January 29, 2009

Sketches

Thought I should unload. I've been having some problems with computer, but all should be swell now. Comments, critiques, thoughts and criticisms are more than welcome. Umm...about where I got the animal sketches, for the most part they're from Lewis Brown's An Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists, and the latter (about five pages worth in my sketchbook) are from Ken Hultgren's The Art of Animal Drawing. I'm liking Hultgren's book a bit more, mainly because it really emphasizes the gesture aspect of drawing and gives tips on how to construct an animal from memory (ala Hogarth).

Not going to put all of them, since it's just a bit too much, so just some of the most recent (ordered from most recent to older work):



































That's it. I actually took this sketchbook to NPD, it was held in my local community college. I also took some of my actual "pieces" (too many). The only school I went to get reviewed was CalArts. I went mainly for, as they say, shits and giggles. Since, I can't afford it even if I got accepted.

Umm...I took a lot my stuff, mostly paintings, but the representative there wasn't digging it too much. She asked me if I had any drawings, figure drawings specifically, but I've never had a figure drawing class, the only place I ever drew my figures when I did get the chance, was in my sketchbook.

I had given her that, and she really liked it, but that's about it. Felt kinda disappointed for the lack of enthusiasm on the paintings. But it makes sense, since character animation has a lot to do with draftsmanship and not really on rendering (even pencil rendering), and especially paint rendering. That and the paintings weren't so good.

I dunno though, painting is still great, and I really do think it can teach you a lot about drawing even though painting is an extension of drawing and not the other way around. I think it was Glenn Keane who elaborated on this idea of "sculptural" drawing and talked about how all these mediums feed each other; drawing, painting, sculpture, etc.

Throw in the fact there's talk of this new type of 2D animation Glenn Keane is said to be trying out for a new movie using a "sculptural drawing" method, and the importance of knowing these mediums rises even more. I understand where CalArts is coming from though as far as animation though. Since, draftsmanship, really is the hardest part, at least I think so, in any "traditional-non-abstract" art form. If you mess up your foundation, what you build upon it won't look any better.

Of course, better here is defined as close to reality, meaning naturalistic style, or in the case of animation, the illusion of life.

Getting off the painting for now though. Despite the fact I just bought a bunch of new mediums (neo megilp my favorite), I'm going to try and get good at this draftsman deal. Even though, quite honestly hearing some of the stuff on Spline Doctors, you start to question how useful drawing is at all. That of course only applies to 3d animation.

I'll cut it here.

1 comment:

Elizabeth McMahill said...

yeah, it's amazing how sculptural a thing painting is. Color class, where I always used acrylics, helped my understanding of drawing structure and what it means to sculpt so much. The three disciplines are really so closely connected.