Week 5 - Painting with Technology

    As an Illustration Major I'm doing a lot of work, so that when I'm done I can get some work of my own. For my Senior Portfolio class I'm working on a "full page illustration" to accompany an interview with science fiction author Alexander Weinstein. I get a feeling that his work is about technology's ability to empower and weaken us as we rely on it.

    After thumbnails I came to this sketch. Then I shot reference and photoshopped them together to create this.

    Now I've started to work on the final sketch/painting which is due this coming Thursday. I like where it's hedaed, the hard part for me is finishing and cleaning up.

    This is just one assignment for my class, I'm doing a lot on my own for my senior project, I'll try to share some more work soon if I can find time.

-Cody

Studio Update 9/16

    I've been working on some pieces by starting collages. It's really fun and gets my head clear. It's easy to get lost in collaging and create something interesting. I took this one and painted it at the end. My work consists of fragmented images so that's what the end result would look like.

    First I lay down some color and some values I think would work best. This image above is my under painting.

    Once I lay some tape down to cover the under painting in section I would like to preserve, I shift the image or change the tint of the area I'm painting to imitate a collage or fractured image. 

    The end result is this image above. Most people are surprised to know this is all paint and has no collage included. From a distance it would look collage-y but up close there are some nice design elements.

-Allison

Senior Year

    We have moved into our studios and have been working hard. Sorry for not keeping our blog up to date in the past couple semesters. We like keeping our family and friends informed, but sometimes our school life consumes us. We are going to try to keep our senior year documented, at least that's the most important thing to document.

    I stopped posting before because all my images were deleted, I felt like It wasn't worth it anymore. Any post I had put up no longer had photos and anything from Italy was gone online. I still have photos from the trip, but the blog posts were no longer available.

I attached some photos from our studios if you were curious! More soon!

-Allison

[Allison's studio]

[Cody's studio]

Week One Done

    We're one week into class now and it looks like I'm going to be doing a lot of reading. I don't have anything to share from any classwork yet, but I've some sketches/studies of my own here.

[aardvark rider sketch]

     I'm working on trying to "finish" off my designs more, and I'm getting there. I'm also trying to find a way to present my work that looks professional, but not overdone.

[vehicle sketches]

[environment studies]

    The student juried show is coming up again, and Allison and I both have had work accepted. One of my painting from Painting II, and my Ramadillo from Digital Painting will be in the show. If you live in the area come by and see our work.

-Cody

Hello again,
   
    It's been a very long time. The only excuse I have is I've got a lot on my plate. I'm taking 4 painting classes this semester and one is a large scale project and another is an independent study. I have two pieces in the show coming up and one is in the exhibition card. The industrial silo's in the top right corner.

    I'm excited to start my paintings for the semester but I'm having the most fun making collages for my thumbnails. They are easier to make instead of drawing, it has more idea provoking material than just trying to come up with images from my head. the process is long but they come out detailed enough for me to do paintings off of them.

    This panoramic one will be for my large scale painting. I'm hoping to pull it off as well as I want. It looks cool all broken up like this in my sketchbook. 

    Here I just added a few things together on the left, and on the right I took a photo of the reflection in my window. So you see outside objects as well as what my room looks like inside. I drew a small sketch of things I saw and wanted to change. 

-Allison

 The show's opening reception will be:

Friday, February 5, 2016 from 5-7 p.m.

Last Year, and This One

    We didn't post much at all during the second half of the semester last year, we were fairly busy. I won't go back and share all of it, but I'll upload a few from the end here.

[figure drawing]

[self portrait as self]

[landscape painting]

[composite animal]

    I ended up submitting the figure drawing, landscape, and animal paintings into the Annual Juried Show for the beginning of the school year. I've spent the last two weeks in Colorado visiting family. Reading and sketching, I'm home now and I've missed my tablet. I need to get back to my personal studies/work. I've got some time until class starts on the 19th. So I'll get some work done. 

    for Christmas I got a few books I'm very happy to have, one is an encyclopedia of mythical/magical creatures. Which I've been sketching from, there are hundreds of creatures to work from. Oh and Star Wars VII came out, that's a different discussion though.

