Life Drawing: Session 1

Yesterday, we had our first life drawing session, since i had life drawing before it was easier for me to overcome the aspect of restricted type of drawings and go for a more freedom apporach. Even though I'm not fully sastified with the first 2 drawings.

10 mins.
10 mins.

I found that I drew in a restrained way not letting the lines free and embrace what i was seeing, but was good for the 1st drawings in a 10 mins pose.

After those 2 poses we were advised to look for the lines that interact the human body, e.g. the difference between the shoulders and the hips, etc. so we had 2 exercises using a cubist way to draw the figure, which in my opinion gave me a freedom with the pencil respecting the proportions of the human body, this exercise helped me to explore the angles of different positions of the human body. Very interesting!!

30 mins.

35 mins.

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Anatomy: some completed sketches

After some studies of the human face i tried to produce final drawings so i asked my girlfriend to be a model, hoping she wouldn't regret, i drew her. poor her! i guess i drew with a cynical face but i didn't mean it :), i found really interesting looking at other person and find the small details on her. what i found really difficult to catch was the eye essence maybe thats why they say it's a mirror to the soul because it's hard to catch...

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Anatomy: Study of human face

As we need to do a self Portrait and mine will have my face showing there i have started to try to draw some human face and knowing the basic shapes. what i found in my studies i have started by doing a cartoon like face what i was not trying to achieve, and i would blame all those "How to draw books". lol. they put the human face in basic shapes wich can be wrong sometimes, ideal only for cartoon drawing.

Also, I have started to draw some features of the human like the eyes, mouth, nose and ears in more detail, and found how amusing the human face can be with all those small detail.

I studied some human body at least at the position i want me to be in the portrait.

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Self Portrait: First Ideas

At last, I was able to spend some time on my blog and share my first ideas towards the Self Portrait Project.
Also i did some rough sketches to to better visualise my ideas.

1st idea (top left): it would be me in a profile position where i would have all my body blured apart from my arm where i would a pen and written in my arm I would have some of my character aspects.

2nd idea (top right): it would be influenced by Edvard Munch Portrait where the background would be black and my face would be shown rising from the darkness as an element of shyness also coming from the dark i would have my arm with a pen on my hand, all this scenario would be covered with glass effect and with my figerprints on it.

3rd idea (bottom left): I would be in a position facing backwards to the spectator in meaning of myst and i would some cartoons crawling out of my mind showing a different world where sometimes i am.

I did like some of the elements in some of the ideas so i tried to combine some of them and come up with the final idea.

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Intro to Software Packages ( Maya, Photoshop and Illustrator)

Today we had introductions to the programs we will be using this year, On Photoshop and Illustrator was quite a straightforward tutorial just highlighting the basic stuff of the software which helped to refresh the brain of some missing tool. On Maya, it was exciting, apart from using 3d Graphics software before i wasn't familiarized with Maya, so like tutor Alan advised, we had to forget what we have from other software and learn Maya from scratch, what sounds really exciting, I know it was too much information to take on but hopefully after a few reads over the helpful tutorial documents, it will be easier to understand.

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Self Portraits More Influences

On tuesday we had a look at new techniques to represent comtemporary artists feelings using photo manipulation, These techniques were quite interesting causing optical illusion to provide a self portrait. Jose Luis Neto

Jose Luis Neto was a good example of it, using pictures of prisoners to create the illusion of a mask.

Lucas Samaras, Photo-Transformation,1973

Another artist was Lucas Samaras, using a unique technique with chemicals in a polaroid photograph, this technique was new to me and blew me away some of the effects in some artworks from this artist's portfolio.

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Self Portraits

Our next project is to do a Self Portrait using a Digital program such as Photoshop or Illustrator, we had 2 lectures covering this subject, which i can say helped a lot to understand what the artists are thinking or at least suppose to be thinking when representing themselves ( thank you tutor phil). In my point of view the ones who stood out the most were the controversial ones such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Egon Schiele and Frida Kahlo because they are DIFFERENT!! they object the conventional type of portrait where the artist tried to represent beautfully the main element. On the other hand these show simply the true...

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait, 1988

Robert Mapplethorpe, yes as Tutor Phil advised is an artist that has a quite shocking portfolio, but in my opinion Art is that art is controversy which leads to progress, throughout the History of Art, artist tried to change their styles according to the previous and I think Robert Mapplethorpe is an example of that why stick up with something conventional when you can always try something new.
This picture particurlaly grabbed my attention because as a self portrait, it represents a death of an artist, for the ones who don't know Robbert Mapplethorpe was diagnosed AIDS and he had to live with it for the rest of his short life, so for an artist that knows is going to die create a portrait like this may be something quite disturbing, also is face hold something special something hard to describe, which makes you wonder If he is ready or not. I like the metaphor between the power of an artist only taken by his own death.

Egon Schiele, Self Portrait

Egon Schiele, was also a controversial artists using beautiful brushstrokes creating his inner self with quite disturbing artworks but in fact he was just trying to represent truthfully himself.

Frida Kahlo, The two Fridas, 1939

Frida Kahlo, one great surrealist even though she didn't consider herself as it, because what she portrait in all of her artworks was reality or at least was what she felt at that time, the opposite of surrealism. She transmits what she felt even if it is good or not, the honesty in her work is fascinating.

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Project 101: Final Ideas

The final outcome of the Life Form drawing, I really like this one particurlaly because of the face of the character, for my first sketches I used a more childish look, and I wanted to change it absolutely so after some tries on a more realistic area I came up with. I know is still a character but is something which both kids and adults can associate.


The choice of this machine came as mixture of characters from different films ( Sweeney Todd and Edward Scissorhands), which after I opted to give a machine-like look, I liked the final outcome but the use of colour gave him an unexpected look, In my narrative this Robots would be the bad guys but the colours dont communicate that.

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Project 101: Developmental Drawings

This is a developmental drawing of my machine-like drawing, after coming with different types of machines i chose the one which would be appropriate for my narrative.


My idea of the life-forms was more difficult to do but after doing some first sketches of different life forms, I decided to stay with my first idea but with a more realistic approach of the character.

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Getting some inspiration in portugal

photo: Ivana Kutilkova ivanakutilkova.wordpress.com

hiya!

i´m posting from my homeland portugal where i have finally had my holidays that i needed this year, also my projectis are going on the right way (at least) i like the sketches.

I´ll update my blog with some developmental drawings of my final ideas and after my first day in university i´ll post the final outcome.

for now i will just enjoy the sun and the 35ºc , hehehe

Ruben

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