Watercolour and Gouache - The Class

This semester, one of my three studios is Watercolour and Gouache, taught by the unforgettable Lenny Long (I had Lenny for sophomore drawing as well). It's a primarily technical class from the looks of it - which is good because I have pretty poor technical skills in both of these mediums. Actually, I have basically zero experience with normal watercolours. I've only worked with watercolour gouache / opaque watercolours in the past, and I'm finding that the real stuff is a completely different animal. So this will definitely be a big challenge for me to develop my painting skills in a direction I haven't really explored yet.

The first week was gouache only, and we did several 40-minute still lifes in class, with the requirement that they must contain an (imagined) figure. Mine were pretty terrible. Here's an example.

Oh dear.

The homework was two still lifes of three hours each. First was a self portrait with 10+ objects, second was just an assortment of textures on 10+ objects, on colored paper with 10% of the paper showing through. This also didn't go as I'd hoped. But no complete failures.

Looks like me.

I only had red paper! Agh!

And finally, we're up to today, where we began with watercolours. Lenny was missing from class today, so we all winged it in our in-class paintings. Watercolour is HARD. But I managed to make a few 1 hour paintings that didn't make me want to transfer to a liberal arts college.

"I wish I could get out of this putrid cup..."

Some days you ride the duck, some days the duck rides you...

Expect more soon! (getting kicked out of lab)

Clodhopper Page Two

Remember that comic I recently posted with a koosh-ball alien and a kid with a lollipop? I'm for-real continuing it, under the name Clodhopper. Here's page two, which I made last night and this afternoon instead of doing my Watercolour and Gouache assignment.

Expect more in the following week(s)

Comics & Bits from Winterlude

Since RISD's schedule is an odd little arrangement due to Wintersession, I just wrapped up a compact weeklong break from school. I was lucky enough to spend it visiting home to see some family...and get my wisdom teeth pulled. During the time I wasn't lying around wallowing in nausea and self pity, I managed to get a few minor things drawn. Here they are, in roughly reverse chronological order:

First page of a comic that I would like to continue in my free time...Kind of a light thing to explore some ideas and practice with nibz. 

I asked at the dentist's office if I could keep the tooth fragments, and they sent me home with the pieces (two intact, the rest in bits) inside a larger plastic tooth container. Pretty meta...Anyway, I wanted to colour this but I had some technical difficulties. Later.

I got to spend a hot minute at the Gauguin exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum with my dear parents and got some sketching in. I actually returned a couple days later and made some better drawings, which I can post when I return to PVD.

Very rushed drawings due to grumpy security guards.

A quick digital color thing applied to a sketchbook drawing. I forgot how much easier things are with a tablet...being stuck with just a mouse seemed to make the simplest Ps tasks a huge pain.

Pretty self explanatory? I really did often just eat slices of cheese with pizza sauce by the way. And it was delicious every time.

A couple revisions

I reworked two of my XX/XY projects slightly based on critiques I received in class and on the big scary world of the internet.

What's new? Text bubble, no more lines behind the figures, a few minor adjustments to the bodies. Most significantly, person #6 lost her giraffe legs and person #7 has top surgery scars. It's still not where I'd like it to be, but hopefully it is less problematic (visually & conceptually) than the original image. Next!

This was pretty difficult to revise since it started out as a fairly small ink drawing. Mary sat down in a chair and put on some pants (she's no longer stuck wearing an impractically long dress). Meanwhile, the plants on the right grew a an inch or so and jesus put on some brighter shoes. Half the revisions were made directly onto the original via white gouache and more ink, but the entire pants & chair area was drawn on a separate page and photoshopped in. A few more adjustments were made in photoshop to clean up stray marks. I wish I could have made Mary's halo smaller, but it turned out to be too time-consuming and frustrating a task to complete.