Studies from Figure Drawing

Hi. Today (Now yesterday) Kaitlin and I are going to a friend's wedding, so I took the day off. She'll be here to pick me up any minute, but I spent the morning scanning in some of the images from my figure drawing class. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed as I flipped through these. I remember doing some really killer stuff, but most of these weren't at all impressive.

Truthfully, I was also tired of scanning 5 images in the big (but not big enough) scanner here at school and then stitching them together. There's a few really nice gesture drawings I didn't upload and a couple other charcoal studies I didn't want to deal with. But whatever.

This was the final project. I did a pretty initial drawing and, in typical Zach fashion, ruined it when I tried to render it out. Probably my biggest frustration was the mess I made of her hand. I managed to salvage it to what you see here in the last 15 minutes, but this could have been the best drawing of my life. Maybe next time.

I love the poses with the chair. I noticed many of my classmates neglecting to use it, but it provides such a great measuring tool for getting things proportioned correctly.

For this last one, Perry had the model wear black articles of clothing and our job was to just draw them as though they were solid shapes. It was a fun exercise!

That's all I have for today. My sketchbook is still struggling, but my demon-building is going well. Expect more of that soonish!

Also? We didn't have a single male model all summer. Hopefully future figured classes amend this.

Much Better!

Hi! I'm really tired. It's 10:25 here. Kaitlin went to a concert with her sister and since I finished  (sort of) my homework, I've just been doing some art things. Here's a 3D thing I've just been noodling with. I should have snapped another view, his arms are really impressive. Maybe you'll get to see them later.

The guy on the left with the sword was a personal victory for the week. He just turned out really well, and I love his hands.

Here are those faces we drew last week:

I posted the guy on the left on Instagram this week, but the central character? I pumped a lot of time into him. Unfortunately, there was already a previous scribble on the page (the guy on the right) so I didn't have space to do him justice. Digital magic will allow me to remedy this, so I want to take this sketch to a finished state. We'll see. Sheesh.

Just some guys. The guy on the right's coat and pose was referenced from a TOMORROW KINGS photo I saw. Let me go find it...

...

...

Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Maybe it was on Pinterest? There's no way I'll be able to track down the source image. Sorry.

I like a character's hand in the next one. I circled it so you'd see. It turned out so dern well.

Apparently I didn't really have anything else to say. I'm just glad I got some good drawings in. School is exhausting, I'm tired, and I'm going to bed. Have a great week.

SLOW

You guys, school is cramping my style.

I'm trying to figure out ways to work on pushing paintings and 3D while maintaining my heavy school load. We haven't even really started doing any actual animation in my drawing class- The class that's killing me is a design basics for digital media class. It's not particularly hard, but teacher assigns a lot of work and I'm having a hard time trying to make the assignments work for me (i.e. so they are more in line with my stuff and what I want to do). I'll keep working on that. This week I've been working on making my smartphone into a tool for time management. I don't play games or do the Facebook thing on it, so it's already a good tool, but I'm trying to get organized so I can do the things I need to do.

I don't have a lot this week, but I got together with some friends yesterday and drew some people at Costco. Why aren't those drawings in here? I must have forgotten to scan them. Maybe you'll see them later.

P.S. - It might be updates once a week until I figure out a way to effectively do everything that needs to be done. So that's kinda the plan.

School...

School has been too busy. 

Since school began I haven't had time to do any art. I've just been filling sketchbooks while in class. I guess that's not entirely true. I've found time for a single 1-hour study.

...But that's all!

I woke up at 6:30 this morning and did homework til about an hour ago. Then I cobbled together as much of the stuff I don't hate that I can and am sharing it with you.

It's kind of depressing, but I hope it will be worth my while someday.

I'm terrified that since I'm not flexing my 3D muscles at all (I'm busy doing things like drawing primitives in Illustrator), I'll forget everything I learned over the summer. What a waste! Urgh! I hope school gets to teaching me cool stuff sometime soon so I don't feel guilty for forsaking the important art stuff I was doing.

Here's the single study I've been able to do. She looks quite sickly. I'm pretty sure it's because of that nauseating background color getting into everything.

This next one has a cool thing. That monster on the left was done from this reference monster on Pascal's Pinterest. Just like the last post, I've been trying to spend some time there cuz he's got some really cool stuff. I know my monster is nothing like the photo, but that's cuz I made it better ;)

As an aside, that "EAT MEAT WHALES" note has been on my mind a lot. When I think of big monsters like Godzilla I ask myself what the heck a monster like that would eat!? Something that size would need a lot of calories to take a step, let alone destroy everything. My solution? They eat whales like candy. Whales are big and full of meat.

 Okay, gotta go. I hope my updates don't become this infrequent. I hope I get time to do 3D. Someone give me a Timeturner so I can do some freakin' 3D!!!

Hello! 29,998 Views!

It's not quite 30,000 [Update: Soon after this post, we did actually pass 30,000 views- Ed], but I was too impatient to wait! I had to do a post.

Today is Tuesday. I've been to all my new classes. I have an animation class that will be fun. The rest will be... School.

Here are some things I did.

I wasn't going to post this (it's last night's 1 hour study) but Kaitlin saw it and said, "Is that Jake Gyllenhaal?" I was flattered she knew who it was!

I have a break between my first class and work today. I did some studies from Pascal's Pinterest stuff. He posts such cool junk!

I did these yesterday.

I DID THIS TODAY. Why is it important? It's because of the foot. Look at the awesome foot. Our right, his left (I drew an arrow so you could find it easily, but it's kinda aimed right in the middle)! It's just one of my favorite feet. And look at the cute little mushrooms!

