This is about feeling a bit shy and isolated sometimes

School reunions are just as awkward as they're supposed to be. Two minutes into a conversion with someone you haven't seen for 4 years and suddenly the talk is highly inappropriate and i really don't care about her sex life when she was seventeen and ancient gossip, some people do not change. The fakery from them and me was astounding and just ew. I feel a little bad actually. I've gotten so uses to being at uni, i sometimes take for granted being on the same wavelength. Most people from school are ready to settle down in leeds, and i feel childish to have ambitions. Sometimes its like i haven't changed from being 15 either, or maybe just being with everyone again reminds me of that time. Some people were still so genuinely lovely it made up for those vapid conversions. I'm not one to have amazingly mentally stimulating conversations with, but at least its fun. If noone enjoys it then it feels truly pointless. What I'm trying to say is I'm so glad to have broken out of that circle when i did and have the friends that i do or people i just enjoy being with even if we don't know each other that well. I love my hometown but school was crap. Everything after that got so much better! I guess its pretty common to feel this way? I don't have a load of friends or anything like that, but i think i'd go crazy if i didn't have them. so thanks for putting up with me everyone :)

So the 2nd year is at an end...

I guess I can count it as finished now and we're officially third years after the degree show. I'm glad I came up to see it, everyone's work was so impressive and the standard was so high...I feel like I really want to push myself to at least meet that next year.

I want to say thank you to everyone especially Cam, Del and Dave for putting up with my nagging questions, you guys taught me so much this year and I'm so grateful to everyone for taking the time to explain things to me and giving me direction. I appreciate it so much, thank you ♥

Looking back on this year I'd say I've been a little too emotionally sensitive towards what people have said and taken things as a personal attack. People are going to say what they think and be harsh to me, but I need to learn to take criticism and carry on. I made a thread on Gameartisans.org recently to get some harsh crit that isn't softened because we know each other. I'm starting to compare my work to real game artists and realise how far I have to come. I just had a frank conversation with my dad and he thinks its likely that I'm going to have to work a shit job at home and save up money before I can work in the games industry. I don't want that to happen, even though it might, and I'm a bit worried about it. Working in a shop or whatever would be a last resort, there are many other things that are at least art related I'd try and do before that. But, fuck worrying, lets do some work!

I did these drawings recently for a 12 thumbnails project and to practise my digi paints and colour theory...the last two images were done without photo colour reference/colour picking and they turned out much more blue/washed out. I don't mind it though, I think they look ok. Just used large brushes and didn't go crazy with the details, as they are just thumbnails.

time management

Since I never made a time diary when we were supposed to this term, I made by own simple 3-day diary of how I spent my time.

11 - get up, eat breakfast
11:30 - browsed internet for 15 mins and started work
13:18 - lunch
14:00 - break
16:30 work again
18:24 - break
19:30 - modelling for personal project
23:45 - stop working
2:30 - bed

sat -

11:30 - get up
12:00 - browse the internet,eat breakfast
13:00 - work on personal project
14:00 - blogger
14:30 - visual design
15:00 - browse internet
17:00 - went out

sun -

12:30 - got up
13:00 - had lunch, chatted online/browsed internet
14:00 - started digi paint
16:20 - break
16:50 - resume work
17:40 - finished paint
18:00 - watched star trek with parents/dinner
21:30 - chatted online
22:45 - worked on personal project
02:00 - bed

My working habits this week haven't been as good, mainly cos of social commitments in seeing my friends at home where I'm out for the whole day due to travelling and such. I still managed to find time to work though. Yesterday I didn't do anything cos I had a migraine, and the day before I went out, etc etc. Its easy for your days to just disappear and you can't be in control all the time. I learned that when you have free time, you have to make the most out of it and get as much done as possible because 'working every day' in small amounts, isn't possible. So as long as I work hard on the days where I do have free time, I'll be ok I think.

The pic is something I did recently, tried to develop different silhouettes..the drawings are full of errors though!

new Master's piece

Here's a study of an Alphonse Mucha oil painting. I thought he was an interesting artist to look at, because he's most famous for his stylised commercial works rather than his fine art/painters work. I really liked this piece because of the symmetry and focal point of the composition, as well as the vivid skin tones. Mine is full of errors compared to the original, [small face] but the main thing I learned from this piece was the importance of measuring, and that in my paintings I tend to overly highlight and shade things which makes my work look flat because there's no sense of background and foreground. So doing this helped me to recap on really basic things like that, and the piece in itself is very simple.
I suppose digital painting comes the closest to oils, because of how easy it is to blend colours and create a smooth transition between shades enabling you to render things more realistically. When I did oils in high school I painted on this huge wooden door and the smell of it really makes you light headed after working with them all day. I wouldn't mind trying to find a class that devotes an afternoon or so to oil painting, I've decided I mostly hate acrylics.

adventures in perspective

Yesterday I worked on the ideal interior spaces project for Chris. I've been looking at a lot of rococo architecture lately and wanted to make a tea-room lounge style place. I've never actually drawn something like that without either drawing from life or using photo reference, so I made a rough model of the layout in max and drew in some perspective lines over the top.

In the chart of my progress, the biggest changes happened between image 3 and 4, when the problems in scale were pointed out to me between the chairs and the staircase. It really hurt my head trying to figure out why it didn't look right, felt a bit like a child who didn't understand anything. So I lowered the horizon line which made the room a lot bigger, so the staircase could look more plausible. Redrew a few things so that they matched the new perspective lines and added in details. I'm still not sure its completely convincing, but I learnt a lot from this project, that scale is really important for the believability of images, and to always follow perspective lines when making things up or it will look wrong. Also, that colours desaturate when they go into the background. I knew all these things in theory, but sometimes I struggle with applying them to my own work.

Drawing life, day 3

Ok, here's my last set of drawings from the short course! Some ok and some really bad, a mixed day but it was nice to do some curled poses. Stayed away from colour today and just concentrated on measuring and line...The two measured drawings I did I like the most! It is a technique that really works sometimes if you prepare accurately. The last one I did in 10 minutes before end of class and its my favourite for some reason even though its not that good. We were looking at gestural life drawings today and none of them were rendered or anything, but they were really nicely drawn lines. I like it when you can see movement in the shape of the figure. Anyway for the charcoal/chalk piece in the middle I tried to copy Aby's flesh rendering technique because I'm a fan...though mine still needs more work.
Now I really want to make extra life drawing at home a regular thing over summer! Oops, its really late again. I'm going to get up before 12 of course and carry on with my work for Chris. Goodnight~