Art!

Have some more

2008-10-21T20:54:00.001-07:00

Oh and I guess also here's 12 more pages of faces and heads: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lbassettart/ I do about four or five of these pages a day now.

Maybe one out of every five of ten on average is any good, which is pretty good odds of success to me.

More Faces and Heads!

2008-10-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

More cartoon/comic faces and heads!

Got any favorites?

Faces and Heads! Faces and Heads!

2008-10-10T17:57:00.001-07:00

Doing so much life-drawing, figured I'd balance that out by going for some more comic style, cartoon head-face stuff. Well, origionally I was going to just draw hats, as you can see in the top-left here, but I decided that'd be too easy, and therefor boring, so changed that to faces and heads instead. For four pages.

Anyone else want to count them and see how many I did?

Well, I was having so much fun drawing comic style cartoon faces, it turns out I just turned the page and kept on going. Hit a sort of peak there where there were all these faces just dropping out of my pencil when I wasn't looking, plopping right down there on the page, I hardly even had to pay attention to it, faces just spewing out everywhere.

And the second page of faces fell out of the pencil so well, I kept right on going. Alternated between a soft 4b, and a 0.5mm mechanical pencil, for no particular reason, though the 4b was less finicky. I've always found mechanical pencils too sharp and narrow, though they can be convenient. I gotta do more faces in the future.

Turns out, first time doing concentrated face-drawing like this, it takes about four pages before I start to fade. They were still falling out of the pencil easily, but the 'holy crap, faces are coming outta my pencil' was starting to distract me. Decided to end it here rather than go on, at this point; the four pages in all took maybe an hour to get through.

Definately going to do this again.

More!

2008-10-03T13:11:00.001-07:00

Started drawing bagels, or doughnuts, or donuts, you really can't tell from the pic, but was getting bored with them. Realized that the basic shape of a bagel is basically a loop, or torus - and got fancy with it. :)

Knots are hell of interesting to invent and draw.

This one was interesting. Was sitting outside, and a seagull landed on a post about ten feet away from me - luckily I was drawing leaves at the time, and I had about ten seconds to capture this before he figured out what I was and flew off - I'd have liked to get a full-body portrait, but seagulls aren't known for sitting still very often.

Not bad for a ten second sketch - I'd loved to have had ten minutes.

Another quick sketch while I was outside, this with one of those big 1" thich chunks of charcoal, which is rapidly becoming my favorite drawing tool. Wanted to capture the strong light on her face - she had an interesting expression, sort of staring off into the distance - not pensive, but not calm. Maybe just... taking it all in. Whatever it was, I hope I captured it here.

Life drawing! Two and a half hours every Thursday, it's the most fun I have every week. I've got tons of these, but the charcoal dust tends to stick to the scanner, so I don't often scan them - and they're usually drawn on 18" x 24" paper. Except for this Thursday - it was raining, and carrying newsprint outside in the rain is usually a bad idea, so I used regular three-hole punched printer paper instead. Which I gotta say, I actually enjoyed - not drawing as large as I'm used to really helped me to focus on the bigger picture, ironically enough - less room for small details means I'm less likely to get hung up on them.

Boots Chairs Faces Mugs

2008-09-28T19:56:00.001-07:00

Yup, 10 minutes of drawing boots. This was a fun one, I'll probably do another thing like this soon. Shoes, maybe.

And this is how I learned to draw chairs. Started off with a boxy box chair box thing, ended up with a computer chair.

Another in my series of giving myself 10-minute 'draw anything' challenges.

10 minutes of drawing faces!

This is the sort of challenge suggestion I love. Drawn with a 5/8" thick solid chunck of graphite, my new favorite drawing tool.

Ceramic mugs! And a broken sphere thing at the top left.

These were fun to draw - got any mug or cup or thing you've got a pic of that you'd like me to draw? I'll do so and post it here!

Challenge me!

2008-09-27T22:14:00.000-07:00

Challenge me to draw anything, and I will, for at least 10 mintues, more if I get into it, and I'll post it here. Heck, give me a list of stuff, I'll draw all of them eventually.
_____________________

Two rabbits. Part of my "Ten Minute Random Drawing" thing.

First thing that popped into my head - rabbits. So here's two.

If you're going to do a 10-minute drawing challenge, who better to draw than Henry Kissinger? Hugh Laurie, that's who. But I haven't drawn Hugh Laurie yet, so you're getting Kissinger.

Mst3k robots.

Yup, another 10-minute challenge. These guys were fun to draw, except for the part about fatigure, wobbly surface, and drawing with a 0.5mm mechanical pencil. I'm much more comfortable drawing with 5/8" thick solid graphite sticks.

Mushrooms!

My first 10-minute drawing challenge. I love these challenge things.

Challenge me!

Revival!

2008-09-27T00:32:00.001-07:00

Yup, again, starting tommorrow.

In order to get myself moving on this, I figured out the best way to get over 'argh blank page' is to give myself a series of 10-minute 'draw the first thing that comes to mind' challenges, anything from chairs, to clay mugs, leaves, shirts, bees, whatever.

