For this week of my VAM 30 special project I decided to take a different approach to how I'd start this page, instead of focusing on the background I've been focused on detailing the characters. The background isn't as important in this illustration as it is in the previous ones, what's important here is giving an idea of what sort of opponents the protagonist, Ryan, is up against since the scene was already established in the previous illustration. On Monday I started off by tracing all of the line-art and added the base colours to the man on the right. On Tuesday I fixed the belt and hair of the man on the right then coloured it in afterwards. I added a skin colour I thought fit well however looking back on it I might have to change it, other then that I started to experiment with what kind of shading would be appropriate for a character of his size. On Wednesday I began to start on the main character's cloak then did some touch ups to the man on the right, removing most unneeded lines.
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This past week that I've been working on the second page of my illustrated novel has proved be very successful, progress has been great and I haven't ran into any problems. On Monday I had long awaited over the weekend to fix the dreaded staircase that bothered me so much from last week and I did just that, with them fixed they now actually look in proper perspective. I achieved this by drawing the lines pointed more upward as the problem with the last set of stairs is they followed the same perspective lines as everything else, this made it look as if they were a floor made of toy triangles. With that out of the way, my primary goal was to finish the line-art and move onto colouring in the illustration. By Tuesday I had finished most of the line-art, the most noticeable change being the railing on top now looking to actually be in perspective which I did using the perspective grid tool in adobe illustrator. On Wednesday I created a basic colour scheme and began to filling everything in, the pallet is outside the art-board and consists of dull looking to enforce the setting of the story. I continued to colour everything in on Thursday, it hasn't proven to be difficult but just time consuming due to how tedious it is to group each shape. This concludes my forth week of my project, if the next page I start on Monday isn't completed on time I plan to adjust my work schedule so these past 2 pages can be finished. After all, completing what pages I have already takes priority over starting more I won't have time to finish, I'm hoping if it comes down to it I'll only need another 4 days on each page at most. As of this week I've officially began progress on the second page of my novel, although, due to how short this week was I've gotten done less then I initially wanted. Regarding the first page, it still hasn't been completed however I have recently purchased a new laptop so I have no doubt it'll be finished soon. The first page of the slideshow belong is my base sketch of the page, if not obvious already obvious it's perspective is pretty messed up so my main priority this last week has been to fix that. Tuesday, the first day I began working on this page, may seem unproductive however this isn't the case as I was experimenting to see if I could fix the perspective without changing a large amount of the original sketch, sadly this proved unsuccessful. On Wednesday I approached to solve the perspective problem by creating two vanishing points to draw all my horizontal lines from resulting is a very noticeable quality increase. Since this method turned out so well I continued to add more detail the next day by redefining the bar area and adding a decent looking railing. I caught a cold at the end of Thursday which meant I couldn't attend school on Friday but despite this I've been planning what to do with this page next. The first thing I plan to work on this upcoming week is the stairs, I've only recently realized that they actually don't give the illusion of going upwards but rather sit on the floor. There is no easy way of fixing this other then to just delete all of it and start from scratch but it's a necessary sacrifice of time. After that I have to finish the railings on top of the page then draw out the poker table which shouldn't be too difficult. Finally I'll need to draw out of the two basic figures sitting at the bar, I don't plan to put too much detail into them since they aren't significant characters so they shouldn't prove to be too troublesome. These first two pages have taken longer then expected and as a result I may have to end up adjusting my schedule to allow for a catch up period, this will only be if the upcoming pages end up taking just as long or longer. This week has been especially productive! Since I already had most of the background completed in the image by Monday I decided for the rest if this week I should focus on the character himself since he was looking a little dull to say the least. In terms of shading and effects Adobe Illustrator doesn't offer much so on Tuesday I took the