Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Coming back from the Art Store

Feels good to blog again.. but I need to stop making typos ;_;

Came back home just in time before the snow storm started lol. Man what good timing. On Monday I spent my day after class buying $150+ worth of art supplies. The professor gave us this massive list of stuff to buy, even after my little shopping spree there was still about a third of the list left to buy =_=. After spending so much money on books it really sucked to watch so much more go into the art supplies. It was pretty cool buying my own portfolio and everything but jeez the stuff can get pretty damn expensive. At least it's a "one time" buy sort of thing.

I'm so glad I finally got a digital camera, I've been taking pics of everything...

I bought the more old fashioned looking portfolio. I think the measurements were like 23 x 33 or something, so it was just the right size for me. Honestly I wish I had gotten the portfolio with the strap-on so I could carry on my shoulder rather than lugging it around all the time. But oh well, its just another way to work on my manly muscles.

Bristol paper pad and a Sketchbook so far. And yeah, 1st project is all about dots lol

It's kinda neat carrying around for the first time. Because people really do look at you and think "oh hey this guy must be a real artist" and whatnot haha. But I'm pretty sure I'll grow to hate carrying the thing as time goes on since it'll probably get pretty heavy as the semester drags on. We apparently have 12-14 fat ass projects to do this semester. Which is pretty nuts considering that is what you would typically do during a regular high school year in an art class. So basically imagine all that work and probably a lot more being squeezed into like what? 4 months or something X.X.

So I bought the big important "one time" purchases on Monday, unfortunately I didn't really want to carry an Art Bin along with the portfolio with my school bag hanging from my shoulder all at once so I neglected to buy it until today.

I feel more like a construction worker carrying it around

So today I went to buy all the other dispensable sort of stuff. I bought my brushes, sumi ink, pencils, pens, painter's tape, ruler, knife, triangle.... I bought a lot of stuff. The list was pretty long but when I put it altogether into my box it felt juuuuuust right lol.

I felt like such a baller when I threw it all together

One thing that is going to haunt me forever is the price of paint. Paint is soooo expensive. I bought a decent tube of it for like I think $13.99 or maybe $15.99. I'm not sure how long the tube will last me for, but it doesn't look like it'll be too long seeing how big our projects need to be. I could only afford to buy 2 tubes, Mars Black and Titanium White. If I went and followed my professor's orders, I'd be buying those $30 jars =_=. Plus this is just black and white, there's still other colors to buy >.<. 

Well aside from all that stuff, I was also required to have a digital camera. Never in my life have I ever had a camera, and shit it's pretty damn fun taking pictures. I think taking pictures from an art perspective is by far one of the most exciting things I've done in a while when it came to art. I'm quite positive now that taking photos of scenery you want to illustrate is a really really good way of practicing. Some of the pictures I've seen of like a full blown out scene really made me question whether or not an artist drew everything off the top of their head. In the case of George Seurat, that guy and other like-minded guys spent a lot of their time visiting different places and sketching them out so that they would have ideas to put out on canvas when it was time. So it's certainly a good thing to take photos and use em as reference. One of these days I'm going to take a pic of my desk and computer and draw my own little "anime girl in your room" sort of thing LOL. There's sooo many pieces that people have made with that, it's not only awesome for the artist (lawl) but it's also a ton of fun to look at. To be honest I'll probably have to set my anime illustrating passions aside and focus on doing the usual realism sort of work. It'd be a little embarrassing to bring in projects loaded with people with big eyes and ridiculous long hair lol. 

Here's an example

I really really loved how this room was illustrated. It's exactly what I want to try to draw at some point. Although it could've been done straight off from the top of the artist's head, I highly doubt it, unless their that amazing- that's always a possibility. There's just soooo much attention to detail. One of the problems of trying to imagine what a room would really look like is the fact that the things that naturally accumulate and clutter up in a room are extremely difficult to process into your head. I'm also suspicious of this artist simply just uploading the photograph and simply recoloring it over while keeping all the perfect lines. Whenever I've done a "room" type of drawing, it always comes out really uncivilized. Human homes aren't natural because of all the perfectly straight lines there are that exist. In this pic, the artist did such a good job of making every detail look perfect that it makes you say "wow, it feels like a real room."

Another Example

Yeah yeah more Hatsune Miku lol... This is one of the pics out there that I believe to have been made from scratch. There's nothing in particular in the pic that stands out as something you would recognize right away in reality. Sure there's a rubik's cube and a goddamn old school Mac but those are two objects you'd rarely see in a common household. If anything I'm quite sure that whoever did this, probably took the foundations of some room and added to it. Because seriously who the hell would still have an old Mac like that lol. In the future I'm pretty sure that this is probably what I'm going to come up with when I give it an attempt, and hopefully I'll make that attempt in the summer during my Computer Applications class, where I'll finally learn how to use Illustrator, Photoshop, and w/e else there is.

