Friday Figure

I caught myself a little early this morning. I have the worst way of elongating the torso so that it just doesn't fit, but I think this one turned out better. Not perfect, but better than normal.

The World Has Ended

Well, maybe not. But it could have, because I'm posting a few drawings. These are from this morning's figure drawing session at work. Last weekend, I was going through all of my pads of drawings from college and before, and I as amazed that I have almost completely forgotten most of the good things I learned...the gesture, the construction, line quality. All of those things have slowly ended up in the garbage bin within my head. So I'm trying to get them back. I kind of like the way this drawing turned out. A little heavy on the lines and outlining, but overall, I think it came out pretty good.

Animation:Master Animation DVD Downloads are now available!

I finally got to posting my animation tutorials on my Lulu storefront. All of the character performance videos are now available:

1. Character Performance Introduction - 31 min.
   
2. Keyframing - 52 min.
   
3. Inbetweening - 1 hr. 13 min.
   
4. Finessing the Curves - 58 min.
5. Facial Animation - 50 min.
   
6. Final Rendering - 10 min.
   

They are all 1280x1024 Quicktime h.264 .mov's.

Since my posting privileges have been removed from Hash.com's forum (long story...maybe I'll tell it sometime. Let's just say that I'm an Avalanche guy and Martin Hash doesn't like that), I'm announcing it here. There have been a lot of people emailing me about these, and there will be more coming soon.

10,000 hits!

Well, it's a pretty pitiful accomplishment seeing that most of my Avalanche cohorts have triple or 10x that. But I never thought that many people would see my stuff. I hope it's actually interesting to them, and not one of those...

*Avalanche Blog*...
"Ryan Wood! Sweet!....Adam Ford- Sweet!!! who's this Barry Zundel guy?...(clicks link)...oh...(clicks "back")

Anyways, thanks for the patronage. I've really been struggling to find time to add to my blog lately, so I will try to do better in the future.

Well, not quite a painting, but...

Most of my time for the past 2 months has been consumed by finishing my basement, so I haven't had a lot of time to do any painting. So for my last post, I guess I'll have to postpone that for a while. Anyways, here is a figure drawing fron last week's session. I'm ok with it, but I felt that I needed to find the shapes faster and not noodle so much in the details. The quest never ends. Hopefully I'll be painting soon. We'll see if that actually happens.

Blah.

There is a severe lack of color on this blog. Time to do a painting. Now only if I could remember how.

A Meeting Drawing...

Meetings seem to be the place I come up with the very few ideas that are in my brain. Believe me, there aren't that many of them. All of my Avalanche colleagues have taken them already! In the midst of 2 really bad drawings, a little gem emerged. It's not finished, but it has it's moments. I love it when a quick sketch comes out better than a planned, lengthy drawing session. I may have to take this one further.

I'm back...kind of.

It's been a while since I did a figure drawing that I felt somewhat good about. This morning was a really good one in my opinion. Not because the drawing was great, but because I felt like my drawing ability to see was slowly returning. I think medium has a lot to do with it. I began with vine charcoal to block in forms and get my proportions right. It's SO forgiving you can move stuff all over while trying to get it right. Once I had that in, I went for the charcoal pencils and compressed charcoal to get the darks and details. I made the mistake of thinking my drawing was good, and then leaning over and looking at Adam Ford's. Not a good idea. But I think this one turned out well. The face leaves a lot to be desired, but that's what I get for leaving it to the last 15 minutes.

Figure Drawing Dump

Here are a few figure drawings from the past month or so. I've been using vine charcoal, compressed charcoal, and black NuPastel lately, and I like the result. My favorite is still the black NuPastel. All 18x24 on paper.

New Figures

We had a genuine Belly Dancer come in for the session last week. Pretty cool, but the sequins really threw off seeing shapes. I think these turned out alright, though. I'm noticing that I'm starting to get impatient with my drawings. It's really hard for me to concentrate on a hand, the shadows, the hair, or a face, etc. Maybe it's time to switch things up...a new medium, perhaps. Or maybe we need to turn a few lights on in the session room so you can actually see what you are drawing. Yeah, I think that would help. Anyways, just when I think things are coming along, this morning happens. We had a soccer player as a model this morning, complete with ball, shin guards, headband - the whole shebang. Not really in the mood for drawing baggy shorts and shirts, I went for a portrait. Bad idea. It started out okay and got progressively worse. After about 45 minutes, I had to stop, and this is what came of it. It's decent, but I had to stop before I completely ruined it. Looks like someone smeared Silly Putty all over his eyes. Once again, I was getting impatient, and it shows.

