I had originally wrote a draft 1600+ words covering the last five years, but then I realized this week it was no longer necessary. All my previous blogs cover the last five years fairly well, but the short of it is that 2012 defined my life in a negative way, and I never forgave myself for spending so much just to re-learn what I had already received for free. I am finally able to let it all go this year.
Finally getting a day job has accelerated this year and I really haven’t made a lot of time for finished work, other than the Blizzard Heroes of the Storm contest piece. Most of my sketches were posted to Instagram as I still haven’t taken time to scan my sketchbook drawings going as far back as October 2014.
My goals for 2016 will be to set up an oil painting space in my room and start working more traditionally hereafter, hopefully achieving a good balance between digital and traditional.
I haven’t posted in two weeks. I have been reading comics and playing video games and not working on personal art. I saw Albert Epshteyn last week and he encouraged me with his words. “Good, as long as it is still something with art.”
I saw Fury in theaters and also Big Hero 6, and I loved both films. I also enjoyed Book of Life quite a bit as well. I loved the character designs and animation and overall visual development in all these films. One of the interesting things about Big Hero 6 is that it was actually a Marvel superhero team based in Japan and adapted for a Disney film after Disney’s acquisition of Marvel. I am glad it turned out to be such a great film. Speaking of Marvel, I am so hyped for Spider-verse.
Here are the figure paintings for this and last week.
Sections
I. TAD
II. Esports
III. Comics
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I. TAD
I made it out alive with only 2 F’s haha, but i passed the classes that i cared about, and a handful that i didn’t. I am a little cynical with art education at this point in my life, and I’m growing more stubborn too. I regret doing full-time this semester, and if I could go back, I would’ve definitely chosen part-time. There were a lot of classes that I would’ve loved to invest more time into this semester, but simply could not between real life commitments, poor self/time-management, and just the weight of certain classes being more impressionable than others.
In particular, Comp n’ Color (that is, Composition and Color I) helped fill a great void in my artistic learning, and it’s really helped me understand how to start an image, with how to properly thumbnail and how to properly group shapes in the thumbnails, as well as nuances in developing compositions. The thumbnail sheet that I showed in the last blog entry is probably a better testament to my understanding of the concepts learned in the class than my actual final Flat Shape Project image.
However, If I only did part-time, I might have missed out on everything I learned out of FIG101, because if I were to have done part-time, i probably would not have selected FIG101 (because on paper, the class sounded super remedial for me). If Comp n’ Color taught me how to start an image, FIG101 taught me how to finish one. Concepts such as subtle value control, edge control, and creating focal points using the two aforementioned really helped ground my image-making ability. I think everyone thought that FIG101 gave out the most work, but realistically, it wasn’t necessarily the most work but the most consistent. Most of the homework took no more than 1-2 hours to complete, 3 if including breaks. However, it was the fact that it was given on a regular basis that forced students to either consider it a burden, or to consider everything else from other classes a burden. For me, I think there were only a few weeks where the homework for FIG 101 was hard (the week after the week after spring break, and the weeks where we had distortion homework). Everything for that class clicked probably two or three weeks before the end of the semester, and between the lecture and the constant practice probably has helped me become a lot stronger as an image-maker and painter.
As for the other classes… Form/Light and Linear Perspective were really interesting to me at the start of the semester, but as i started putting more time into Comp, Figure and Media, I mentally dropped those classes from mind. Figure102 Anatomy Lab was very technical, but for my stubborn ass, was remedial. I didn’t score high on the final for it despite that fact because i hadn’t spent any time practicing nor did i submit any “finished” drawings, so accuracy might not have been top of the checklist for me to accomplish. I think it’s very bad of me to approach any class with a “been there, done that” attitude, but like with Form/Light and Linear Perspective, as I got deeper into comp, figure, and media, I started zoning out Anatomy Lab (i showed up for class still because i think Marshall Vandruff is one hell of a teacher/lecturer and has an awesome speaking/singing voice). Photography class was like the secret bonus level at the end of the week, where Brent would give us some entertaining music from his era (like the great legendary Tony Bennett) and we’d share our interesting adventures with our cameras. That was a refreshing class. Media class was kind of slow at the start, I felt like I was already at a point in my art education where I was beyond graphite and charcoal. That’s so first year of college, man — Oh wait… TAD semester 1 is supposed to be a first year of college equivalent. Things started picking up for me in that class once we got to ink and George Pratt came in and we were allowed to do mastercopies from Frazetta. FRAZETTA. Oils felt pretty comfortable for me because of what I learned from studying under Danny Robbins, and I might have over-invested on the oil color master-copy which caused me some suffering in other classes during that time period.
The one class that i did not enjoy at all was Sketchbook I. There was at least one other student I spoke to who also thought the class was kind of lackluster, but for me specifically, I had the worst case of the “been there done that” syndrome for that class. My time back at VCU was highlighted by two semesters of sketchbook burn out. I can understand how this class might have been good and helpful for students who aren’t accustomed to working in sketchbooks as a place for ideation and problem-solving, but for me, none of the assignments resonated other than a few from pre-midterms. I pretty much gave up on the class after midterms and decided my time was just better spent focusing on the work for other classes.
