A little bit of life drawing

Anyone who can successfully juggle all the modules at the same time on my course can beat superman in a fist fight hands down. For instance today I produced my tight pencil rough for illus210 ready to be signed off and taken to a final piece, researched my chosen area of illustration and contacted several practitioners in readiness for my essay question and chosen a subject for my new drawing out project and prepped my sketchbook. And i'm not even finished for the day!

By the time I finish the course I should be a master of time management, that is assuming I haven't collapsed before then. But, I should;t be complaining, few people get the chance to do what they love day in and day out.

Oh, but I digress. I have also just completed my first life drawing session for this year and I was particularly pleased with the results.

The focus of the session was on 'weight' and trying to show weight and the occupation of space through our images. It was a welcome return to charcoal for me, and after these exercises I have attempted to use charcoal for my editorial brief, the results of which are shortly to follow.

Time ranges here was 40 minutes for the first image, 20 minutes for the second and 5 minutes for the third. I like the timed challenges as you are forced to define the most important aspects of your model and get only the necessary information that you need. 

Artistic reference

It's kind of ironic how much work I'm getting done at uni, but how little of it actually ends up on here. I'm still very much in the mindset of not wanting to put my work online for fear of ridicule. It's silly, and I need to just be brave and get my work out there as this is the most likely place that people will find my stuff. A simple analogy could be a parent dropping their child off at the first day of school: they want to hold on, cherish them and protect them from all the dangers there are out there, but they know deep down the only way their child will grow and develop is for them to interact with the world around them, and the people that inhabit it.

So! Hence forth, I shall stop hoarding my artwork and just put any old crap up here! ...well, not crap exactly. My meticulous nature doesn't allow me to ever draw something that isn't in some way half finished, but I know I need to stop being so selective.

With this in mind....I have nothing to show.

No joke I don't actually have anything scanned in but i'm going to do a large haul over the next couple of days and really bring this bog back up to date.

On a side note, and in reference to this posts' title, I wanted to just express my love and admiration for the work of Yuko Shimizu. I only stumbled across her work the other day by recommendation of my tutor. I was told my style was some what reminiscent of hers and upon viewing her work, I'm very flattered to be even remotely similar to her.

 

She has a wonderful ability to combine cultural aesthetics and has a brilliant grasp of how to use the frame. My own editorial brief has subsequently taken direct influence from her and I just wanted to pay my respects here. You should definitely check out her work, you'd be hard pressed not to find her images as they appear all over the place. On a personal note, I do feel a very strong affinity for her as she took drastic changes in her life to achieve what she has. Having a mid life crisis at 22 may seem like the end of the world, but its nice to know that there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel. There are truly wonderful people to admire and aspire to.

Thumbnails at 2:33am

The title leaves little to the imagination! I'm up at nearly three in the morning, trying to scan in some cover ideas for tomorrow's (or should I say today's?) deadline. This is a short editorial brief, only 4 weeks in total, to go through an entire project from initial ideas to final artwork. Included here are my ideas for the brief, I would go into detail about the content but i'm so bloody tired! I'll give a more thorough explanation once one has been chosen so I can finalise my design.

 

                                        

I hope they choose the first design as that is my personal favourite, if not, then design three would be a close second. But, sod's law says they'll pick number two so we'll wait and see. Thumbnails were completed with pencil, fine liner and watercolour, for speed more than anything.

Back from the river styx

Well, it has been a little while since I put anything up here (again!) I do have a legitimate reason however, i've been very ill. Now by i'll I don't mean a tickling cough, but a several day assault of all my sinuses and digestive regions. I won't go into the gory details but for a time there I really did feel on death's door. But i'm back on form again now, just, and despite my illness work has continued. I'll endeavour to get it up on here pronto.

At the moment i'm currently working on an editorial brief for a lawyer's magazine. I'm pretty sure i've mentioned my inability to do editorial brief's but so far my ideas have been strange and varied. I'm actually having a little fun with it, which is the only way to tackle something you do ideally want to do. I've got images of lawyers playing 'operation', paper planes escaping aircraft carriers and all sorts. Should present me with some interesting feedback if nothing else....