line-art for the character into Adobe Photoshop and have completely redrawn him in more detail. The following days I began to experiment with various shading techniques and came up with something that is surprisingly consistent. By creating a new layer with the same colour of what needs to be shaded you can go into the blending options menu and add a colour overlay of black at about 30% for a decent shading colour! You can see just how effective this technique best by looking at how the hair is shaded on Thursday, the last slide. Aside from this, I also began to mess around with a variety of different eye designs since they are one of the most important features for when illustrating a character and I personally have next to no experience with drawing eyes in digital programs. Eventually by Thursday I came up with a technique to draw eyes that I'm happy with and will be using to draw the eyes of the character, Ryan. Since my time schedule is one page per two weeks I must move onto the next page, however, I will continue to work on this page in my spare time until I finish it. Before school ended last year I made a proposal to all of the academy teachers at my school for a new independent project that I could do for an entire semester this year. It was none other then my graphic novel Soul Loopers, I started it last school year and after developing a greater desire to continue it I thought why not continue it this year? I wanted to be sure I had plenty of preparations done before I begin working on the novel this school year, I completely revised the entire story, plot, characters, and point of view of the story. Although this was a long process, in 2 weeks I was able to almost finish the first chapter's text and sketch out 4 pages worth of illustrations! I did this because because now I can invest all my time into the digital art aspect of the project and not have to worry about anything else. I started the first page illustration on Monday, I decided to use adobe illustrator since having vectors for the buildings in the background would be beneficial in terms of quality. The first day was very successful, I managed to complete the main character's line-art and almost finish the line-art for the buildings. This also provided to be a great day in getting myself re-introduced to adobe illustrator as I hadn't used the problem since last school year a couple months ago. Tuesday proved to be just as successful as Monday, I finished the line-art for the buildings and began to add the more finer details onto them. For the protagonist part of the sketch I filled in some of the base colours and made some minor touch ups to his base line-art. Moving onto Wednesday, I imported my concept character from Gacha Life to use as a colour palette for the protagonist in progress as well to keep track of the finer details on the character's design. I then began to resume my work on the buildings, this time around I added some more details to the wall of each building to the right to show just how old and damaged the buildings had become in the story. Next I began to mess around with colours I could use for the buildings and filled in a few spots to see how they'd look, these wouldn't be the final colours as later on I'd change them. On Thursday I removed the background sketch as it was no longer necessary, I continued where I left off on Wednesday and messed around with more colours for the right buildings, of which, on Friday would later be modified. Afterwards I filled in most of the base colours for the protagonist and fixed some of the flawed line-art. On my final day of work, Friday, I managed to complete quite a lot. Starting off, I changed the colours on the right upfront most building again and this time they look even better, along with that I applied the base colour to the road, alleyways, and sidewalk! I made some minor adjustments to the details in the walls then proceeded to add the base line-art for the sun and finish the base colours on the protagonist's clothing. Overall, this has been a super productive week and I've learned a great deal of new, useful tips and trick to help me as I progress further with my illustrations. I'm excited and looking forward to finishing this illustration next week where I'll update you next. Regarding last semester, I have grown a fair amount as an artist due to the new art medias I've learned about, art medias I've improved on, and the raise in my confidence. I've learned how to print make and have improved on my acrylic paintings, oil pastel, and chalk drawing skills. Through my most recent presentation about Gerhard Richter I've reached a new stepping stone in VAM, with the courage it took me to step up in front of all those people I've definitely raised my confidence. Although the presentation itself wasn't part of the first semester I learned a great deal on how to create a successful presentation through the time I spent gather information. Every project this last semester has been a stepping stone for me but out of everything that presentation project was definitely the most influential and inspiring projects for me.
