Leonie’s small blog island says hullooo! (: Not sure why I have such a silly opening line but then again, the majority of my content is serious. Or is it? You tell me, kind blog reader (as at least one of you exist).
Let’s go! Journal Time!
7th Wed
Research Topic: had more things clarified thanks to Heath and will have to plan for this asap!
As PV Team leader: there was a lot of lectures going on but I managed to speak to everyone in the team to some degree but spoke at length with Tony about his animation progress, Tony and Tonko to see where we could adjust the Gantt chart accordingly, I clarified and moved the milestone a week forwards, updated Tonko and Will about the new colours from last week’s blog update while Victor worked on the rig. I didn’t get anything else I planned done but I half expected it and the other half of me was surprised because I didn’t feel like I was “leading” anyone as all my team members do their roles well and sorted themselves out.
PV Textures: after some confusion, made a tilable texture for the room’s walls for Tonko
Figure drawing adventuuures:
Writhing in agony.
Scribbles of people in different positions
“No, not my face!”
PV thumbnails for the paintings:
The Disproportionate Secretary
Thumbnails for the Tentacle Poker painting and the other painting. Sketches for the Employee of the Month Portraits too.
More assorted Employees.
Self portrait for the day:
I guess the fact that I draw my own face allows me to not care if I draw someone else “unappealing”. Gave myself horrible surgery on paper here but it sort of looks like me. Hullo dead pan face, we meet again.
8th Thurs
Train adventuuures
Train passengers that stayed still and preoccupied.
Train passengers that did not.
Figure drawing adventuuures:
More bodies doing more things!
Sadness ball, kneeling to reflect and writhing on the floor. Choose your path.
PV Poker painting in progress: (many thanks to Victor lending me his tablet again and in advance for subsequent in-class paintings)
WIP Painting: My art study/parody of the classic Dogs playing Poker painting series. I started and am up to this point today. This is going to fill up one of the picture frames for the environment. Gambling, drinking and there was smoking cigars in there too but I’ve omitted that because they got cards to hold already…I don’t know how they’re going to hold cigars as well. Anyway, three potentially devastating, addictive and unhealthy activities all the same.
PV progress: everyone was simply busy working things out for their own roles today!
Self portrait for the day:
Today’s main surgery feature involves: making my eyes too big, lips too pouty and nose too mousey.
9th Fri
Figure drawing adventuuures:
Poses here
Get your poses here
Cloth seems to make things more flowy.
PV progress as team leader: a lot of casualties today within our team but I got minutes down along the way and Victor and I updated everyone with feedback. We reviewed what we need to focus on getting done by next week but we all know how it is. It’s crunch time!!
PV Poker painting in progress: got feedback from Heath and the lamp seems to take too much attention. Arguably the original that I was basing my study on was similar in lighting, but I shall see what I can do here because it’s my parody painting after all. I didn’t simply photocopy every element across as I added some things, took some things out, rearranged positions and simplified some elements; still the original’s overall composition is there!
WIP Painting: Not complete still as the tentacles, suckers, some cards, spectacles, touching up with lighting and other things are still left to be done. I got ordered to do the spectacles and to add a cigar somehow…so there it is. It’s been a while since I’ve done a fully illustrated painting.
10th Sat
Figure drawing adventuuures:
What happens when you render too much and run out of time.
Ballet Prince and Princess here?
Self portrait for the day:
Apparently I’m an evil vampire.
Changed the blog post colours so that images don’t completely dominate the text. I also unpublished my facebook art page to clear things out. Looking back; I am so embarrassed at my old work and musings! Ah well, we live and learn and I’ll probably be embarrassed by the work I do today in the future. Worry not. Though now I don’t know what to do with this art page right now but I know that eventually I will have to utilise it if I’m ever going to actually self promote myself as a freelancer one day.
PV Poker Painting finished at last! Funny how the colours turned out well; the original dogs were all shades of brown while the tentacles are reddish brown. Yes I’ve put two signatures in the one painting for online showing purposes as the one in the background painting isn’t visible (as that is for in film purposes). You’d think I’d be tired of drawing tentacles by now; admittedly I am slightly. But I don’t mind it that much and I will do what I must.