Lastly, there's this song (Hail from the Past) from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. In my opinion, it was a mediocre game. It was fun, but mediocre. But the desert song? I haven't played it since I was 16, but this song is CONSTANTLY going through my head! I know I'm sidetracked now, so it won't hurt if keep talking. Alucard's running animation in Symphony of the Night is one of my all time favs. Jonathan's running animation is pretty weak in comparison. I can't find one for you to see, sorry. But anyway, my only real recollection of Portrait of Ruin is Jonathan's running animation syncing up to that desert song. Anyway, my whole point with this dumb story is that I go running multiple times a week to keep from going insane and sometimes when I go running I sing that song in my head in time to my running. It's pretty stupid. 

I LIVE: Sitrep

Hey, I'm here. What's going on? 

School is busy. In fact, I should be patching up the holes in a 3D pelvis, then rigging and weighting the model. But I had a few thing lying around I wanted to post. 

So yeah, school. I've been busy doing paintings, which is something that I don't really like to do. I feel like rather than studying the color theory aspects of the medium (acrylic, in this case) I'm just fighting the tools. Because of that I dread it. It should be an effective exercise but it's tough to push through. 

That's been life in general, lately- just kinda tough. For me, there's a lot of fear about the future: Can I make it as an artist? Am I really getting better? Is what I'm doing getting me to improve the fastest?

I try to just relax and keep taking steps, but I wonder if I'm being proactive enough.

Time management has been another hard thing. Last week Kaitlin and I bought another calendar (we couldn't find our first one, probably got lost in the move!) and started mapping things out with the hope that it would help us use time more efficiently. Since I just started work over at Boostability, time has been even more important. 

It's overwhelming, so much so that my typically endless motivation to do art has been all over the place.

It would be easier to embrace the chaos if I could know it was all adding up properly and would mean work upon graduation, but I guess we'd all like to see bits of the future and it's not likely to happen.

Anyway, I really should get around to my homework, but I just wanted to  say it's probably time get back into a regular posting routine again. For starters I think that I'll do one post a week, maybe on Sunday nights. Hopefully that will get my art muscles feeling better again.

Head studies from class:

(Hmm, it seems like I'm ending up on the same side of the model on a regular basis. Time to move to the other side of the classroom!)

Then I've got some doodles from the last few days. This first one was from this morning and it just felt so good to do. I haven't been drawing for myself at all this semester and I think it's important to do some fun stuff aside from the grunt work so you can apply the things you're learning and actually see how far you've come.

These were some studies from people I saw at the mall last Thursday (2/26/15). The guy on the top and left, anyway. 

I'm a Thief (and I'm Slightly Sorry)

Oops! 

Last night UVU's Illustration Club met to discuss portfolio stuff to apply for the BFA program. It was whatever. Anyway, the club has been doing a new activity where members draw on printer paper with the eventual goal of compiling all the drawings into a sketchbook we can sell. I never really participate since I have to run to class soon after club starts, but last night, with maybe 5 minutes left before I had to bail I looked in front of me and saw a blank paper and a chunk of 2mm red pencil lead and thought, "What the heck, I'll throw something together" and this is what I scribbled out:

I thought it was way cool! But I realized that I couldn't give up this sketch without scanning it to show you all, so I looked around guiltily and stuck it into my backpack. Zoom!

I was sitting in class and feeling really good and remembered it was because I had drawrn a cool drawnrwning. I opened my bag and removed the sketch and found that I hadn't just stolen my sketch, but I had also stolen Dylan's sketch, too! The blank piece of paper I had drawn on? It was blank on one side. Dylan's sketch was on the other side! Sorry, Dylan! I'll bring the paper back to school and return it to the Illustration Club. Ha!

Then some drawings from the last week I didn't totally hate:

(This model? I drew her head too small for her body. Blast!)

EmBEARassing

Hey, school is busy, keeping me busy, busy, so I'm not posting a finished painting right now or anything, just some stuff I drew yesterday.

For my Drawing for Animation class, we had to design a character based on a prompt. We could do a spaceman, a bear, or a schoolgirl. I figured that the spaceman would be too obvious for me (based on what I'm always doing) and the girl would be stretching myself too much. So I did a bear. These are some of my concepts. Well, the first couple are. Ha. Things got out of control later on and I drew some other bears that were barely bears. I left those in cuz some were kinda cool. When I get my final draft back I'll upload it so you can see what I ended up with and submitted.

This was my final concept before I finished it up:

Things were getting wild.

Bearzerker? I'd like to render this out and turn it into a cool 3D model or somefink.

A tank bear and a...

Yeah, I don't know. I do know that I should get some reference so next time I draw a tank it looks more tanky.

2nd Day OF SCHOOL

Yeah, it'll be a busy semester.

I have no time to talk to you.

Zing!

*Runs off to do homework*

Oh, jk. I forgot: 

Everyone is facing to the right. I could technically flip stuff around, but it would be cheating. It's called bad habits. I wanna fix it.

Effigy, by Converge

Jake Parkour REDUX

Today, we hosted artist Jake Parker for a workshop down at UVU, and it was so much fun! You'll remember Jake Parker from this post approximately 250 days ago (according to Google). I didn't censor any words this time [Liar! - Ed], though. These notes are mostly for me, so they might be slightly confusing, but if you get something out of it, then GOOD.

This last one has no notes, just scribbles.

Thanks for coming, Jake! Hopefully we'll get to see you again soon!