Icarus Lives

   Two posts in one night. I guess I can only waste so much time looking at doge memes. Recently in our life drawing sessions we've moved onto tonal work. You know the standard cover your paper in a neutral grey and then work in with a rubber and charcoal to build up your range of tone. Now this is great for me because I suck something special at tonal variation. Plus the skills are easily transferable, I'll run into problems at some point if I can only visually record things with line, I mean it essentially means by the time I make it to painting I'll be fucked. Hampers my ability to represent three dimensional form something awful as well. So here's my second round of tonal charcoal drawings in relation to human figure. You'll have to forgive my abysmal camera work but you get the idea.   

      Concentrating purely on tone so I don't have to slag myself off for not measuring properly and mucking up my proportions. Well I keep having this problem that even though I am working tonally I don't push either the lights or darks enough to really sell the idea of the three dimensional. When I'm actually working on them I have the repeated feeling that I'm pushing these extremes too far but as you can see with the finished result it isn't the case. Gonna have to remember that the next time. 

Shhhh, Go to Slep

   You know it's really easy to be idle, if anyone's proof of that it's me. Now a few years back I got tired of sleeping twelve hours a day and having the most engaging thing in my life being watching Gilmore Girls in the afternoon. Thing is, you spend three years in that kind of a rut and it turns into a hard habit to break. I accepted a place onto this course knowing full well what would be expected in order to succeed and yet I still have days where I'd sooner lay in bed most of the day instead of doing something productive. The weird thing is I actually enjoy the work and feel really good when I do it.
 I'm telling you this for two reasons. One I can't stand to bullshit myself, when I'm slacking I need to admit it, and two, everyone's accountable for their own action....or inaction as is more relevant to my circumstance. So here's me trying to make it known that I need to work harder, now I've got to prove it. Now this hasn't been a sudden and shattering realization, quite the opposite but here's kinda what drove the nail in. 

  

   This handsome four bedroom Tudor home situated in one of Leicesters more quaint looking areas is a great opportunity for both those looking to expand their real estate or make a leap into the market. I don't actually think it's a home, probably something more important I don't actually care. It's just through the archway that we had to draw and a bit past the church. A tonne of people chose to model this particular set of bricks and mortar and most were more successful than mine. 

 To the point though, I started modelling this building a week or so before the hand in date. Started to texture it the day before and had to pull an all nighter to get the texturing and renders finished. It's a passable job, hell, I hope it is. Couldn't figure out tiling textures; might have been nice to add some normal maps; got generally lazy finishing the textures and a lot more details could have been added. Now we had something like four weeks to complete this project and even with my limited skills if I'd used my time properly I could have made something I was actually proud of. Plus I'm not as young as I once was and as fun as the all nighter was on account of some excellent company. Well, by morning I felt sick as a Cleethorpes donkey. 

A Maid as Red as Autumn

   Ain't had any kind of a relevant update recently so I reckon it's about time I hop to it. So how far in are we now? Month and half; nearly two? Either way its flew past like it's got a rocket pack and a devil may care attitude towards any chickens that might be crossing the road.    Since I don't wanna fill about three pages full of everything I've done since my last entry, cause lets face it I'm pretty dull and no one really cares I'm gonna compile a highlights reel, mention a few things I've recently learnt and anything cool what gone on that's course related.

   I drew an arch, drew other stuff too but the arch you can look at. Yea, not much else to say about this.

   We went to the park. Now I ain't seen any proper green open spaces since I got here so I was naturally pretty chuffed when I found out it weren't so much a park as a backdrop for the lord of the rings. There were deer man. Drew some trees, found a little church, went to the pub, s'all good.

A piece of advice: Don't go for a paddle in those streams in the middle of autumn, you ain't  impressing anyone and your feet will just get cold.

   Life drawing I enjoy, allus have done since we got to do it in the second year of my BTEC. I mean we can't listen to music here but that's probably for the best, keeps me from dancing round my easel and drawing the model from twenty different angles. Starting my drawings now with the flat of my pencil as oppose to the point, feel as though it helps me flesh stuff in a tad better at an earlier stage. Have been told to stop blacking in my outlines though, hard habit to break. Understand why I have to stop though.


The museum trip was a fun one, tonnes of dinosaurs bones, skelletons and junk. Definately prefer drawing those to buildings archways and bridges. Think it all comes down to natural form as opposed to architectural, just prefer drawing flowing lines.

   Most importantly though and completely unrelated to the course, I had a friend from home visit yesterday. She didn't actually bully me much which was a surprise, though she did react exactly how I expected her to in regards to everyone she met. Really need to get home to see everyone at some point...and people said I wouldn't miss Rotherham. I wanna sit outside the Rhino and watch drunks argue with each other.
   Anyway that's everything whats happened with me. Ey up, ah's it goin? Ah's 't Kids n't Missus? Pleasantries etc.

Til next time, tek care o'thissen.