Color! Oh, Color!

The best thing I gained from my Figurative Concepts class this Fall semester was an experimentation with color via pastels. See, color was an elusive she-beast to me and is only now starting to come around. Previously, I worked mostly in a limited color palette, usually even purely monochromatic. This isn't to say that I'm necessarily going to vastly change my color appreciation and I'm still a hardcore sucker for monochromatic illustrations... but the explosion of color I experienced was a nice diversion from my norm.

We each placed our five best drawings on the floor of the classroom the last day and the scope of it all was pretty cool.

Pastels are actually pretty awesome and fun to use. They provide bold, vibrant color and are a relatively flexible medium--at least more so than my usual inks. Here are a few selections of my work with pastels these past months. In the future, I'll be adding some of these to my Etsy shop so if anything strikes your fancy, keep an eye out.

Ah, pastels. How you have worked your way into my heart... and my hand.

Merry Winter's Solstice, everyone!!

Enjoy your holiday festivus winter celebrations!

A Master's Copy and Awesome Portrait

FALL SEMESTER VANQUISHED!!!

Now there's nothing but time to post some artwork from the semester, photograph work, and draw, draw, draw in this month and a half I have off until Spring starts! So, without further ado.....

This was a Master Copy assignment from my Head Drawing class. We had to copy one of a Master's drawings (from a selection provided). I tried my best and think it turned out alright in the end... definitely the revisions I made from my instructor's critique furthered it much more. Also, drawing a child?! Whaaat....

Here you can see the real essence and evil soul emanating from those dead eyes... or it could be that the drawing's just been started...

This was how I first turned it in. Definitely not as finished as I would have liked it but I thought it was a good start. My instructor, though, was clearly able to see what I had missed and give me some pointers.

And there's the final, final version! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out... at the very least he looks like a human child minus physical deformities. Below is a closer look at the drawing followed by the original reference. I don't know who the Master artist was since it wasn't listed in the file... if anyone recognizes it let me know who it is!

For the final in my Head Drawing class, we had to draw from photo references of our classmates taken with a primary and secondary light source. There are still some revisions I want to make to my final, so I'll post that in a couple of days, weeks or so... but a fellow classmate, Katy Fox, happened to have drawn me for the final. At the end of class she asked me if I wanted the portrait... do I want an awesome, multi-colored, textural drawing of myself?

HELLS YEAH!!! So thanks a lot, Katy--not that you read this blog--but her style is quite awesome and she did a great job. Check it out and be inspired by mah face.

(via some light Googling, I believe I found her website too. For more of Katy's work, check it out here. )