PV Tentacle Poker Painting: finally done. A comical art study. Which tentacle’s winning? I have no clue; I haven’t played poker before. [I got featured here by Art in Play!]
11th Sun
Figure drawing adventuuures and PV thumbs:
Dancing figures
Showing their poses
Poof! There is nothing there.
I know…her head is a tad small.
Figures and thumbnails
I didn’t draw all of the drapery as I wanted to focus on her instead
Self portrait for the day:
No wait, I’m now an oogly eyed, distorted alien.
PV Employee of the Month portraits: Sketched them all out and blocked them all in.
12th Mon
PV Reference Research
Self portraits for the day: did more than one to figure out my approach here
Some annoying portraits along with some 30 second poses
Something possessed me to scribble this mundane part of my life. Apologies for the photo quality.
If her voice was made up of images, then it will be over the top love hearts, flowers and friendly rainbows streaming out of the phone. It almost took over the typing, booping and background noises I heard. I couldn’t tell if she was overly friendly or trying to be seductive.
She interrupted my lunchtime.
Figure drawing adventuuures:
She has cool clothes going on
Such an uncomfortable pose
Research Project: Figuring the details out stage andonly managed to research the tip of the iceberg. Need to step back to square one and approach it another way.
Revamped my Facebook Art Page: “Like” it if you want a condensed version of some of my art. Appreciate your kind support if you do! (: It will mostly be made up of my more finished art and a few sketches. As a result, it probably won’t be updated as frequently as my art blog here but it does allow more people to see more of my art through facebook. My Personal Facebook Page will remain as my regular facebook blog feed however! And stressing that I don’t expect you to follow both facebook places!
13th Tues
Self portrait for the day:
…so many things calling out to me to do. I’ve been neglecting games for so long, and will continue to do so for a long while.
I have a pig nose now.
Figure drawing adventuuures
Assorted facial features and a pose
So many ladies here; not as much male references.
PV Employee of the Month portraits and Painting number 2 continued: Nothing to show yet as I’m finishing the blocking in stage.
Note for the day: if you get scoffed at when you tell people what you want to do as a career, politely and respectfully keep your distance where possible and keep doing what you want. Think of that famous Dr Seuss quote:
“Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss
Reflection for the Week
Been feeling stumped lately at my own progress. However, I reminded myself that I’ll keep feeling like a newbie learner for many years to come, and that is okay. There will always be times where I’m hitting walls and falling over my own mistakes and as a result I would keep feeling like I’m stuck in a bottomless pit on my own; this is part of the process of learning. This is wonderful because I’ll keep striving to improve, learn and try things out through my own projects. You just need to keep picking yourself up and climb out of the pit somehow.
For a while now, I’ve been wondering what part of what I do really drives me. Time and time again the words “visual storytelling” come back even stronger. If there is a story I’m immersed into, then everything else will fall into place (aside from my developing skill and technique) including character design, environment design, colours…essentially visual development or concept art. Does this explain why both student film projects I’m doing this year were originally stories pitched by me?
Increasingly, I’m finding that creating a design out of nowhere without some form of background story and purpose doesn’t really get me too far. I realise now why I can’t constantly doodle from imagination and fill up millions of sketchbooks I see other artists do. Mostly it’s because 1) I have limited visual vocabulary and experiences, 2) I work better when I have a bigger picture purpose in mind whether it be for learning or research and 3) drawing from imagination is still an area I need to keep working on. I am usually very process driven and prefer taking the long way there, but I do sometimes draw out of spontaneity and completely from the top of my mind.
Enough from me reflecting on how I work; there’s 4 months left till I graduate and the terrifying countdown has begun. Will I be employed some time after graduation? Will I sort out my portfolio? Will I be able to juggle with all the things I’ve wanted to learn in my lifetime? Only time will tell.
Not to mention I’ve got a research project to get going!
Anyway again, my Facebook Art Pageif you simply want a mini image gallery version of this blog. Thanks for the kind support so far to those who already have liked that page! Thanks especially to those of you who keep up to date with this central blog of mine however! (:
Thanks for looking, especially those who have been reading! (: Until next time, Leonie (UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)
