Final Project 2

I forgot to take another picture so the one from earlier will have to do for now...

At first, I wanted to do a drawing of my father shooting one of his rifles, as it is a hobby of his while drawing is somewhat of a hobby of mine. I also would have thought it interesting to try to draw the intense shift from light to shade as his front half is illuminated with the muzzle flash. This idea was quickly shot down by my mother, however, so I decided instead to draw my mother also drawing seeing that it is a shared interest between the two of us. This would also allow me to work on my facial recreation skills that were lacking since I spent the previous decade or so just drawing still lives or objects. So far I have established the majority of the face and while it is not quite exact, it is, to her son, recognizably alike to the original. I have also added details to the hands and started on shading the fabric about her shoulders. The shirt underneath is relatively smooth so that will not be as much of a challenge although the folds are a small bit more difficult. If I run out of the time allotted for the class work, I plan to bring it home and work from there to finish it.

Final Project

I decided to draw a picture of my mother drawing. This would take into account the skills that I acquired this past year concerning faces as well as my more comfortable method of art, drawing. I have done a very quick sketch over my final paper and plan to fill it in, eventually becoming my final project.

Self Portrait Painting

In this project, we were told to put together all of the painting skills that we had learned previously. I could have done this if it were a drawing but painting makes the task much more difficult for me, personally. I find I am much less able to find the right shade or color when painting. I also, as I was unable to make a sketch before starting, made the proportions wrong so I had to redo the head and the eyes. I still have to make alterations to the entire face since some sizes or colors are still off. I did not find the first step of just putting on brown paint very useful although I understand why we did it. This has not been my most successful piece of work, which is understandable since I have rarely painted in the past.

Facial Features

In this project, we learned how to recreate various facial features so that eventually we would be able to do a painting of a complete face. Along with improving my understanding of the different skin tones, I also learned which parts of certain features to include in a drawing or painting and which to leave out. This will make my future art of faces much more accurate since if one includes too many details, the face looks older and if one changes the proportions, the face can look younger. This series of paintings has already helped my ability to produce accurate art of faces.

Light and Shade Studies

During this semi-project, I learned how the human brain uses various aspects of the information in front of us to piece together an understanding of where we are in space compared to other objects. The brain utilizes light, shade, size, and the differences between the two images produced by our eyes to create one, three dimensional image in our mind. As artists, we can try to recreate, by using different pigments, the illusion of such an image by imitating the light, shade, and size to trick others' brains into thinking it is real. I already knew some of the patterns of shade and size although I have not had much experience looking at the way that light bounces from surfaces so I found this very useful in expanding my knowledge of light's properties. I hope that this will, in the long run, help me to become a better artist.

Facial Proportions

After making the lines for proper proportions on top of my photo, I realized that I slightly differed from them. My chin, mouth, nose, and eyes were all slightly above the line by about the same amount. After taking this into account as well as the fact that I have a slimmer face than that of my original drawing, I think my secondary one looks better, although I think I may have made the eyes set a little too high and the mouth is off. Aside from those, I think it looks closer to the real face than the first image did and, because of that, I am satisfied with it for now. I would like to get better at this, though. 

Artist Self Portait

I thought this particular image was interesting because not only did the artist draw himself, but he also had his face in a way that was different than the flat, neutral pose. This creates differences in the proportions that one must learn before trying such a feat, unless the artist is skilled enough to draw without any previous knowledge. As I am new to drawing faces and have not yet become comfortable with this part of art, I need the previous knowledge such as what details to keep in, which to not bother with, or how someone's face distorts when he/she smiles or frowns. While my skill with recreating faces is lacking, I look forward to helping it to grow.