This week I have something out of the ordinary to show you guys from my art class! I've made a lot of progress last week on several things even though apparently I am very behind in my art class. The most important part this week was that I finished my second small work on the Dylan project AND I finished my own first in-depth self portrait with conte crayons (which I recommend to everyone they are the coolest!)
I'll begin with my Dylan project today just to keep it constant to the previous blog post; below is where I was left off last week and will pick up off today.
From here onward I kept on working on the doors below the balcony and after that I started doing minor fixes on the background building and I filled in the dark characters on the far left bottom corner, making the edges of the facial features blue to relate to the other smaller work, which I thought was quite necessary even if it doesn't fit in the work. And voila! It was finished.
Here is my scanned version of the work, and I guess I could say that I am quite happy with this work, especially considering that I really stepped out of my comfort zone to draw a building and a scene like this. It was a challenge, but I learnt a lot from it, such as getting color values right and getting my proportions right, keeping the vanishing point in mind.
And there we go. Only one more work needed in the middle which I started working on this week. However, I do think the three works will fit in together well and I cannot wait to get them ready and presentable for their receivers.
Now it is time to break out the A3 and start working on my poster, which I am especially excited to start on because it is directly associated to my future plans, doing illustration. I love designing letters and doing projects like this because they are so freeing for the mind and soul, allowing your creativity to run completely free.
Okay, so I am very aware of my plan for this poster but I just couldn't help myself to make a few alterations after inspiration struck me. I'm taking references of Bob Dylan in the Last Waltz for this entire project so I wanted to get his whole 'look' right as well so I found a great reference picture for him and I decided to alter his hair into something more surrealistic such as below - squiggles. I think these will look completely rad with the right colors. I also wanted to do this western kind of typography to write out his name on the top, I'm not sure why, I just thought that it would fit well with his old-timely background.
I'm still going to include a standing Dylan in the front, the singing Dylan in the background is just going to be like a close up of him, and the foreground will be a 'stage' for him. So I'm really just adding a face in the background, I think that will come out quite well with a little more work.
Alongside my Dylan project I started a self portrait with conte crayons in my art class, we were assigned to draw 'selfies' but I did not like the idea of drawing myself smiling so I decided to do this expressionless representation of myself.
In this work, I'm using only three pieces of tools; a black and a white crayon and a blending tool that is essential for getting the values right. These crayons are extremely forgiving to the point that I feel like I'm almost cheating because it's making my progress so easy and almost even thoughtless. I kind of like them and hate them, I do like the challenge with graphite pencils where you can't add white in anymore if you've made it even slightly darker already, with contes it is almost too easy to put white back in.
I really enjoy working on hair, I started working from the left to right because this medium smudges extremely easily and requires more attention to avoid smudging than ruining your work. Anyway, I found this working with hair a really easy task and enjoyable to work on because I got the exact texture I was looking for with the right amount of detail that was easy to mold with a little help from my smudge tool.
From here onward I work my way down from left to right again, avoiding as much smudging as I can. The most difficult part in this work I found was getting the expression right on the face, because it is quite expressionless and that can be hard to obtain at times at least for me at this point. Below you can find my just about final representation of this work, I think I will do a few more final tweaks to the face here, such as the lips and the nose, just to make sure all the shadows and values are correct before bringing it back to my art class.
This work is quite large itself, it is 19 x 14 inches which I think was nice. I enjoyed working on a larger surface for a change since I usually work on A3 at the largest (for the exception of my last art class in the fall of last year). This work took me about two weeks to finish all together working on it for an hour and a half five days a week, which wasn't too bad I'd think I can be much slower than that.
A productive finish for a productive week! I'm making good progress for my portfolio, with only two 2D works to finish and one 3D that I'll start working on on the Christmas break (yes, I've planned this already). Tune in next week for my progression on the Dylan poster!
