Palm Tree

Two hours. We practiced painting palm trees in Landscape Painting Essentials today. Bob Watts helped with some finishing touches.

Victoria

Five-minute quick sketches, two hour long pose.

Jennifer

Four hours. I'm still sticking with Mr. Ander Zorn's famous four-color palette (nowadays it's ivory black, cadmium red, yellow ochre, titanium white) and will probably adhere to it until I figure out its nuances to my liking. I wasn't paying much attention to the painting in the early stages and noodled far more than I should have, and as a result the drawing suddenly fell apart at hour three. I scrambled to salvage the painting during the last few sets, and I think I succeeded more or less. I doubt I nailed Jennifer's likeness this go around, but at least the end result doesn't look atrocious. I honestly almost gave up on it when the structure of the painting collapsed, which would have been the first time I would have quit out of frustration. But I hate the feeling of giving up more than looking at a crappy painting I made, so I've yet to do that.

Cassie, Week 5

Two-and-a-half hours. I fixed the lips, chin, and hair area to complete the grisaille painting. I'm now ready to move onto color.

Studying Chen Shufen, Part 3

Two hours. Worked a little on the nose and hair, refined the silhouette of the face, and added a canvas texture to try and kill the digital look. Haven't decided on whether or not that makes it too kitschy (it probably does). Still have a lot of problems to fix in this piece. I need to reign in the details before the whole painting runs away from me.

Studying Chen Shufen, Part 2

Two hours. I worked on the eyes and nose a bit for tonight. I would plow on through, but it is currently two in the morning and I've got to be up for a six a.m. wake up call. I'll step away from it for a day in order to get a fresh look at the painting and check if any features need to be tweaked.

FYI, I am looking at reference for this piece, combining from a variety of sources and trying to match the style to Chen's approach. It's proving to be a lot tougher than it looks, but I'm really having a blast with the study, and learning oodles about digital painting in the process.

Studying Chen Shufen

One-and-a-half hours. WIP (Work in Progress). One of my favorite illustrators these days is Chen Shufen, a Taiwanese artist whose artwork of gorgeous gals and guys has come to define the look of book covers for romance novels in Asia. Her recent collection of artwork, Pure Love, just came out and it reminded me that I've been yearning to try to paint an illustration in their style someday. Might as well give it a gander now. I'll be working on this one whenever I can, which is often these days, since my busy post-work schedule is starting to lighten up a bit.

My plans for the fall quarter is to cut back on classes in general and spend more time doing both creative endeavors (character design, illustration, etc.) and specialized studies (anatomy, master studies, etc.). I've learned a gargantuan amount of information in the past nine months and I need some time to sort through it all.

As far as this doodle goes: I started with a graphite drawing on sketch paper, and scanned that into Photoshop to clean up the line work. I then started blocking in some basic colors, always mindful to indicate the forms comprising the face (this is where all those head studies over the past year have helped a lot). The next step from here will be to further refine the turning of forms and figuring out where I can loose some line work and where some contours should absolutely stay.

This is going to be fun.

Toni

Two-and-a-half hours.

Anna Maria Pierangeli

Four-and-a-half hours. For my head drawing class, we're supposed to sketch from reference and take to a finished render one head a week. I honestly don't know much about Anna Maria Pierangeli. Looking her up at IMDB it seems as if she was involved with James Dean at one point, and like him, also passed away at a relatively young age.

Her neck right now is really bothering me. It looks like a goofy cast shadow, but it's actually the collar of a button-up blouse, which I admittedly should have indicated more clearly before I decided to call it quits for the night. I'll keep in mind not to introduce such bizarre reads into my drawings in the future.

(I'll probably work on the drawing a bit before class tomorrow, and if I finish, I'll edit this post with the revised version.)

EDIT: I fixed the structure of the head, pounded in the blacks, and cleaned up the halftones. This drawing could be further refined (for example, the eyes are probably too large), but I'm growing weary of it and am eager to move onto the next challenge. You know, that reminds me of a saying I heard somewhere: drawings and paintings are never finished, just merely abandoned. It's true.

Ian

Three to five minutes for the quick sketches, two hours for the long pose. Erik worked on the right arm of the long pose to illustrate how to take my drawings to a more finished render.

Sunset

One hour. Every week for my landscape essentials course, we paint isolated objects in the studio using photos as reference, to help us get accustomed to problem solving the small parts before we tackle the real thing (plein air). Our focus this week was on skies.

Nicole

Four hours. I'm still working through the four-color Zorn palette, trying to understand the fundamentals of painting before I add more variety to my repertoire. I've been studying a lot of work by Sean Cheetham, to figure out how he indicates features with a minimum amount of brushstrokes.

Cassie, Week 4

Two hours. We continued refining our grisaille paintings this week. I probably have another hour left in this one to bring it to a level I'll be satisfied with (specifically, I need to block in the background, finesse the hair, and focus on turning the form more with strict attention paid to warms and cools). I had to ask for so much help from our instructor Ara to make it through our class without tearing my hair out out of frustration. This painting business is a lot tougher than it looks.

