I Learn Draw Good

Watercolor - Not my strong point

2012-03-05T18:53:00.002-05:00

Below you'll find the two most recent assignments from my watercolor and gouache class + one in-class painting from today. The two homework assignments are each 100% watercolor and three hours of work, timed fairly accurately. This week in class we started trying to combing watercolor and gouache within the same painting...which turned out to be a massive disaster for me and many others in the class. I'm too ashamed to post the other three paintings I made in class, and look forward to burning them at the end of the semester with great enthusiasm.

You can't see, but he is cleaning a knife on his apron. Assassin.

Assignmetn: shiny and/or reflective objects

A small flame of hope burned in my heart - that I would be able to make paintings that don't completely suck. But then I made the painting after this one and that flame was extinguished forever.

Clodhopper 3

2012-03-04T20:25:00.003-05:00

So far I've been able to keep up with Clodhopper since my comics homework has been relatively light so far. And so I present to you, page three.

I'm not entirely psyched on this page, since I was trying out some nibs and other inking stuff in the making. I also used some spot blacks, which isn't something I'm used to and I was a little heavy handed all around, I think. However, I'm not too concerned about consistency of style between pages at this point, because this is more of a personal project than anything else.

Brought to you by Better Homes & Gardens

P.s. How do groups of people work, even?! Oh dear.

Note taking

2012-03-04T20:16:00.001-05:00

I thought I would share a little of my sketchbook today, since working in it is such an essential part of my creative process. My sketchbook is essentially a record of all the stupid/genius ideas I come up with as well as a receptacle for random bits of paper, images, doodles, class notes. I know a lot of other artists use several sketchbooks or have one reserved for "good" stuff, but for me it makes the most sense to cram everything together as a sort of comprehensive record of my brain.

Anyway, here is the current cover of my sketchbook as well as a few pages that combine classwork or class notes with whatever my hand feels like drawing at the moment.

It's hard to tell, but this book is about the size of a math textbook. Perfect!

Left - studies of the Brian Chippendale piece 'home on the run' as a part of a comics assignment. Right - some quick figure drawings...and other stuff.

Left - Psychology of gender notes. Right - first page of art history notes.

Continuation of art history notes - this part of class was a very fast slide lecture.

Watercolour and Gouache - The Class

2012-02-27T18:55:00.002-05:00

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

2012-02-25T17:22:00.001-05:00

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

2012-02-19T02:48:00.000-05:00

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

2012-02-02T21:59:00.001-05:00

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.

Mary and the Man-Child

2012-01-28T17:47:00.001-05:00

This week in XX/XY, we had to make an illustration based on either lactation or testosterone. It was pretty open ended, really, and we were encouraged to draw from cultural perceptions, history, science, etc. I was pretty psyched up on the article we were assigned to read about lactation, which among other things brought up the many depictions of Mary nursing the baby Jesus (a few examples below).

I love this Hans Baldung engraving (or woodcut?). Why is there a man in the moon? What are all those clouds about? Who knows?

A classic example of the tendency of artists to show Mary's breast as a sort of water balloon or globe shape by Bernardino Luini. Also, what a weird garment!

Quite a coy little christ

Mary's milk is essentially seen as the purest and strongest of any human excretion, for it both symbolically and physically sustained Jesus. I also wanted to touch on maternal guilt in past and present society and the ridiculous amount of pressure and judgement that mothers face. This guilt often manifests in over-sheltering and coddling a child in order to shield them from physical/psychological/emotional harm. And thus, we have the "man-child."

A common animal in my experience at college, the man-child is a male, usually white, who has been sheltered so much by his loving mother (and father, perhaps) to the extent that he is unwilling and incapable of taking care of himself. He may be in college or living at home, but in any case he is still suckling at the metaphorical teat, while he depends on others to perform basic tasks of adult life for him: laundry, cooking meals, paying bills, cleaning his residence...The man-child is immature and greedy, after being indulged for far too many years by a well-meaning family. Stunted, he will continue to depend on others until forcibly weaned.

So I guess what we have here is a juxtaposition of the man-child and classic Christian imagery. The mother's care (milk) is powerful nourishment, the most formative of a child's early experiences. But like all mammals, the young must eventually be weaned, or it will become a gluttonous and helpless mess - a man-child.

Oh, and have some sketchbook pages to make up for the slow post rate.

"Mary and the Man-Child"

Two pages, two days

I got to stop by open figure drawing for a bit today, something I would never have time/energy for during the normal schoolyear.

Sex Ed!

