Introductory art stuff from a new member

[serehfa]

Hi all,

Started art classes again after many years, and have some reasonably pleasing results. Its a short list, from beginning a few weeks ago until now:

picasaweb.google.com/serehfas/ArtAttempts
edit - you can click the gallery name if this only loads the last image.

Feel free to comment, question, critique. I went in with the request to learn technique as a foundation, so nothing imaginative here yet.

Edit - to do the teacher credit, because he's owed some, this is his site:

www.johnlawryart.com

Comments

[lark_ascends]

The last one - wow. Wow.

No critiques from me - I have no idea what I'm doing, let alone what anybody else should do. One day I hope to get to some art lessons.

[serehfa]

Thanks!
I found it was worth it to scrape some $ together *edit* for classes, for the weekly exercise and homework that I wouldn't have got done otherwise, and the peer pressure to put some effort in :)

The almost free way is you can also borrow library books on drawing (I think drawing skills are the core to everything, like balance before you are a gymnast). I like Betty Edwards Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, where she takes an innovative path to fooling your mind into drawing what's actually in front of you, rather than reproducing the shorthand your brain has decided will represent things and people.

The other thing is books that describe construction techniques, like perspective, and head and body generic proportions, that help you get the framework in place, literally.

The miner's cottage in Castlemaine in that last one had preparation as follows; a photo from which some basic scaling was done; a perspective sketch done with a ruler and transferred onto the drawing paper, to keep the alignment of the edges correct, then the had drawing in of detail and shading, the wash, more detail, more wash and gouache (opaque white watercolour paint) to give the highlights. A whole bundle of techniques build up into the final image.

I'd like to do another one with brighter summer tones...but later.

Anyway sorry for rambling on, I'm enthused right now :)

[tamouse]

Really well done, all of them. The last one is a quite excellent based on the source photo. You have a good style in both the pencil sketches and in the last one you have pulled together quite a result!

I've found, when taking pictures of my art pieces, that the straight digital images are rather poor. I am always fixing the levels in photoshop to make them look like they appear to my eye. It can be tricky, because it's rather a subjective thing, plus it can be easy to go too far, but I think it helps see what's there.

[serehfa]

Thanks. You can see the progress, can't you...so much relies on fine-tuning muscle control in the drawing arm, and training the eye to see relatively.

The source photo printed out horrendously, using an old bubblejet onto ordinary paper because that's what I had to hand. It was also a grey but bright day which played havoc with exposure. I did resort to looking at the original picture from time to time, though I suspect I actually benefited this time by not seeing too much detail. It made fudging easier!

But yeah, I hear you. Next time I'm going to print on photographic paper, and either artificially overexpose it, or do a copy like that, to show up the detail. The other thing that is obvious once you start taking perspective shots with cheap digital cameras like one's phone, is the extreme distortion that occurs.

I need to practice the figure drawing. The funny thing is that I noticed despite the formal scaling for heads, the teacher's examples always wound up shorter/wider than mine when I was following exactly. I know that we move on from the formal beginnings, but its interesting to see how each person perceives differently.

[tamouse]

Actually -- heh -- I wasn't referring to the source photo at all. I print my source photos on regular paper all the time, and am happy not to have them too high a quality. It distracts me from what I'm seeing in my mind about the image, and how I want it to be in the painting (watercolour, in my case). I often let the source image drive me too much in fact!

No, what I was talking about is the pictures you took of your drawn/painted art to post online. Those the ones I'm having to always futz with to get them to look like what I made, or at least more accurately resemble what I'm seeing with my naked eye.

[serehfa]

Ah, yes. Lighting is an issue, particularly trying to take a shot square on without coming between it and the light source.