Another Lonely Valentine's Day

For a man it could be either the best or the worst time of year.

Usually when I feel like blogging I have something really thoughtful to jot down. Something I would like to read when I take a look back on the blog. I had something real nice planned to write about but... I woke up this morning and realized it was Valentine's Day... Even worse I came to another realization that I woke up single on Valentine's Day! ;_;

To be honest I can't really complain about it, I spent the entire year working on getting my life on track and whatnot, and didn't even have a single serious thought about pursuing a love life of any sort. But hell, all of the neglect seriously comes back to bite you in the ass on this day. At least I'm not the only one haha. My pal Steve and I are going to go out in about an hour or so for lunch so we can cry about our ailing love lives haha. I'll probably have a glass of scotch later tonight or rum, it'll be a substitute for the warmth of a significant other at my side lol.... @_@

Okay Okay- thats my moping for today. This is still an art blog so of course I have art to show. Lately I've been super duper busy with papers and a few tests to work on in the past week. I quite literally couldn't find enough time to sit down and have a nice session of painting and drawing. Even on the weekend I had other painting assignments that I had to do for my art class tonight. In the end I've only gotten some sketch work done on a little anatomy self-study I did, a good lot of inking, and one watercolor piece in progress.

These are the sketches I was doing as a new approach to working on female figures. It turned out to help A LOT. Basically what I did was search up some new ways to draw female bodies, and came up with some really interesting references that actually went as far as drawing out the basic bone structures of the female body. I honestly felt like I was back in my physiology class laying out the bones of the human body haha. But thats when I made a huge discovery (well for myself of course)- female bodies are VASTLY different from males. I finally realized why all my female characters always had a hint of masculinity in their full body poses. Girls simply just have a lot more curves than you would normally think. Who knows, maybe if I watched more porn or something I wouldn't have this problem =_=; . 

So basically the hip area is really drawn out and exaggerated on a female body than a male. If I had to describe it, it has to have a nice "plump" feel to it for it to be considered a proper feminine body part. I never ever considered that a female hip could stick out so much because, hey, I've only got my own body to pull references from lol. In comparison male bodies are much more tubular, the only area they really pronounce themselves in is of course the chest area. There's also small differences in a male and a female, like the love handles. Male love handles always stick out, while female love handles are thankfully tucked in. Which is what makes a girl look sexy in a bikini or tight shorts with a semi short t-shirt. So the next time I have an issue with female proportions... I'll just look up human anatomy hehe.

I did a good bit of inking, and looking back on my blog I used to have inking problems. Well now it's no longer any problem at all =). If anything I've graduated to using color, my next obstacle. Inking is really simple and natural now so I didn't bother scanning over any other inked sketches. Instead I just have this incomplete water color piece. Water color is pretty difficult to control when you want to have certain values in the pic. Well in truth its probably because of my huge lack of experience in the coloring field, but hopefully I'll be able to hop over that curve once I get to use a computer instead. I wasn't able to finish this one because I was unsure of how to color in her skin. I'm really really scared of trying to mix water color paint, or trying to adjust its tone. Because if I screw up it'll be pretty damn scary trying to make it again. Well... I'll figure it out somehow.

Here's the latest thing I've done aside from my art class work. Using the stuff I learned I made a pretty a nice figure. Her arm is off a bit but my main focus here was to get all the right curves in her body. I honestly felt like I was drawing an alien because I'm just so used to drawing the simple shapes of a male body haha. But yeah, I'm starting to get a stronger and stronger grip on drawing female bodies so just a bit more practice and I'll have it down pat. I kind of want to complete this one though. I made little sketches and marks around her to figure out how to finish the pic but I'm not quite sure what to do. It's the 2nd last page in my sketch book too so I really don't want to waste it.

I'm really thankful to you guys who read this blog, I'm honestly surprised that people take interest in it. So I'll let you guys decide what to put in the background, and I'll do my best to pool the ideas together.

That's it for today, I'll be back in a few days or less with the things I really wanted to blog about.

Deciding what you want to do.

A few days ago sano asked a really good question in his comment. He basically asked what was it like in the art department of studies.

Because I used to be just a business student and nothing else, it was one hell of an experience to get into some art courses. It's completely different. The work ethic is like day and night compared to the business courses. By that I mean you could have a management class with one or two bozos lazing around and not caring about how each class they doze off in costs them $300+ or w/e it is. You will almost never see that in an art class. Never. For a good reason too.

Recently I've had a lot of mental conflict about how I've been going about with the things I love in life. I'm a really really laid back guy. It's one of my good points haha. It's one of the reasons why I get along with a lot of  people even if they are not on good terms with friends on the other end of the relationship tree. But that's also my problem, being too laid back.

I finished my dot project on the final piece of 19 x 24 bristol paper. It was horrible. Absolutely horrible. I went along with doing it with my usual swagger- "spend only a couple of hours on it, and not give much of a damn of how it comes out, it's all good as long as it is done." That sort of mediocre effort in an art course WILL show. And it will show it's ugly face in the most embarrassing way possible in an art course. Because when the projects are done, we hang them up for everyone to see. Needless to say, with a half-assed paint job and the obvious evidence that I had spent less than half an hour designing and laying out the composition- it was a complete disappoint. I even saw the professor sigh when he looked at it. I was the only one in the class who had done poorly, and everyone knew it.

