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

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.

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

    

I think it Could Use More Dinosaurs...

    I've started my new job at the school and I'm liking it so far. Until the summer classes start up that I'm to monitor/assist with in a couple of weeks I'm pretty much a whatever needs to be done guy. The last coupe days I've been a graphic designer.

    I have been drawing when I can, still not enough though.

[figure studies]

    I've found some time to get some studies in, but I need to make more time to apply what I'm studying after each day. To design my own vehicles, creatures, and characters.

[vehicle studies]

    I haven't had enough time to draw more dinosaurs like I had wanted to before Jurassic World comes out THIS FRIDAY. I did get a couple new Jurassic park shirts, so I'll have to decide which out of the 5 dinosaur shirts I own I'll wear on Friday... I definitely want to get in some more dinos in my days. I'll try to get a few in tomorrow, we'll see.

[acrocanthosaurus sketch]

[raptor sketch]

    I've got a lot of catch up to do if I want to hit 30 dinosaur sketches by the end of Jurassic June here. So maybe one day will just be nonstop dino drawing after work or something.

"Life, uh, finds a way." -Ian Malcolm 

-Cody

Studying Away

     I've been getting some work done most days, last week I missed a few in my schedule, but I'm determined not to this week.I'm trying to make sure I hit a little bit of everything each week. Vehicles one day, environments another, animals, and characters...

    Early last week I got a few vehicle sketches in, I'm trying to work on my perspective above most other things. It's one of my weaker skills.

[vehicle studies]

    I also worked on some black and white environment sketches as well. This week after I get a good sketch I want to develop it further. Hopefully I can start pulling some portfolio pieces out of my studies. I'm still having a hard time creating a real sense of depth though, another thing to push. 

[environment studies]

    After those sketches I started on an idea I've had for a long time, that until I understood applying perspective was baffling me. It's just a double floating pyramid in a city, but I couldn't do it 1 or 2 years ago.

Progress? I may come back to it, or go at it from another vantage point/composition later.

[environment concept in progress]

    Today though i was working on some animal studies, birds in particular since they are dinosaurs. I want to be able to bring the real traits and postures of living birds into extinct dinosaurs. The dinosaur sketch I ended up doing has a kind of silly pose/stance. So I'll play with that more next time.

[bird studies]

[dilophosaurus sketch]

    There's a group/movement on Twitter and other sites called Jurassic June, where people are celebrating the Jurassic Park franchise for the entire month. Seems like a good month to pick with the new movie coming out IN ELEVEN DAYS. I'm going to try and get a dinosaur into my studies each day if I can so here's another chunk of Dino A Days.

    Allison's been drawing and painting almost every day with her classes in Italy, hopefully she can share some pictures of what she's been doing tomorrow. If not it may be another few days because she's taking a few day trip to Rome, and Pompeii. She better have 2 billion photos for me on her memory card when she gets home.

-Cody

We appreciate any comments or thoughts anyone has, and share our blog with friends and family if you think they'd be interested.

Summer Work

    I finally have some time to work on some art and share what I'm up to. I've been drawing/sketching most days, but until this weekend I hadn't buckled down. So I've got a plan to keep myself working every day.

    I'm still working with a friend of a friend on a game project, it's shifted away from the armadillo character, but that's alright. We're gaining steam and more team members so I'm looking forward to working on it more. I had misunderstood what the art direction for a character and I ended up with something sci-fi and we're actually going with high fantasy...

[unapproved centaur knights]

    Last week I did a spitpaint[30 minute speedpaint] based on the prompt "fish car", I've been watching Design Cinema videos by a great concept artist and teacher Feng Zhu lately. So I essentially did a quick exercise he suggests of re-skinning something with the attributes of another. Hence the fish shuttle.

[fish "car" spitpaint]

    I actually sat down to do some re-skinning sketches and there are what I came up with. I'm trying to pay more attention to perspective, but I know I can do even better. I do like what I ended up with though. It's all good practice. I'll push myself more in the coming weeks. 

[fish inspired spacecraft]

    I still plan to photograph all of my work from the 2 semesters at Lyme, but I'm not too good with my camera, so I'm waiting until Allison gets back from her trip.

    While she's gone though I start my new job at Lyme Academy, I'll be monitoring the digital studio and helping out faculty with summer courses for high school students all summer. I'm pretty excited, it's a little closer to my end job than the meat department is.

-Cody

Back at Bat

    We're back in town from our vacation in Colorado, we had a lot of fun and I got a little bit of work done on my homework so I'm catching up to where I need to be. I'll be back into the swing of things by the end of the week here. hopefully with regular blog posts and more digital work because I now have a new tablet! It's a cintiq 21ux and I love it, being able to see exactly where my hand is takes so much pressure off of my brain I can use for thinking about what I'm drawing rather than how.

