An opportunity has arisen that means that my original plans for my studio practice and my statement of intent will be affected. I have gained employment as a contractor that requires me to work on site sight for the following next 12 to 14 weeks. This means that the projects that I had planed and currently working on either has to be slowed down or even neglected. 

Completely aware that I have to have other projects running along side my profession projects (that can be used as my studio practice) but for me to complete both, studio practice and pro projects, the uni projects that run along side have to be short, for me to be able to meet the requirements of the project. Thats why my current projects will be effected.

The best thing for me to do is to re-think my statement of intent with my contracting position in mind. 

speak to my advisors to work out the best way to achieve both...and well. 

ADVISORS FEED BACK

It was suggested to me that I take on smaller quick turn around projects that I can complete in the space of a few days that I can make in my evenings whilst I'm working.

Make space for the days when Ill be asked to or have no choice to work in the evening for my contracting employment. 

 I am worried that the results of my projects will be weak and that will have a bad result on my studio practice but hoping that my  profession practice will help support / make up for the projects that are effected.  

  

statement of intent

practice development project

starting my figure drawing project that focusses on developing my figure drawing has made me question what else i need to focus on, what else do i need to develop on, what is it that I NEED to do to better my practice. 

its no secret that starting my higher education that my digital skills was none existent! when I came here I didn't know how to turn a mac on! my practice has a huge percentage of digital presses now! something that iv been working on the past 3 year and if I'm honest i have progressed a lot. in my first I was introduced to photoshop and i hated it I couldn't use it but since then iv learnt all sorts and that has opened more opportunities for me, not just within my practice but opened doors that now allows my practice to exist in places that it is necessary to have knowledge of photoshop. places such as concept art and comic book careers!

digital comparison 

 

level 4 digital work                         level 6 digital work 

even though I'm at a level with my digital skills that I can say that I am comfortable and able to produce a high-level standard of work i still realise that I need develop my skills to the standard that i feel that people will want to hire me for concept work. basically I want to be able to paint crazy digital paintings. 

so I decided to create a project that allows me develop my skills. a quick turn around, a fun project.

During PPP tasks iv contacted many concept artists and most told me the tools that all the pro use and them selfs are the kyle webster brushes. i checked out the sight and saw which ones would suit me better, which ones i needed to develop my skills as a digital artists. 

 

I decided to start a little fun project...

to draw 10 portraits using these brushes. doing this allows me to experiment and get used to the brushes. im going to create the portraits in black and greys. this allows me to only question technique and texture, focusing on just that really lets me make good judgement of the use of the paint brushes. after that ill develop 2 of the portraits in colour. 

after i have finished with the portraits I should have a good idea of how the paint brushes work and have some ability and knowledge of brushes. 

once i have finished with the portraits ill be creative and will attempt to  draw something at a high level and see how this project has developed my digital skills

this project is to be able to have fun and practice developing my digital skills. 

i want to pick relevant portraits so this project will alays be entertaining. i dont want to do people of the class of family members or anything like that i want people that have had some influance/intrest/entertained me as present. 

so... here goes.

Conor McGregor

this guy has entertained me and kept me inspired with 

my sports as the uni work as been piling up. 

Penn and teller

 

Penn and Teller have been mine and George's escape from cop,

our treat to our selfs as we enjoy our tea.


Tim and Eric. An adult bizarre comedy duo. here they are sporting their Christmas special out fits. Chrimbus.  I added the back ground and the text so I could submit the image to the fan art Friday on their Instagram account.

Tutorial 

my tutorial with patrick was to recap what i was doing and what i was planning to do with my projects over the chrismas holiday. i proposed this digital project that im doing and he agreed that its good to have a project that is developing my digital skills how ever i should take the focus away from celebratie portraites as its a distraction form the experiment and development. deffenitly see the benifits from coming away from the celebratie portraits. also we discussed that i should explore the
3 60 of a head and explore angles of the head but still express the weight of the character.. also explore the verity of shapes and forms of heads. i should be explorig the same with my figure drawing project to explore 360 and to explore the many shapes, forms and ages of the figure.

so what i intend to do is finish the celebrity portraits as said im going to create 10, and then explore all the topics that patrick suggested, also ill be adding additional images that show my testings and my developments with in this digital project.