Even better - give me an idea, anything, fish, robots, alien geometry, and I'll draw it, whatever it is, for at least 10 minutes. More, if I get into it.

Hell, give me a list, I'll draw everything on it, eventually.

*cracks knuckles*

Alright, go time.

Back, again.

2008-07-06T17:33:00.000-07:00

Some kid's face.

More 3d things. I may have a webcomic idea in my brain at the moment, this 3d stuff may or may not be related. >.>

Juste ye olde burninge bushe.

Day 5: Birds!

2008-05-28T17:22:00.001-07:00

17b) Bird 1

A bird! This one drawn without any reference of any kind, just made up out of my own head, without the distraction of any background. Anyone recognice anything it could be? I'm starting to have fun just shading things.

18b) Coffee Guy

Mexican Coffee Guy. Or just some guy - really quick sketch this time, I was out of the house and didn't have very long to get the likeness down.

19b) Bird 2

Bird on a stick. Had fun with the feathers on this one, aroudn the eyes and head - I think this is the first bird I've ever drawn, which is why the body is lumpier than it should be.

20b) Bird 3

Ah, and *here* is where I started to really *get* how to draw birds, today. Even shaded in a sky for this guy here, wings poised to spring into the air.

Day 4 of Four New Pics a Day!

2008-05-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Hmm, a lot of animals recently, isn't there? Much as I enjoy drawing humans, there's more freedom in drawing an animal, in that there's less pressure to make it look 'right', whatever that means in the human context. More room to play with things like foreshortening, strange poses and textures not found with most human forms.

Enjoy!

13b) Flower Circle

Continuing to explore the idea of using a darker background to enhance the lighter shapes and shades. Trying to make this pop off the page a bit, glow - it'll be interesting to see if I can get the same effect with color, rather than graphite.

14b) Another Hand

It's been awhile since I've drawn my left hand, I've forgotten how fun it is - expect to see more of them.

15b) Leaping Deer

IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR YOU WATCH OUT

Heh, this was fun to draw, really exagerating the foreshortening. I thought about blurring/rubbing out the latter 1/3 or 1/4 to give a greater sense of depth and movement, but decided against doing so, for this.

Do you think it worked, or did I just end up drawing a horribly mutilated deer?

16b) Stalking Bear

A bear. Worked on emphasizing his bulk, roundness, strength - still working on getting a handle on non-human anatomy. Frustrating, sometimes, but in strange ways that just make me happily stubborn to do more of them. It really does work to mentally split 4-legged animals into three 'pieces' - hindquarders, middle, and front. Once thoes relationships are laid out accuratly, the details can be put in, following those thirds.

Day 3 (again) of my 4 New Arts a Day

2008-05-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, I missed this. Hope you guys missed it too! There's a lot more in store - not only am I getting tons of ideas for stuff, but I'm really gaining confidence in my drawing and painting ability, and that's going to be reflected here more and more in the coming weeks and months.

9b) Dandylions

One of my favorite flowers!

Pen and a bottle of ink, getting used to the needle-point nib, and controlling more complicated forms. I think this is one of the best things I've drawn recently, too bad dandylion season is mostly finished over here.

10b) Toon Skunk

Playing around with cartoony style things. Animal proportions are a bit different from human proportions, which makes things easier and harder in different ways than drawing people. Main reason for doing this was to see if I could, and I really enjoyed the curvy lines this pose allowed me to play with. Much easier than I expected too, I'll probably do more like this - I'm not usually one for cute, and I'm not a fan of the typical "100% human body with animal head and tail" that most anthropomorphic furry art ends up being - but stylized animals are just fun to draw.

11b) Horse Profile

A horse! I have the strange feelings that the legs are too short and skinny, but I'm not sure if that's actually true... It might just be something to do with my posing and very basic shading... definatly have to work on improving my horse-sense.

12) Fishing

Guy in a fishing boat on a lake. Experiment in silhouette, again used the fat permanant marker to lay down the inital sketch... I was going to go back and lay down some better reflections, but I seem to have lost the original paper somewhere.

Day 2 of my Restarted 4 New Arts a Day!

2008-05-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

And Day 2! It's good to be back. Much better idea for me to update these in the morning, instead of waiting until evening, even if it does mean getting up an hour earlier. My mind is alive with things I want to paint for you guys! And draw, pen, and illustrate - good thing this is a Sunday, because I'm going to be busy.

Any requests?

5b) Falling Drowning

This is going to be a painting - what's the feeling you get when you look at this? Really look at it - gives me a feeling of vertigo, and I'm the one who drew it. Great exercise for improving your straight-line and square/rectangle drawing. Make sure to plan it out ahead of time though, or you might find yourself falling off the page.