2012-01-22T23:54:00.002-05:00

This week for XX/XY brought a "sex ed" assignment - to create a two page spread (implied that it is in a sex ed book for a chosen audience) or an instructive toy/game/object. The interpretation, audience, medium, etc. were all up to us. I made these two pages with the imagined audience of a fairly young girl, perhaps age seven. This was kind of about exploring a new process for me as well - I started with an ink drawing and tried to develop it to finish in Photoshop. It took longer for me to figure things out than a traditional process would have, which was very frustrating. I'm not 100% happy with it, but I feel like I learned a few things during this project in regards to brushes & workflow that may come in use in the future.

Hidden

2012-01-18T22:21:00.000-05:00

Below you'll find my second assignment for XX/XY. The prompt was to make an illustration which applies to one of the following topics: transgender, intersex, or androgyny. I chose transgender, and I owe a lot of my inspiration to the French movie Tomboy (which is great, by the way. See it!). The comic is pretty bittersweet, I suppose, but in the context of how most transgender people are perceived by the world at large, this is a pretty optimistic take. Both pages are approximately 8.5"x11" watercolor, with some minor revisions in photoshop. I don't usually tool around with stuff in Ps save for contrast, value range, color vibrance, and the like...but seeing how other artists use digital media to make changes quickly and efficiently or even work solely in digital has changed my mind. I'm an amateur when it comes to imitating or improving upon my traditional stuff in Ps, If you look closely, you'll definitely be able to see a couple places where it's clearly touched up. Yikes! I suppose I must start somewhere, though.

XX/XY

2012-01-09T20:13:00.002-05:00

Below you'll find my first assignment for XX/XY - a diptych. I'd rather not say too much about the pieces, save that I'm much happier with the first one than the second. Both are opaque watercolor and ink on my favorite ridiculously heavy watercolor paper.

What is the Value of a Sketchbook?

2012-01-02T19:14:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking a lot recently about the importance of sketchbooks. Part of this is due to the fact that my cousin bought me Drawn In, which is a really great collection of pages & spreads from various contemporary artists (many of which went to risd?! what?) + short interviews about their contributions. I haven't got to examine every page yet, but it definitely stirred some things up in my brain.

For me, I do my most inventive work in my sketchbook. I'll start off drawing an idea or my surroundings and then slip into this weird mode of intuitive creation. Time will fly by as my hands seem to make decisions on their own - decisions I would never come to by pure, rational thought. I'll admit, the results are not always groundbreaking. However, they are always looser and more interesting than when I get out a piece of nice paper and decide to "make art." Looking at other artist's sketchbooks generally seems to confirm this tendency. Something is lost in the trip from pure expression (doodling, random collage, life sketches for me) to planned expression.

Questions: Can we then present a sketchbook spread as a finished art piece? The sketchbook itself as an art piece? How does a doodle change in meaning when it is made as "art" instead of as a doodle? What about artists who don't use their sketchbooks often?

Answer: I don't know, you tell me!

Anyway, if you get a chance, definitely pick up Drawn In and allow yourself a long time to look through the various artists. You'll not regret it...

Still Alive, Just on Break

2011-12-30T18:25:00.001-05:00

Well, my break is just ending in a couple days, but here are a few things I managed to make while not stuffing my face with home-cooked meals and staring at the computer screen...

Advanced Drawing Final

2011-12-16T20:59:00.000-05:00

My Advanced Drawing final was supposed to be a series of paintings, made into a book, but at the end instead of a book I made a comic page...whoops. All the paintings are based off of a jumble of WWII reference images of American planes, mechanics, and factory workers. Anyway, here's what I made:

New Layout

2011-12-09T12:38:00.001-05:00

So, you may have noticed I switched up the layout to the "dynamic" style template blogger encourages users to try out. It gives you the option to view a lot of posts at once, try it out! Just click the different format options at the top bar to mix things up. I'm not sure if I'll be keeping this format, so let me know if you have any strong positive/negative feelings about it!

Conceptor Four!

2011-12-09T01:33:00.001-05:00

Agh! I made another page with time to spare! It's only 1:30am and I'm done with comics homework, what's going on?! Things get a little interesting on this page. I haven't really had to paint/draw a dense forest scene ever, so the whole rainforest thing was pretty difficult to figure out. More conceptor will hopefully follow in the near future...

Also, a big thanks to Moebius and the Hoh rainforest for this page. And as previously, the maximized version is desaturated for some reason (thus the smaller preview size so you can see the real colours. sorry!)

Conceptor Page One Redo

2011-12-07T15:57:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the duplicate posting of this. I've been having some technical problems with image quality so I needed to experiment a little and had to delete the last post to do so. For some reason, when the image reaches a certain size, it loses a lot of the color quality and appears desaturated. Ugh. This is a reworked version of the first page of conceptor, this time in watercolor.

Conceptor Page Three

2011-12-02T18:18:00.001-05:00

The saga continues. I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on the materials a little more now, but still some spots are pretty thick with paint. For my comics final, I'm going to redo page one in the watercolors and (hopefully) add a page four if I have time.

