drew a child because I was feeling helpless to what was going on around me at the time and it was admittedly a transitory time for me in retrospect. The child is meant to be a boyish looking girl (most people assume that they're a boy, due to the hair, which I kept short since my own hair was short at the time), this is primarily because I've always been a tomboy. During the course of my relationship, my then boyfriend kept expecting me to be more like a 'real' girl, so I purposely drew myself to look like a boy here as a means of reminding myself of my true nature.

The picture was largely inspired by the animated film Cat Soup, a surreal anime about a brother who travels to the land of the dead to retrieve his sister's soul. In particular, one sequence in the movie inspired the picture, when the brother and sister are stranded in a boat after the world has been flooded with water. This scene had stuck with me, since I have an affinity for water and it has often played a part whenever I've drawn pictures representing my life. So, when I started this picture, that was meant to deal with subjects like depression and loss, my mind went back to the scene of the two cats in the boat.

Overall, while the picture does have a definite sense of sadness about it, I don't see it as entirely depressing, since there are still so many more hopeful images within it, which I find keeps everything in perspective. One thing that often interests me is the range of reactions this piece gets. When I first drew it, it went largely unnoticed and the few reactions I got seemed to be oblivious to any of the depressing elements, as people seemed distracted by the happy whales and the pretty waves. It really only drew attention about a year after I'd finished it and now people seem to understand its hidden aspects better, even if they don't understand the context.

[Puffin]

New pic!
This started out as a vent picture, but it soon became an exercise in practicing realism and testing out some stuff I'd learned in my painting class over the past two semesters, and applying it to digital painting. I probably could have stood to have more dark contrast, and maybe a little less purple overall, but I'm happy with it. I'm really proud of the perspective, since it's really hard to get that angle right, I love the shading around the mouth and how I was able to balance solid color with the shading, and just... dat hand.

I used photo reference for this, just a pic I took with my webcam, basically, that I could refer back to easily without fiddling with a mirror constantly. I dunno how much the actual pic looks like me, though, so maybe this could be counted as a particularly creep self portrait, or maybe you could just consider it some anonymous woman.

[Glaciermage]

...Dat hand.

It's really really good, Puffin. Another professional drawing.

[Puffin]

New art work! This is all stuff I did over the semester in my painting class.

 

The first two paintings, Mt Dumyat and Edinburgh Alley, were based on photos I took in Scotland. The assignment was to create a whole bunch of color palettes using a variety of rules and techniques (choose nine colors, then mix with white for example) and then to paint anything we wanted using that palette without mixing the nine colors together to create more shades.

 

The next set, the ads, were an assignment where we had to paint something that did not interest us and reinvent the subject in a way that interested us. I chose ads and decided I wanted to blur them out and abstract them. The idea was to paint the ads in a way that reflected how we ignore ads in passing. I HATED this assignment and the my first attempt, the Charlotte Russe ad, came out terrible. I did have more fun with the assignment when I switched gears and started using the palette knife later on.

 

For the next set of paintings, we had to paint any subject matter however we wanted. I chose to paint two of my characters, Mohinder and Lynx. In their world, Mohinder is a prophet and Lynx is a king. The way I painted them was meant to look how they would be represented within their own world's art. So, essentially, I had to think 'If you walked into a temple and saw a painting of the prophet, what would it look like?' and 'If the king commissioned a painting, how would it turn out?' I researched a lot of medieval art for this one. The Lynx portrait was kept very dark and stiff, not only to reflect his nature as a king, but because it was inspired by early portraiture or kings and nobility in the medieval era. The Mohinder portrait was largely inspired by the Book of Kells and various Christian iconography.

 

Then there's my final project. This was originally going to be a third installment in the previous series, done something like various art of St George slaying the dragon. I didn't have time to even start it for that project, though and by the time I got around to it, I was very, very bored of referencing medieval art. So, I did something else with it. Instead my goal here was to use the palette knife to do a narrative drawing, something I'd never done despite my love for the palette knife. More over, I wanted to work with the texture of the paint especially. So, the paint of the scales doesn't just *look* like scales, it's physically layered and patterned like scales. Similarly, the blood on Kaleo's neck was actually poured down the canvas to get the right drip effect, and buildings were carefully smoothed out. The sand started out rough and then I went back over it in spots to smooth it out and create a more layered appearance. I worked a lot with movement in this painting, too, splotching color all aroun Kaleo's head and body to show a sense of her thrashing around, and I left a lot of the canvas white to make it seem open and faded out.

[Puffin]

So, today I went to my cousin's wife's baby shower. Yesterday I had meant to buy a gift, but it totally slipped my mind while I was out- so I ended up making one instead. I had, for my nephew's first birthday, written The Nerdy Alphabet, presented in poster form with various illustrations drawn in colored pencil. It was largely popular with all of my family (there's not a single person among us who isn't a nerd). So, obviously, this was my key choice this time around. I altered a few lines and lettered it all by hand, then drew little illustrations in marker (admittedly, I think the colored pencil worked better, but too late now).

 

The picture is 9x12", and it took a total of ten hours to complete.

 

Funny enough, that might sound like an unusually long time for me, but all of my work takes at least 5 hours now a days, unless it's a minute little sketch. Large pieces, like the paintings, take closer to 20 or 40 hours, though for a piece of this size, 10 hours is still quite a bit. It's mostly because there's A LOT of measuring involved with the lettering, and then the inking of the letters has to be done very slowly to ensure I don't mess it up.

[Xteven Xavier]

I really like that, it's super cool

[Stars]

You win best cousin-once-removed.

[Puffin]

I couldn't sleep (randomly achey- what gives, body?) so I drew a picture instead. I barely do little drawings anymore and when I do, I rarely ever post them anywhere nowadays, but I really liked how this one came out.
 

Mickey and Raisa

 

I've drawn Mickey once before, recently, as well, which...since I'm posting the other one, might as well post that one, too.

 

...Oh, yeah, and while I'm at it, I guess I should post the painting I recently finished for Kamau. I kind of just forgot about that one altogether until now.

 

Walking in the Temple

[Stars]

I like how both pics of Mickey are mostly black and white (aside from skin tones in the new one), and then bam, bright red hair.

I've seen the other two before, so you already know I like them.

 

Unrelated, I was scrolling up a bit to remember what else you had posted here recently. I hadn't noticed before that you shared the paper you wrote on the Sailing picture. Now I feel bad for paying so little attention to it when you first uploaded it.

[Puffin]

Yeah, I didn't want to leave the picture entirely colorless, so with the first one I decided, on a whim, to color in his hair with a few markers. I liked the look of it, so with the second one, I decided to keep up the trend and colored in only his hair, as well as some of Raisa's lips and jewelry. Looking at it after that, I wanted to indicate Raisa's skin tone (mostly because SHE has pointed out in the past that it's easy to forget that all my characters aren't white if I don't make some effort to shade them in, which is a valid point), but I decided to do that digitally since I didn't trust that I'd be able to get her skintone even with markers. After that, it simply looked silly to leave Mickey paper white, so I decided to color his skintone in, too. Personally, while I like the look of all white with one bright spot of red in the Mickey stand alone pic, I think the sense of warmth that's brought in with the second picture is fitting for the nature of the piece.