6b)

This was fun. Started when I glanced at a photo I had of myself and whipped a permanant marker across the page - that gave me the hairline and neck, so I just tossed in the ears, nose, eyes, and chin, there I had... well, mostly me. Not quite though, since I just outlined that in about twenty seconds, so I spent a bit of time 'masaging' the rest of it with the pen I had on hand, give it some depth and roundness, shading; in retrospect I should have left off the shoulders and chest, but I think the face turned out well enough for a quick thing for me to post up here.

Definatly going to do more like this, but with more forethought and planning to achieve a more realistic presentation.

7b) Unknown Leaf

Not sure exactly what kind of leaf this is, but I love the depth, shading and tone, roundness I managed to give to it. Started off with calligraphy pen and a bottle of ink, about a 1.2 millimeter nib to get the bones of it, the darks, then a regular HB pencil to seperate the leaf from the whitespace surrounding it, and a heave plack conte crayon for those darks along the edges, and the modelling in the center mass of the leaf.

Anyone recognice the species of plant this leaf comes from?

8b) Unknown Flower

A flower this time, again I'm not certain of the species, though it's vaguely familiar. Nothing too fancy with this, just regular old pencil, though I was surprised how much that rough toned background made the lightness of the flower stand out.

Restart!

2008-05-24T10:01:00.001-07:00

...and I'm back.

Thought about continuing the old numbering scheme, which would have meant that what here is '1b' would be '65', but I decided that'd be dishonest. This is all about seeing how many consecutive days I can upload four new art pieces each day; continuing the numbering from my last point of failure would be dishonest.

So! Now that I've gained confidence in pencil and graphite, I've moved over to pen and ink, markers, calligraphy pen and bottle of ink, and it really is a lot of fun. The tactile feedback of a knife-edge calligraphy nib vibrating against the surface of the paper as it bleeds black ink behind its path is something just not found in the smooth silken slide of soft graphite or charcoal.

1b) Crest

Small thing here, getting used to drawing with a calligraphy pen and bottle of ink, along with a few permanant black in markers of various sizes and a regular ball point pen.

2b) Thing in a Box

Thing in a box. Practicing angles, construction, lighting - my angles are off a bit, but I've sinced learned how to correct that, I've got a painting of something like this somewhere around here I'll upload later on, angles corrected.

3b) Mountain Meadow

This was fun, all of this was done with calligraphy pen, various nibs, and a bottle of ink - I smudged it in the bottom right there, the ink isn't as black as I'd like, but it flows well, and it's convenient for on-site sketching like this.

4b) Dead Tree

Big old rotten dead tree. Background was added artificially to give it a sense of scale, if I remember correctly this was in the corner of an old gravel yard. Was fun messing with the angles and perspective here, and I'm glad the flowers worked as well as they did. Drawing with various pens, markers, and ink doesn't exactly leave any room at all for erasing.

Hey Guess What

2008-05-23T22:09:00.001-07:00

I'm back!

So much for that old grand plan - every great success needs it's initial failure, and I think that's enough of that for now.

Also I'm pretty sure I'm getting the hang of this art thing now, because dang, I've got some great stuff in store for you guys.

New grand plan (which is the same as the old grand plan, just not broken anymore) begin!

(secret thing) Psst: If you send me an image of your face I might draw it with pen and ink. (end secret thing)

To clarify -

2008-04-24T01:22:00.001-07:00

To clarify, since there's been a couple question - I really am making four brand new pieces each and every single day.

I started off with a collection of about 10 drawings, using two or three of those a day until I got into the pace - but I used that up awhile ago. Everything after about day four or five is totally brand new each day.

What's even crazier, once I got into the pace of making and uploading four new drawings each day, I started painting, and so now my goal is to create and upload four new *paintings* each day.

I'm still drawing massive amounts of drawings though, so... I think a good idea would be if I just painted four new paintings a day for six days in a row, and then for Sunday I'll post four drawings. That's only 24 new paintings a week, but I've got some fun drawings I've got to upload too, especially since I'm starting to get into all kinds of fun with ink and oil pastel. Right now painting is still more fun, and I'm comfortable with the effort required to create three new ones each day - the fourth painting takes more effort, but it's the sort of effort that tells me I haven't peaked yet, because I can still push myself further, so... it's an enjoyable effort.

Day 17 of 4 New Pics a Day!

2008-04-23T23:59:00.000-07:00

Three paintings and a drawing of an old beer mug! I'm really getting into painting now, there's a ton of stuff to explore here. Have to severly tone down my chroma though, the dominances in these are all far too towards favoring the high-'brightness' (as opposed to dullness) end of things.

More neutrals would serve to balance out my compositions... I'll explore that next.

61) Path

Started off with using up some very dilute dairylide yellow paint I had leftover for the background. Started using up some other leftover paint, got a fairly uniform vertical background, so I started added some spider branch effects with some other colors, keeping in mind the tones for depth.

A new thing in this one is the ground pumice stone I used on the path. I couldn't find a way to get a photo of this picture without glare from the surrounding ambient light, so the colors are off just slightly - the shadow part of that path there doesn't glow quite so much in reality. And the texture really is noticible, even from a distance. Great for the sort of drybrush effects I have on there.

