Art Class: Self Portraits due next Monday

TheStranger · **Posted:** Sun Feb 17, 2013 9:50 pm

Well, for a 24 hour piece its pretty good, but as far as critique goes, the proportions seem a bit wonky, especially on the stretched out leg, and some of the books look WAY too big.

Stranaton · **Posted:** Sun Feb 17, 2013 10:29 pm

cool stuff! I'm not really any good at anatomy so I can't offer anything specific.

Dire · **Posted:** Mon Feb 18, 2013 4:20 am

The Willow Witch wrote:

So over this weekend I did a 24 hour painting event, which basically you spend 24 hours straight dedicating yourself to make a complete painting, using the art process + references + whatever you need to finish the piece.

The theme for the paintings was Independence, and my word was Imagination.

It was basically like this big artistic sleepover at my friends church hall because we couldn't hold it in the school this year, and we braught a whole lot of food and I honestly got only one hour of sleep out of 24.

Here is the process of my piece.

Here is the finished piece.

seriously it took 15 hours to paint all those books.

So what does everyone think? What I did good or what I could have done better? For a long time I have the proportions off

I like the over all composition, it's a tall piece that's broken up by a lot of horizontal lines (the shelves) and then some vertical lines again (the books)
Some of your colour groupings are very pleasing to the eye, specifically the bottom shelf, I think I would have liked to see more of that through out the rest of the painting, Not that the mixed colours are bad (it's meant to be a colourful piece after all) But I think it could make this even more appealing.

Issues I'm noting are mainly with surface planes and perspectives. I don't know if you were going for wonky, but the books and shelves are sort of all over the place in terms of perspective, some books seem to be viewed from a bit higher than others on the same shelf.

The floor plane also seems inconsistent, like the shadow past her right leg on the floor makes the floor there look like a table or mound she is setting next to as opposed to the same floor plane she's sitting on. The books in the foreground also don't quite match the plane they are sitting on.

As far as anatomy goes I think her lower back dips in a bit too far compared to her upper back making her look like she has a hunched back as opposed to simply being hunched over to read. If she's actually meant to be sitting up straight then her upper back is showing too much.

Due the way the skirt(also the bottom of the shirt) isn't really folding or creased it looks like her left leg is attached funny, like it's higher up on her torso and off to the side like a lizard leg.

I think her cleavage is a bit far left, it makes her left boob look tiny and her right boob looks like it's pushed over that may.

The over all proportions of the body are correct though. Just more a matter of posture and clothing folds that are making her look weird.

I dunno if it was a requirement of the session or what but I'm not a fan of the text. I think you've gotten the idea across already with all the little bits and pieces floating around the books (the fairies and stuff). So I don't think the text is necessary.

The Willow Witch · **Posted:** Mon Feb 18, 2013 2:30 pm

The text was mandatory for all pieces during this event.

Thanks so much for the crit, its hard to keep things consistent and in perspective when you've spent sleepless hours looking at the same thing and it just doesn't click in that something is wrong.

Can I get a red line, to see how I should have positioned the body? I also used this reference for her shape, and then went around the room looking at other peoples body's and creeping them out.

Dire · **Posted:** Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:17 pm

The Willow Witch wrote:

Can I get a red line, to see how I should have positioned the body? I also used this reference for her shape, and then went around the room looking at other peoples body's and creeping them out.

Your proportions were pretty much spot on to the reference, only differences being how far the back dips in and how far the head tilts forward. Those things I adjusted in my red line but I also changed the legs as an example of thinking about the floor plane. Your floor plane is obviously higher than what I've done, But I changed it drastically to make it easier for you to see what I meant. (The legs you've done are fine as they are it's just a matter of making the floor plane around them look consistent.)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v75/musaera/forum%20posts/red-line-imagination_zps1276ca25.png

The blue lines are the floor, the parallel lines help be get a feel for the surface and kinda guide the perspective there.
Also the green is to show how I'd expect the skirt to bunch up when one leg is raised. ...I chose a really bad angle for the floor plane now I'm looking at it.
Up-skirts don't equal imagination...

