Final Reflection

My time in Advanced Art has allowed me to develop art skills that I had never really nurtured before in my life. Last semester, I couldn't draw more than a stick figure or maybe a rudimentary, disproportional body at best; currently I feel much more confident in my ability to draw, and having the freedom to draw whatever I can think of (to a degree) feels very liberating. Over the course of the semester I experimented with many different mediums and have done a wide array of projects with many subjects. I've used Blender, Adobe Illustrator, and traditional methods like paper, 2B pencils, 0.5mm pens, and brush-tip pens. Overall, the medium I enjoy using the most would definitely be traditional with pencil and 0.5mm; likely because I don't have a Bamboo Pad to draw on my computer with, and I found Blender to be very confusing and perplexing. Traditional is much more enjoyable because I have minute control of my drawing tool, so my errors are minimized.

Of all of the projects I have done, my favorite one would have to have been the Vladimir Lenin bust that I did at the beginning of the year. Even though I have not used Blender at all since then, I found the time that I sunk into the project to be well-worth it for the results I had. The rendering process made the bust look hyper-realistic, and while I have improved vastly in my innate ability to illustrate things from a 2-D medium, the bust has always been a source of pride for me because of how original the idea was, and how surprisingly well I believed I executed it, especially with the knowledge of Blender I had at the start of the project. As far as other techniques and mediums that I have improved on, I am especially happy with how my ability to visualize in three-dimensional space on paper has gotten. Before this class, I quite literally could not draw a cube from a three-point angle, but now I feel good with my ability to draw bodies in certain poses.

I have many outlets and sources for inspiration when it comes to creating art, but I would have to say that by far without a doubt the largest source of influence for creating artwork for me would be from video games, followed only by historical events & battles. When I see all of the tremendous amount of work that went into a game, especially from a small group or from a dedicated group of people, I find it to be tremendously inspiring (Undertale was created by a single person over the course of four years, for example, and is widely accepted as a cult hit in the gaming marketplace). There is a clear difference between when someone makes a game for money, and when someone makes a game to tell a story or express their use of creative liberty; I have a huge amount of respect for people that take such massive risks by revealing the inner machinations of their mind to the outside world. In addition to this, significant historical events are always interesting because they serve as the turning point for individuals, principalities, nations, kingdoms, and even entire continents and the cultures within.

Concept art for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It looks a lot like an impressionist painting from the 1800's, yet it's just a piece of concept art among 10,000s of pieces for just a single game. An impressive amount of work is put into the Witcher IP, especially when it comes to artwork.

There are many things that I have not been able to do in terms of projects, and admittedly it's because of my restrictions in my level of skill. Unfortunately I have never had a structured course for art in my life, and the most advice I had ever been given one-on-one on how to draw a human head was to draw an egg-shape in 2nd grade. I really wanted to be able to enjoy and take advantage of an intense period of time where I could develop my skills, and that is why I opted to sign up for the 'Into to Art' course down at the Des Moines Art Center. I felt that this was a good class because they cover the basics of shading and composition, which I have absolutely no experience in, or very little. If I feel good about taking that course, then I will definitely move onto the class they have down there for anatomy and posing for the human body.

Andrew Loomis, along with many, many different YouTubers, have been my largest source of knowledge and learning for these past few months. Shortly after completing the Vladimir Lenin bust I started studying Loomis' books, as well as the mehodology of various youtubers like Sycra, Jazza, and FZD. The thing that really drew me to the YouTubers that I watch is their ability to create confident linework and speak about IPs and wide aspects of art with a knowledgeable and well-versed base to go off of. Their passion for teaching makes it much easier for me to learn the content because I am more engaged and look forward to the insights they have to provide. Below are some videos from some YouTubers that I watch frequently:

A self-portrait of Andrew Loomis

Sycra on Head Proportions

Jazza on basic body proportions

In addition to those who make art tutorials, I really enjoy the effort put into animation, as well as a lot of the styles of the animators I watch. They find really neat ways to express their thoughts and share stories from their lives. Here are some links to various animators that I'm subscribed to:

Domics

The Odd 1's Out

Piemations

Sr. Pelo

I really enjoyed Advanced Art and I hope to peruse some type of activity in drawing in the future; This year was certainly my largest year for art growth and I don't intend to stop!

