Horse of a Different Color

Another experimental piece, line work, marker and watercolor, together at last! This turned out to be quite a collage of mediums but I wanted to see how my Prismacolor markers would look agains a painted backdrop. I thought that acrylic might be a bit too much for the eyes to take in so I went with watercolor. Unfortunately I only had water color pencils, not my favorite way to use the medium. Horses are one of the most difficult animals to draw, and as I said in an earlier post, understand anatomy first or at least use some kind of reference photo. This piece however really just started out as a sketch, even the paper that was used was from a scrap pile, maybe 2 ft by 6 in. I'm not exactly sure, the piece belongs to someone else now. The color and design for the horses was partially inspired by the Beatles Yellow Submarine movie.

Nudes

To anyone hoping to improve their technique, I like to suggest figure drawing. By studying anatomy through drawing, you can start to render your own figures without the use of a model. I like to think that you cannot draw a cartoon cat without first understanding how it's body works, then you can go back and make exaggerations to it's form. If I'm beginning a figure drawing session, I like to start off with quick 1-2 min poses, then work my way up to half hour poses. These drawings were done during  much longer sit downs. If you don't have a live model there are a lot of great websites that offer class-like sessions.

Home Made Projection Box

And now for something completely different...

It can be fun to work with large scale projects, but when trying to create something based off a photograph, proportions can become a little wonky and can affect the overall outcome. I ran into this problem during college and living in a small dorm, I didn't have a lot of options as to how I could fix this. At home I would have used my Dad's projector but of course I didn't have anything like that, so I decided I would make my own. All I used was a box, a lamp, a sandwich bag, and black paint. I looked at a few tutorials online but I made most of this up. Basically light goes through one side of the box, and shines against the bag with my drawing on it, then ta da! projection success! 

The projector box, that window is where the drawing was placed

You can see I used a special lamp that went through a much smaller opening

The final projection. Of course not my best work in terms of drawing but I just needed a guide. later I set this up over the large paper I was working on and made a quick sketch. I was sad to take it apart at the end of the semester but it was so easy to make, I know I'll definitely be making one of these again.

Hand Spectrum

Random body part floating in space, check. Said body part placed in very center of canvas, check. Every single color under the sun being used, check. This painting is just a mesh of cliches that are usually frowned upon in art class, but I just went with it anyway. This was made during my junior year of high school, when I first started getting used to handling acrylic. This painting was actually a remake of something I had made at least a year before, which was probably only 9xll'' or something around that size.