Nightmares.

Originally this was for an assignment about dreams, but I feel like its color scheme is a pretty good descriptor for me right now. Just going through a little heartbreak.

WIP: Sakura Collage

Toys in Monochrome

Still lifes done in class: the assignment was to draw objects all of the same color (there was a study in yellow, too, but I don't like that one as much). The teacher usually sets these up, but today she was late and some students (all full-grown adults, mind you) set it up themselves and started fighting over the same objects, trying to set them up in their own little corners to draw! I guess high school never ends.

I like the frog drawing the best. His belly was a challenge because it's a lighter color than the rest of his body...but it was in the shadow...so that had me a little unsure of what color to make it. But when I figured it out (and I'm sure there's more than one way to get the same effect) I was surprised that it was this grape color that did the trick.

Oh, and new-found old love: Nu-Pastels. They're hard enough for detail work, because sometimes you need a good sharp edge to keep your drawing in control; but soft enough to play nicely with Unisons and Senneliers. Hey, if they're good enough for Wayne Thiebaud, they're good enough for me.

A watermelon surprise

Watermelon closeups in pastel on toned paper.

Remember Jolly Ranchers (or do they still exist)? I used to love those things. Not sure when it happened, but now, the idea of all those mysterious flavor and color additives sounds kind of gross; that's why red velvet cupcakes freak me out--WHAT is the point of all that red food dye?

Eeeeeeee...

I appreciate the cream cheese frosting. I just don't understand why the cake needs to be red; it's not like it makes it look yummier. I mean I read in some recipe that you need like a quarter cup or something of dye. Dye. Scary. And isn't red the one food coloring that can make kids crazy or something? Sorry. I seem to feel quite strongly against red velvets, and somewhere many people are thinking me a heathen. But probably not right now at 3 in the morning. Good night!

Herakut

via RomanyWG's flickr

Wow, I just discovered this German painting duo Hera (Jasmine Siddiqui) + Akut (Falk Lehmann) = Herakut, and I am in love with their art. They present one solution to a question that I've been struggling with recently: How do you make figure drawing modern?

One problem I've had with my work in figure drawing is that although I love the drawing process itself, and find it so much more exciting than still lifes, the end result after a session with a model in class looks only like a successful exercise at best; there's nothing more in it to tell a story. I do think that figure drawing is a genre most appreciated by other artists...the naked body (even if nothing explicit is exposed) can make people uncomfortable. I mean even on my first day with a model, I had to take a deep breath; and I had a classmate who, even at the end of the semester, still refused to look at the body, working only on the head!

Our last project involved our drawing a dream or memory. The end result (not really done, in my mind, but see last post) finally had me finding a happy balance between figure + other, and between careful rendering + modern spirit. In my opinion. :]

Anyway, I wanted to mention Herakut because they've found this balance. In this article, they talk about how the guy does the super-rendered body forms, sometimes so photorealistic that I was convinced they were magazine blowups collaged on, while the girl does the more expressive painting. And then there are all these great pencil (?) drawings by Hera alone, which was great to see just at the time I was working on the mushroom project and had fallen back in love with graphite. I won't say too much more about these two because you can read about it for yourself, but here's another article with more pictures of their awesome work. Love!

via RomanyWG's flickr

Mushroom Dream

Not completely done, but as done as it was going to be for an assignment. I fell back in love with graphite with the last project, which also made me reevaluate graphite as a perfectly respectable drawing medium. I wore down so many 6B Tombow pencils that my mom used as a student, some to a one-inch nub!

Anyway, this is a dream I had where I had mushrooms growing out of my arms. The actual scene in my dream had little fluorescent mushroom caps (think enoki) studding my arms, but I didn't think that would be nearly as fun to draw. Google and this crazy mushroom book were a huge help [I learned about mushroom sports!] but it was a new challenge to piece everything together and make them look like they weren't just collaged on. I might build a model next time, too, and use that as yet another reference. Sounds like a lot of work, but it can also be a lot of work to figure it all out in your head.

Back to still lifes.

(Not toilet paper.)






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