PMC Drawing Challenge Entry: A Night Fury Ate My Homework

Since I'm a member of the PMC (Pencil Mileage Club) on campus, one of the monthly events held is a drawing challenge for all PMC members. This month was 'X Ate My Homework'.

I was tempted to do the 'I accidentially ate my own homework' but couldn't really work it. Then after it was announced the How To Train Your Dragon 2 Artbook would be one of the prizes, I started doodling Toothless for fun. After a while I ditched my first idea and went with Toothless shredding a priceless project the day this event was due.

This was done in a combination of a 4B pencil, Micron Pens and three Tombo Markers.

Illustration A: Media Sampler Panel #1

My first project is 1/9th complete!

The first I did was a time-consuming papercut illustration featuring an elephant flying with a clock in a satchel around its neck. I figured the papercut look would lend itself well to this Dumbo themed illustration and I think I was right!

Illustration A: WDP #4

This week our task was to paint with opaque acrylic compared to the previous week with a more transparent layering style. Painting opaquely I thought was slightly easier than transparent due to its similarity to painting in oils, which I have used before.

Through this process I learned how to make a soft gradient, as my changes in color had often had a hard edge instead of a soft edge when I painted.

Illustration B: Splatter Portrait

Today I think I've finalized my splatter portrait! This will likely be the version which will be printed out and mounted for next week as a grade. So exciting!

I personally think this is a mixture of Sin City and Hellsing styles of art but that could just be the sketchy look.

Illustration A: WDP #3

This past week we've been studying and practicing how to use acrylic washes to make gradients and how to make hard or soft edges.

I never actually painted with washes; all of my earlier classes involving painting were done in opaque oils where setting down color was the first and only priority. I do like the technique even if the process requires starts and stops for the water to dry, and I think after some trial and failure I'm getting the hang of painting this way!

Illustration A: WDP #2

My second entry for my drawing and painting assignment is about our ink lessons from the previous class. 

To be honest I never particularly liked pen and nib inking. This was because I didn't have a teacher who took the time to explain out how this tool worked and the many different things an artist could do with it. Anything I made with ink I was either ashamed of or frustrated with and tended to use microns in my 'ink' work (as seen in my animal drawings below). Though, even then, ink confounded me terribly and I still wasn't fond about it.

After this lesson I felt far more confident with a pen and nib than I had before. Testing out the different nibs felt freeing instead of stressful and I found I enjoyed the bolder sketchier look of the larger nibs as much as the very delicate smaller nibs used for the finer details in the sketches above. There's something wonderfully charismatic and confident about these marks, along with the way they can vary in line density and line boldness.

Illustration A: WDP #1

An assignment for my current Illustration Class is to post weekly drawings that the student as done in addition to some commentary on what was learned through the exercise. This week: the basics!

During the first day of class we had a challenge sprung on us; to draw ten of the following:

 Cubes, Cylinders, Cones, and Spheres

The catch was that we needed to draw each in ten different points of view in twenty minutes! I barely was able to finish my page but I'm glad to say I managed it.

 On Thursday our task was to refine our skills at drawing the basic shapes and to learn new methods of rendering accurate images.

I always have a bit of a problem with ellipses, the ends usually turn out somewhat tapered and football like. Hala taught us a useful method of drawing them, and cylinders, by paying attention to the lengths of the longer ends of the ellipse to the shorter ones. It was informative and helped me with my homework assignment, where I needed to handle a fair amount of ellipses with my object.