P.S. by the way, if you want to see the REALLY BIG version of any of these images or you just can't read the text when it's so small, you gotta right click the image and "open link in new window/tab" instead of left clicking to view it in a slideshow. Besides letting you see all the tiny details, I think it also just lets you see the colours better (or maybe that's just a placebo effect). But don't trust me, try it yourself!

More Machine-People

2011-11-28T22:31:00.001-05:00

Here's a couple more bits of my advanced drawing final project. The first one is the most recent piece (and perhaps my favourite so far), and the second is one of the earliest experiments I made for the project. You can see I deviated pretty far from my initial vision. This is mostly due to A) reading too much moebius B) switching from bristol to watercolour paper C) figuring out how my new paint set works, sort of.

Both are about 7"x8".

Shirt Design

2011-11-27T17:33:00.001-05:00

I just finished up a shirt design for the Knowledge Bowl team of my dear alma mater, West Sound Academy. The zombie thing was their idea, I swear! I hope the team likes it and I'll be psyched to see how it prints in a couple of weeks.

On "Break"

2011-11-24T21:07:00.001-05:00

I made it to Thanksgiving break in one piece! This calls for a celebration! Oh, wait, I have work to do, sorry. I'll push that celebration back until the winter holiday break. In the mean time I'll keep chugging away on my finals and trying to chip away at my cynicism problem.

Anyway, I've got a load of stuff to scan and upload, but even more that I just need to keep working on between now and December 16. In the mean time, here is an isolated piece from a series I'm working on for my Advanced Drawing final.

Conceptor Page Two

2011-11-18T20:08:00.001-05:00

This week was a big switch up in comics. We had to make another page in colour, this time using Pelikan Opaque Watercolors on 300lb paper. For those that don't know, 300lb paper is REALLY THICK and also REALLY EXPENSIVE. But it is very worth it. Learning to use the opaque watercolors was a real trial for me and it took way longer than it should have. However, I'm pretty pleased with what the medium can do, so I'll continue working with the watercolors when possible.

I decided to continue the story from last week (conceptor) for two reasons: I wanted to see the contrast in materials and I just like the idea a lot. It's actually a pretty startling comparison as far as saturation and value range goes. The scan is a little too dark, but you get the idea. Below the page you'll see I've included the sketches I made to figure out the panel layout and value placement, as well as page one for contrast.

(page one)

Initial thumbnails

More finished value study thumbnail and some sketches

Forest/Home

2011-11-14T13:56:00.001-05:00

Another work from my artist's book class. This was an altered book assignment, and this 1970s gem on evergreens called to me from the Savers rack. The book is about remembering childhood play in my woodsy back yard, and the scents and colors and textures associated with these memories. Inside is a removable door which reveals a rosebud on a robin's egg, which is a callback to several very specific memories of building "nests" from twigs and flowers and placing them in a tree next to some rose bushes, in hopes that they would be occupied by a grateful bird in the future.

Diner Lift-the-Flap Book

2011-11-14T13:42:00.001-05:00

Hey! Watch out! There's nudity & tiny cartoon genitals in this one!

Now that's out of the way...This book was made for my Artist's Book class in response to an assignment to do something involving a diner and secret or hidden elements to interact with such as flaps or sliding panels. Each of the four pages shows a "normal" set of people going about their business at the diner. But, what's this? A flap to lift? Below the table, they're all nude and every table has something hidden or unexpected.

New Contact Info

2011-11-12T13:32:00.001-05:00

I'm finally making the switch to a more official sounding email and slowly shedding all the accounts associated with my old email (joshuatreelegume). If you want to contact me or give others my contact information, please use either my RISD email (mtrower at risd.edu) or my new address: m.r.trower at gmail.com.

Carry on!

Conceptor

2011-11-11T21:28:00.001-05:00

This week in comics we had to make a page in colour, which was...intimidating to me. I looked very hard at some moebius comics and then made the comic you'll find below. I also included the sketchbook studies I made beforehand while I was planning it, for context. After class today, I made the digital version of the comic, to see what it would look like with cleaner, more solid colours. Next week is watercolour, so I'll be continuing this story into a second page.

Shifter 2.0

2011-11-05T12:15:00.000-04:00

For this week in comics, I made some changes to the existing pages of Shifter and added an extra page on the end. It's optional as far as the story goes, but if I were to continue making pages for Shifter that's the direction they'd go in. As far as the improvements to the first four pages, most are pretty subtle but they made a big difference in the overall look. See if you can spot what changed...

