Week 7 Results: 50/100 Faces

You know that feeling when you finally finished a 600 rep workout you thought would take half an hour but took you two? And even after the half hour mark when you went "WTF, I thought I was so badass?" you still decided to keep going? And then when you're done you feel like you need to throw up and you have no idea why you would be stupid enough to put yourself through something like that? That is...until you look in a mirror and realize how effing hot you're getting. Well that was basically how yesterday felt when I sat my ass down and gave myself 3 hours to do 18 drawings....ha. ha. ha. 

I ended up having to use a timer to keep myself from getting too detailed and stuff, so most of these are more or less 15 minute sketches. And here you're thinking...but wait, that should only add up to 4.5 hours, don't be such a wuss! The drawings themselves probably took about 5...consecutive hours. But the research in between killed off another 3 or so. Now after having been so thorough on what I'm gonna call the "Middle Eastern" appearance (I know not all the countries I picked fall under the official Middle East blanket) I feel like I cheated Asia a bit in my last post and rushed through it a bit..Hm.

Something I'm starting to realize though...I could pretty much dedicate 100 drawings to each ethnicity and still have no idea what I'm doing. This "classifying business is hard. I tried looking at multiple faces from the same country and half combining the most prominent features with a photo of a face...stalking people's flickr accounts turns out to be quite handy, hint hint. This was actually my first time drawing faces from the Middle East, and while I feel more confident in creating this appearance now, I still can't point out too many distinctive features without finding a face to completely contradict everything I write here. So here goes (I actually took notes as I drew this time so I'm not just B.S.ing from the top of my head)

• The almond shaped eye seems to be a key feature of most of the faces I drew. Some countries showed a very prominent lower lid (if you have no idea what I'm talking about look at a Chinese eye and an Indian eye for example) which kind of deepened with age, giving a "sunken" appearance to the eyes
• The nasal base varies in thickness either being pointy (look at faces from India) to wide (Israel) or even having a "double chin" sort of appearance (yes my vocab is very rich, bite me). One definitely prominent thing was that the nasal base drooped lower than the nostrils for all countries. (score!)
• Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, And Saudi Arabia had fairly chiseled and square faces, wheras going east, west, or south seemed to show more elongated faces, and softer features (eg. full cheeks)
• A lot more wrinkles in older age than my previous studies
• the foreheads don't tend to bulge out or recede, but stay pretty flay and low for most countries. Also the brow ridge isn't as prominent, such as South-East Asia or certain African types
• The eyebrows tend to sit pretty horizontal, casting a darker shadow over the eyes
• lips can range from plump to narrow (seems to be in the same range as the sharp/soft features)
• Eyelashes are super long and dark (who needs makeup?) which pair gorgeously with the dark eyes
• Egypt seems to have cases of lighter hair and eye colour but most other countries stay a dark brown to black.

Now wasn't that just informative and thorough? And you thought I was wasting time devouring my christmas chocolate (done), watching movies (did that too) and doing not a lot of productive things (wrong). And speaking of good movies, check out that new one "The Best Exotic Marygold Hotel". A really great feel good movie, with some unusual situations, and lovey-dovey shit that makes me get all "shojo-ey". It's nice knowing love can happen whenever, wherever, and you don't have to look like Hiedi Klum to be happy. : D

Anywho...I hard rumours of actual snow outside, and realized I haven't stepped out since last...not sure when, so I'm gonna go clear my head and move on to the next part of this challenge!! 

Week 7 Results: 32/100 Faces

So...it's been like a month since I had any activity here...oops. I swear I have been arting my butt off, just  in a more portfolio-oriented way. Then while trying to think of what people would like to see in my portfolio I realized how dumb it would be to create projects just "for the portfolio". Sure it's important to include elements they're looking for in my work but I figured it would be as dumb of an idea as submitting a bunch of animal drawing from random photos or one minute gestures from life drawing....see where I'm going with this? If I can tell if an art piece is "forced" (drawn for the sake of crowd pleasing) then I'm pretty sure the profs at all the schools I'm applying to will be. And considering the calibre of work I see from the students I stalk diligently follow, everything is both amazing and clearly inspired. 

So yeah, I'm back to this. Since this was a project I was having a ton of fun with to begin with, learning a lot from it, and will probably have a few pieces to add to the portfolio as a result along with my personal projects, I say we keep on going! 

But mostly I've been slacking due to workload going up and me doing a bit of overtime for the last month. It's all over now, so I no longer have any more excuses!

