Shading in with markers

11:27 pm pacific 

Isometric perspective 

25 thumbnails , atmospheric perspective

11:27 pm pacific 

Redesigning characters

12:21 am pacific 

While watching Worlds for league of legends season 3 , which after seeing the match ups for quarter I'm super excited for , I continue doodling and ended up working on the redesign on a few of my characters' appearance. The characters I redesigned were villains who were related to each other by blood. 

Vines' costume is a bit iffy and Sharp Blade's is a bit plain but allows her to move around easily. 

It's a work in progress. 

Doodles

3:50 pm pacific 

Fighting poses I suppose 

Space/ sci fi suit doodle

1:24 pm Pacific

small update while I have this break in assignment work

12:27 am Pacific

Oh, I haven't written anything for close to a week now I believe.

It's just been crazy, well...busy is more accurate, between all the assignments and classes.

At the moment, I finished most of my work for next week's classes. 

One of which was Bart Simpson with 5 values. I think I made the values a bit too dark though...which worries me since it'll be my first graded assignment in my Analysis of Form class. 

Charcoal is such a pain trying to clean from my fingers, especially since I use my fingers for blending on the charcoal paper (or newsprint). 

I'm glad it's at least washable (instead of permanent).

My last assignment I need to work on is related to the post I made previous to this one; that line weighed drawing for my Perspective's class has to be shaded in so in order to do so, I need to make a copy of it since I don't believe tracing paper goes well with shading, regardless of medium. That and the professor wants to keep the ink version separate from the shading version. It's sorta related to seeing one's progress, by keeping the previous versions, etc. 

Finally finished inking in assignment for Perspective class

Been busy over the week with classes and assignments

3:25pm

I've been locking myself with my assignments the past few days and finally am on the last assignment I need to finish before next week's classes assignments get assigned.
I had a range of assignments in terms of how much time they would take me to finish. Nine step value gradation for my Color & Design class, which I had to finish before Monday morning's class, well basically by Sunday night. Charcoal drawings of 4 objects that are either cubes, cylinders, or cones (1 of each and then selection for 4th object) for Analysis of Form class which is Monday afternoons. Another charcoal drawing, but for my Figure Drawing classs, of two hand poses from life, which is due Tuesday afternoon. Then finally for Wednesday morning's class, Perspective, I have to design an isometric interior or exterior environment. It's optional to ink it but if we don't ink, our pencil drawings have to be super detailed, as if we were going to ink it. 

Charcoal assignment, exhausting day and long blog post.

11:45 pm Pacific

Today was a long day for me, for many various reasons. I had an 8:30 am class so I'm physically (and possibly) mentally tired from waking up at 7am to get ready (breakfast, getting ready for class). The morning class went through well with nothing too crazy or exhausting. It was the roughly 2 hours break I had between my morning 5hr class and afternoon class that kinda rushed things and caused a series of exhaustive experiences. I was expecting a delivery of 5 items from the art store that I had ordered online on Aug 28th; it was only arriving today due to a hold on my order from no email asking for confirmation of my credit card sort of thing. (The person who explained it to me on the phone explained it a lot better than I just did.) Unfortunately for me, it arrived 5 minutes before I had to get to the shuttle for my afternoon class' location. As a result, as I was trying to adjust the large clipboard with my large notepad with slight frustration of trying to keep the notepad from slipping off the clips, I missed the shuttle and had to walk for 20 minutes to my class from my dorm, in the afternoon heat mind you. It wasn't fun the first time I missed the shuttle (though at that time, it was because I didn't wait for 1-2 more minutes to see if the shuttle was slightly late) to walk to my afternoon class in the heat and it certainly wasn't any different this afternoon.
Now I just need to wait for my next package to arrive tomorrow; I pray that it does otherwise I'm gonna be unprepared for Wednesday's morning's class.
In other news, I got to sharpen charcoal pencils with an x acto knife today. Luckily for me, I had enough visual reference from my parents , who sharpened regular pencils with the same method , and videos on Youtube to know how the process went, though I still ended up putting a bit too much pressure on the process and broke my first bit of charcoal. There was a guy in my class who had the unfortunate luck of breaking through many, even with hard charcoal , which is supposedly really hard to sharpen at all.
Now fast forward to about 8 or 9 pm Pacific. I spent the last 3-4 hours working on my assignment for my Analysis of Form class. It's not that it was difficult, but I really wanted to do a good job with it. Unfortunately, it's not 100% neat/clean as the previous marks of charcoal from my sketching of the objects couldn't be cleaned off with a kneaded eraser. Since I was using my kneaded eraser so often and it got pretty warm, my poor fingers got bits of the warm kneaded eraser stuck on them. Additionally, my fingers feel so sore right about now. I don't know if that's from the eraser or the many hours of sketching with charcoal.
Not related to school work or classes, I experienced my first foggy (and slightly drizzly it seemed) evening in San Fran since my arrival. I saw some morning fog when I landed last Wednesday
With all that's happened today, I'm physically tired and mentally tired as well though a shower did sorta help wake me up a little but I'm definitely heading to bed soon.

