Fall Has Arrived and more school dwgs

Yesterday I noticed when I was out doing some errands that the leaves in the trees along the highway are really starting to change color. Looks like they have been paying attention to the calender. I know that isn't true of course, but last week it seemed like only a few leaves were beginning to change and yesterday there were a lot of trees starting to show some color. Peak colors won't be for a couple of weeks, but still, it isn't just the cooler temps telling us fall is here.

School of course has been keeping me busy, but I finally have some finished work from the Color and Design Class, though the color in the title is a bit of a misnomer, since we really won't be working with color in this class, that happens next term. My current project is using one color with black and white, but the beginning projects were all done with just black and white. The pictures are for those two projects. The first is an abstraction from my vegetable drawings done in the first day of class, the second is from the apple with seeds that I finally managed to draw (as an aside I finally had a pear this week that had seeds in it, hmm maybe I will buy another pear and if I find seeds in it I will finish the pear drawing, since I really liked that one)

This is the design study sheet I did for the veggies, I had done a different study first which I didn't like so I went back to basics and did this one. I used the two bottom right images for my final work.

Here is the final veggie study, the one image is an onion, the other a cucumber



Here is the study for the Fruit/Seed Design, I rather like this just by itself so am inking in a copy, not sure yet how it is will turn out. The image I used for the project below was the center square the 2nd row up from the bottom, you can tell it is darker then the rest.


Here is the final drawing for the Fruit/Seed Project. I rather like how it turned out.

Drawing class this week was a challenge we started out viewing slides along with a discussion about negative space and how important it is to draw and pay attention to the space around objects, first it can help you define the shape of an object more accurately, but it can also be a pleasing shape in and of itself. Then we went on to our drawing. The instructor had us cover our paper with soft charcoal and then using an eraser we had to draw the objects at hand. One was a limp plant (limp because it was wilting, even though it was in water), then I did a chair, and last I worked on a bicycle. The bicycle was the hardest of the lot, and I didn't really finish it. I had a hard time getting some of the relationships right.

Plant, as you can see the poor thing was wilting even though it was in water.


Chair #2, I rather like this one, at least it looks like a chair

Bicycle #3, handlebars aren't quite right, but it was the end of class so...

My last image is my homework assignment, no not the shoes, I will hopefully get them up later this weekend, this was the one I turned in this week, the assignment was to draw our desk, I don't have one, so did the table that I use as a desk instead, course it is in the kitchen so has all sorts of stuff on it.

Homework assignment #2

Comments are welcome for any who wish to post them, if just to let me know you are visiting.

Mini Quilt and School

I am not sure if I mentioned it here or not - probably not, but I joined a Closed Yahoo group called the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge (FFFC) I found the group through the Art Quilt List when they had a call for new members. Anyway they have a monthly challenge which is posted the 3rd Friday of a month, can be based on a theme or just about anything that the challenge leader for that month comes up with. The August Challenge was to use a photo of a garden (yours or even out of a magazine) abstract it and create a quilt. I decided to see what I could come up with using one of my photos of my Christmas Cactus which I took last December. I took the photo's with the idea that one day I would make a quilt out of them so when I saw this, even though my plants aren't technically a garden I decided to go for it. I am posting 3 pictures, the original photo, what I did using Photoshop and the final quilt. There are some differences between the design and the outcome that I made for design reasons, but it is pretty close.

School - 3rd week of classes are done. And so far I am still surviving. Monday we got our test back in Computer Graphics, I didn't do too badly which I found a relief. I am still working on my drawings, well pen and ink studies for the Color and Design class, and don't want to show them just yet. I finished one, but don't like it so am doing another which I think is turning out much better. I am using an apple with seeds as the source of my second study, I wanted to use a pear but couldn't find one that actually had seeds. I know bosc pears have seeds, but I didn't want to do a bosc pear - bother. Anyway the apple is drawn and I am not doing another. I am at the ink in stage of these abstractions, I know I am not being very clear here, but when you see photo's you will understand, and feeling a bit nervous about doing it. Ink doesn't come off once on, and I hate second guessing myself.

Drawing class on Tuesday went well I think, I turned in my shoes (homework was to make 3 drawings of a shoe) - sorry I didn't get pictures of them, maybe I will take photo's when I get them back. Not sure of my grade on them, I don't think I got the different quality of line that the instructor was looking for (sigh). In the class on Tuesday the instructor had set up an arrangement of black and white objects, apparently he had been busy painting over the weekend. Mostly simple shapes, balls, blocks, cones (Styrofoam) with some bottles and vases added in. I did one which I will add in here, moved, did another (won't show that one) moved again (we are at easels, standing for the class) then the instructor came by and gave me a bit of one on one - he used tone as an over all tool to get the large shapes and not to worry about the details, which could be put in later. This is a problem I have always had drawing, I tend to work too much detail from the start of a drawing, any way I am posting the drawing he played with, and then I am posting the last drawing I did trying to use more tone and shape and less detail. We will see how well I can learn this lesson, and it is really an important one and will make figure drawing easier, not to mention landscape drawing. I think he was concerned that I would take his criticism as that I wasn't doing a good drawing, but I am aware from past instructors that I tend to to begin with too much detail so I didn't take it that my drawing was bad, just that I need to loosen up, and start more generally. Erasers are my Friend

My first Drawing of the table, note the pictures aren't all that great, I was being lazy and didn't get the board out to support the paper tablet.