Project #5 - Geralt of Rivia

My final project was a culmination of all of the skills and tools I have learned to use throughout my time in this course. I chose to illustrate a character from the Witcher series, Geralt of Rivia. I chose this as my subject because I really enjoy how well-rounded and thought out CD Projekt Red's team of storyboard developers made him. It took a lot of risks and artistic challenges to bring Geralt out from Andrezej Sapkowski's books to turn him into the character that many people see today. I spent a lot of time warming up for just the pose and perspective of the drawing, and I feel like it payed off well. I pulled many references from both the games and external renditions of Geralt, and decided to restrain my stylistic choices in order to properly draw this character. While I originally did plan cel-shading, I eventually leaned towards utilizing line weight and coloring emphasis to draw out pieces of armor and other parts of Geralt's armor. In terms of the type of armor and appearance for Geralt, I eventually settled for his iconic 'Witcher Armor' and tied-back ponytail, albeit with my own artistic liberties. I began this by sketching out form figures for about three pages to warm up, and then I moved onto this pose with the sword (which took about 20 minutes just to find a satisfying frame to begin the musculature/ anatomy). After this, I added dimensions to the skeleton, which is a concept I pulled off of Andrew Loomis. Eventually I was able to draw most of the musculature, and I began to gruadually erase pieces of it and draw armor or clothing over large amounts of it, although I immediately drew out the extremities with armor. I wrapped this up by outlining the drawing in my PITT artist pen.

Most of the research I did aside from references involved a large amount of anatomy research and how the body changes dimensionally at certain angles. I didn't really employ a specific type of perspective, but I suppose you could say that my project is drawn in 2-point perspective. You can notice this especially in the different faulds of the armor, such as the boots and pauldrons, and some parts of the gauntlet. The actual pose itself is a derivation from what the character is usually seen doing - fighting monsters; I settled for this because Geralt is otherwise a very expressionless and lax character. I pulled lightly off of Andrew Loomis' 'heroic proportions', but I adjusted the final drawing once moving on from basic musculature to properly portray the character.

My own goals and the project learning targets, I felt, were met very well by the end of this project. I applied every method that I felt necessary, and especially utilized my gained knowledge on perspective, musculature, body proportions, and posing to fully illustrate and convey a character in the best of my ability. Instead of incremental implementation of these techniques, I was forced to constantly keep in mind how to bring the Geralt together, which especially proved to be a challenge, as Geralt is already a character in a well-known IP, so my ability to draw him correctly had to be on-point in every manner of the term. Layering the arms and legs, especially in the crossed position I decided on, was also very difficult; it took about 2/3 of the project to get all of the line-art finished, and the extremities accounted for 2/3 of that in itself.

I had many challenges throughout the course of this project, but I feel like I have improved a lot in many ways having completed it. As stated earlier, drawing the hands and feet, as well as the rest of the extremities was extremely tedious, and many iterations of the same pose were drawn because of how I felt about how the hand gripped the sword, or the boots touched the ground. My largest problem, by far, was drawing Geralt's face with as little space as I gave myself. I had only about a square inch of space to draw facial features that would fully express that it was Geralt's face, and the eyes were incredibly difficult. I redrew the eyes about 20 times in itself just to find something that worked well to show his character; most of the time the eyes wouldn't even match one other. My personal goal in the future would definitely be able to minimize facial features, yet be able to obviously show who I am trying to illustrate.

Project Proposal #5

My last project will combine all of the skills I have worked on throughout the course of this semester. For this project, I will be illustrating a character from a video game, similar to what I did with Project #2. The difference, however, is that the character is a human, and I will be utilizing perspective even further along with line weights and facial features / shadow emphasis. Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher series is who I will be drawing for my last project. I will have to utilize my knowledge with musculature, poses, anatomy, and texturing in order to properly illustrate the character. The medium I will be using is paper and a 2B pencil, after which I will go over with a PITT artist pen and give it basic coloring as well. My plan is to create a full body pose, as I want to place more emphasis on anatomy and posing in order to portray what kind of character Geralt is. A full body pose will force me to minimize important facial features and keep the body in proportion when drawing the armor over some parts of his musculature.