"You're Making Me Feel Bad"

2011-10-29T13:41:00.001-04:00

This week went really well for me work-wise. I don't know if I'd call it a breakthrough, but I was just unusually happy with everything I made. On the other hand, I had to sacrifice all activities besides sleeping, eating, and working to get everything done. The only time I wasted went to a couple hours at the grocery store and savers. Anyway, I made this artists's book for my advanced drawing class.

It's a little hard to explain, but it makes way more sense if you get the process so bear with me. The assignment was to do a "collaborative drawing", but since I hate collaborative projects at school, I decided to do something that minimized the amount of collaboration. I got about 20 or 30 of my friends to make me a small drawing of something that made them feel "anxious, nervous, sad, or generally bad." Once I collected all the drawings, I was struck by how petty our troubles were: getting too hot in a sweater, feeling uncomfortable when looking at the homeless, having "itchy pubes", etc. So I stained the paper and proceeded to paint on top portraits of people with real, desperate problems, like natural disasters, extreme poverty, or war. This was a weird experience for me, because I felt like I was exploiting these people by using their situations to make my own project. So between the original drawings, the contrast with the painted portraits, and the feeling of exploitation, the whole project made me feel...well...bad. The book is an encapsulation of feeling bad and the shades of meaning within the statement "I feel bad".

Now that block of text is over, here's some photos and scans of the pages.

Shifter

2011-10-28T21:17:00.001-04:00

After a lot of sleep deprivation and ink stains I finished my Tezuka themed comic ("Shifter") for today. It was received far better than I could have hoped, which was nice since I invested a lot of time and effort into making it. It was also good to know that I could finish four pages in two weeks, which is nothing compared to Tezuka's god-like output, but an improvement over the one page a week pace I'd been working at previously.

Next week's assignment is to redesign/redraw/rework these pages, so this is really still a work in progress.

Halloween Diorama

2011-10-26T18:18:00.000-04:00

I don't really enjoy making cute things. Although I love me some kitsch now and then and I enjoy doodling weird monsters, drawing happy children is not my strong point. Despite this handicap, I pushed through on my "halloween diorama" artist's book assignment. I actually drew this out in pen and ink, intending to color by hand, but was told in class to try it with photoshop (and I'm glad I did). The only annoyances were having to pay a print shop to print out several copies for me and having to cut all the tiny little edges on the trees and kids a second time.

I can't get over how much I like doing the covers for these books. Something about thick, soft paper wrapped around a solid rectangle is really satisfying for some reason.

If only that horse costume was real

Disregard the ghost behind the book

Nothing on the cover for now

Accelerated Atelier Figure

2011-10-25T23:55:00.000-04:00

Here's a drawing I did in Advanced Drawing a couple weeks ago in an attempt to follow the atelier style. I only got to put in about 2-3 hours in, but there are certain things I see developing that are pleasing to me.

Tezuka-mania

2011-10-24T14:55:00.000-04:00

My current comics project is to make a comic of several pages that is informed and inspired by the methods of Osamu Tezuka. If you haven't heard, Tezuka was rightly considered the "God of Manga" and possibly created more comics than any artist in history. Several of his works famous in the states are Astro Boy, Phoenix, Black Jack, and Buddha. I'm a huge fan of his work and I'm currently waiting for the return of Phoenix pt. 7 to the library. I made a couple of scans from Phoenix pt. 5 for reference, they give a pretty good idea of what I'm looking to pull from in Tezuka's work.

My project will be 3-5 pages and is set in a futuristic environment inspired by Tezuka's worlds. I just finished the first page yesterday, seen below.

I've got high hopes for this project! Below is a sketchbook spread that includes the thumbnail I used to plan this page. You'll notice that it's fairly refined, and that's because I went through two or three messier versions on the previous page. On to the next one...

Sketchbook Page

2011-10-20T17:17:00.003-04:00

I went to a lecture by famous illustrator/painter James Jean last night, and was thus inspired to do a million more anatomical sketches and studies. I already do anatomical studies for fun, but seeing James' sketchbooks made me realize that I need to do more. So here's one spread representing part of today's sketches.

Recently, I look like this

2011-10-18T22:11:00.003-04:00

Vine charcoal self portrait for my advanced drawing class. Just a straight up, studied self portrait from staring at my face in a mirror for five or so hours.

Edit: Actually, its pretty interesting to compare this to a self portrait assignment from my freshman year (below). I'm guessing I spent an slightly more time on this earlier piece, although there were more faces to do. But regardless, I feel a bit better about my current portrait, putting it next to something from two years ago...

Dream Sequence

2011-10-18T18:40:00.001-04:00

Last week's comic: a dream sequence, starring yourself, set in Providence, ligne-claire style. Here I wander around in my underwear and decapitate Roger Williams in Prospect Park. Woop!

Furry Artist's Book for Fall

2011-10-05T20:56:00.000-04:00

Real fur!
Real paper!
Real gouache!
Real ink!
Real words!
Real comfort!
Really tiny!