More Figure Drawings from Fridays

These are some other figure drawings that have been piling up in my office. Finally got around to it. All are 18x24 Charcoal or NuPastel except the Sepia one. It's 8x10 in conte and white charcoal.

Figure Drawing Dump

These are a few drawings from the past few weeks. All are 18x24 in either charcoal or NuPastel. I personally am a big fan of the 2nd gesture. It seems that if your gestures are good, your drawing is going to stink. The reverse is the same.

Another ZBrush WIP

Here's a new image...finally. I have a ton of figure drawings that I would like to put up, but I haven't had my camera at work to take images of them, so I guess this will do until tomorrow or Friday. I'm really enjoying ZBrush now. I've just barely scratched the surface, but it's really fun. One of the most unintuitive interfaces ever, and I am still getting the hang of it. But I LOVE the layer system in it, and I have fallen in love with the sculpting brushes! Well, There will be more to come.

Figure Drawing Heresy

Well, for the past 10 years, I have been brainwashed into believing that the cardinal sin in figure drawing is to use BLACK NuPastel. Heresy! The only worthy figure drawing medium was Cordovan(sp?) or Bottle Green. All other mediums are worthless. So for the past 10 years, I have mainly used those two. In art stores, I wouldn't even consider looking in the general direction of black NuPastel. It was the enemy, and there was absolutely no way that I would be coerced into using that faulty, lesser medium.

Well, this morning at figure drawing, I grabbed an old box of assorted NuPastel, and lo and behlod, there was BLACK in it!! But for some reason, I thought I might give it a chance. I would rebel against my artistic training and give the black NuPastel a go. I was a bit apprehensive. After all, I would be the laughing stock of the art world, at least in the circles I am in...wouldn't I? But I pressed on. I began with a few gestures. After a few strokes, I reeled in shock. I couldn't have just felt that! There's no possible way! The drawing looked....alright. I drew more. Woah! I had just discovered something amazing. I wanted to continue. It was not conte. It was not charcoal (shudder). It was just what I was looking for. It was glorious.

Well, it may not have made my drawing better, but it sure felt goo to use it. I found that letting go of the training I had received was the best thing for me. I've found my new favorite figure drawing medium. It's NuPastel, and it's BLACK. Take that, Barrett and Barksdale and Smith!!

Friday Figure Drawing

Well, it's been 4 weeks since I last did figure drawing, so getting back into it was hard, but I felt pretty good about this one. I started to fiddle with it too much, so I had to stop before I completely ruined it. NuPastel on Paper - 18x24.

This is my first test at using a sphere and ZBrush 3. Man, the interface is a piece of work. Mudbox is amazingly better, but there are some great tools in ZBrush, and I know this is a tiny thing, but I LOVE the wax shader that is the default. Sooooooo much more to work on. This is about an hour of tinkering not knowing what I'm doing...

Cool new Slideshow tool....

You can do this when you have a Picasa Web Album Account! These are all old drawings, but it's a cool little tool!

My Final Dragon

Well, I got it "done" before the weekend. It was a little more frustrating than I originally thought it would be. Probably poor planning before beginning to paint. Hopefully I'll get it next time.

My new Avalanche challenge entry..

I began this, realizing that it takes me so long to paint something to my liking, that I better post something before the subject passes me by. Here's the original drawing and the first step for the painting:

A new place to vent...

I just started a new blog so my wife doesn't have to listen to my political rantings. Now only those who want to take the time to read them will. But I also hope that it can bring some logical arguments into this internet world of political discussion.

One Messed Up, Beautiful World

Avalanche Challenge Entry

This working-class superhero saves the lives of countless soccer moms one child-calming kids meal at a time.

Friday Figure Drawings - April 27, 2007

Well, it's been a while since I posted any figure drawings. A lot of them have really stunk, so I haven't posted them. These were the better of the bunch, if there are any that are "better", so here they are:

2o minutes, NuPastel 18"x24"

1.5 Hours, Charcoal 18"x24"

1.5 Hours, Charcoal 18"x24"

Goddess of Sky and Wind

This was my late entry into the Avalanche Blog. I actually got really close to finishing it, but then my wife went into labor, and I haven't slept in two weeks. But here it is, in all it's cliche glory. It was a test of painting with Pastels in Painter. I think I like it almost just as much as Ryan Wood's "Washabrusha". I'll have to keep playing with it before I can know for sure.

Friday Figure Drawings - 3/23/2007

5 minute Nupastel on Paper

2 Hr Nupastel on Paper

I'm somewhat satisfied with this drawing, but I found that the hand on the leg was too small, and I didn't have enough time in the pose to redo it, so it had to stick. Other than that, I think it went pretty well. I had to stop at the 2 hour mark before I started noodling it to death.