[gargoyle concept]

    I'm trying a sketch a day again with gargoyles this time. I'll probably just post up all seven as one post on Sunday, rather than rush to draw and post them every day here. I did this one with the new tablet though. I can't wait to keep working and get back into working digitally more often.

    I've got some illustration stuff I'm working on and even finished, but alas they're in the wrong file type so my photoshop cs2 won't read them. I should have some work to share later this week for my other classes though. I'm trying to get back into doing work for Project Contingency the Halo fan game I was doing concepts for a while back. We'll see what's going on there.

-Cody

Finding a Path of My Own

    With all the snow around I didn't have much class the last two days, so I've been taking time to redirect/reevaluate where I want to be with my art when I'm leaving school in a couple years here. So I'm making sure I'm working on my own style and artistic voice outside of my classwork. I always feel as though I'm learning in class, but I want to see it reflected in my concept/design work.

[prop design sketches]

    I want to traditional/fundamental skills I'm learning to inform my designs and hopefully it can make them that much better/more appealing. I was sketching  a lot last night and today while doing so, and talking to my brother who also wants to get into art. My goal is to have a new portfolio-worthy design every week or so now. I'm need to spend more time and thought getting them done.

[vehicle design sketches]

    I'm trying to work on my line work in photoshop, I have trouble achieving the same confident and bold mark making that I have on paper. I'll get there though. That said my goal for next Friday is to have a portfolio worthy vehicle design page done. Now I need to start looking for some freelance work/internship opportunities for the summer.

    Don't forget Friday is the opening reception for the Annual Juried Student Exhibition from 6:00 - 8:00 P.M.

-Cody

Spring Ahead

    I know it's not time to change our clocks yet, but tomorrow is the first day of our spring semester at Lyme. I'm excited to get back to school, and back to work. On painting, drawing, my own stuff, and on our blog here.

    I have some classes that carry over, and some new classes as well. I can't wait to start my Illustration classes this week. I have two tomorrow alone! Special Topics in Illustration, and Illustration I. As a transfer my classes don't fit the plan exactly so I'm skipping Intro to Illustration, and the second half of Sculpture I for now. I'll have to squish them in next year.

[a sketch of an Australian mythical creature for @sketch_dailies on Twitter]

    Hopefully my illustration classes can keep me motivated to push myself/my art even further. It's something I always struggle with. Even when I have projects I can be working on. Like one that Allison, and I are starting together for her Uncle. We were asked to work on designing some logos, and t-shirt designs. So we'll have some of that to share soon.

    Right now though, I'm going to take out the trash and head to bed soon so I can get to class on time tomorrow. I hope everyone had a good holiday/break.

-Cody

Christmas!

    MERRY CHRISTMAS!


     Tis' the season for giving! I did a large painting for my aunt. She requested it a while back so I decided to finish it for Christmas. Photos soon to come, because of the winter break we won't have much to write about every day. So we will be writing at least once or twice over the break.
   
    I think the semester went well. I haven't checked my grades yet. I'm a little nervous to be honest. Cody has been doing some concept characters and they are very interesting. He will probably add a photo here: "I did" -Cody

[armadillo character designs]

    But who knows when that will be. "Today" -Cody

   Today we are spending the day at my aunt's house. Celebrating Christmas is so fun for me because I get to spend time with my family. We are a very close family and we spend every Sunday together but there is something about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Italian traditions that I just love.
 
    On the Eve we have a dinner that consists of seven sea food dishes. Anything seafood related. The Crab cakes are my favorite. This will be the first Christmas with out my Nonna[grandmother]. As well as Thanksgiving, which was hard for me because she is so important to our gatherings. On Easter she bakes Italian cookies with hard boiled eggs wrapped inside of them. They are a tradition to our heritage and to our family as well. I will miss our traditions that can't go on with out her presence.  For those of you who are unaware, she passed away May 15th of this year, the day after my birthday.

    On a happier note. We wish you a very Happy Holiday! Christmas, Hanukkah (which just ended yesterday) and all seasons greetings!

-Allison and Cody

Yesterday's Tomorrow

    We've been focusing on perspective in out drawing class for the last couple weeks now and this time we were working on two-point perspective. So we weren't staring straight at everything this time, the objects we drew mostly receded into two different vanishing points.

    I was having trouble trying to figure our where the longer orthogonal lines should recede to as they were off of our page/outside of our picture plane, but I'll just keep an eye on it. I had started one in the student commons and realized I had spent too much time on something that ended up creating a problem. So the one I've got here is a little less developed than I'd have liked since it was a bit rushed.