Amy

Three hours. The scribbles on the right-hand side are Kevin's notes on how to use a handful of values to address ambient lighting as well as a stark reminder on the importance of grouping shapes in order to help communicate a more effective read.

Eric

Twenty-fives and fifties. Eric, who works at LAAFA, volunteered to step in for the model who didn't show up tonight. The first couple of drawings were focused on laying in the structure of the head; the third's the beginning of a full value render.

Aaron

Five minutes. The model failed to show up tonight, so our head drawing instructor stepped in for some warm-up fives.

Cecilia

Two to seven minutes, plus a two-hour long pose. The nicer quick sketches at the bottom of the first image are my instructor's. Had lots of help overall today.

Keith

Five to ten minutes. I'm beginning to see results from all those hours doing quick sketch. I feel as if I've achieved a greater understanding of both rhythm and form. It's great to hit such plateaus.

Cassie, Week 3

Two hours. I've begun the grisaille underpainting, which for our purposes is composed of ivory black, lead white, and burnt umber. The grisaille will act as a blueprint upon which we can base our color decisions off of. This underpainting will be brought to a finish before moving onto a more expanded color palette.

Cassie

45 minutes. It might have been rude to doodle during my instructor's grisaille demo, but I couldn't help it. At least this sketch will help me memorize her face so that I'm better prepared when I tackle the longer, full-color painting later.

Nicole

Two hours. I'm trying to focus on grouping together various shapes for clearer reads.

Doug

Three to ten minutes for the quick sketches, two hours for the long pose.

Another Midnight Doodle

Four hours? I lost track to be honest. Some reference used, although by the halfway mark I straight up abandoned it and started painting from imagination. Just another sketch so I can get used to the medium and check to see if I remember all the lessons I've learned from my watercolor sketches.

Jee

Five and ten minutes. It's amazing what a single one-on-one session with the right teacher will do for you. After Erik showed me how to properly do a 5-minute quick sketch last week, everything just kind of fell into place afterward. My marks are looser but also more confident, and I'm far less stressed out about the whole process of quick sketch in general. I actually find it quite meditative these days.

Cassie, Week 2

Three hours in charcoal pencil. I practically redrew the entire head this week just to nail shape placement to my satisfaction. I even went so far as to double-check everything in a mirror. As a result, it's a far more accurate likeness of Cassie.

I'll transfer this drawing over to a primed canvas in a couple of days.

Eric

Two hours. Some forms are turning a bit strange. I'll have to be more careful about value relationships in the future.

Michael

Five minute quick sketches and a one-and-a-half hour pose. Aaron Westerberg gave me excellent critiques on my head drawing tonight as well as on the one I drew of Daniella a few days back. I'll document some of the pointers he gave so I can keep them in mind for later:

1. Once you finish the initial light/dark separation, begin to organize your halftones cleanly, moving from the shadow areas into the light (remember the procedures you learned from Rick's head drawing class).

2. Vary the lines you do decide to keep in the drawing, but opt to obliterate line as much as possible and let tone/mass do the heavy lifting for you. Lose those edges. Recall what Meadow said about lines being pocket change - imagine you've only got enough to afford a few of them, so make them count.

3. Adding a thin, light sliver of a line next to a highlight can make it pop like nobody's business. It's all about contrast.

4. Watch the placement of and clearly define the boundaries of your shapes. Mask the drawing in parts to determine which harmonize and which need to be finessed further.

5. Measure twice, draw once. Watch the length of that neck on Michael.

I'm really grateful to have talented teachers who can give such honest and thorough critiques.

Thanks Benjamin

Three hours. Reference used for the face. The rest from imagination (heh).

I didn't feel like sleeping in early tonight, so I tried my hand at painting digitally. Whenever I get too comfortable in a particular medium, I usually switch to another to keep challenged, and digital has always been a real pain in the ass to work with for me. It's become surprisingly easier to handle after working so much with watercolors though (they're very similar in application).

In case you were wondering about the wild mix of colors: I was inspired to experiment after browsing today through the blog of Chinese comic artist BENJAMIN, one of my biggest inspirations. I love the way he paints women with such bold, energetic strokes of color. He's amazing.

I guess you can also say this work is also reminiscent of John Asaro, although I wasn't necessarily thinking about him when I was painting this.

I really enjoyed doing this study. I'll continue to explore more in this medium when I can.

Paul

Over an hour. This and the previous sketch were done tonight in my Fabriano sketchbook at my cousin Paul's birthday party. I'm trying to get into the habit of bringing it along with me wherever I go so I'm constantly drawing from life. If you're wondering how these guys were able to stand still for such a long time, then I've got two words for you:

Guitar Hero.

Jason

About thirty minutes.

Natalie

Two to five minutes for the quick sketches, two hours for the long pose. After watching Kirk Shinmoto from Art Center and Erik Gist from Watts do some demos, I'm beginning to understand the importance of loosening up my line work for my lay-ins. I'm having a lot of fun with quick sketch these days and the things I learn there are slowly seeping into my brain, which helps me tackle the long poses better. Slowly but surely I'm improving.