-Cody

Hello, for the first time in months.

    I've been on a hiatus clearly, with being the Resident Assistant at my school and just doing work for class I've been very busy. I will try to write at least once a week and update you on what I've been working on that week. I'm in an independent study class so I will have to make some documentation of what I've been doing each week. Below is a painting of a landscape I did for Painting II for an exhibition at the Florence Griswold Museum. I really wanted to think outside the box so I did some man made structures instead of doing a grassy plane or some trees by a pond. 

[landscape painting "Factory Tin Cans"]

    I was really into this piece and I think it will inspire my next painting for Large Scale Painting. I want to incorporate stencil and painting on large canvas. I hope it works out, I need to do some sketches and some test stencils for layering that I'm going to try to use.

[figure painting]

    This piece is a self-portrait using only my spatula like brush.  I did take some reference photos for  this a while back, but I never got to paint it over the summer. I had an assignment for class where the figure was meant to be in a staged setting and I felt this was a good start so I used my reference photos to create this piece. I'm going to go back in an retouch some things with a regular brush. I like the texture it leaves but I need to be more careful with my rubber tool, it seems to make some areas dirty.  I want to create more pieces like this as well for a series of uncomfortable positions of everyday furniture. 

    Here are some digital imaging works as well, just images manipulated with Photoshop. 

 [ made black and white, added a skull and made a smoke brush]

 [ combined an image of a girl with a colored city and a textured image]

[manipulated features ,added animal like ears and nose, added text to the shirt.]

Cheers 

-Allison

A Grave Mistake

Some of you may have noticed every post that was put up by me no longer has photos...
I accidentally deleted an album on my Google+ account and now they are no longer available. I'm  very angry that I could delete images on a totally different website and it could effect something that I'm connected to. I'm not a fan of every account ever being connected.

Well every photo I've ever posted here now is grey with a symbol over it. Yay.


Updates that I WON'T DELETE are coming soon.

-Allison

3 Weeks In...

    It's been a while since I/we last posted, but we're now three weeks into the semester and we have a bunch of work to share. This semester I am in Painting II, Digital Painting, Intro. to Illustration, Illustration II, Calligraphic Drawing, and Figure Drawing.

    These are shots of my still life I did for the first two classes/weeks of Painting II. The goal was to zoom in and choose an interesting intersection of objects. I found the negative space behind the cup to be interesting so I started there. Our instructor encouraged us to work out from a point rather than focus on shapes/objects, more on color relationships. I think the painting turned out pretty well. I'm goign to use more color in my darker values/shadows for the next piece though.

[focus still life]

     I just thought this picture of the painting was interesting so I'm posting it as well.

[focus still life]

    I really enjoy my Figure Drawing class, there isn't an open one on Thursday nights yet, but I get an entire day Friday to do it. I'm actually very happy with how I'm drawing figures from observation, my next trick is to take what I'm seeing and create my own figures from my mind. I need to be able to do so for character/costume design.

[figure drawings]

[figure drawings]

[figure drawings]

[figure drawings]

    For homework we had to do a self portrait of our whole body, this is an in progress shot.

[self portrait figure drawing]

    In Digital Painting we had an image of a styrofoam sphere that was lit and we painted from it. For about an hour and a half I fell prety good about it. I'm not used to trying to replicate reality when I paint in photoshop. This class is going to be good for me.

[digital painting still life]

[digital painting sketch homework]

[marker concept/sketches]

    I've also been trying to use my "spare" time in between classes better, so I've been sketching with my markers.

    The next post won't be as large, but hopefully I'll have some of my personal work/studies to share as well. 

-Cody

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Hello, it's been a long time since I've written on the blog. I'm getting back into the habit of doing art everyday, I took a little break on doing art. 

[Allison drawing]

    Above, I'm doing a self portrait in a mirror, in a very painful position. I've had to redo it three times now so hopefully the third time it will be more successful.

