Sketchbook: Church and fashion!

This morning during church I got inspired. I've actually been sewing a caftan similar to the ones below out of old bedsheets I got for free a year or two ago. Free clothes, Woo!
Anyways, these are just some of the ideas bouncing around in my head. Enjoy!

Brother Bear and Man v. Nature!

Will likes to use layouts and paintings from Brother Bear often, since they're just darned good. I was looking through his packet of art and was thoroughly inspired by the epic looking man v. nature themes.

SO I drew a group of thumbnail ideas for snowscapes--with a lonely snowshoed traveler. Of course, when I showed them to Will he pointed out the egregious even spacing that was littered throughout most of them, but hopefully I'll be able to correct some of the proportions on these and (maybe?) bring them a couple to paint.

Something Slimy

I drew a couple tentacles yesterday.

...Will would be pleased, and vindicated.

Speed Still Life!

Last week in Nicole's class we ended early, so we only had 2 hours. Since painting faster or limiting my amount of time has seemed to produce more fresh-looking paintings for me, I decided to try to paint a large chunk of the set-up as fully as I could.
I was actually surprised at how much I got done. Then again, there's not too much detail. Ah well, I did learn a lot with this one.

I like to think that this is a courtroom scene taking place among the objects. The vase is the judge, the plate of fruit the jury, and the lone peach in the blue bowl is the witness on the stand. The yellow vase and the white jar are the lawyers, and the red apple is the defendant. They're all arguing fiercely as the three lemon up in the audience are gossiping about whether or not he's guilty.

I ended up using only a corner of the huge canvas, and I kind of like the way nothing blends into something:

Faces from Karl's Class

A couple faces fleshed out from imagination, based on the diagrams we're learning:

The model was a no-show, so we drew each other!

Pride and Prejudice Sketches

I love the new version of Pride and Prejudice...it's just a visual treat.
I did a few quick sketches of some scenes with nice composition.

Cow Sketches

I borrowed Ken Hultgren's book "The Art of Animal Drawing" from a friend, and it's been amazingly helpful! So helpful, in fact, that I went into a cow-drawing frenzy!
Anyways, here's a slightly peeved cow. Enjoy!

...Whoops! One of them's missing something :D

Kite Layout Rough Drawing

After much ado (consisting of film studies, thumbnails, prop designs, silhouettes, perspective grids, and tears of frustration), I finally landed on what I think will pass for a composition.

Here is a rough drawing of the layout. Right now the main purpose is to check that the composition works, evokes the right emotion, and leads the eye. The drawing itself was done hastily :)
When I take it to a finish I suppose I'll work out some better designs, and spend a little more time drawing!

Lastly, I painted three different potential lighting layouts, obviously very rough. Just to get some ideas...

Final Ragneau Layout!

Sooooo this layout was "in the works" for about 3 months...because I dropped it after burning out on the painting part...ugh. Took SO long! But now it's mostly done, so I'm just gonna post it :)
I still need to work on the shading for the chest in the foreground, and maybe mess with the colors to unify it some more, but forget that for now. I'm done.

I slapped on an adjustment layer to boost the blue in all the shadows, to bring the colors together. Then I did a perfunctory pass with a mask to desaturate all the areas except the focal point. Done. Cheeeaaah!

Still Life...again!

More still life from Nicole's class.
These were both done in about 2.5 hours. Nicole wanted me to practice going faster and painting more organically...because when I practice the "massing" technique, I tend to get too methodical about it and turn my paintings into big abstract jigsaw puzzles that look awful until the very last 15 minutes when everything comes together...
Let's just say these two were a lot more fun to paint.

Grandpa's Kite Dev Process

Now for some film studies from Kung Fu Panda, for composition inspiration:

...and some thumbnails, based on specific film studies chosen from those above.

More Fashion

I've been drawing a lot of inspiration from fashion magazines, Padme's costume designs, and my own wardrobe recently, and have come up with a dozen different designs I want to paint. I've started out with these silhouettes...
More to come!

Choosing Your Composition...

For Still Life Painting last Thursday, I chose to paint a scene that wasn't officially part of the setup. This onion was leftover and was laying on top of extra fabric at the base of one of the stools we use to set the plants and vases on.

As I looked at the scene, I noticed a couple of interesting compositional points (through my viewfinder made of masking tape...)

1. The shadow shapes all form triangles pointing to the onion (squint until the picture becomes simple dark and light shapes...then notice what they are doing)
2. The saturation and contrast are intense near the onion (I could have pushed this a lot more, desaturating the BG a little more...like that stool...)
3. The lines of the fabric form a sharp angle at the onion, which (according to Will) draw the eye in and stop it. In opposition, the lines formed by the vase and the shadow shapes are all curving, which move the eye past them swiftly. (Again, that stool is battling for attention due to the sharp angles of its legs, but oh well...)
4. The elements, entry and exit points, are mostly placed along the most pleasing proportions (Will says they are: 1/3-2/3. 60-40, 50-50, and 80-20)

All in all, I was thinking, "How can I compose this picture so that the viewer knows exactly where to look?"