The Willow Witch · **Posted:** Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:19 pm

Wow the way you did it with different perspective looks way better. I should work on changing my perspective once in a while to make things more interesting to look at.

DoNotDelete · **Posted:** Wed Feb 20, 2013 4:21 am

Nice shoe tutorial thing, Verom.

Dire wrote:

Oh just curious here, but the 12 week plan was gonna have a lot of figure drawing/portraits. By a lot I mean just over half. Is this a problem or is it okay to start off with mostly human representation?

I'd recommend starting off with less complex themes than the human body and/or face, but I generally don't see a problem with that - I myself probably won't take part in every 'lesson' because of outside considerations/factors.

I was wondering how you might go about doing these drawing lessons in general - because I personally find it difficult to draw or just generally get online every day - I have concerns about my ability to participate in any lessons because of that; Also I have other projects to be working on that I might rather spend my time on. So I guess I'm saying I'll probably end up picking-and-choosing any lessons I might take part in.

Will you be insisting that certain lessons be executed in a given style or will the 'lessons' be focussing more on accurate proportions and such - allowing people a degree of creative freedom outside of such mechanics?

If time/work/my interest permits it I might try to offer some lessons of my own pertaining to more graphical-based art theories such as logo or background design - but I'm not sure how much forum interest there would be in such tutorials/lessons.

I mean - because I work in Adobe Illustrator I can potentially talk people through things like making tessellating patterns and textures - but tutorials like that probably won't help people who don't use/have no intention of using Adobe Illustrator.

Dire · **Posted:** Wed Feb 20, 2013 5:04 am

Well, while I think people would get the most benefit from doing as many sessions as they can, It's totally alright if they can't find time.

Each session is a week long. I'll give a topic, along with some references and/or tutorials and at the end of the week we'll all post and discuss what we did.

No style restrictions, just the rule that style wont excuse bad proportions etc.
These will be sketch sessions, I want to help people improve their drafting skills. We'll mostly be working on accurate representations, however the goal is to get people thinking about what they are trying to draw and I guess develop their awareness of what they're actually seeing.

Actually, I'll post the 12 week plan I've currently got and explain what I'm going for.

Quote:

Week 1.
Portrait of Ian McKellan.
This is a warm up session. Do your best to be accurate to the reference image/s supplied. It'll also be a good gage of where you're at in terms of drafting skill.
Week 2.
Hand studies. I find a lot of people struggle with hands (or feet) So getting people to actually sit down and study what they have difficulty with is a good way of breaking people out of fluffing parts of the figure they have trouble with.
Week 3.
Nude/scantily clad figure studies. Some people only draw heads, or waist up or sometimes just eyes (every high school has one student who paints eyes floating over a fantasy landscape) Lets look at the bodies as a whole.
Week 4.
Animal studies. Sometimes people might draw humans great but everything else they draw sucks. This session is to challenge people to draw something that isn't their RP OC.
Week 5.
Free project. It's best to try and challenge yourself but this is a bit of a breather exercise. Given the nature of the 12 week course I would prefer people go out and draw something from life or reference. Work on your drafting skills.
Week 6.
Self portrait. From a photo or in front of a mirror, take what you've learned from the past few weeks and put it to use. (If you aren't comfortable showing people what you look like you can PM the drawing to me for critique).
Week 7.
Pose maniacs gesture studies. Lets practice our quick draw skills and get a feel for posture and gestures.
Week 8.
Vehicle studies. We've covered a lot of humans and a session of animals. Time to mix it up by drawing machinery.
Week 9.
More figure studies. (Actually I'm thinking of switching this session out for something else. Maybe something that gets everyone thinking about perspectives.)
Week 10.
Nature studies. Plants, landscapes. Lets take a look at the world around us.
Week 11.
Free project time again.
Week 12.
Ian Mckellan again. This is important to see how far we've come after 12 weeks of sketch sessions. I hope that people who struggled initially will have gotten something out of this by the end of the 12 weeks.

I'd be pretty interested in back ground design and also pattern creation myself. I have a copy of Illustrator that unfortunately doesn't get much use these days.