62)

Used paint from the next painting I'm uploading here, I'm sure you'll recognize some of the colors. Also included here, some of those greys and greens, are remnants of the ground pumice stone I used for texture on the path to the other painting I'm uploading in this set, "Path", found here: http://lbassett.deviantart.com/art/Path-83742184

Not sure what I'll do with it, but it's an interesting effect. Maybe a waterfall... Any suggestions?

63) LostGhost

Another experiment with using up leftover paint here.

Myself, I see an alien sort of figure there, that top right circle the head, leaning, perhaps crawling... what do you see?

64) BeerMug

Quick sketch of a beer mug - I'm getting into figuring out reflections, and how light is seen and distorted through glass.

Day 16 of Four Updates a Day

2008-04-22T23:45:00.000-07:00

To randomly celebrate the 16th day of this project, and to make up for da's rando maintaniance denying me my 14th, have four paintings!

There's fun in line, shape, mass, and texture, certainly, especially with variances in tone, but to add hue and chroma to the mix adds two entirely new dimensions to the play. What is that, seven dimensions now?

57) Background

Decided that using up the leftover paint I had on my palette was better than throwing it out - this stuff isn't cheap. This is the result - an interesting background, or a finished piece? Haven't decided yet, though I'll likely add to it later.

58) Face

Mostly playing with creating backgrounds from layered acrylic here - got the impression of a face, so I played with that for awhile.

59) Ocean

Another ocean piece. I'm having a lot of fun with a severely reduced and limited pallete - this here is simply burnt umber, paynes grey, and titanium white. Might add tree silhouette's to this later.

60) RedTrees

Experiment in using a severly limited colour palette in a limited area in an abstract fashion, then building a scene out of it. The red here was deliberatly intended to look almost alien, out of place - that centre of the sun tying in only to the red trees, the yellow of the sun matched in the tree's highlights. Experimenting with strong colours on a fairly netrual background.

Those bits underneath are playing around with color mixing and comparing how colors laid adjacent on the canvas play off each other.

Day 14/15!

2008-04-21T22:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I do remember posting about 'daily updates, barring extraordinary circumstances' - yesterday, Deviantart was in "read-only mode" for maintaniance, blocking me from uploading anything. Instead of waiting whatever random time that might be, I'm claiming 'out-of-my-control' for that one.

Rather than posting twice in a day, I'll use the reserve to start a backlog, so in another case of my being prevented from updating via regular means, or if something happens and I'm unable to draw for awhile, I'll stuff have stuff ready to post.

Tommorrow: More paintings! Recent acrylics have just been excercises so I haven't bothered to post them, but that'll change soon.

53) ClothPile

Pile of cloth I had a fun time deliniating the edges and masses of. I'll do more like this, though I likely won't upload many of them. Great for working out your shading and tones.

54) Pose2

Buying expensive Starbucks coffee is only worth it if you can sit in an unobtrusive spot and draw what's going on inside and out. Here I took the opportunity to sketch up a few random people, more of a gesture sort of thing than conture or structural.

55) Pose3

Buying expensive Starbucks coffee is only worth it if you can sit in an unobtrusive spot and draw what's going on inside and out. Here I took the opportunity to sketch up a few random people, more of a gesture sort of thing than conture or structural.

56) Fanart

Yeah, fanart. I figured, since I'm on da, the home of random fanart, I might as well toss one more on the pile. If you ever want to practice your patience, try drawing Lisa's hair accuratly. I tell you, it isn't as easy as it looks. Marge was easier, and Bart's head is really just a tin can with eyes.

Hope they're recognizable for first attempts, drawing stuff without a reference still feels weird in my head. I like it, but it's just a different way of doing things, going by memory and construction instead of observation.

Let me know if you've got any fanart requests, I'll welcome the opportunity to practice on new shapes.

Day 14 of 4 New Pics a Day!

2008-04-20T23:01:00.000-07:00

Two weeks already! Wow.

Unfortunately, as of right now, deviantart is "Currently in Read-Only Mode for Maintenance.", so I'm locked out until whatever maintenance is going in is finished. Because that could be hours from now, instead of staring at the clock and refreshing the screen for an unknowable amount of time, I'm going to claim this as extraordinary circumstances, and make up for it with a double update tomorrow.

Day 13 of 4 New Pics a Day

2008-04-20T00:29:00.000-07:00

More experiments with abstraction - it's interesting, but I'm going to pull back from it. It's interesting like candy, and a diet of candy is neither healthy nor satisfying. Delicious in moderation, but I'm going to balance it out with some more serious explorations.

49) AnimalLines

Random page out of the sketchbook. I thought the effect of the equalization on this image was interesting, so I kept it as it is. The sketch themselves are attempts to begin to simplify a random assortment of animal shapes, inching towards a more foundational set of fewest possible yet still recognizable lines.

50) Faceoff

More abstract rarndomness, two of faces here, experiments with different lines, shapes, masses and textures than the ordinary.