mega crit  feed back

This drawing study is of georgie. there was no bag on the photograph but i added one to fit the theme that i was going for. with this one i wanted to be inspired in a walking dead kind of theme.  on the TV shows it always fascinates me where they get there equipment from, endless rounds of ammo, a gun belt, all kinds of crazy clothing but in my reality i think you would be wearing the same clothes as you was wearing the day the world come to an end...grab a bag, throw in some shit ...find Patrick or Fred, they have boat! so for me, it was all about making the clothing tattered and the body language stressed.

when I was in my ink stages of this drawing I lost the face due to using/ testing a dry ink brush. but i knew that i could bring it bak in digital. the boot is ink and white ink. i wanted the boot to have that wet weathered look...an experiment that digital will answer.

final piece. I added a gun to it (this characters back story is that she's a daughter from a farmer so its easy to get a gun...) I'm happy with the this one, everyone recognised who it was and recognised it was an end of the world theme. ben spotted that it was influenced by walking dead so i feel pretty happy wth the results. happy with the weathered and dirty sleeve ends.

Extended practice peer review

Understand and demonstrate coherent and detailed subject knowledge and professional competences some of which will be informed by recent research in the discipline

6A3

Research is good - extensive

the audience is at the right 

thorough blogging

Articulate and synthesise the knowledge and understanding attributes and skills in effective ways in the context of creative practice employment further study research and self-fulfilment 

6B3

using roughs effectively. demonstrating start to finish.

characters are appropriate to research

problem solving  is evidenced by development.

Develop appropriate methods are professional presentation combining visual verbal and written techniques

6C3

the blog looks lovely.

consideration for presentation - looking at portfolio 

maybe try applying your work to a different format - editorial or covers.

think alternative results like publication, the format of characters think of alternative results - a year book, 

Terser there ability to synthesise and analytic and intuitive approaches with a high level of process and professional skill

6C4

relevant to practice.

professionalising your process

focus on projecting its self, not for the portfolio.

Analyse information and experiences for meal independent judgements and articulateness reasoned argument to review and evaluation

6D3

honest, artical. keep it up. identifying your weakness and stengths 

this was a succesful crit for. i feel it helped talking to people who understood my practice, they know how i work best and what i dont work well in. there for i didnt get suggestions like have you tried to screen print this? suggestions that aint even related to my practice. 

all my feed back was greate, its always nice to hear that your doing a nice job! but its also nice to be told to try a different approuch.  

im concidering the year book idea, this is somthing ill discuss with my tutors with in a tutorial and get some feed back from this.

figure drawing

On a tutorial with Patrik, we were having a conversation regarding my concept and comic book ambitions. we spoke how figure drawing is a key element to both practices. Patrick suggested that I start a project to focus on figure drawing. we decided that I'll spend one day a week drawing figures and to explore media and to practice with poses and proportion of the anatomy and how proportions are distorted with composition. this project is to exhaust myself one day a week to really push my understanding and my skill level with figure drawing. 

I feel that to push my understanding of figure drawing and my level of skill I shouldn't just explore new things but to recap on what I do know. from previous projects I have felt that my drawing figure abilities had dropped a lot, I'm not saying that my figure drawings are rubbish I just know they are not as good as they used to be.  

so the best thing is to introduce the basics. to start a sketchbook of life drawing, iv been life drawing for the best of 10 years before the illustration course and there is where I learnt the most about figure drawing, proportion, the perceptual skill of drawing, gestalt linear perspective and most importantly eye level. So this is something I'm intending to practice again.  

also when I had a tutorial with Teresa, before my tutorial with Patrick, with in a conversation about  concept art she had suggested that I should start a task that focuses on lighting. experiment with light sources and the angles they hit the form and to play with more than one light source in a piece.  

with the directions my tutors have suggested to me, it seems that this is to better my practice as a concept artists. So I recapped on the feed back from the emails that recived concept artists that i have contacted. and im going to aplly the suggestions they made with the suggestions from my tutors. 

below are comments from a couple of artconcept artists that i contacted and i feel will help me me push my practice forward. 

feedback from concept artists Renaud Roche

   

feedback from  concept artists  lorin wood 

but the bottom line is what is the tools you feel you can work with the fastest, to produced the highest quality in the shortest amount of time.

the best advice is to draw ALL THE TIME. carry sketchbook with you everywhere you go. study reality and be able to mimic it first. what that does is build up muscle memory so when you create something fantastic it will be imbued with relatable details and a sense of reality. also have a good foundation of the fundamentals, proportion, things like that. 