Another project that I found quite important was the print making project, it put to light possibilities for new art styles I could explore in the future for my scenery art. As like the collage and assemblage projects, it was nice to explore and try something I wasn't experienced in, all three created new perspectives for me and has further expanded my imagination for future projects. From these projects, I've learned to draw other things than just scenery and go outside my comfort zone so I may hone my other art skills. As for my smart goal today, February 22, I can't really say I was successful or unsuccessful, yes I've improved my schedule to a much better point but I have yet to fully achieve what I want to, In other words I've made significant progress. I believe the reason why I've had such a problem with improving my schedule is because I've grown up as a procrastinator, someone who doesn't normally do work until absolutely needed because I'm so easily distracted. With a lifestyle like this that I've been used to for such an extended period of time it's hard to put down, it's no different then an addiction because when you think about it, it actually kind of is one. Dealing with this has been a problem for quite some time and I really hope to rid myself of this problem in the upcoming months, through this semester I have found new ways to deal with it. Usually, staying after school or coming to school early helps to do work helps because at home I feel too comfortable and there are too many distractions around my work spaces. With all of the scenery art I've done last semester I want to start focusing more on human anatomy this semester, it's something I've wanted to improve on for awhile now but never really got to it. With my recent acquiring of adobe cloud I now have access to digital drawing applications outside of school which is all the more motivation to get started. Lastly, I wanted to improve on this since I'm already pretty decent at scenery artwork and adding a figure to focus on in those artworks can potentially improve them drastically. My goal for improvements by the end of this semester is that I am fully able to create a decent looking figure without any help or guidance from tracing or reference, thumbnail drawings only. Last night was our school's "Celebration Of Learning" event where the whole school and all it's teachers got to showcase a wack load of projects. For VAM we all got a tri-fold (which is essentially a huge piece of cardboard folded into three door sized pieces) and choose some of our best pieces of art to showcase it on. For me the art show went pretty well, everything was well organised, I got lots of feedback on my art, and I enjoyed talking to the people passing through about my art. As a group or VAM a whole I think it went very smoothly, all the art and sculptures looked beautiful and unified, everything was set up very well and was a sight to behold. Beforehand I didn't thought it was going to go this well but it exceeded my expectations and far passed them. I can't say I'd really change anything because everything already looked awesome.
Recently I finished my acrylic painting which I've spend about a week and a half working on. It is based on a college I did a few weeks ago, it isn't a remake of it because I cropped out just the portion I wanted to do and put a filter from Prisma on it. For this painting I wanted to get better with blending using acrylic so I chose a filter that fitted that very well. The colours used neighbour each other so they fit well together, the painting is fully constructed with only triangles and has a very modern feel to it, overall I'm quite happy with how it turned out.
SMART goals were something we as an academy elaborated on last year, and while I was successful with my goals others were not as they either were unreasonable or simply forgot about them. We all need a goal to set our selves upon, if you're driving with no destination then what's the point of driving? Those are some of the reasons why we are creating new SMART goals, it is important to have a drive and have our clutch in gear when working or we'll burn ourselves out because our focus, our clutch pedal, hasn't been pushed to it's limit. SMART goals stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bond so my goal must have all five qualities added.
So starting off, my academic smart goal is to keep track of my time better. A large portion of my problems came from my lack of interest of creating a schedule for myself, so I plan on fixing that for myself this year by creating a weekly schedule dependent on what assignments I have due. I'll be keeping track of my progress through different reminders set up on my phone. For my personal SMART goal, I plan to get leaner by going to the gym more often and to become 150 pounds (mostly muscle) by the end of this school year. I plan to achieve this by setting a time to wake up, probably around 4:30 AM, This will be measurable as I will take progress photos every month and is very attainable if I put my mind to it. It's relevant and worthwhile as it improves my mental and physical states. It's been a long year but it's sadly come to an end, school is finally over and I have the summer to do whatever I please. It's been a very rewarding year compared to others, VAM (Visual Arts and Media Academy) has affected my life dramatically. I've gotten much higher grade then I'm used to because of how relaxed it is in the morning I'm able to have a consistent level of focus and determination throughout the day. What I really loved about VAM is how you're in charge of the way you want to do your project and the teacher support 100% of the way. I've grown exponentially as an artist, because of VAM I'm now much more advanced in digital art, photography, laws of design principles, etc.
Throughout the year I grew to be a more and more open person and learned to ask for help when I needed it instead of shutting down like I used to. Although I wish I we would've had another person project, I'm also glad we got to learn new things that helped us out of our comfort zone using art styles we've never done or done very little of before. It's fantastic that the whole class is filled with artists so if you ever need feedback or constructive criticism you can ask anyone; VAM was definitely the highlight of my year. |
AuthorJonathan Heidbuurt Archives
December 2019
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