Bilgewater Brewpub

This was the final art class project, and I'm really happy with it. The one downside is that I didn't include any of the additional objects (there were bottles on the cloth) nor did I include the edges of the cloth, so unless I tell you what you're looking it, you might not have guessed "cloth." Ah well, live and learn.

I went to a game convention over the weekend, and I got to chat for a while with an actually cartoonist / illustrator. She said I'll definitely need to get figure drawing classes in at some point if I want to be good at it. Unfortunately, I'm not super at still life yet, so how am I going to be any good at capturing a person on paper? So... I'm going to take a brief break (i.e. - 1-3 months) from classes, and I'll study still life on my own for a while. I'll be sure to post my progress, and hopefully, I'll be ready by the time summer classes are ready to start.

So part of our homework was to find a painting or image that we liked, grid the thing, and then try to use that grid to replicate the original. I took a whack at it. I think I like value studies better.

Coincidentally, this also gave me reason to toy with the wordpress gallery object. Not much to it really. Just click the thumbnails to see the actual images.

As part of our previous class, the teacher taught us the basic topography of the human face - the usual bits about the eyes being halfway down the head and measuring things in relation to eyeballs and all that. She just had us start sketching without any particular subject in mind. I was curious in seeing who the face I was sketching actually turned out to be. I can honestly say that I don't know this guy.

I think the most important bits I took away from this practice was the inner contour of the ear and the lower contour of the nose.

Seriously, if you don't watch Battlestar Galactica, you're really missing out on some good science fiction, and by "good science fiction" I mean "it's better than Lost."

I found myself using the eraser more than I would have liked for this one, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The profile angle definitely brought to light a new dimension (for me anyway) of the relationship of facial elements to each other. I need a little more practice with the positioning of the mouth to the nose - after that, I'll be cooking with fire.

p.s. - A coworker noted that that trick I do with the Gimp is called "posterizing." I checked out the posterizing tool in the Gimp, and it's effectively the same thing as toying with the contrast. So... grayscale posterizing is what I've been doing.

This is the first value study that I've done of a figure (as opposed to a face / upper torso). I have to admit that I was pretty worried when I started, but I think everything came together in the end. I'll definitely need to do more of these if I'm to be an artist worth his salt.

By the way, I just did a cursory search for what "worth my salt" means, and it seems to be a reference as to how soldiers used to paid. Can someone confirm this?

And also, Farscape is a bizarre but fun space opera worth checking out. It's one of the most recent Jim Henson Company shows that comes to mind. It's available from the Blockbuster mail rental service, and it wouldn't surprise me if Netflix had it too.