I started by reading and researching figure drawing by reading parts of these books from the library. 

I did this as part of touching up on what I already know. saying that there was a lot that i forgot so I'm glad i made the effort of research a topic that I thought I could just start drawing right away. 

                                     

I dedicated about 4 hours of my time on drawing classical figure drawing, again this is where I learnt most of my drawing techniques. i plan to carry this on for the next few weeks. or i might fill a sketchbook full of classicly drawn poses nudes and cloths models.

I started by drawing the female form for a number of reseans. lets get it out of the way...yes becuase i enjoy drawing them. in my opinion drawing and mastering a female nude is like the foundation of any other figure drawing. if you can draw a female form you can draw male, child, fat thin what ever.

obviously i want to walk away with this project with a stronger ability to draw figures in a concept scene and to be able to say 'ive mastered figure drawing' but i want to walk away with that and have a body of work that shows that. i want to have a sketchbook/sketchbooks showing that iv practiced and studied this hard  and i want to some nice rendered work. 

so i decided part of my daily task is to draw a pose of someone a nice rendered piece.

i got the strong good looking pfffttt....i cant lie to save my life. i got Tom from our class to stike a pose so i could draw it. 

below is my pencil design for the piece, i didnt like the idea of him sat on a chair so i played around with the idea of him sat on barrels or a petrol canister...somthing to fit the look. tom looked veryy urbon this day i might add. 

once happy with my pencil work i inked the line work. i used the light box to ink the line work. ever since my traveling man project i feel that the light box gives my work a better profestional finish, its more cleaner. as you can see a dog has apeared. i know this is a figure task but the more i was drawing tom the more i was getting lost in an idea of this urban lad sat with his Dog. (the dog was penciled in before i started to ink it)

im glad i put a dog in there becuase its more character and more menasing feel to it. 

i added textures by dragging a semi dry brush across the ink and i used a touth brush for the flicks. 

i used white gouache to remove the unwanted flicks and drips. 

this is somthing that i use alot of in my practice. i think it gives it a very gritty feel to it and it brings a realistic element to the piece. 

 finaly it gets digitally coloured. i coloured these in the way i would paint a figure drawing, block colour overlapped by  loose and straight stiff strokes. I had tom sat on a rock to fit the look of the piece. 

below - iv added some close ups to show the use of strokes as explained in the above.

also an oppertunity to see how the ink flicks work as texture in a piece.

 

 

further development - the job

progression on this project has been slow due to the dissertation but i'm plodding along nicely. 

i spent an evening digitally making some heads shots of some of the characters from my sketchbook. 

i pushed one idea to a more refined image. 

during my tutorial Patrik talked me through the process of the concept artists. vital information that i need to know, this is the question iv been asking concept artists in my ppp but none have been as clear as our good Patrik was.

silhouettes is the first step that is presented, to show the scale of the characters. then it works towards how the character looks so, a 180 look of a character, action poses, headshots and so on. then its illustrated to a refined image (hero shot)

this is a exacly what i needed to know. now i know what process my characters need to go through for a presentation. so my 10 characters that i choose for my bar scene will have - 

a silhouette stage

180 look

head shot 

in action look 

final render 

travling man exhibition.

travelling man exhibition. this is an exhibition that will take place at the travelling man comic book store down in Leeds city centre. being one of the two managing this exhibition I shouldn't be able to get this wrong... pretty simple project the theme is fan art...and we have a colour pallet boundry to work within. 

I feel that I'm pushing it a little bit by taking on this project. but I feel it's a possibility a good chance to make contacts and get my work seen within the industry that I want my work to exist in. I don't want to spend too much time on this I want this project to be completed within a 2 day period. I'm going to see this as a practice to plough out some god quality work in a short space of time.

well if you didn't guess what my fan art project was going to be by now then you don't know me at all...of course, I'm going to do star wars! star wars for a number of reasons!!! 1. it's awesome 2. it has a huge following 3. it a dream of mine to work on something star wars (so whatever chance I get ill do it) 4. on the date of the exhibition opening its 46 days until the next star wars come out. and yet another trailer will be realised so there will be as always a huge hype and a buzz everything related star wars. plus I already  know lots about star wars so I won't have to do a lot of research I can work from reference but because I'm a huge fan and have drawn these characters 100s of times since I was like 6 I know what they should look like and what I can get away with.  not only am I wanting people to look at my work and want to buy it, I want people to notice who's done it! 