51) HandSketch

Equilaziation kept because of the interesting effect. It's been awhile since I've drawn my own hand. The practice is a valuable one. Barring extrordianry circumstances, you should always have two hands with you - one to draw, the other to hold the mark making tool. Hands are endlessly poseable, and able to hold their own prop. Handy thing, that.

52) Spheres

Similar to Cylinders: http://lbassett.deviantart.com/art/CylinderBaseAndLight-83253325 I've been playing around with the concept of a lit sphere on a square stand, and some different ways that such a simple object can be newly interpreted.

Day 12 of Posting 4 New Pics a Day!

2008-04-18T23:45:00.001-07:00

Day 12! That's almost 2 weeks! How did this happen so fast?

Interesting how my own perceptions are changing - much as I percieive the bulk of lazy abstract painting to be, well, lazy, I am delving deeply into the foundations of it's more successful examples, and extracting some fascinating methods of control over the visual image. So far almost entirely with line, shape, mass, and texture - I'm holding off in introducing hue, tone, and chroma to this way of thinking until I've better established my mind in its domain.

45) Cat

Figuring out how to draw a cat that doesn't look like every single cat ever drawn, but still have it look like a cat, isn't easy. The face and forelimbs need to be better tightened into the body, but otherwise I'm satisfied with the style.

46) BlindContourBase

Something else I've been playing with. Since I'm doing so much blind contour drawing as it is, I've had the idea to use them as the foundation for other things, either abstract, or more representational. The blind countour 'look' is difficult to achieve without doing actual blind contour drawing, and I'm learning that there is potential in it for very interesting visual images.

47) CylinderBaseAndLight

This was fun! Reality is boring, isn't it? Take one of the most boring 3d basic objects you can get - the cylinder, here resting on a square cubical base, with light coming from the right.

Look at it in different ways.

What if your eyeball was in the shape of a cube, what would a cylinder look like then? What if you could only see in 4d space, what would a 3d cylinder look like?

What if you turned a cylinder inside-out, and what is its most basic form if you look at it in a non-euclidean space?

Everybody knows what regular geometry looks like. Create a new geometry! Then put the cylinder into it, and see what it looks like.

Isn't the cylinder much more interesting now?

48)

Another really fun piece to create! Learning some very interesting things about different ways of representing observed reality, dominant and subordinant relationships between line, shape, mass, texture, angular, curvilinear forms, then adding representations of basic light, tone, depth with hatching and pointilist techniques and deliberatly applying some of the techniques useful to creating the illusion of depth such as density, surface, overlap, contour, foreshortening...

It is somehow like a feast, this kind of drawing.

Day 11 of Posting 4 New Pics a Day!

2008-04-18T00:05:00.000-07:00

You know, I never before now realized how terribly the automatic anti-redeye feature of most modern cameras can mangle a painting that has a alot of, y'know, red.

41) AbstractJaws

Working on practicing and implementing some of those deliberate controls of the emotional impact of design, I've been doing dozens of little almost motifs, abstract pieces like this. Random one here, I might post others later, or find some way to bunch them all together if there's interest.

42) CurvedFigure

Another abstract piece, trying to sense the masses of the form while ignoring pure anatomy for the moment, the large planes, rounded depth of form without resorting to much shading - I like the style, there's potential here for some more interesting figure drawings, as well as paintings.

43) Gesture4

Another random page from about an hour or so of gesture drawing the human figure - I'm getting better.

44) RedLand

Ack, this hellish piece. The failed paintings in a row I just kept painting over them. Eventually I decided that there must be something wrong with me, so I limited myself to a strict three color palatte, and forced out this nightmarish alien landscape of dead bone trees partially lit by the last nuclear gasp of a cold and dying star.

Day 10 of 4 New Pics a Day!

2008-04-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

It's my tenthdayversary! To reward myself, I'm going to go to bed early tonight. Maybe going to do four paintings tommorrow and no drawings... think that'd be fun for you guys?

As always, this is also posted over at http://lbassett.livejournal.com/ for your convenience.

37) Cubes

Just working out some plans and angles, cubes and cylinders, foreshortening and depth, lighting and things. This sort of practice will get more interesting, but it's neccessary to get these sorts of foundations in place first.

38) SketchingPoses

After all this gesture drawing, it's time to start working stuff out of my head - I'm getting better at this. Sorry for the weird contrast issues here, I don't have access to Photoshop on this comp, so about the best I can do is 'equalize' the image, which does weirdness like this - that, and I'll use a darker pencil next time. In the original image the lines were almost invisible, which why I had to force it like this. Ah well.

39) SashimiAndPlant

Piece delicious salmon Sashime (raw salmon), and some plant flower I just invented. Little sketch, but fun.

40) MountainLake

More playing around with light, depth, scale, foreground->midground->background, non-blue skies, and different sorts of water. Sort of a cold, wintry feel to thtis one, despite the green bits of field. I really should start signing these.