[Cody's two-point perspective drawing]

    I also had Digital Imaging today, and I got some work done on my crustaceous themed environment concepts, but I forgot to save them as a file type that's compatible with my software at home, so I'll have to fix that tomorrow.

    I've got half of my costume done/repaired. So tomorrow I'll be half of the Master Chief. I'll get some good pictures finally if I can. Then I've got to finish him up for the 11th, when Halo: the Master Chief Collection comes out.

-Cody

[Allison's two-point perspective drawing]

    I've done this before, and it comes pretty easy to me, so I was happy with the results of my drawing. I feel better about this drawing class now because, I re-worked my homework assignment, and brought my grade up to a B+[on the homework].

    I am a terrible sewer... seamstress... Tomorrow is Halloween, and I'm trying to sew my own costume.

-Allison

"So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view." -ObiWan Kenobi

Tomorrow's Yesterday

    Today we started another 2 week painting, this time based on a still life that was set up generally using split-complimentary color schemes. Which means that instead of the color that is directly opposite it on the color wheel[a color's compliment] it uses the two on either side of that color. Creating a more varied yet still appealing color palette.

[Cody's split-complimentary still life in progress]

    My main goal for today was to get the entire canvas covered with colors/values that were at least some approximation of what they will look like in the finished painting. I was having trouble getting stuff up to the same level of polish as I had mentioned in the past, without working it all up at closer to the same time.

    I'm going to try and get some work done on my Halloween costume here tonight, I may not get much sleep the next couple days, but I'd like to get this thing done this year. I started it two years ago around this time... I'll have more to share on Friday.

-Cody

[Allison's split-complimentary still life in progress]

Crustaceous Environment Designs

    Yesterday I had Intro to Digital Imaging again, and I've been trying to use the time to my advantage. I had done a quick sort of environment painting study/exploration that would work well with the crab-guy designs in my last class. For this "assignment" I'm going to explore some environment paintings in the same theme/style.

[crustaceous environment work in progress 1]

[crustaceous environment work in progress 2]

    I'm going to keep working on developing them, we'll see where they go. I think I'll get at least 3 pieces done for the "critique" of these in two weeks.

-Cody

Midterm Drawing

    Today we had our midterm evaluation, and drawing assignment which was a still life that our instructor had set up with all sorts of different shapes, and objects to see how well we could incorporate all the ideas, and techniques that we've learned so far. The assignment isn't really graded, but it was more of a benchmark to see where we're at right now, and how we've improved theoretically from the beginning of the semester.

    There are a lot of things that I like about mine, and a few things I don't. It's not perfect, I would barely call it complete at this point, but it has to be, and now it's hanging on the wall in the school.

[Cody's midterm still life]

    The picture isn't dark, my drawing just has a lot of graphite on it. I spent a lot of time laying everything out, and drawing everything as well as I thought I could within the day. I think it was successful. I'm happy with where I am in the class and where I'm going with my drawings, I look forward to pushing myself even more.

    I also had Intro to Digital Imaging today, which was our "midterm" as well, which was just turning in our latest digital project, and talking about them for a bit. I was doing one thing in class, then decided to scrap it and do/finish up some thumbnails, and bring them up to a presentable level as a character design sheet.

[crustacean character designs]

    I'm heading to bed myself here now so we can get up bright and early to get on a bus and head to New York, New York. Hopefully we don't get lost or mugged.

-Cody

[Allison's midterm still life]

    My ellipse's are getting better, but they are not the angles they should be at. I feel like this was a successful drawing, I'm cleaner than I used to be with my lines, but now they want me to not clean up anymore? Every teacher I had said to clean up my line work, and now I need to show everything. I erase often. Art school is what its worth.

-Allison



"It's not luck, it's what you do that makes a hero" -Kopaka

Gourd Times, Gourd Times...

   The title sounded more clever in my head before I typed it, anyways, if you couldn't already guess after a while of working on rigid structural forms we finally switched it up and drew some gourds.

    We were encouraged to continue to think, and work constructively as we built our drawings. So you can see some structural marks in my drawing. In a drawing without any value[we were strictly forbidden to use any] lineweight plays a huge part in how the form turns in space, and holds it's integrity. I think for the most part my drawing is pretty successful.

[Cody's gourd drawing]

   
    Gourd is such a weird word, every time I write it it looks misspelled. Drawing is definitely my favorite class right now, every Thursday I look forward to whatever thing we'll have in front of us to draw next. It's my comfort zone, I can do alright no matter what we do.

    I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing about the show on Saturday, who knows. I'll share a small preview of some designs I was working on yesterday.