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Project #4 - Dimensional Analysis in Geometric and Free-form Shapes

This project is a set of exercises I did, with the hopes of understanding dimensional analysis better. These pages were filled using a blue Prismacolor brush-tip pen, and a PITT 0.5mm Artist's Pen. Most of the exercises I did utilized a horizon line and vanishing point. I looked at  many different illustrations from other artists that focused heavily on perspective for their own respective pieces, and used my knowledge from these works to apply to my own project. Stylistically, I did not draw much influence from a single person, but rather tried to make consistent and confident lines whenever possible.

As with last project, most of the pages that I practiced on are not displayed within this post. The amount of iterations I had practiced both drawing boxes in perspective and free-form shapes with volume makes me feel confident to say that I have a thorough understanding of perspective in one-point, two-point, and three-point. Over the course of the project, I noticed that my line confidence and ability to reproduce perspective without use of a vanishing point got much better (late part of the project at the top), and I was also able to move onto free-form and give the illusion of volume to my shapes by utilizing ellipses and curvature. Most of my influence for picking these exercises came from Irshad Karim, derived directly from what he stated he does to practice the essential skill of perspective.

By the end of this project, I felt pretty good about how I decided to invest my time into certain skills and parts. I noticed a massive improvement in how to draw lines in reference to a vanishing point (lines are not necessarily parallel to one other in a proper frame), and I was able to move onto non-geometric shapes with ease. Despite this, I noticed a lack of line confidence, especially earlier on in my project (bottom). It was tough to get proper perspective lines down whilst also creating a consistent line that would make its way to the vanishing point. Many of my lines were jaggy, or did not line up properly in accordance to the VP. Overall I felt very good about my use of line weight to portray the front/ most important side of objects, as well as my ability to produce illustrations in a frame.

Art Project Proposal #4

Because my last project had such a noticeable impact on my technique when drawing the human body, I figured it would be best to have a similar project for layering perspective in 3-D space. I've been doing some research on what methods create the most aesthetically pleasing art, whilst also aiming to improve my understanding of 3-D space. I plan to use paper, a 2B pencil, and black or green marker to show the front face of any cubes / certain contours that i'll be doing. I plan on drawing boxes that work well with a certain vanishing point in a two-point perspective, but I'll also try out three-dimensional exercises by freely drawing shapes without the help of a vanishing point. The reason that I chose this exercise is because it is absolutely integral to any form of art across all mediums; though I've already done a project on perspective, I had never tried developing this skill in a completely isolated project / series of illustrations.

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Project #3 - Major Abdominal Muscles

This project is a diagram of the human abdomen, illustrated in a traditional method with paper and a 2B pencil. The method used to create this illustration was by first looking at a few references, then moving off of them and annotating my learning down to simple structures and shapes. Initially after trying to draw without a reference of the musculature I needed, I found it very hard to get it proportionally correct, so I spent a lot of time refining that before I made this final version. The pictures above are actually the 5th iteration of muscle anatomy that I drew in my sketchbook before being satisfied with how they look stylistically and anatomically.

During the first few days of my project, I spent a lot of time studying the major anterior muscles of the body, as well as looking up various artists' renditions of how to proportion and place the muscles in the human body. Over time, I narrowed down my subject group to only the muscles that directly connect to the abdomen, or are a part of it. I did this for two reasons: Extremities are much more dependent on movement, and are as a result more complicated if flexed or turned on the radius of the bone it is attached to, and drawing too many muscle groups without fully absorbing the method on how to illustrate them would lead to ineffective absorption of any material that I pick up. The two artists that I pulled most of my influence / learning from are Andrew Loomis and Burne Hogarth. I chose these artists because of how little their individual style affected their portrayals of the anatomy of the human body, which made it easier for me to understand the muscles I was trying to learn to illustrate.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the final result of this project. I definitely noticed an improvement in my ability to draw the muscle groups of the abdomen proportionally as I drew more and more. Along with knowing how to draw these muscle groups, I also am now able to name each group and explain their primary function in the body. Even though I felt I did well with proportions, I can see a few things myself even in the pictures above that need improvement: The pectorals are slightly too large, the trapeziums are a bit too wide, and the abdominals are too tall to be proportional with the obliques. For my first time really getting into drawing muscle groups, I would definitely say that I did very well making it appear symmetrical with my careful use of linework.