Day 9 of my 4x a Day Challenge

2008-04-15T23:38:00.000-07:00

Day 9! How did that happen so fast?

Well, next challenge I suppose is to see if I can keep it up for a month, until May 7th. That'll be a solid month of daily updates, and if I can do a month, I can do two months, a quarter year, half a year - a full year?

Step by step, that's my intention.

33) ToonProps

I'm good at drawing anything I see with full accuracy, given enough time - but drawing stuff out of your head, with no reference, is a different skill entirely than pure representational drawing. I'm not very good at it yet, so because it's a weakness of mine I've been putting a lot of work into figuring out perspective, lighting, volume, mass and form of 3d objects on the 2d plane, entirely made up out of my head. In other words, no references - I can feel that it's using a different, more active part of my brain than the usual right-hemisphere dominance of representational drawing. Drawing like this is a much more active use of the brain, combining the rational critical deliberation of the left along with the more creative right hemisphere in a much more cooperative way than simply translating the optical nerves signals to the arm with as little intererence as possible. The signals for something like this, rather than originating at the eye, originate from the interior brain. The optical perception of drawing purely from imagination seems to be secondary in relation to the drawn image, rather than as in representational drawing, where every motion of the mark-making tool is governed primarly and purely by the reflex of the perception of the optic nerve as translated through the angle of the eye and the contraction of the cornea.

Or a different analogy - drawing from imagination is like writing from imagination, whereas 'drawing-what-you-see' much more akin to summarizing a pre-existing written work. Not transcribing - that would be a photograph.

Regardless, this is too long already, but I hope my point is clear; for me it is revelatory, and something I will be paying greatly active attention to in the future.

34) Gesture3

Some more random gesture drawing samples - I've realized that doing an hour or so of pure contour drawing before these, to get my head in the right space (beta or theta wave, whichever one is just below full concious awareness) would greatly improve these.

35) ColourDifference

My daily painting! This one I wanted to point out how different using flash (the main part of the image) or not using flash (the bottom-left inset) can really change the feel of an image. I'm very keenly becoming aware of just how extrordinarily different peoples perceptions of color can be - for example, try doing that dark room experiment of Newton's, where he took a prism, allowed a pinhole of white light to refract from it into a full-spectrum rainbow. Do that, and mark of either side of the limits of the colors you see. Then have someone else mark off the limits of their color perception - you'll find they vary quite a bit; for example, I'm certain I see at least a full color into the ultraviolet past indigo, and I know of others who can see further both into the ultraviolet and the infrared.

Back to this particular painting, neither one of the combined images here what I see when I turn my head to look at the painting sitting on my desk. Interesting stuff, this ocular perception.

36) DesignControls

Because the preview image is so small, I reccoment you click the image to arrive at my deviantart page, then click it a second time for the full version. This works for all the images I'm posting here, but is particularly useful for this one, where the detail is difficult to discern at this resolution.

Briefly, this is a couple random pages of an exploration I'm making into very specific, deliberate controls of design that can be used to intentionally affect the emotional response of the viewer.

Here, for example, I think they may all be shown, but in this image are examples of Nine seperate controls that can be applied to image creation. They are:

1) Overlapping Planes
2) Counterchange (alternation of hue, value and/or chrome in a controlled alternating fashiono)
3) Line over Mass (most of these are exactly what they sound like)
4) Implied Line
5) Interlocking Rhythm
6) Open Colour/Offset Conture (basically, coloring outside the lines, deliberatly and for intentional effect)
7) Transparency/Translucency
8) Forced Edge (emphasis of a particular edge greater than others in the image)
9) The Dynamic Trellis (useful for handling dynamic linear forces - it provides the maximum linear opposition within an ordered design. Lines are limited to six directions: balancing diagonals, perpendiculars to each of these diagonals, and optional verticals and horizontals)

Once you've memorized that, and begun to apply these very deliberate and specific controls with intentional effect, you'll very quickly achieve the ability to more intentionally create the images you desire, with control over the emotional response and guidance of the eyes over the page.

Week 2, Day 1

2008-04-14T22:31:00.000-07:00

Really, the more I do this, the more fun it is to do. Crazy, eh?

29 ) GestureDrawing

Now this is from a cool fun thing that http://rekul.deviantart.com/ Rekul linked me to over here http://www.posemaniacs.com/pose/thirtysecond.html. What it is, is 30 seconds of a randomly posed skinless human figure - hugely and fantastically valuable to people who don't happen to be seeing naked skinless people around them all the time that they can draw from. This is kinda crappy for a first attempt on my part, but tommorrow I'm going to spend a few hours on this, and we'll see what results of it.

30 ) OldHat

Old hat of mine I drew from 3/4 rear lighting. I'm decently happy with it, though next time I do something like this I'll get a bunch of different hats and things together instead of just the one.

31) RedSeaSky

I'm happy with this for the sunset coastline sunset rocky beach color and lighting experiment it is. That said, I've got to work on my waves and clouds. The fact that I have much to improve is gratifying, as that means there is still fun to be had here.