But for now... just gotta keep drilling those basics. I should probably pick up other foundation courses too..

A New Start

Yeah.. I've definitely almost lost myself these past few months. It's like stuff you would see in a psychological satire, but in reality, it's very real. It does happen. People go a little nuts at some point in their lives, I think we all do. But when we recover from it, we grow to become better people.

So how about an update?

Dear Me,

So the past 6 months, I've been sitting in the shit hole, and just this month I was hoisted from the pit of shit and brought back into the warm light of life.

Haha, well thats a short TL:DR summary of the events that have happened to me the past few months. I mean I took off a semester, involuntarily, which a huge difference from taking off a month voluntarily. So it was pretty painful, I had trouble keeping myself composed and whatnot. On some days (like the last 2 entries) I would just have random thoughts or rants (outbursts tbh), it was really silly, and IMO also pretty damn immature of me =(. It was really tough, I don't like to bitch, but for real- it was tough. If anything it has been one of the biggest life changing things I've had in my life so far. I never ever wanted to go back to school so badly.

Annnnd, swinging back to the present- I'm back! Back in school, finally. Like this past week, although I have to wake-up at 5:30 AM every week to commute, I've never felt so relieved and so goddamn happy. It's such an amazing feeling, to be happy. Like holy shit lol, I just don't how to describe it. If anything, my overall wellbeing has improved dramatically, just because I finally dragged myself out of my mixed solemn state of depression and insanity. Everything around me just seems so clear and wonderful. It's like, all the bullshit in the world doesn't affect you anymore, because you've got your mind focused on more important things. 

So I dropped my Global Business/Finance double major. I didn't like it. I didn't want to spend my college life digging around through stacks of numbers and vague economic concepts. I switched over to ISOM, which is Information Systems Operations Management. Which is basically the business side of using computers to deal with company data and what not. My specialty =). Plus it also has a wide range of possible careers which includes dealing with running websites, managing corporate data, computer technical work, database management, the list goes on. But they are all careers in which I would verrrrry comfortable working in. 

And as for minor.... ART!!! FRIGGIN ART!!!!!!DIAS()D*()YNDAJ YEESSSSSSS!

Best decision I have made in my life so fucking far. I mean seriously, I'll put it down right here, January 2011, best decision in my life thus far. I love it so much. I can't believe I didn't minor in art as a freshman. Seriously. Here's the deal. If you don't follow your passions at all in any way shape or form, you are making a huge mistake in your life. Huge. I've been very skeptical about it, but now I've confirmed it. Always follow your passion, even if it's a far out sort of dream, you can always still follow it in some way- no matter how unrealistic it may seem. There's always a way.

I'm going to turn this blog into mainly an art blog. I've put up things in the past and made some good progress by sticking things and critiquing them heavily with my own efforts. In truth, well with the new knowledge I have, I discovered that my way of trying to learn things was actually really flawed. I was taught as a child that using references to draw things was bad. In truth its what you're actually supposed to do in order to improve yourself at a quicker pace. As for the design aspect of art, or in other words- the creative side, that too can be taught. But of course rarely anyone has any clue as to how to exercise their brain properly in the creativity field, so I was doing very little by myself trying  to desperately come up with the most oddest looking designs.

Ever since I've taken my art course, I improved quite a good bit. Maybe not so much on the technical side, but a lo ton the fundamentals side. I was lacking the most in my fundamentals. I just had no direction in whatever I did, as a result progress was slow and often discouraging. 

Right now it's still pencil and ink, but it's like on a whole other level compared to my old work. The design exercises so far have been super useful. It's awesome when you can go to school, and then go home right after and use what you've learned right away. 

This is what I was drawing tonight as I wrote this blog. Originally it was a doodle, because I needed to practice drawing "Dots" (lol) for the first project. I'm thinking about finishing it up, and putting it on my big bristol paper and ink it with sumi ink. I really liked how the design classes can give you ideas.

Some more drawings I did to practice. These are really recent, using the new things I learned to my advantage. Learning to draw figures practically requires you to use something as a model. It's just not possible to Learn it by imaging it in your head. Well actually you can do it all in your head, but you'd probably come out with some abstract looking figures. I like mine with well defined proportions that I can agree with lol.

More practice sketching. Gotta push those boundaries and flesh out poses that I'm not comfortable with drawing, it's the only way to improve. And if I can't do it using my own head, then I'll just find something to refer to. In France they often had nude models pose for young aspiring artists to draw them. So there really was a place for using things as models. 

Basically this entire time, I've been approaching art the completely wrong way. Right now I probably still need some guidance, but if I keep taking these classes and practicing, I'm bound to become a pretty legit artist. So far I like how much better I've gotten. If I compare my current little mini personal project which is the first picture on the blog, to things in my old forgotten gallery there's a noticable difference. I really have a good feeling about this year. I really do.