Dwg 2, This is the one that Instructor demonstrated the type of technique he wants me to use, I did the image layouts he applied the tones

Dwg 3, my last drawing where I was trying to use more values and less details

2nd Week of School

Well I have survived my 2nd week of school, first week where I had all my classes, and we have actually started doing some work. I also had my first quiz, ack - well hopefully I didn't do too badly on it, but I know I missed some things. Had to memorize the names of the tools in Photo Shop, I think I did pretty well considering, since there are a lot of them and we only had about 48 hours.

Had my first long drawing class on Tuesday, the class st arts at 12:30 and gets out about 4:30 so we are doing over 3 hours of drawing. We see slides at the beginning of class, and get a break about half way through so we aren't drawing the entire time. I was so exhausted at the end of that class I was amazed. Course I am not used to that much standing, but I don't think it was the standing that did me in, it is hard work drawing . I am going to post some of the drawings, understand the pictures aren't the best and I have cropped them to show only my drawing not the entire sheet of paper I am working on. I am trying to keep the image sizes down so I can post more.

First sketch, I didn't get very far before I realize that I wasn't working large enough, so scrapped this and went on to number two.

This is just a gourd and some onions, not thrilled but better then #1

Then I went on to try to do the skull, not sure what the animal was, I am not totally pleased with this one

After a break I did the vase above, I didn't realize until I cropped it that it leans a bit to the right, oh well

A Squash, I like this one

Cabbage, the instructor wasn't impressed, told me to keep working on it, but I rather like it.

I also have some projects in the works for the Color Design class, will post some pictures of those when they are done. And no these aren't the egg project, one of these is done with our original veggie sketches and the other has to be done with a fruit, that is drawn as a fruit, then cut in half, and then a drawing of the seed. I picked a pear, did a lovely drawing only to find when I cut it open that there were no seeds, bother. I purchased another pear yesterday, hopefully this one has seeds, otherwise I will have to go for an apple.

Surviving first days of school

Well I survived my first week of school. Only had one class in each of my three subjects, and for the most part have to say they were somewhat a waste of time. Well unless you like getting lectures about how you have to attend classes to get a good grade - like DUH, but since most of the students in the class are just out of high school where I guess attending classes has become optional this needs to be stressed. Still it got very old about the 3rd time I heard it. Also since they don't pre-hand out what class supply requirements are there wasn't much we could do. I did haul my books and some other supplies with me, but in the classes we needed to do some drawing in paper and pecils were provided.

Drawing class, that was my first class on Tuesday, we had a slide show of various artists drawings, and our instructor told us that he likes to teach beginning drawing (YEAH, that is always good news) but he likes charcoal - which I hate - so messy, oh well. After the slide show he had us do a couple of exercises, we had to finish a drawing which at first glance looks like a globlet, but is really two profiles facing each other, then we had to reproduce one of 3 drawings, while looking at them upside down. First image is what we were drawing, but right side up so you can see what it is Next image will be what I managed to do. Hmm no comments















On Wednesday I had two classes, computer graphics - where we will be learning Adobe Photo Shop, Illustrator, and Quark Express (actually it will be Adobe's new program for book design called InDesign) We are supposed to be at least conversant if not experts by the end of the term. We will see. Oh yes the instructor informed us that the room we meet in has dubious heating, there is one heater that works in the room but in order to be heard above the noise it makes he tends to shut it off during class (burr) not sure how well I am going to cope with that, I hate being cold, and it makes it difficult for me to concentrate on anything other than being cold. ICK. My afternoon class is Color and Design, we have a book for that one which I have started reading. Art Fundamentals, Theory and Practice. The first chapter is a dozy, with the introduction of the vocabulary they want to use throughout the book. I have to admit I am having a hard time with some of the concepts they introduce. Form (the how), Subject (the what) and Content (the why) which are supposed to form a Organic Unity, describing these they have a lot of multi-syllable words like Naturalism, Realism, Semi abstract, and abstraction. I suppose the point of this is so that the instructors can critique our work using words that we will understand, but I really and truly doubt that most artists spend a lot of time thinking about some of these things when they create art (sigh) Especially when they talk about how art comes from the artist subconscious which I do feel is true. Ah well, I think the instructor thinks some of this is a load of bunk also - she appears to be very down to earth and practical. For this class we had to draw some fruits and vegetables that we are going to be using in Monday's class. Should be interesting.

On the home front I have been working on a small wall hanging where I am abstracting (grin) christmas cactus flowers from a photo I took last December. I have the background pieced and am working on the top. I should be doing that now instead of this, but wanted to get the blog updated before heading into classes which are bound to be much more demanding then last weeks.