I started of by taking an hour of my spare time and googled fan art star wars.

impressive stuff but none that I can see that I can relate to...is that a good thing?

I think I'm drawn to the ones that show more craft in it. I seem to pick out the ones that I would have on my wall. the ones with multiple characters on are the ones that I feel shows a level of craft 

 

A2 submission...so I don't want to waste that space, i saw a few of my peers drawing 2 or 3 things on one page and its just too front heavy and I just see space that could have been used, so saying that I'm going to use all my page. 

I've been incredibly influenced and inspired by the fan art above.I'mm thinking about a huge piece with multiple characters on. 

my favourite pieces of work are the ones that you get lost in, mentally and physically, I like it when your close up to a piece and able to notice new things "wow look whos just over his shoulder...wally" if that makes sense.  

okay, below are the characters that I will be putting on this fan art poster, there's going to be multiples of the stormtroopers...there's going to be around 25 characters drawn all together!

stormtrooper, sand trooper, snow trooper, scout trooper,stormtrooper7, snowtrooper7,flametrooper7,captinephasma,thanks trooper,desterstormtrooper,death trooper,kyloren,

darthvader,emporier, hux,cant remember,the director,spoke

below are some of the vehicles that are used in the films that I want to exist in my poster. 

I decided to base my project on the bad guys of the franchise. the empire, the dark side. resin being...I researched on Instagram and twitter and the amount of star wars fan group and pages was more about the empire than it was the rebels...( the good guys) by a lot! 3-1 kind of thing happening.

so I feel that if I'm aiming this at the fans of start wars I should aim it at what the majority is like!

I revisited some of my work that I had done previous to this project. I was getting my self-familiar with the drawings again, studying the strokes and contrast to the ink. part of me was looking for a shortcut and hoping that I could scan them and arrange them on photoshop or just trace them onto the A2 page... 

I can't do either because the line weight will change throughout the page...as one gets smaller the other line weight will get heavier and this will through the piece of big time. so I plan to draw all the characters str8 onto the A2 page there for I will have a consistent line weight and a true form picture.

   

thumbnails

I didn't spend too much time on thumbnails I usually spend a lot of time testing out compositions and layouts but I had a clear vision what I had in mind and I came to the final composition idea fairly quickly. was one of them moments where you know it's right. however I didn't want to jump the gun but at the same time didn't want to waste any more time... I asked peers for advice on which they felt worked the better and all said the second one ( right hand side below) one peer told me that she was drawn to this one right away because she had seen this composition done so many times and that this was a fresh idea and not seen it...plus she's a huge star wars geek like me and is a fan liked it that's hitting the nail on the head. so the vote was in and 100 of people said the second one.


add thumbnails in

following my thumbnail I laid out the placement of characters I got that just the way I wanted before I added the refined pencil. this stage isn't the recovery  line work for my ink, but its guidelines...without sounding all fine art and pretentious the pencil work in my practice is a conversation between me and my development. thicker lines tell me to remember a drop shadow goes there, a smudge reminds me a gradient is needed here, and cross hatch with a pencil means a darker shade of grey is needed to express a reflected shadow. and this conversation needs to happen in this piece because its a big piece with lots going on and if I forget about one of these, it will not be forgiving. id loose the whole picture...the thicker line on one trooper can through of the composition and the weight of the picture ( i.e if a trooper behind another has the thicker line weight and a wrong drop shadow it will appear that the trooper in the back ground should be in front of the trooper in the foreground.

you can see more of that conversation happening here...the jaw lines are thicker to indicate a cast shadow is needed.  I could have made these characters look realistic, but I want these characters to be recognised but in the comic format.

this is a proses shot, about 80% done with the pencil. 