Here’s some artwork.
Comp n’ Color final: Flat shape project. I initially thought to use the zealot thumbnail from the thumbnail sheet but after reviewing it in class, I decided that the mothership thumbnail lent itself to flat shapes more easily. I would’ve loved to render the f— out of this composition in a Noah Bradley/Bierstadt/HudsonRiverSchool landscape painting style and put rimlighting all over the place.
final gesture drawings for FIG101
final shape drawings for fig101. i feel like this set is leaps and bounds better than my previous sets. the teacher agrees with me.
final long pose drawing for FIG101.
surprisingly, I got the most out of the FIG101 class than any other class with possibly exception to Composition and Color I.
Everything else i did for Form and Light after the midterm isn’t worth showing. The lectures were really good for this class, but the assignments weren’t particularly exciting for me. This one I never turned in on time even though I did all the math and calculations for early on when it was assigned. I finally manned up around finals week and handled the “3D” part, since this was one of the required turn-ins for final. Pen tool, while a staple of Adobe Illustrator, is one of the most underrated yet very powerful tools in Photoshop.
here’s my Bierstadt master study for Media I from a couple months back
My friends and I went to the beach, I got sunburnt. I finished this last piece just in time for father’s day. It’s a watercolor portrait of my dad. I don’t particularly like watercolors at the moment because i haven’t achieved a level of mastery where i can get the medium to do what it want it to, and i’m sure i would like it more if i were at that point, but for now not so much. I’ve seen what watercolors can be capable of in the hands of a master of the medium, but right now there are more pressing media to master.
part 1, the art:
Here are some things I worked on last week, but forgot to upload.
firstly, some figure drawings.
i feel that i’m still rushing the measuring/composing phase in these drawings too much, resulting in weird proportions. i know that i know better, and i know that i know enough to do better; just need to slow down and execute… it’s like in Starcraft 2– stop trying to worry about micro and just build good macro mechanics.
and the latest revision for the X-Men cover for the KT Benefit Auction: the last set of feedback included lightening Bobby Drake (Iceman) a bit so that Wolverine would stand out. I used FW white acrylic ink for this process, hoping it would work. Something I didn’t quite like was that the wet ink would pick up the Slicci pen ink I used for the ultra thin strokes, and the polluted white ink would have a cold bluish tint to it (as if white wasn’t cold enough by itself). In the end, it gave him this kind of cool “ice” effect, but i wonder if it being color won’t draw the viewer attention from Wolverine…
part 2: musings on Dreamhack and MLG results
Even though this is primarily my art web log, I like to add in a segment each post on the events of the e-sports world, to invite the people who follow this blog for the art to catch a glimpse of this crazy scene of competition.
This weekend, Dreamhack EIZO Open took place in Sweden, while Major League Gaming’s SC2 Spring Arena 1 took place in New York.
At Dreamhack, fan favorite Swedish pro-gamer Marcus “ThorZain” Eklof , representing team MouzSports, fought through the hellish open bracket tournament and emerged the victor, being a hometown hero by defeating the statistically favored TSL.Polt, a Korean Terran and a GSL title holder (who Thorzain admitted in the pre-game interview has a significant lead in their personal head to head score from previous meetings in various tourneys). The series ended 3-1 in T-zain’s favor, with game 3 in the series on Antiga Shipyards being the most memorable match for me. Thorzain played that map brilliantly, using really smart siege/medivac positioning to hit Polt’s base, sniping out critical upgrade structures (specifically the tech lab researching Stim) and hindering Polt’s production abilities.
MLG ended with a re-rematch of DongRaeGu and MarineKingPrime. This series was particularly hyped, since the two had met each other in the last two MLG finals, MarineKing taking first in both. MKP was poised to be the first to three MLG titles, while DRG was under pressure to win a first place or suffer being put back in the curse of “Kong,” the eternal second place (something both of these players have been known for at earlier points in their careers). What a grudge match, their rivalry essentially revolving around the stigma of second place, going back as far as the first Arena of Legends league, where MKP forced a win against a then-heavily favored DRG.
This series ended with a 4-3 score, a score that viewers always look forward to, signifying how close the series was. Unfortunately the final deciding game, played on the map Tal’darim Altar was disappointing for me to watch– DRG played it intelligently, as he should have given that the map and spawning positions was disadvantageous for him. MKP however, did not make any siege tanks, despite the fact that the map and starting positions was practically an auto-win if MKP had gone for tanks. The victory was much needed for DRG, who himself, despite being last season’s GSL champion, had fallen out of Code S and had lost the finals to MKP in the last two MLGs
I finished this last piece just in time for father’s day. It’s a watercolor portrait of my dad. I don’t particularly like watercolors at the moment because i haven’t achieved a level of mastery where i can get the medium to do what it want it to, and i’m sure i would like it more if i were at that point, but for now not so much. I’ve seen what watercolors can be capable of in the hands of a master of the medium, but right now there are more pressing media to master.
Fenrysk 