32) YellowedHatShell

Another hat here, that I'm wearing right now over my giant headphones - I was having a bit of trouble emphasizing the tonal v ariation in this one, until I decided to really push the lights hard with some yellow charcoal, and turn it on edge so that it's less of a hat, and more of an almost shell-like abastract shape. Really, it could be either a shell or a hat when it's on it's side like this, it's a fun effect to play around with.

Day 7, Week 1

2008-04-13T20:41:00.001-07:00

25) AbstractAndPaperPallette

Here's a neat little abstract thing I built off of a contour drawing of a piece of a tree that almost hit me in the head when it rotted off the main body. Nothing hugely special, but drawing stuff like this based off contour is a great way to lay a foundation for interesting abstract stuff.

Also that there on the right is something called a paper palette, which is exactly what it sounds like, and is great for mixing acrylic color on without having to worry about cleaning it off after.

26 ) Abstract Tree Fruit

Eh, figured I'd try my hand at a totally abstract piece. A couple of tree-things on a weird backgroundy thing with a green sun and a... well... abstract... thing.

27) ToonType

Random toon characters I pulled off this http://www.venisproductions.com/angelmoxie/index.php website - the comic is finished, currently in reruns, but I love the minimalist-cute style of it, it's something I'm wanting to figure out.

28 ) Toothpaste

Haha, now this was fun!

Decided to pick out the most boring ordinary thing I could think of, which turned out to be toothpaste, and see what I could do with it. Focusing on really ramping up creative type drawing, really ignoring everything else except that it had to be toothpaste, and it had to be creative and interesting.

Gotta do this with something else, maybe I dunno, spoons or something.

Day Six

2008-04-12T19:20:00.001-07:00

21 ) CloudSketches

Just sketched up a couple of clouds here, really rough and contour kinda thing.

22) ComicFaces

This is actually something I just pulled out of a sketchbook from last August, when I was just learning how to draw stuff out of my head by figuring out the faces to a couple of random comics I pulled off google.

23) TonalFaces

Basic rough tonal study I did of a couple of faces I pulled out of a newspaper.

24) Forest

Eh, I'm sorta happy with this I guess. Really quick sketchy forest kind of think I did in about an hour, playing around with mixing colors more than anything else, really.

Day Five!

2008-04-11T18:05:00.000-07:00

17) Plant

This is a neat old plant I found with new leaves just getting started - basic shadows, it's more or less a modified countour. I think it's some kind of onion or garlic or chive plant, though I'm not sure.

18) SilverPlateAndDrapes

This was awesome to draw. Almost lost it too, it was starting to become way too symmetrical, until I added those handles and invented some drapes and that background behind the plate to give it some depth, visual interest, and more interesting visual tonal variation.

19) SkullHatching

Exercie in pure hatcing here, using something a bit more interesting than eggs or boxes. Pretty easy actually, if you want to do it yourself:

1) Get a skull
2) Draw the outline of it
3) Put in the lights and darks

The hardest part, really, is getting a human skull, but come to think of it, there's tons of those just walking around every day.

20) Tin

Cookie tin! Not really an old one, just one I had around to keep receipts in. Figured it'd make an interesting model, and I'm going to do this again, spending more time capturing the texture of tartan. Was actually easier than I was expecting, though you'll see by my note there that creating the basic shading first, before placing the texture, would have been wiser.

Day Four

2008-04-10T19:18:00.000-07:00

Day four comes and goes, and I'm really starting to enjoy the fun pressure of having to create this stuff, and the sense of pride and satisfaction that keeping the momentup up is bringing me.

13) ForestNatureScene

How about some color to start off day four? Forest scene, more abstract than representitive, my goal here was to get a feel of the colors, the warmth and coolness of the light and shade, and impression rather than a recording.

14) Perspective&Light

Just messing around with perspective and light, really trying to push some interesting whitespace and tonal valuations here. Sideways because I wanted to get a fresh look at it - it was more frustrating to put together than it looks, I'm not yet used to drawing stuff out of my head. It's a bit of a different use of the brainmeats than just drawing what you see, and I'm still adapting to it.

15 ) PrayerStudy

Quick, large scale study of an old woman at prayer. Humans aren't easy to render, especially at the sort of low contrast light and head angle that's going on here, the ear gave me trouble. The hair was fun though. At an angle to make people look at in a different light, instead of just allowing the subconcious to click with it's automatic 'oh that's a person' feature.

16) PumpkinAndBag

It's a pumpkin! And some kind of... bag! Heh, the pumpkin was the easiest part, the bag the most fun. Tried to add some highlights with pastel, not sure if I'm going to try that again in cheap paper.

Day Three!

2008-04-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

Never fear, day three is here! Well, it was up at deviantart about 4 hours ago, but I just spent those four hours painting non-stop, so this over here just had to be patient. I'm sure it understands.

9) Delicious Chips

Just regular old potatoe chips, delicious to draw. Fun with contours, textures, and regular old drawing.