Like Looking at Things? Me too!

2011-10-01T00:05:00.002-04:00

As a sort of time capsule in the invisible blogosphere and as a (hopefully) helpful service to anyone viewing ilearndrawgood, here's a quick list of some of the sites and blogs I check in on frequently. Some are comix, though not all are even art related. Check em out.

Guise of Normalcy

2011-09-30T18:32:00.002-04:00

...is the title of my second assignment for Shanth's comics class. Basically the same assignment as last week, but the whole thing had a few structural requirements (as far as panelling) and had to be done in the ligne-claire style. Not entirely pleased with it. Definitely some drawing issues, but I feel compositionally and as a whole it's solid enough.

As a bonus, below that is another one-hour master copy done in-class, this time no pencil drawing allowed. Source was a very famous page from Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind manga. Better than last week's effort.

Comics#1111111

2011-09-23T18:32:00.000-04:00

I had my second comics class today and turned in my first assignment (One finished, self-contained page). I can see how far I am right now from where I would like to be in terms of technical skill, composition, etc., and it is more than a little disquieting. View my first comic for the class below, forgive the necessary profanity. Also note the hour-long Moebius master-copy Shanth had us make from a projection in class. It's shocking/humbling/embarrassing to think that this is all I can accomplish in an hour.

So much to study and draw. So much to read and watch. Gotta run.

"For the Sport"

In-class Moebius master-copy

Wake Up for It

2011-09-15T09:17:00.001-04:00

Another meaningless but mildly entertaining sketchbook comic. Profanity on the second page, be careful!

Rapidograph Love

2011-09-13T18:46:00.001-04:00

Some sketchbook pieces made with the rapidographs my parents were so generous to gift me.

Gross self portrait

Excuse to use ALL THE COPICS

Sketches of Late

2011-09-09T12:08:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a lot more sketches than usual in anxious anticipation of the school year starting. Here's a sample...

Inane Comix

Action Figure / Gestures

Typical of my time at a coffee shop

A Coupla Comix

2011-08-12T09:56:00.000-04:00

Here are a couple things I've been working on, nothing too big (that's for later!)

"in heat"

"Entropy" (comix compilation cover)

"A.E.D."

More stuff on its way when I remember!

Also, some news from Providence: http://www.projo.com/news/content/rhode_island_murders_08-11-11_RVPMAV6_v14.3c2a8.html It's all the scarier since I have been to both places a lot. I actually bike past the chiropractor daily and was there maybe 30 minutes before the whole thing happened. The mob's back in town I guess.

Studio Tour

2011-08-08T13:13:00.000-04:00

Hey, so I spend a lot of my time currently in a queer art collective space in Providence filled with awesome comic artists/musicians/printmakers/textilers(?)/all around excellent humans. I built myself a studio there to work and sometimes live in from found materials and a lot of paint and fabric. Take a look!

Side #1

Front door and wall

"desk"

This guy looks familiar...

Inside wall (opposite first wall)

Fabric ceiling

Reading/Sleeping Area

Back wall

Self Portrait (not finished still)

2011-05-28T13:27:00.000-04:00

Still in progress self portrait. Photo is pretty glare-y/wrong colours.

Random Painting #3

2011-05-28T13:23:00.003-04:00

Random Painting #2

2011-05-28T13:23:00.000-04:00

This one's got a bit of glare...

Random Painting #1

2011-05-28T13:13:00.000-04:00

Commence series of assorted paintings from the semester...

Drawing Final

2011-05-28T13:07:00.001-04:00

My drawing final for Lenny Long's drawing class. Assignments was called "kid's rule" and there were about 300 requirements for the piece (graphite shaded, no lines, 18x18, must have a dollhouse, 5 children inside and outside, a real & toy dog, real and toy car, checkerboard pattern, etc). This took crazy long! Please please please view full-size.

SLICE

2011-05-25T03:43:00.002-04:00

(CGI final)

SLICE from Maddy Trower on Vimeo.

More rough animation

2011-05-23T02:52:00.002-04:00

2nd third of my animation, approximated. i swear he'll be okay in the end.

Random Comic (profanity and nudity, BEWARE)

2011-05-20T01:30:00.000-04:00

A reaction to patriarchy, violence, and the excellent novel Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy.

Icarus

2011-05-19T04:42:00.002-04:00

last illustration assignment!

the roughest of cuts

2011-05-18T01:20:00.000-04:00

(ROUGH ROUGH ROUGH TOTALLY NOT CLOSE TO DONE!!!!)

