various Foundation Drawing assignments
Wow. It's been almost two weeks to the day since my last post. Sorry guys-- didn't mean to go for that long without updating, but the past couple weeks have been pretty hectic, and it's going to stay that way. I've been working for nearly twelve hours today, all on art projects. So I figured I'd take a break from making them and post about them so I don't lose track of this LJ completely. Since I took such a long (though not intentional) break, I've got a lot to catch you, my faithful readers, up on. First is Foundation Drawing.
In my last Foundation Drawing post, I said we were moving from line value to actual constructed value. I was both wrong and right-- we continued with value this past week, but before that we had to back-track for a week for some reason and do two-point perspective. My in-class exercise actually remained in class, so I don't have that to post, but I do have this piece, my homework. The assignment was to do an interior space in two-point perspective that has a narrative attached to it. The narrative to this piece is a little bit weird, I'll admit. I did this drawing in our study lounge, a place where the acting majors practice their lines. Often, because they're so good at it, it sounds like they're actually getting into legitimate arguments. So I thought I'd take that premise and expound upon it-- I turned over a chair to make it look like there was a fight, and added the book Othello and a pillow because I wanted it to seem like one of the people practicing tried to suffocate the other one just like Othello did to Desdemona. And the two-point perspective is seen from the perspective of someone slumped over on the floor, and the door leading outside is open, like someone fled the scene. I thought it was pretty cool, but my Drawing professor was creeped out by how many sick and twisted narratives my whole class came up with.
Back to value. So this past Wednesday in class, we drew something from the projector. My professor started out blurring the image a whole lot, and then focused it a little bit more and a little bit more until we saw the details of the whole image. The image was also upside-down. This way, we could concentrate on just the value and the shapes of the whole composition rather than the details right away, which was actually really helpful. It ended up being a famous painting called Man With Pipe, but I can't remember by whom. I tried to find it online for comparison, but searching for "man with pipe" was too vague. So you just get my version instead-- a slightly warped, pudgy-looking happy man with no teeth apparently. Hehe.
So for our second-to-last of the year, and the most intense so far, our professor told us we had to find a masterpiece by a famous painter with a lot of good contrast in it and recreate the painting in black and white. She gave us a list of artists that utilized contrast well, and I chose Artemisia Gentileschi, an early Italian Baroque painter most famous for her painting Judith Slaying Holofernes. (She's pretty awesome, I highly recommend checking her out.) I chose her painting Cleopatra because I loved the contrast and I thought the woman was beautiful. You all know the story of Cleopatra, how she kills herself with an asp, so in the painting, the snake is wrapped around her wrist. I thought it was a beautiful painting, and one I'd never seen before, so I thought it would be really cool to do.
So I did it. This is my master copy, done mostly with vine charcoal that I smudged with tissues, and a little bit of black conte for the darkest areas and an extra-soft charcoal pencil for the detailing in her face. I used the eraser a lot too as a tool, which was helpful for getting some of the really light areas to stay really light. This took me about six hours to complete, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out, how everything does really look flowy and soft.
Well everybody, I hope you enjoyed the work in this post. I know I'm happy to be back. But what to expect in the waning weeks of my second semester? Two more Dimensional Arts projects, one more Foundation Drawing assignment (but probably some more in-class work for that class as well), at least one more in-class assignment for Color Processes, and my climactic Color processes final project. These upcoming posts will be the last ones for a while. (But hopefully not too long of a while, because I want to of course keep this up with my individual projects over the summer.) So keep checking back.
In my last Foundation Drawing post, I said we were moving from line value to actual constructed value. I was both wrong and right-- we continued with value this past week, but before that we had to back-track for a week for some reason and do two-point perspective. My in-class exercise actually remained in class, so I don't have that to post, but I do have this piece, my homework. The assignment was to do an interior space in two-point perspective that has a narrative attached to it. The narrative to this piece is a little bit weird, I'll admit. I did this drawing in our study lounge, a place where the acting majors practice their lines. Often, because they're so good at it, it sounds like they're actually getting into legitimate arguments. So I thought I'd take that premise and expound upon it-- I turned over a chair to make it look like there was a fight, and added the book Othello and a pillow because I wanted it to seem like one of the people practicing tried to suffocate the other one just like Othello did to Desdemona. And the two-point perspective is seen from the perspective of someone slumped over on the floor, and the door leading outside is open, like someone fled the scene. I thought it was pretty cool, but my Drawing professor was creeped out by how many sick and twisted narratives my whole class came up with.
Back to value. So this past Wednesday in class, we drew something from the projector. My professor started out blurring the image a whole lot, and then focused it a little bit more and a little bit more until we saw the details of the whole image. The image was also upside-down. This way, we could concentrate on just the value and the shapes of the whole composition rather than the details right away, which was actually really helpful. It ended up being a famous painting called Man With Pipe, but I can't remember by whom. I tried to find it online for comparison, but searching for "man with pipe" was too vague. So you just get my version instead-- a slightly warped, pudgy-looking happy man with no teeth apparently. Hehe.
So for our second-to-last of the year, and the most intense so far, our professor told us we had to find a masterpiece by a famous painter with a lot of good contrast in it and recreate the painting in black and white. She gave us a list of artists that utilized contrast well, and I chose Artemisia Gentileschi, an early Italian Baroque painter most famous for her painting Judith Slaying Holofernes. (She's pretty awesome, I highly recommend checking her out.) I chose her painting Cleopatra because I loved the contrast and I thought the woman was beautiful. You all know the story of Cleopatra, how she kills herself with an asp, so in the painting, the snake is wrapped around her wrist. I thought it was a beautiful painting, and one I'd never seen before, so I thought it would be really cool to do.
So I did it. This is my master copy, done mostly with vine charcoal that I smudged with tissues, and a little bit of black conte for the darkest areas and an extra-soft charcoal pencil for the detailing in her face. I used the eraser a lot too as a tool, which was helpful for getting some of the really light areas to stay really light. This took me about six hours to complete, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out, how everything does really look flowy and soft.
Well everybody, I hope you enjoyed the work in this post. I know I'm happy to be back. But what to expect in the waning weeks of my second semester? Two more Dimensional Arts projects, one more Foundation Drawing assignment (but probably some more in-class work for that class as well), at least one more in-class assignment for Color Processes, and my climactic Color processes final project. These upcoming posts will be the last ones for a while. (But hopefully not too long of a while, because I want to of course keep this up with my individual projects over the summer.) So keep checking back.