I am planning to make my next project similar to this in the respect that I will be trying to draw the arms and legs. My goal will be to illustrate them in a way that gets across any flexion or radial movement in order to appear more realistic and fluid, rather than stiff and anatomical.

Art Project Proposal #3

My third project takes an entirely different, more formulaic approach to art. I've made the decision to try drawing out the major muscles in the body, while also labeling them. I plan to use paper and colored pencils to show the groupings and specific muscles that I'll be covering. Though muscles are illustrated with much complexity, I will try to simplify the method I use to illustrate them to further my own understanding while helping myself create realistically proportioned human bodies. The main reason I chose this is because I am very novice with body proportions, and I am unable to accurately illustrate a human body at the moment. By doing this, I will be better at placing muscles in anatomically correct locations, which will help me with both realistic and cartoon-y drawings of the human body and anything similar.

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Project #2 - The Great Papyrus

As stated in the proposal for this project, I decided to create a piece of artwork over a character from a video game. In particular, I chose to do a character from the game Undertale. The reason I chose this game is because I feel like it had a lot of influence on me, and overall had an admirable amount of work put into its engine, story, and especially music. I did a lot of research regarding how to use Adobe Illustrator and how to properly apply techniques such as perspective, layering, and shading. I had a lot of trouble with perspective, so I looked up a few guides and did some life drawings as practice before I drew the basic frame of Papyrus. This ended up helping significantly, as I was able to create the desired perspective of a worms-eye like angle. The general process that I created it was making an initial form sketch, outlining the anatomy of the character, then drawing over it. After that I created all of the splices in order to properly convey where the light source will come from, and then I filled in the splices with the proper color to create the illusion of a shadow. After that, I placed some bones in the layer behind Papyrus, and then a more general background behind that in order to convey where Papyrus is.

Prior to creating this piece, I did a lot of research on how perspective and shading work, as well as some general skeletal anatomy. Of course, since this is a cartoon character, I didn't have to illustrate all 206 bones accurately. Over time I decided to switch from gradient shading to a more direct splice-shading technique to add to the cartoon-y effect of the drawing. In addition, I worked on drawing poses and practicing one-point perspective and researching how to properly draw a subject with proper perspective. I looked at some other drawings of Papyrus to get a good look at his expressions and demeanor, and eventually decided that a more heroic pose would help convey how he feels about himself.

In terms of both the project learning targets and my own goals, I feel like I did a good job hitting them both. I applied all of the techniques that I wanted to express in the drawing sufficiently (line, shading, perspective, proper color, expression, body position), and broke down these techniques into separate sections for myself to complete in order to add a level of organization to the project. My connection to popular culture is directly seen, as my subject is a character from a recently released video game. My personal goal of creating a good perspective and expressionate Papyrus were both met; I'm very proud of how I was able to draw his body and facial expressions in a way that properly represents him.

I personally felt like this is the one project where I have improved the most in sketching and drawing. It had been quite literally a few years since I had tried to draw anything seriously, and I am very happy with how nicely it ended up turning out (especially the lines and use of color). My ability to properly convey a light source through shading is better than it ever was, and after working on this project for so long and watching videos over art theory, I find it much easier to visualize objects in my head. Though I did improve significantly, I would still say that my weaknesses would definitely have to be shading and my ability to create an immersive background, as well as being able to illustrate a specularity/shininess to objects that are being directly hit by sunlight. I can't quite wrap my head around gradient shading, especially on a subject where I have no experience with seeing as a 3D subject.