Anyway here is a really approximate sketch/draft of the first half of my animation. Just so no one worries about this (I'm looking at you, parents), I'll just give some spoilers and let you know that this is not suicide and the character ends up much happier at the end of the piece than at the start. I just reviewed the animation a few times and I realized that the start looks pretty dark for A.E. here. But he'll be okay. I promise.

Self Portrait WIP

2011-05-15T23:38:00.000-04:00

This is a painting assignment I decided to keep going on, still not finished. Forgive the terrible webcam photo...

spoiler: this will be a gift for my lovely mother! :)

Ready to start animating!

2011-05-10T23:25:00.000-04:00

I've got my basic building model put together, and that's enough for me to start the bare bones animation. I can put in the rest of the environment later, so I'm really psyched to start seeing some movement in the mean time.

A note on the character: He is not an alien or a skeleton man or anything, he is just a character that emerged fully formed from my brain a few months back. He has no name, save for the initials A.E. He is often seen with another character of mine, Y.A., although A.E. is generally the protagonist in their adventures/interactions.

I thought about posting the storyboard for my animation, but I'd rather keep it a secret for surprise purposes. Also I may change my idea a bit in production so I don't want to show something that may not be realized. For now, here's two more images from the process! Expect more soon...

Determining scale for the primary environment

Lighting/posing experiment to test my rig

HE LIVES

2011-05-04T23:03:00.000-04:00

Had to redo the skin weighting twice due to my own ineptitude, but here he moves and breathes now.

Movement Test from Maddy Trower on Vimeo.

Textured!

2011-05-04T04:12:00.002-04:00

I promise some time I will post something other than my CGI homework.

Ready for texturing and skeleton!

2011-04-30T20:34:00.000-04:00

Did some quick stitching together of head and body and made a few revisions. This guy is ready to get his textures and skeleton.

with a body to match

2011-04-27T16:23:00.000-04:00

Prelim stages of my character model for my CGI final project. More on that soon...

Creation Process

2011-04-20T16:18:00.000-04:00

(From earlier in the creation process, pre-texture)

Look familiar?

2011-04-20T15:36:00.000-04:00

Actually probably not since I don't often post my comics here. But the fellow on the left is a repeated character in my drawings so I modeled, textured, and rigged him for this week's CGI lipsync assignment.

New Semester, New Portrait

2011-03-16T20:41:00.000-04:00

Here's my first portrait painting of the second semester. This is actually the same model, Ivy, as one of my previous paintings (although before she was clothed). Pretty happy with this one, although the lighting in my apartment makes it impossible to photograph anything well.

3-Jointed Character

2011-03-16T04:07:00.000-04:00

This weeks assignment was to animate a forward-kinematic 3-jointed character expressing anger. I kind of got caught up in the interaction between the characters, so I lost the anger part a bit, but I'm happy with the outcome overall. I wish I'd had more time to figure out how to switch cameras or compose the scene a little better.

First Basic Animation

2011-03-09T15:17:00.000-05:00

This week's CGI assignment was to animate a 120+ frame sequence of a hammer, a ball, and a feather in some sort of interaction. One of the three must have a sense of character or motivation. I kept running into things I didn't know how to do in the program, but on the other hand I was constantly surprised by how much you can accomplished with very limited knowledge.

first maya creation

2011-03-02T19:52:00.001-05:00

Behold my first creation from my CGI class this semester: a poorly made cave! The assignment was to create an environment that told a story about a character without showing the subject him/herself. In the first image I hadn't figured out how to set the dropoff for lights, so the back part of the cave is still illuminated. whoops!

electric canvas final pieces

2011-02-26T14:43:00.000-05:00

I don't really know how to present these pieces as they are meant to be organized in a certain way with an animation playing above. I'll try and figure out a way to make a GIF or something that is close to the actual presentation (as i set it up for my final crit in class). Anyway, for now just imagine these go from left to right in a line and that you are in a state of hypnosis. Should be close enough.

All are near 19x25, but the middle one is larger than the others by several inches on each side.

cell study 1

2011-02-26T14:38:00.002-05:00

the other half of the cell study assignment

cell study 1

cell study 2

2011-02-11T16:30:00.000-05:00

from electric canvas (finished version of painting I posted earlier)

cells/nodes/users in network build up the individual user to (false) heroic status based on availability of resources/people far beyond his physical abilities.