10) MetalReflections

Just a pot, a tube, and some other stuff, nothing too extraordinary. Reflections are fun, but take a lot of concentration to make work.

11) TreeFormStudy

Study of the masses of a tree, heavy on one side, focus almost to an abstract level purely on the interpenetration of planes.

12) UnfinishedTidepool

Finally, some color! Just have to add some minor finishing touches to this, cool down the top left corner a bit, and it'll be done. Fun playing around with predominatly cool tones, a lot of fun browns and greys in this one. All acrylic, I'm not getting into oil until I have the space to do it safely.

Day Two!

2008-04-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

And now on to Day Two of the 4x a Day Self-Challenge!

Hmm, I think I'm going to have to start scrambling by the weekend... exactly the motivation I need to get stuff done.

5) RoughPenny

Eh, just a rough of a Canadian Penny. A very large penny. Going to paint one in the next little while, so drawing one in huge-size like this really helps me pay attention to a lot of the tiny details. I might do a series like this, actually, with other coins, as long as I don't run afoul of any weird 'thou shalt not copy currency' type laws.

6) Shoooooes

Haha! This was a fun one, I might have to go back later and put up a better photo or scan of this. Basically, really trying to emphasize depth here while using complicated shapes and subjects. Table with a bunch of random shoes on it, really paying attenttion to composition all through this, atmospheric density (objects in the background = lighter in tone), overlap, placement, and repetition of forms at the smaller and larger levels to try and tie it all together. Wish I'd done it on better paper... I'll do something like this on better paper using a Nintendo DS as a model perhaps.

7) Walnuts

Eh, just a couple of walnuts, rendered with different techniques. Walnuts are good because they really force you to pay attention to tone and texture, rather than just falling back into the trap of relying on contour for everything.

8) WhereStuffGetsDone

Ah, this is a bit of a cheat, but I figured I'd show off where I'm doing all this. Off to the right there is something I'm working on at the moment, a low-angle view of a sunset tidepool - fun grays and midtones all over, heavy on the warm colors - I still have to push back the top left, cool it down, finesse a couple highlights and etc... though honestly at this point I'm afraid of going too far and overworking it. It's at that 'step back for five minutes, add one brushstroke' phase.

Lets get this started then, shall we?

2008-04-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

Challenge to myself: update here (barring emergencies) with four new images each day, or you all get to kick my ass. Give me a couple days here to work out a viable system of image hosting and posting, and we'll see where this goes.

First off, I'm going to be digging into "ye-olde-drawringe-pilee" until I'm established, mixing it up with new stuff until it's *all* new stuff, baby.

Hey, if major webcomic people can update three times a week, I can sure as heck update four times a day. (hubris? only if I fail!)

Hmm. Okay, this is pretty cool, I can html a deviantart thumbnail right to the main image. That's pretty cool. Going to duplicate the same image text between here and there, just to keep things organized. Remember to click the image for the full-sized version!

1) CountourBikeGears

Heh, this was a neat one - ever tried to draw the gears of a bike in pen without looking at the paper? Well, modified-contour drawing here - I'd draw a complete shape without looking at the page, glance down long enough to place the pen at the starting point of the new shape, then ignore the page. Repeat for about 2 hours and you end up with something like this. Not the best, for only looking at the page for about 5% of the time, I'm happy with it.

2) GestureDrawing

Ah, this was fun. Limiting myself to a couple inches and no more than perhaps 20 seconds per frame, this is gesture drawing. Capturing the essence of the gesture, of the movement, rather than any particular form. Going for the essence of the thing itself, rather than its apperance. The impression rather than the outline - the masses and planes, the depth, edges, white space, interpenetration of forms.

3) ModelledModel

This funky looking model brought to you by a technique called modelling. Essentially, drawing using pressure, ignoring such things as light-sources. The parts of the model closest to you receive the lightest pressure - the further away the part of the model is, the more firmly the mark-making tool is pressed into the page. This piece is rather ugly looking, I only really caught onto the technique at the right shoulder, but you'll see it a lot more in still-life compositions in a little while.

4) PhoneWires&Cloth

Haha, this was interesting. Trying to figure out some still-life thing, finally decided to ignore the model entirely and focus on the corner of the table where the wires were dangling down. Bit of fun with modelling the cloth here, trying to show some weight and depth to it.

***

So that's it for day one!

This is exciting, and just the push I need to get moving into a higher gear. Look forward to the next update!

First Post

2008-02-13T14:14:00.001-08:00

Hey all, going to be using this place here to update at least four different random sketches and etc. a day, once I figure out how to crosslink with my lbassett.deviantart.com account. Blogger/Blogspot seems to be the place to be for art/sketchblogs and the like, looks like I'll fit right in here. There's some great talent I've seen that I'll be taking note of, a lot of people here that I'm learning a lot from. And I'm always looking for new people to chat art stuff with, so drop me a line and we'll art it up like maniacs, 'cause nothing else matters 'cept living the dream, right?