[crab guy work in progress]

    Look at that sweet mushroom. I notice I don't care to draw such simple things anymore. I want challenges. I rush right thought everything because I feel like it's wasting my time. These structural techniques make me focus more on the technique and less on the object itself. So what ever I'm drawing might be way off from what I'm actually looking at, but it looks right on paper. I rushed this gourd drawing. I was happy to draw an organic object, but I was so excited I wanted to finish it and prove to someone/the teacher that I can draw quickly. I have no patience for anything. All of my professors keep telling me to slow down. My body does not want to slow down. It wants to draw quickly and semi-accurately. I'm stubborn. 

    My gourd looks funny. I know the angle of the large plump part is wrong. I didn't use value one the mushroom, I put in small circles. I have the patience for that, but I don't have the patience for accuracy.  

[Allison's gourd drawing]

-Allison

"Take your time and concentrate on the humming bird" -Unknown(I know but I can't remember) 

1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red painting, Blue Painting

    Today was the second class that we worked on our still lives with the three primary colors, so my painting is "done" for now. I ran out of time to do what I wanted within class, once I got a hang of mixing colors and laying them in correctly I wanted to get very meticulous/accurate with where/how I applied them to the piece. I may come back to it over the next week here while the still life is still set up. Or work from a photo to get more of the nuanced colors, and reflected light into the painting.

    Here's where it's at right now though.

[Cody's three color still life]

    There are some parts that I feel are more successful than others, the small blue glass bottle, and most of the drapery in the background for example. I realized that my painting was very vibrant compared to a lot of other people's including Allison's, but I like it. The objects were bright primary colors though. I ran out of time to refine the blue vase, and the yellow kettle forms, but they have paint on them at least.

    After looking through and editing some of the shots of my skull I also decided to get a little more "creative" and paint it into Skeletor for fun tonight. 

[Skeletor from Cody's skull]

    Everytime I had looked through the classroom I had seen a sea of many different permutations of Skeletor already, so I figured, why not?

-Cody

     I only had an hour and a half of sleep last night, I went to bed at 4:30 am. I felt awful, so I went back to bed and decided not to go to class. I figured that I would get more sleep before going to class. I slept till 11:20, got dressed and got to school by 1:15. I didn't really get to finish my painting like I wish I could have. I just realized there is a huge chunk I forgot to fix , the brown on the bottom box should be duller. Now it's going to bother me.

[Allison's three color still life]

-Allison

"Art is never finished, only abandoned" -Leonardo da Vinci 

Procrastination Station

    My computer, is a procrastination station. I built it for high quality game graphics and to handle my abuse of higher quality videos and editing software. I use it for my homework of course. I have two 3 page essays due today and I had to deactivate my Facebook last night because I would get on to do my financial aid/write on the blog/homework and spend more than an hour catching up on everyone's posts. I deactivate my Facebook often because it's too time consuming. I finally finished my financial aid entrance counseling, my " think about it " course for school boring because they don't want us to get raped or do drugs and drink to much. I felt most of the information was common sense, I know what a " hook up " is, but apparently they had to teach me regardless. It was designed well, but the information in the first half was common knowledge. I learned more about how to keep a buzz though with out getting drunk. Hooray!!  During the course, they say that if your BAC is below a .02 you can drive legally but you might be impaired. Which is weird because I was taught as a kid that if you even have one drink that's light on alcohol you can't/shouldn't drive.

Anyhow, I'm writing an essay about this image right now:

[ Ad for reporting child abuse] 

"Some people look at a child and don't see a child"

   I'm not having a hard time because there is so much to talk about this image even though the content is so simple. Here is my intro paragraph, I thought it was clever :  

       A young female walks into the restaurant, she is wearing eye catching colors and her strawberry blonde hair is long and soft. You make eye contact and she smiles directly at you. Her lips are moist and they shimmer in the light with a cherry red glow, your favorite color. She sits next to you at the diner bar and tells you her name, she seems to be interested, are you?  You place your hand softly on her back and introduce yourself by offering a hand shake and a drink. A women with a stern voice approaches you, she takes her daughter by the hand as the child hops off the bar stool. The mother is disgusted with you, how far could you have gone if she hadn't shown up.

            The disgusting thought of being tricked into thinking this passage was about a young attractive adult women looking for attention is embarrassing. The truth is, some people look at a child and don't see a child.  Just like the ad, this passage captures the audience’s attention immediately.

   My prologue seems powerful, it grabs you in and then throws you under the bus for " assuming" she was of age in the first sentence. Gotcha, shes like 6. Which reminds me, my essay is due at 6 pm and I'm not done. One page left, then I have to write another essay about a statue.



-Allison

Ps. I'm currently drowning a stink bug because I don't wanna kill and get the smell everywhere. Is that cruel?