So let's talk politically correctly about this weeks results. As you can see, I was focusing on East and Southeast Asian faces...and I did most of these today actually. Could've kept going once I started googling certain high cheekboned, pronounced jawline personalities..ahem. But I stopped myself! Ironically it was interesting trying to find a very "natural" look to people, and I'm sure this will apply to any country I try to find. While the child faces had a very distinct appearance, many adult photos ended up being overly photoshopped or even perhaps involved plastic surgery. SO....I resorted to using weird keywords such as "farmer" or "traditional" to find ACTUAL photos of people, you know, wrinkles and all. Not that asia seems to know what wrinkles are.....> : <

So my summary of "distinct" features for this round? Here goes:

Basically no country looks like any other country. 

Mhm. Sad. And obvious, I know. And here you thought I would help you.

But! I did notice a few little tidbits I'd like to point out. If I'm wrong or offensive, shoot me.

The more south you go (eg: vietnam, thailand):

• the larger and rounder the eyes. 
• rounder cheeks in women and children
• fuller lips
• broader nose and flatter bridge of nose

The more north you go (eg: mid-north china, korea)

• babies still have very round eyes but as they grow up they get narrower (200 students in china worth of proof for me is enough)
• more pronounced bridge of nose
• bottom lip can both be a single curve or two "pouches"
• philtrum to upper lip connection is very pronounced
• sharp, high cheek bones

Colder climates (eg: mongolia, tibet)

• square jawline
• soft curves to the face, particularly the cheeks
• eyes tend to almost slant upwards at the ends
• hair color tends to be lighter and occasionally have some wave to it

So...that's my 2 cents on the whole bit. Another thing I've noticed more are more...people are just so damn beautiful. Like, every single person, whether it be a classical kind of beauty or a really unique, interesting look. 

And lastly......Merry Christmas!

Week 3 Results: 15/100 Faces

Well this is rather embarassing....I started off super obsessed with this challenge 

but all these other projects seemed to get the better of me and I ended up taking

a bit of a break to present you with..not a lot of work. 

I was focusing strictly on black ethnicities, and found very little

guidance from my dear old internet. I found a nifty body type guide with a few helpful

hints, but overall, I ended up gathering photos after photos until I started to notice similarities from face to face. OF COURSE this is complete generalization, no one person looks like another, no country looks like another but overall I did manage to find a few "key" points to make these faces look like they were meant to and not like some whities who spend their days at the tanning salon..

You can enlarge this picture by right clicking it if you can't see all the notes. Hopefully these will help someone out there!

An Awesome Guide To Drawing Different Human Body Types

This artist has some awesome resources for drawing features and whatnot. Check out their whole profile!

Challenge 2: Ethnicity

I was initially considering making this one the facial expression challenge, and started working on that...but! I wanted to challenge myself so I decided to hit up different ethnic groups, only to realize I'm stuck in that drab "whitizing" everyone zone since I've never taken the time to properly study features of different cultures, save China. So...before we get to that, let's rewind and take the time to properly draw some major ethnic groups, then separate those further. Here's how I'm gonna go about this:

Here are the six major varying ethnicities, by that I mean heavily varying facial features between the six. Your first 50 or so drawings should consist of these, spread out between different age groups (aim for kids, adults, elderly)
Asian
Black
Middle Eastern
Caucasian
Latino
Aboriginal

For the next 30, pick certain variations of the major groups and try more drawings of them. Eg: Central Asians vs. Southeastern Asians...whatever you want. (My god its hard not to somehow sound offensive in this entry..)

These 80 drawings can be anywhere from line art to rendered shit like the one I did above, up to you.

And....for the last 20, go friggin crazy! Cartoonize (try not to get offensive here) in any styles and mediums you like. And here's the hard part. Do it from memory, not references.

Ready, set go!

Week 3 Results: Faux Hands 96/100

So....I'm gonna owe you 4 hands, but if I have to draw one more during the next month I'm going to put a bullet through my head. I was going hysterical during these last two studies, particularly the muscle ones. I don't mind anatomy at all, I love drawing large muscle groups and stuff but this. was. just. so. fucking. tedious. But it's done! Not exactly that ideal one week as I had planned but I got through it all and learned a hell of a lot. Now I'm going to stop ignoring hands at life drawing (once I get a conté stick longer than my pinkie nail...). I used two main resources for these studies:

Anatomy for Artists - Eugene Wolff

Drawing Dynamic Hands - Burne Hogarth

Week 2 Results: Hands 80/100

So...did my best, but still didn't quite finish. Partly due to getting carried away by these. I started the week with the challenge of 10 different styles:

I used plenty of references, many from good old childhood cartoons like Hey Arnold and Fairly Odd Parents, as well as a few other blogs and interesting pages I found. Links below.