I didn't expect to spend this amount of time on the pencil work, I spent 2 hours and 10 mins... not to sound big headed but it's not bad going for a couple of hours work. it's made me think that I can handle these short briefs with a good standard result. the plan for this project was to practice this and I feel like its paying off....but I haven't started the inking and digital yet there could easily be a huge challenge such as me trying to save the document that will jeopardise the time on this project 

I used a lightbox to ink on a separate piece of paper, something I don't really do because sometimes I can't see the line work properly or I don't get that clear conversation I was talking about and it always leads me to make a mistake and having to start again, but I thought I've learnt from my mistakes and ill give it ago (on the largest piece iv worked on in 3 years) whilst I was inking on the light box I noticed the difference it had on my practice already. the lines were clear and tight. something ill adds to my development every time. 

the lightbox has improved my line work dramatically. there been comments from peers and without been big headed I agree that it looks professional, so I'm pretty happy to have achieved it. iv always looked at my work and thought it's missing that professional look always has that crafted hobbyist level to it. the improvement on the line work made it complement the digital colouring. every time I added a colour I got that bit more excited about how it was looking.

I came across a challenge I had intended to have all the ink done by 6 o'clock one evening so I can get the base coats down on my digital colour by 10 pm...the challenge was that the print room at college shuts at half 3 and that is the only place I could get an A2 image scanned...if I missed it that meant that I had would have to wait until Monday to scan it and that would mean I was 3 days behind. so at 3.20 Friday I ran to the print room and scanned in what I had so far and then planned to draw the rest on a3 paper and then scan them in and add them into photoshop and add them on later that evening.

right - here's a teaser I posted on Instagram...plus I wanted to show of a little...its all about the likes.

left - progression shot of the colour being applied. important step! here I think you can see the decisions that were being made regarding the colours. I was testing out that heavy pink and the dark blues...I wanted to get that 80s feel on the helmet ad sink of the old guy in the top right.

if you scroll up to the images that show the inks been applied you'll see an at-at walker to the left of the image (looks like the below) it on a side profile so looks flat. I felt that something needed to change out the composition of this as I felt it was flattening the image and drawing the eye of the page...I asked peers and they agreed so I drew another composition of the at-at walker and scanned it in and used powers on photoshop to make it part of the piece.

 

the piece at this stage is coming to its end. I have to add tie fighters in the background and add shading to make the image have depth. here I added a border to the piece to see what it was I was working too. with the white border, i can see the final image and how it will look. i like it :).

when I felt it was finished I got Patrick and ben to critique it. and they picked at it to the very detail witch was perfect! its nice to get feed brack from someone who know that i won't take offence...feedback that is actually constructive. the studio needs more honest feedback, more times than none iv come away from a group crit and been told yeah it's nice!....that's it, knowing full well that this isnt the practice they like so I'm sure they would have something they would change about it...but never mind i got my feed back none theless. 

not sure if you can see it from this photo but there's lots of circles, and crosses and all kinds of notifications on it, these are all pointers from ben and Patrick. I don't know why but i love seeing test prints with all these working outs on it! maybe it excites me because i have a to push that image a bit further.

i think its nice to be told this needs doing and that needs changing becuase that means if you do them thats your work stepping up its getting better never understood how people get offended by critiques but i must say the hardest part of taking this critism was reciving it 1 hour and 10 mins before they get sent to be printed. 

progrestion shot...hitting that digital flow to get it ready for print on time.

the final out come.

i think its a successful piece. i think it shows my research and interests well. i adapted the comic book style with that collage of characters you see on the movie posters at the beginning of this post. working in a limited colour pallet was a challenge but i really really enjoyed it. i think it challenged me to use colour in a different way to show contrasts and a different way of expressing light. also i felt the challenge of having to mix the colours up enough so the portraits represented them. using a limited colour pallet is something I'll definitely be applying to my practice in the future i had so much fun with the challenge and i feel that it makes the work look more interesting it draws they more to the picture. working with in a short time was stressful...i didnt hit my deadline of 2 days because of other commitments in college such as cop and tutorials but i only spent 22 hours and 50 mins on this project so i did it under the 2 days but oer the duration of 6 days. iv learnt that i can create somthing of a good quolity in a short amaount of time. in future i know that i can tell clients that a project can be created and finished with in 7 working days and that gives me more than enough time to jugle a few projects about...if that makes sence. over all i learnt a great deal from this little project. how i handle my timemangement, new skills in my practice, working to a short dead line, and that i can create not bad work with in a short time space.