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Krakenbane
Starting Member
USA
2 Posts |
 Posted - 06/01/2010 : 12:46:16 AM
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For your edification (and entertainment), here's a synopsis of my experience with the first three lessons of the penciling course. I encourage other students to post replies about thier own coursework here.
Lesson One: Tools and basic layout. Okay, I can do this.
Excavated my old art table and supplies (mainly rocks, dried roots and bits of flint and bone) from storage, and pinned a load of my artwork on the wall (basement, natch). The ominous presence of gurgling waterpipes overhead lends both atmosphere and impetus to my coursework. I take out a sheet of clean white paper and realize how rarely I've allowed myself to actually sit and do this for the past twenty years . . .
Assignment One: Simple and effective in getting a pencil back in my hand, AND showing me where I lack knowing what to do with it. Roughing everything on 8.5x11 actually worked against me. I struggled getting any of my work scaled to fit on the assignment board, and wound up combining elements from three different finished figure drawings, with the result appearing noticably disproportionate.
A personal estimation of my own work has always been; "Flawed, but not entirely without merit." I am happy to say that the review of my first assignment gives me hope that I can still meet that standard!
Lesson Two: Light, contrast, white and black elements, contibuting both to a drawing's basic construction as well as the mood it will evoke. Yeah, it's all coming back to me now. Capture a lighter, distant background with an H5 pencil, indicate a midground with an H3, and a more thickly outlined and shadowed foreground with a good old #2. I used to get pretty good results doing stuff like that.
Assignment Two: Aaaah, away from the unfamiliar Western frontier and back in Pelucidar where I belong! Less of a struggle getting my individual elements scaled and juxtaposed pleasingly this time, but I could see the entire composition needed to be shifted up higher on the page. An "I knew it!" moment after reading your review. Guilty of not putting a pencil on the actual assignment board for this one til the day before I mailed it to you. Won't allow THAT to happen again.
Lesson Three: Use reference pics and location schematics to establish convincing environments. Essential for the more esoteric among us. Backgrounds, dimensions, foreshortening, perspective . . .oh good lord I think I've forgotten how to draw in perspective. Quick! To the reference books! Perspective, perspective. Where IS that example of how to space vertical lines receeding into the distance? This is ridiculous!
Assignment Three: Although generaly pleased with what I mailed you, I feel it falls short of displaying some specific elements asked for in this assignment.
What worked better for me this time was laying out the entire composition in scale on a tracing paper overlay. I count the connection of the locales by the central full moon as well as the mirror-like elements of the figures and their companions among the positives of this drawing. I think a lack of clarity in the foliage and pecision in the buildings are probably chief among its negatives. Currently awaiting this review.
Finally, though I am enjoying the coursework, I am so far struggling to crank out a single storyboard in a month. I'm sure this will become easier as I get back into it, but for now my art is suffering from the awful neglect I imposed on it. Thanks to your school for being there to help me change that.
After all, luck, talent and devastating good looks will only take you so far without a modicum of actual skill to round things out!
George
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