Art Project Proposal #2

For my second project I would like to draw a character from a popular game using either vector-based drawing or simply a piece of paper with a pen/colored pencils. Though the character looks very simple in this image (This is how the character appears in-game), I plan on illustrating him with much more detail and color, along with non-diffusion shading for that cartoon-y look. The main goal of this project is to reproduce this character in a very different perspective, along with a background that fits the context of the game. If I decide to use Adobe Illustrator for this project, it will be a completely new program that I have almost no prior experience with. The main reason that I thought this would be a good project is because it would give the opportunity to convert a subject from one art style (pixel art) into a different style (cartoon/semi realistic). I plan on improving my work with making straight lines, and especially making artwork with a consistent perspective and proper proportions for the viewing angle.

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Project #1 - Vladimir Lenin Bust

It took me a while to decide who would be a good figure to model in history, but I finally decided on Vladimir Lenin. My major concern was the difficulty that would be presented when modelling the mesh with such a low amount of polygons, but also being able to create an identifiable face. Lenin seemed like a good option because I had just learned about the effects of communism in APUSH, and he seemed like a very influential figure in developing the communist doctrine. Additionally, Lenin has a very distinct complexion that could be easily expressed in the style I chose. The statue and environment can be broken down into three assets: mesh, material, and lighting. For the mesh, I started out with a cube and continuously subdivided it, manipulating the vertexes to form a body, an arm, and eventually a head. In total, I ended up using only 650 verts and about 210 triangles, which is very low. The next step was making an adequate material, which took a very long time. I had to create over 30 nodes and individually manipulate scatter density, occlusion, and reflection, among many other factors that go into creating a realistic material. I settled for a copper material because most communist dictators in Russia had their statues made with copper. This process of mixing to get just the right material took about 5 hours alone. Finally, lighting was put in place to create realistic reflection, ambiance, and shadows. I switched over to 'Cycles Render' and created a 'sun' object, and added ray casting to create a diffusing shadow. In all, it was much more specific than what I have described but this was the most simple explanation.

Prior to creating this piece, I did a lot of research on various historical figures from many time periods, stretching all the way back to the Bronze Age. Eventually I settled for Lenin because of the reasons stated in the preceding paragraph. Additionally, I did a massive amount of research on how to properly utilize the tools in Blender, and how to create a realistic material and atmosphere. I also researched various styles such as Neoclassical sculpting and low-poly designing, both of which were implemented in my bust to create an interesting contrast in art movements. I drew more influence from low-poly and minimalism because I felt like it would fit the medium of a 3D rendering program better, and it would create a greater contrast with the time period that Lenin was in.

I feel like I hit most, if not all of the learning targets stated on the rubric. I took my time to fully familiarize myself with Blender and get an understanding of the tools and nodes of the program. My use of the styles researched was adequate enough on all sides for each style to be seen as an influence in this project. I utilized organizational principles to create a structurally feasible and materialistically feasible bust; my work could most certainly be made in real life with the proper tools. My use of art history when choosing the styles and when selecting a proper figure to model was very comprehensive and thought-out. As far as personal goals, I feel like my skill level in Blender has raised dramatically, especially in modelling and creating materials; before I never had the knowledge in order to create metals or even leather, cloth, etc.

My strengths in this project would be my previous knowledge with using this medium, as well as a thorough understanding of many styles. Of course, my knowledge of Blender could also be considered a weakness, as I did not understand many facets of making a proper mesh. Additionally, I am not very good in general with creating realistic figures, so I took influence from low-poly so that I would be able to exaggerate features of the particular person I might have been modelling (i.e. Large forehead, extending chin in Lenin) whilst also making it look very good and stylistically appropriate.

Art Project Proposal #1

For my first project I would like to create some type of Romanesque neoclassical bust, but in a more retro low-poly format. The medium I will be using for this is a 3D-rendering program called 'Blender'. My plan is to sculpt a renowned figure from history (such as Caligula in this bust), and then lower the poly count to give it the desired style. The main goal of this project is not only to focus on the subject itself, but also the atmosphere and shadows of the surroundings when I decide to render the completed product. I am familiar in general with Blender, but I am new to sculpting and creating light sources / materials; hopefully my prior knowledge of some of the functions of this program will allow me to make a quality bust. Because this is a bust, I will not be adding any type of color, but rather creating the proper material and surrounding to best reflect and outline the time period of the figure (i.e. Bronze bust for Gilgamesh to represent the Bronze Age).



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