So yeah it's a tough environment. But thats a good thing. If you truly love what you do, and you want to improve- you have to have people who will push you to become better. After the critique session, I knew that it was my calling. This is it, this is the time for me to really step up and really forge a career out of the things I love.

Money is just money, and money isn't everything. I used to believe that money was everything last year before I went on my "break". But in truth money really isn't what makes you successful. It's that fulfilling feeling you get when you accomplish something in a field you truly feel passionate for. In regards to Sano's comment & question, he mentioned about having trouble deciding between doctor or art. To be honest man, the right choice is always the one you feel more passionate for. If you really love helping people then aim for those medical schools, if you love art, go for an art school.

Here's real advice from a guy who already went through the "What do I want to do with my life phase". The biggest mistake I've ever made in my life was deciding on what school and major to take based upon how it would pay off and how difficult it would be to obtain that job, rather than choosing based on what I really love to do. It sounds cheesy, and some would call it risky- but following your dreams is actually the best decision you can make for your life. And you don't have to be too far from reality to achieve your dream. Some people say "I want to be a star", sounds silly right? But in truth you can come close to your dream by being realistic, while having an opportunity to still achieve it.

And you cannot be afraid. I was afraid, and I ended up wasting a year because of it. Even if things don't work out, you're still in a win-win situation, because then you'll come a step closer to figuring out what you're going to do for a career. I wasted a year trying to be a finance/accounting major, but it was also a worthwhile year because I found out that I really hated that form of business. Now I am completely content with my switch to Information systems (because I'm better than the average person with computers, and I love it) Major and Graphic Design Minor.

It's a struggle to achieve my goal of one day working as an graphic designer/illustrator, but I love everything about it.

Since yesterday after my failure I've been sketching non-stop. These are just a few of the whole lot I've been doing. I've been putting in a lot more effort now, and tackling those problems areas I've been having. It's gone to the point where I've tried new things like using guidelines to help me make sure everything is even like in the first sketch. Another thing I've been lacking is energy so I've had quite a few sketches like the first one at the beginning the sketch in the middle here, where I tried to give some humor or funny expressions. And then the dreaded female figure... sometimes I get it right, sometimes it's completely off. The one to the far right here is off in certain areas, it makes me want to throw a fit lol.

Instead of just taking a picture I scanned these from before. It sure looks a whole lot better scanned...

Well back to work, long blog is long.

More Dots and Snow

Rain, sleet, and snow. Lots of snow. Too much snow. Seriously it's been like what? Three weeks straight where we've been hit with like a snow storm, and a week or two before that where we've been hit by a storm.

Buuuut of course Suffolk still opens its doors despite the fact that we have raging blizzard going on out the window of my ISOM class. TBH it's a bit of a mixed feeling now. I actually like the fact that the school is still open, because well, I enjoy  going to school lol. Not going to school for just a semester completely changed my views about what I want to do. And that just happened to be going to school and learning the stuff I want to learn.


Here's what I've been in class recently. At first we were doing just tons of Dots. Like literally dots across a 19 x 24 piece of bristol paper. It was too boring for me to take a picture of so I decided to not upload it. Using tumblr (trying out tumblr now yes...) with pictures and whatnot turned out to be pretty troublesome anyway... But anyways here's two resolved thumbnails I did. I drew out a ton of smaller ones to get my ideas worked out and did 2 of them to scale here.

It's pretty basic. Rules are 3 - 4 shapes per region. If they overlap change its color from either white or black accordingly. I felt pretty happy about the one of the right. When the professor reviewed it he was like "oh shit, this is great" he didn't really have anything bad to say at all about it. It had a lot of small areas where the color would change so I guess he just liked how there was so much attention to that particular detail. TBH I just threw shapes around randomly without having to really worry about placement lol.

In the end we would end having to paint it out using acrylic on bristol paper. The actual painting itself was only 6 x 11 which is stupid imo since I just wasted a massive sheet of bristol for almost nothing. Surprisingly enough, the small painting took me about 2 hours to finish since I really had to be careful not to make the lines too "organic" looking. Making things look straight and civilized is not one of my strong points so it sucked....

But yeah since I was able to learn how to draw out figures properly I finally saw some real concrete progress in my stuff. The three earlier were done observationally, but it was quite good just going over all the body parts and drilling them into my head so that I know what goes where. This pic here was pulled out of my ass, I screwed up a few times at first but eventually it came out pretty well.

Last pic here is one that I've done recently. I was originally just testing out my sumi ink and brush while practicing different dots, but then I ended drawing out the face, the coat, her scarf, and went on from there lol. For some reason I really like those dark cityscape pictures. In the future I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes one of the main themes of my stuff. Especially once I take those computer art classes so I can use illustrator and photoshop.

Well that's all for tonight. I'll stick around tumblr to see how it is. Not too happy so far though =_=, too many little annoying bugs.

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.