City Block - 3 point perspective edited

12:14 am Pacific

The spacing was really off for that third building from the right; there weren't that many sections. Additionally I added more buildings in the open space in the top left and center top/ right of the drawing. Originally there was a hot air balloon there but my instructor told me that, that open space is still the ground; there is no sky if you're looking down. I had completely forgotten about that until he reminded me so! 

Still life - both of them WIP 3 and more...

11:44 pm Pacific 

I'm changing up my posts' formats this time; instead of making separate posts for each WIP, I decided to put them together in the same post. It's not a large difference (or at least as much as I can recall) so one large post rather than 2 posts is fine. 

Still Life: Objects of Personal Interest WIP 3

Still Life - Objects selected by instructor WIP 3

For both I mainly darkened the darks (thus eliminating the grayness of the drawing) and sharpened the edges. I'm not too sure if I sharpened the edges enough; they still look fuzzy up close but that might be the paper's texture getting in the way...

City block - 3 point perspective

11:51 pm pacific 

I drove myself crazy with all the spacing but I think it was worth it. 

To the attic - 2 point vertical perspective

11:49 pm pacific 

I fixed the hair and table leg a a well as the boxes in the attic. I had to change the ceiling light however. 

Sewer - reflection perspective edited

11:45 pm pacific 

I had to fix the lamp and the right sewer grate. In addition I used references to create a more realistic underside of the pedestrian bridge. 

Still life - objects chosen by instructor ( WIP )

10:48 pm pacific 

The reason I titled this as objects chosen by instructor is because just that; there were 5 setups in the class and this was one of them. 

It's extremely fuzzy compared to what it should look like, this is mostly, if not all, baca use everything was all in vine charcoal and I only just started to go over  and sharpen things with my charcoal pencil, kneaded eraser and fingers. 

Still life - objects of personal interest ( WIP 2)

9:47 pm pacific 

I'm glad I took a picture of the WIP I had last night... well technically this morning, but I disgress; it turns out the back yoyo stick was too light even in light and the top cup of the yoyo was too light as well. In addition, I tried smoothing out the background even more though now I'm worried I have too much charcoal in my background again. When I was shading in my drapery #2, I had way too much charcoal in the background then too. I need to ask my instructor about a good in between amount. 

Still life WIP 2: 

The actual image : ( or my reference) 

Head and Hand study - Samuel l Jackson ( WIP 2)

9:44 pm pacific 

Lits of work on this today; I spent a good amount of time darkening everything. I'm a bit worried about the nose and mouth area; I'll have to ask my professor / instructor for advice. 

Objects of personal interest - still life WIP

1:52 am pacific 

Still life - objects of personal interest , which contain my Chinese yoyo , sketchbook , yoyo stick and sewin kit. 

I had so much charcoal on my fingers from blending, especially during the background and managed to get a bunch of charcoal on my jacket sleeves too... At least I haven't done my Thursday laundry yet so that works out. 

... I still need to buy a few groceries when I wake up tomorrow as well as work on my head and hand portrait study for another class. 

Head & hand study portrait - Samuel L Jackson

7:52 pm pacific

The weeks are winding down to the end of the semester and that means finals! 

For Figure Drawing, the final is a head & head study of an elderly person. At the moment, I just finished adding the first layer of charcoal pencil on top of the previous week or two of vine lines and compressed charcoal cross contour. 

Spirited Away - mandala - colored rough

1:45 am Pacific

One of my final two assignments in my Color & Design class is the mandala. After listing several ideas and themes down, I finally narrowed down to Studio Ghlibi and ended up choosing Spirited Away since that was the one movie I knew best [from Studio Ghlibi] with Howl's Moving Castle as my personal second best known Miyazaki movie. 

References linked on my blog post: http://lillianchenartworks.blogspot.com/2013/11/mandala-theme-spirited-away.html

I'll be painting this in later this week or this weekend with gouache. 

Mandala - theme: Spirited Away

11: 04 pm Pacific

One of my final two assignments in my Color & Design class is the mandala. After listing several ideas and themes down, I finally narrowed down to Studio Ghlibi and ended up choosing Spirited Away since that was the one movie I knew best [from Studio Ghlibi] with Howl's Moving Castle as my personal second best known Miyazaki movie. 

I originally drew a smaller thumbnail version without references, unless you count my memory of the movie. For the full size version, I had to get references for things such as the paint on No Face's mask, the bathhouse and the tunnel and its statue. 

Next I need to digitally paint this in the color palette chosen and then paint 1/4 of it in gouache. I'm planning on finishing the digital painting part of this tonight if I can so I can get this printed and painted Thurs night  / Friday. 