Disney Styled Hands

Really Cool Penwork on this one

A neat style from an artist on DA

More wrinkly penwork

Love the design in these

After these I decided to work (finally) on the part of the challenge I was looking forward to the least...the forms. And ironically...they turned out to be my favourite ones to work on. Me. Who never uses a single form in my life drawings actually enjoyed structure and stuff. Mostly because I got fed up with following examples from books and decided to just break down the hands based on how I saw them. And here's what happened:

Kinda happy with the playfulness and motion of these. Was doing my best to keep them from getting all rigid like forms usually get when I work on them. And in fact I had so much fun doing this I decided to do my whole animated 10 frame hand rotation in the same fashion. Check it out!

                                         

This was waaay harder to do than I thought. So many things to keep in mind! Perspective, form, picturing how the hell one thing rotates and its affect on other parts. It's far from perfect, but I think it's a decent start.

A few last notes, here is an incredible blog site dedicated to resources and amazing tips for drawing:

FYeah Art Tips

And lastly and importantly: If you want to do the challenge, even if just a bit, I would love to link your blog/site/scan or whatever to this page, so message or comment me or whatever, I'll make sure to include them in my work!

Week 1 Results: Hands 50/100

These are in no particular order, I just felt like doing the colored ones this week.

1) Paint Sketches - Used my fave combo, only yellow, blue and red. Tried to exaggerate

shapes at this point as I had already drawn many hands and felt comfy trying

out something new. (Water colors and graphite pencil)

2) 1 Minute Gestures - Quick penwork to get the general jist of things. Should

probably do ten of these daily... (Brush Pens)

3) Markers and Pencil Crayons - I think these are my favourite. Had fun

trying out a new style, something I might implement in future projects.

(Copic Markers as base and pencil crayons)

4) Realistic - Most boring of the bunch. I probably did at least 20 of these. Second hand is my fave. 

A friend posed for it. Thanks Marco! (Oil Based Pencil)

5) Digital - Considering how much I detest painting in PS, I'm pretty happy

with how these turned out and with the fact that none too more

than 20 minutes to do. The last 4 in the top row and the second in the bottom

row are my faves. (Adobe Photoshop CS)

Here are some of the references I used:

Books

Drawing the Head and the Hands - Andrew Loomis

Drawing Dynamic Hands - Burne Hogarth

These two artists have made many fantastic books (which you can

download as pdfs by doing a quick google search buy on some website) 

Their styles are drastically different but they break things down to the 

smallest details. 

Blogs

Hugo de Faucompret - Gobelins 2012 Portfolio (Accepted)

An amazing artist who got into the school this year. Referenced

his watercolor sketches. Will reference a ton more I'm sure.

Pierre Vanderweed - The Mey Me Monster

An animation student at Sheridan. His improvement

over his time at school is ridiculous. Check out his

early work to compare. Referenced his hand sketches 

for style inspiration. 

That's it for today. Good luck on your's little lambs!

Week 1: Hands x100

So here's the first Challenge! This one should take two weeks and you can split it up anyway you like.

Draw 100 hands
1) 1-2 Minute Gestures (use your own hand, a mirror, a patient friend or willing strangers) x 10
2) The hand broken down into forms (this one you definitely need to reference some books for) x 10
3) Skeletal Views x 10 (can be partial drawings of the hand)
4) Muscles of the Hand x 10 (can be partial drawings of hand)
5) Realistic x 10
6) Markers or Pencil Crayons (feel free to experiment with styles) x 10
7) Paint Sketches x 10
8) Same hand pose drawn in 10 different styles (go pull out those fave artblogs of yours)
9) Digital
10) 10 frame hand rotation (put it together in that toonboom you pirated years ago)

Welcome to the Challenge!

Hey there,

So what's all this about? Being a bit of a ranter, I'll try to keep things brief and explain. I'm an ex-art student hoping to once again enter the academic world of art, specifically animation, speciafically Gobelins, which boasts to have the world's most difficult entrance exam. (I don't doubt that for one second from seeing the kind of people who get in, here's a link to their 2nd and 3rd year films: Click Me!). So in preparation for my entrance exams, portfolio and for myself, I've decided to create this 20 week challenge, which I hope some of you will join me in!

Here's how it works. I've picked 10 different topics, all of which should help bring your art to the next level, should you chose to fully dedicate yourself to this. Each topic will take up two weeks (I work full time, otherwise I'd knock this down to one topic per week) and you should be able to create anywhere from 25-100 drawings in that time. It's not easy.

I'll be posting all the references I used such as art books, blogs and whatnot to give you an idea of where to get ideas and learn from. (cause contrary to popular belief you don't just sit down with a pencil drawing the same thing and expect it to get better, you need to see your mistakes first) Also all my results will be up so I can make sure to stay on track. (yeah this sounds curiously like a diet plan...)

So I hope to see others join me in this expedition! Take your time, if you need more than 2 weeks per topic, don't sweat it, the important thing is to finish each topic before moving on. It'll help you in the future I promise.

Now go whip your artsy butt into some sexy shape!

Cheers,
Juli