DoNotDelete · **Posted:** Wed Feb 20, 2013 5:37 am

It sounds like a good and well spread plan - I'll try to participate when I can, but I have to say I'm personally more interested in the animal, nature and vehicle studies than the human ones. I have to be honest and say I find the notion of doing a face study of Ian McKellen straight off the bat to be fairly daunting - but I suppose they are just sketch sessions - I'll need to bear that in mind.

I personally might find some of these lessons more palatable if you were to suggest a time limit to spend on each piece - that would help somebody like me who finds it easy to get too caught up on the details of a piece - but of course that's your call to make because you might also not want to put people off by saying they need to finish something in a given amount of time.

Anyway... I'll follow this thread and see how your lesson plan goes before I decide whether to offer any lessons/tutorials of my own; My own lessons might err more on abstract/graphical themes considering things like restricted colour palettes (for example) so will probably feel very different to your own lessons.

Dire · **Posted:** Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:37 am

Hah! I knew you'd favour those particular lessons. Which is why the focus is breaking people out of drawing habits. Like, you could probably nail those things quite easily, while others can't but then maybe there are other people who will find the figure studies easy but not so much vehicles.

I think time limits will depend on the lesson. Portraits I'll probably expect about half an hour on. But say the quick sketch lesson I'd prefer people do maybe half a dozen to a dozen sketches at no longer than maybe 2 minutes.

That's cool. Yeh, feel free to put a lesson forward if you have something you'd like to share.

That's another thing you reminded me about, those colour palette challenges. They'll be fun to do.

[Insert Fail] · **Posted:** Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:32 pm

I am all over this. When would you want to start the lesson plan?

The Nightman · **Posted:** Wed Feb 20, 2013 10:38 pm

I'd like to try this too, but my drawing skills are that of a 1st grader. Oh well, I guess this a chance to help improve.

Dire · **Posted:** Thu Feb 21, 2013 4:12 am

I got some refs ready for the first lesson, so that can begin any time I guess. Probably this Monday? I haven't had time to sit down and collect the resources for the other lesson yet. But I guess it's better to just get into things.

@Benson: Give it a go!

Tatzel · **Posted:** Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:10 am

Somehow I have a feeling that it'd be better to swap drawing a self-portrait and a portrait of Ian McKellan, because people don't really know how you look like, but they'd want to recognize which celebrity you've drawn (no matter the style or exaggaration). But I guess that's not a point to consider, as it's not a competition to show who's best and just an exercise. Besides, it would make week 12 somewhat invalid too.

What would you even suggest people to do who don't want to do self-portraits, because they hate and can't stand looking at themselves for even a second? It could just be another celebrity, as I can imagine that it's easier drawing other people and 'get them right' (as in, people can easily recognize them in your drawing), than drawing yourself, because there's always going to be some influence on how you'd like to look or how you don't want to look etc. (plus the problem of hating to look at one-self).

Dire · **Posted:** Thu Feb 21, 2013 9:39 am

That's actually part of why I've chosen a self portrait as a subject. For a lot of people, they draw characters and other people to escape themselves. Having to scrutinise one's self is a big challenge.

They also gotta resist the urge to 'beautify' themselves.

People can always pm a photo along with their self portrait if they don't want their pictures posted. I can't expect people to like themselves more just because I want them to do a self portrait but I have chosen the subject matter very deliberately.
I suppose I'd settle for a portrait of a friend or family member (Someone you have a connection with.)

Somewhat related story: (tl;dr)
Back in uni I did a session where the students all got paired with someone their height and we all stood facing off drawing eachother's portraits. The main rule being we were not to look too much at the paper except to re align our charcoal.

By the end of the session almost all pairs had matching portraits. That is people who had a good relationship with one another drew softer portraits, and treated their subjects with a gentle touch. The girl I was paired with didn't like me very much, and the feeling was mutual. Our portraits of one another were very fierce looking.

What I'm trying to get at here is the importance of being sensitive to the subject. It's all well and good to draw things we find pretty or nice but it's important to be able to draw you honestly see and feel.

AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Art Class: Self Portraits due next Monday

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