Ready To Go - colored

7:57 pm Pacific

"Ready to Go"

I feel like my go-to for backgrounds for these types of stances end up being a corner of a wall of some hallway. 

Ready To Go - sketch

6:15 pm Pacific

I apologize for the smudges; I'm trying to use up a bad eraser and it's taking a while to wear it down. 

I used several references for this sketch.
For the crouching stance/pose, I used this (rather small) image . 

Then for the hairstyle, vest and pistol, I searched google images with the keywords "short hairstyles for women under 30s"  for this hair style, "lara croft holding pistols" for general positioning and pistol references and "vest for women" to modify this vest.

My plan is to bring this into Photoshop (or SAI possibly) to fix the lines and then digitally paint this in Photoshop. But at the moment, I need to finish dinner. 

Sketching out an environment rather than people.

4:37 pm Pacific

Ignore the sketches in the top right and left corners; I ran out of room for the concept and ended up drawing into another sketches.

I started with the perspective layout of one point perspective going into the distance and built up everything around the odd looking shrine. 

There are ribbons hanging from the "shrine" as there are along the frame of the "gate". The side wall is to protect the area with mountains in the far back. The wall is decorated with the same diamond shaped designs that are on the gate and on the shrine. The circles on the bottom are artificial light sources for when the sun sets. One of the entrances to the area is through the wall with a cloth "door", which is held up by the same diamond shaped objects. 

Learning how to use a new medium

6:02 pm Pacific

It's never easy, learning how to use a new medium. I got to experience that feeling again during my Figure Drawing class yesterday when I had to learn how to sharpen [vine] charcoal and how to hold and sketch with it. I kept adding too much pressure when I was sharpening it so I kinda kept breaking my sharpened point, which was frustrating. The professor said it's best not to get frustrated so I have to remember to inhale-exhale while sharpening and see if that'll help me. Additionally, after class, and when I was back in my room, I looked up how to sharpen vine charcoal and I think  I've got it now. I'll be in the classroom again Tuesday so I can practice sharpening my charcoal before class starts.

Since the professor wants us to use a certain method when figure drawing, it's taking me a little longer than the rest of the class (or so I feel) to draw out my figure. I take too much making sure I've got the right angle and that I'm not missing any of the angles but I constantly go back and re-do that angle again and again. I know the professor said to take our time but I get the feeling I'm taking too much time, especially since the model holds the pose for only 20 minutes.

/edit Wow...I didn't think things through and wrote median instead of medium.

Art classes start tomorrow!...BUT

9:43 pm Pacific

I'm pretty excited for classes to start tomorrow if my materials were shipped the day they were orders (Aug 27th) and arrived already. But alas, they were on hold and if I had never called Customer Service, they would probably STILL be on hold since no email was ever sent to me regarding the hold. And since I called Labor Day, they couldn't be shipped until yesterday and now they're scheduled to arrive Monday and Tuesday of the upcoming week. Which means I'm not going to have all my materials for my class tomorrow and likely my classes Monday and Tuesday. I'm freaking out inside (not as bad as my previous nervous break downs) and hating myself for not paying extra for faster shipping. I was cheap and went with the $4 FedEx Home Shipping. And to top more things on this mess; the shipments were split into 2 (with one item that was unshipped due to slight out of stock issue) and the larger shipment didn't get sent out until this morning so that means it's the scheduled Tuesday delivery. UGH. SO glad I don't have a early Tuesday class and pray that the shipment that's suppose to arrive Tuesday arrives hours before my class! Or better yet... arrives AHEAD of schedule. I'm afraid to see what items in shipment #2 are ones I need for Monday.
Praying my emails get forwarded to the right professor; couldn't get the emails to send via class roster so I had to send them to the department email.
Praying my shipments don't get delayed. Praying my grades don't suffer because of my unpreparedness on the first day of each class.

Notes on how to draw hair

I ended up starting my morning with watching how to draw videos, two of which were videos of how to draw a male adult head in proportion and how to draw hair.

Trying a different angle approach

6:16. Pm pacific 

 

On the spot sketch

1:08 pm pacific 

I started sketching out a figure that ended up helping me with getting an idea for the clothing's appearance. 

Sketches between yesterday and today.

9:05 pm Pacific

After all the initial craziness that comes with moving in, I finally was able to sit down and sketch yesterday.
Yesterday's inspiration was a photo of a sunflower.
An image of a sunflower leads me to sketch a person in sunflower themes clothes. I was going to say character but there's really not much character .