Still life and the troubles set-up brings

 I found out after 5 days after my original set up on the dinner/kitchen table, that us have to move my set up due to the dorms' monthly health and safety inspection. It's super strict this month; stove must be clean, nothing on kitchen table except food, etc.

It kind of made my heart sink knowing it'd have to reset it and wish I had set it up on my desk even though our instructor/professor to the class mentions dinin a spot where it wouldn't get interfered with often, which was in my mind, was the floor due to housekeeping and my desk due to me working on assignments. 

The new set up location:

The original set up location:

To the Attic - 2 point vertical perspective

Self portrait - edited and completed

1:35 am pacific 

The first painting didn't receive a high mark as I hoped for. The reasons were the spiral was conflicting with portrait orientation. The original spiral was horizontal on a vertical picture plane. The original yoyo was too separated from the rest of the painting so I added more blues to the orange. In addition to the spiral direction / orientation, the values were too inconsistent. The overlay had to either be all darker or all lighter than the values of the rest of the painting. I don't know for sure if I got the corrections needed fixed but hopefully it looks improved! 

Sewer - reflected perspective, line art

Hopefully this pencil lines are clear, well visible, enough to see online. Inked lines are the 'real world' while the pencil lines are the 'reflected world'. 

I wonder if I've improved my line quality ..? One reason for the bad line qualit in my previous line arts could be I'm not applying enough pressure on the pens? Therefore many of them such as the 08 or 05,03 are showing up rather light. 

Abandoned subway - 2 point shaded

2:07 am pacific

Honestly I should be sleeping but after working on two assignments up until half an hour ago, I'm wide awake. 

(And it doesn't help that I feel the need to upload images and blog posts of my work before I sleep.) 

The two assignments I was working on were both for my perspective class: shading in our 2 point perspectives and inking our reflected perspectives. I'll be making separate posts for those for the sake of linking on my Facebook page. 

Torso - attempt 1

1:48 am Pacific

It still looks off to me and I think it's because of the breasts... 

On a different but similar/related topic, I feel like I really improved with this charcoal drawing compared to when I first started out/the first drapery. Even my instructor/professor says I'm one of the most improved in the class. (As far as I overheard/know, there's another person who's also improved from the start of class this semester.)

Edge control was definitely better in the torso drawing than it was in the drapery drawings. The background is a lot smoother too but heck did I use a lot of charcoal. Two to three layers of just vine charcoal, brushed off by chamois (I hope I spelled that right) and then gone over twice with charcoal pencil. Oh and of course smoothing or smudging with my fingers. I don't trust paper towels since it leaves gray dots where the charcoal paper has that texture. (Basically, in short, it takes too much off in my opinion.) But maybe that's a good thing? So you can still see the paper texture? Or is it a bad thing because you can still see the texture?

Drapery - Attempt 2, edited

1:41 am Pacific

The drapery above is the one I had for homework for my Analysis of Form class. Similar to my first drapery, I had to fix similar issues: edge control (fuzzy vs sharp) as well as more apparent values. I spent more hours on this one, at least outside of class, than I did for the in class drapery...though if you do include class time, I feel like I spent less? Actually, let me roughly estimate /calculate that.

Three weeks of homework time for drapery

I spent around 3-4 hours per week on it plus an additional 3-5 hours the past few days since we've got a group critique this upcoming Monday. 

Rough total would be 15 - 17 hours.

Class time for drapery

if we also had 3 weeks for it, and class it around 3 hours and add around an hour today fixing up the issues...

rough total would be around 10 hours. 

Hmm, I guess I did spend more hours outside of class, which is a good thing/should be happening.

Drapery - Attempt 1, edited

1:37 am Pacific

For my Analysis of Form class, we had two drapery assignments: one in class, the other as homework. The image above is the in-class one. I had to fix the appearance of it in terms of edge control (more crisp cast shadows and sharper folds as opposed to fuzzy). In addition, I attempted to smooth the background and a gradation effect to indicate even more which direction the light was coming from. 

Abandoned subway- 2 point perspective - line art, edited

5:29 pm pacific

I fixed the left vanishing point (bringing it closer to the image's picture plane). In addition I added more realistic details such as the cracks in the glass. 

Temple of the Dragon- shading,edited

5:26 pm pacific 

I forgot I had improved the drawing and resized I didn't take a photo of it and upload. The improvements I made were on the temple and the rocks, though the rocks gradients aren't that obvious as I hoped . 

Self portrait - it's complete!!!

4:53 pm pacific