BAD PHOTO UGH

Cell Study 2. Acrylic on Canvas, 26" x 31"???. 2011.

more webcam

2011-02-07T03:15:00.002-05:00

i'm probably the worst blogger. this will be my second post in a row with a webcam picture of some unfinished paintings. this is pretty relevant since it will be my final project when finished!

a segment from my project proposal to give you an idea of what it's about:

Second life and other virtual worlds allow the user to enter an alternate, untrue reality which draws users in by the worship of its very falsehood. The distance from physical truth and body allows activities which would normally be mundane to transform into extraordinary out of body experiences in the eyes of the user. The body is in a state of rest/suspension while the mind engages in an escapist virtual experience similar to a religious vision or dissociative hallucination. The triangle symbolizes the elevation of this virtual world to a god-like status, dependent on its ability to separate the user from the physical world. The paintings will show the changes in perception of self and reality when one enters a virtual world in relation to the attraction of the digital nonreal.

sooo unfinished

this gif will be projected above the paintings

Late night

2011-01-31T03:18:00.000-05:00

I've got three new paintings to post but haven't had the time/light to photograph them. Instead, please enjoy this poor quality webcam photo of two paintings in progress for this week. They're related, I swear.

Second Life

2011-01-20T00:44:00.000-05:00

This week we made a series of paintings based on media images pertaining to the topic of our choice. I focused on Second Life, which is technically a game but really more of a virtual world. From what I've learned, users treat it like a real environment: forming relationships, making money, travelling, playing games, and (in seedier regions) even having sexual relations. They present an alternate identity to the SL world, perhaps one they feel is more attractive or possibly more accurate than their physical reality. Does the physical world become a mere chore, compared to the freedom and fascination of a virtual life?

Erasure 1

Virtual Shrine

Placeholder User

Digitally Inspired Paintings

2011-01-20T00:28:00.000-05:00

Three paintings inspired/based on the digital collages I made previously. Some bad photo quality since I couldn't get good lighting.

Fragment 11. Acrylic on Canvas, 18x24. 2011.

Cat Mess. Acrylic on Canvas 18x24. 2011.

Sucker. Acrylic on Canvas, 19x25. 2011.

Electric Canvas Nonsense

2011-01-07T15:03:00.000-05:00

Three of five photoshop collages made overnight for our first assignment in Electric Canvas (my wintersession painting studio).

Derp

2010-12-31T05:21:00.000-05:00

Here I am, at home, going a little stir crazy. And being almost completely unproductive. RISD beckons...

Here's a sketchbook drawing/painting I made, inspired by a fragment of a dream I remembered from a few nights ago.

see//taste wallpaper!

2010-12-19T23:58:00.000-05:00

I made myself some computer wallpaper from my card back design. If you are so inlined, please enjoy it for your own computer as well! This version is intended for 1366x768 resolution, but in all likelihood it will look fine on other resolutions.

Lucian Freud Master Copy

2010-12-17T17:47:00.000-05:00

I finished my master copy of Lucian Freud's Double Portrait this week and I'm fairly pleased with the outcome. Of course, the more I look at it, the more I see that needs tweaking, but for a three week effort it turned out alright.

Card Back Design

2010-12-12T23:57:00.000-05:00

Part of my illustration final!

Fragment #10

2010-12-10T09:03:00.000-05:00

It's 9am. I just finished this piece. Anticlimactic? Definitely. But I'm happy to have 10 pieces in my series, regardless. I'm not really capable of writing coherent sentences right now, so expect a post about the series as a whole some time in the near future.

I ran out of energy right in the middle of this one so I resorted to symbols. Fragment #10 is 100% acrylic paint.

Fragment #9

2010-12-10T05:32:00.000-05:00

One left.

This one is acrylic, wintergreen transfers, ballpoint pen.

Fragment #8

2010-12-09T03:17:00.000-05:00

I had to rush this one a bit. This time used acrylic wash, then used wintergreen oil transfers, then painted on top. PROCESS PROCESS PROCESS.

Fragment #7

2010-12-08T01:58:00.000-05:00

I feel like I've made hundreds of these. How am I only on seven?

Fragment #6

2010-12-06T23:08:00.000-05:00

I'd say more but it would take too much effort. FINALS ARE RIDICULOUS

Fragment #5

2010-12-04T19:11:00.000-05:00

Not extremely psyched on this one, but my professor liked it the best out of what I've done so far. Not sure what that means...

Fragment #5. 12.5"x10", acrylic & ink

Master Copy

2010-12-02T03:22:00.000-05:00

I worked for a while on my final project for painting, a master copy. I chose a Lucian Freud painting titled "Double Figure". It is about 1 meter on each side, probably the second largest painting I have ever worked on. So far I haven't got much past the underpainting, but hopefully in two weeks it will look something more like the original!

Original painting (colours are a bit off)

poorly lit photo of my progress so far

Several Card Concepts

2010-11-30T09:42:00.000-05:00

My final illustration project is to design the face cards (or more) and a backside to a deck of cards. Here are the concepts for my idea I will propose tomorrow. So far there is no king, hopefully I'll get around to that later today.

Backside Pattern

Fragment 4

2010-11-25T23:54:00.000-05:00

Piece #4 my drawing series. Decided to break out my acrylics for this one. It just seemed right. I'm not quite happy with how the figures are interacting with the background, but I feel like I'm getting closer as a whole.