[body part painting in progress]

    This painting is of Cody's knee, I'm doing for figure painting. It is supposed to be a body part as an abstract representation.  Our assignment is to zoom in close until  it's semi-unrecognizable. I'm still working on it and his leg looks super muscular. I used a flat rubber spatula to paint this one.  

[plein air cemetery painting]

    The cemetery I painted above is near the school, it's a little gloomy but I guess it fits the mood of the location. It's very messy but I like the feel of it. It's on a long canvas and I got a severe sunburn while painting it. Worth it, maybe. 

[plein air underpainting]

    This is an under painting from a location near the cemetery, I may go back to it depending on if our class does. I might go there on a free day and finish it. It's coming out nicely I've always been really lazy with my under paintings so this was refreshing to do. 

[body part painting]

    These two figure painting are done with no specific techniques. I like my figure painting class. It's great study for figures and learning on how the figure bends and which muscles are prominent in different positions.

[body part painting]

    Until next time, when I'll have more work to show. 

-Allison

 

A Little More Traditional...

    The past few weeks have been busy, we've had two pretty full classes of pre-college students. Last week was drawing, this week is painting. While working with the students and the instructors I've had the opportunity to work and learn some myself. 

[figure drawing]

    For one afternoon I sat in with a figure drawing course and sketched for a while. I also have a portrait I did of one of our recent graduates. I'll scan it eventually.

[monochromatic still life]

    I did this while the girls in the painting class[THE WHOLE CLASS IS GIRLS] were working over the past day or so. I painted the entire thing with my palette knives, I'm glad I had a chance to develop the way I was painting at the end of last semester. I feel like I'm learning almost as much as all of the students in the classes, just different things. 

[charcoal under-drawing]

    In the afternoon today everyone did a pretty quick charcoal drawing that we're then going to have shellacked and develop further with layers of glazing and painting on top. I've never worked with a technique like this and it sounds fun. I enjoy working in more traditional ways to learn to see and paint/draw. It's easing me back into how I'll be working for most of the semester, but I've lost some time/steam on my digital work again.

    I'd like to be able to focus more, but I don't have a studio of my own or anything any my room isn't really the best environment to focus in. There's one more week of pre-college courses that I'm working with, then one off and classes start again. Summers seem shorter when you have to work through them.

-Cody

"Time is an illusion." -Albert Einstein 


check me out on the Instagrams

Final Render

    Friday was the last day of the Zbrush/digital sculpture class that I was assisting with. I learned a lot over the course of the week, helping out where I could mostly with technical things. I think the model turned out alright for my first try. A lot of the time spent was struggling to learn the interface, I have a basic understanding of sculpture, but Zbrush is a completely different tool set than my loop tools and carving knives. 

[rhino beetle sculpt day 4]

    There are a few things I can see that I need to work on, the structure of the rhino's head underneath could be a little more realistic. It looks pretty close to my design, but I feel like his skull is a little oddly shaped to me. I would rework his eyelids and the cavity around his eyes as well. I do like the mandibles and the transition from the muzzle area to it's skin. 

[rhino beetle sculpt day 5 final render]

Not too much else today, but tomorrow I start with monitoring the next class. Animation.

-Cody

Backups and Updates

    I've talked about grabbing an external hard drive to backup all of my work for about a year now. I finally grabbed a terabyte to keep my work/reference on. I've also been working on my rhino beetle model while monitoring/working as well. I'm pretty happy with where the sculpt is getting to now.

[rhino beetle sculpt day 2]

[rhino beetle sculpt day 3]

[rhino beetle sculpt day 3 with texture]

    Near the end of today we were being shown how to quickly unwrap the mesh and edit the UV map texture. So I quickly edited some insect shell, and rhinoceros skin textures together. It ends up looking like a late 90s show/game textured up. He looks like a high res textured version of some sort of Beast Wars Fuzor. I kinda' dig it... at the moment.

[vehicle studies]

     Learning about 3D modeling and trying to get back into the flow of drawing everyday again has me thinking about how school and my future job prospects will play out. So hopefully I can be prepared for work/life after Lyme Academy.

[creature sketch]

    I've added a few sketches/studies fro, yesterday and today as well.

-Cody