Fragment #4, Acrylic & Ink, 12.5" x 10"

I started with a pen and ink skeleton study for the background and worked on top of that with first ink washes, then watery acrylic. I kind of lost the skeleton a bit, which is unfortunate because I rather liked it as a study. It was actually a huge pain to make because I was using a rusty nib - I don't recommend anyone else tries this. It turned out to be extremely labour-intensive and it would have been worth walking 20 minutes to the art store to get a fresh nib. Fortunately, I took a picture of the study before I began ink washes. Here it is, as it was today at 6am (when I went to bed).

❖ HPPYTHXGVNG EVRY1 ! ❖

Fragment 3

2010-11-25T00:38:00.000-05:00

Piece number three! This one is almost reversing the approach of the other two by going for a high contrast, high detail background with more obscured figures. I'm going to explore this more in the next piece, although I have a hunch some reconciliation between the two methods will end up as the right way to go.

Ink & Gouache, 12.5" x 10"

GIF(T)

2010-11-24T03:42:00.000-05:00

I just learned tonight how to make animated GIFs in photoshop! Or any types of animation, for that matter. Please enjoy this pointless experiment / assault on the eyes. Images used are both mine, photo is of my good pal robbie.

Fragment 3 in alpha testing

2010-11-23T03:22:00.000-05:00

Part one (background) of my third piece in the series. It's all rapidograph marks except for the strip on the right side. I liked how it is looking so far, so I decided to document this stage in the piece just in case I royally screw up something as I move forward. I'll be making some figures separately to cut out and place on top of the skull background. Not as morbid as it appears, promise!

Ink, 12.5" x 10"

Fragment Two

2010-11-21T16:39:00.000-05:00

Second incarnation of my series. I'm still struggling with the direction to take it, hopefully it'll become clear with the next two pieces.

Gouache & Ink, 12.5" x 10"

Fragment (repost)

2010-11-20T12:39:00.000-05:00

(reposted due to a display error)

here is the first piece out of a series for drawing class that eventually must total to 1000sq" (or 2000sq"? I should probably resolve that). i'm still trying to figure out how to put the concept into words, but the basic idea is an exploration of how we as humans place so much value on social interactions, while our various friendships/relationships are quite insignificant when one considers the whole. in a world of 6.7 billion people, the importance of our social successes or failures dwindles to zero very quickly. my goal for the series is to depict various personal interactions, using colour to emphasize the structure of the human body -- as we are all simply human animals in an environment. depending on your point of view, it is either incredible or ridiculous that we so highly value banal interactions with other creatures of our species, often basing our goals and actions on expected social outcome.

but i digress into rambling. hopefully by the end of the series i will have a more concise explanation.

this one didn't turn out as expected, hopefully the next...twelve or so should go better. my process is pretty simple: ink wash and lines first, then watered-down gouache used with a pen nib for the skeletons. also, bad photo.

Gouache & Ink, 12.5" x 10"

Carmen Poster Assignment

2010-11-18T03:02:00.000-05:00

My most recent illustration project was to design a poster for a showing of Carmen in a 1:2 format, with several text requirements. We were given freedom in time period, interpretation, characters, etc. so I decided to do a more urban/contemporary character-based poster.

gouache, 9"x18"

A Series of Unfortunate Oil Paintings

2010-11-18T02:56:00.000-05:00

Assorted disappointing oil paintings from this semester.

concert review comic?

2010-11-17T17:23:00.000-05:00

I'll post real work soon! This is just in the mean time!

Anyway, the following two page comic is about a concert i went to on monday. it was really just for personal enjoyment, re-living the experience i guess. if it is a bit confusing, here's a summary: heard about a show on monday, decided to go, really enjoyed some strange performances, got a bloody nose and a drumstick, loved life, went home. good times!

you have to fullview for it to be legible at all.

Nonsense Post.

2010-11-14T14:06:00.000-05:00

I haven't been taking very many pictures of my work lately. So please enjoy these two random remnants from my brain this week. The first is another random printout gone wrong, the second is a comic I made while waiting around in studio about trying to stay awake in my 8am class. Better posts will follow soon, promise!

Obey Goobers

2010-11-05T01:35:00.000-04:00

You'd think by November I'd have re-aligned the cartridges on my printer. But no. So right now my printer is in this weird limbo state of semi-functional where it gets colours wrong and puts stripes all over the image. Somehow I forgot about this, uh, special feature of my C4600 series and decided to print a photo. Rather than fixing the problem or printing my picture elsewhere, I wasted an hour or two playing around with printing multiple layers onto a single sheet of paper. Kind of like ghetto printmaking. The results were...surprising. I'll leave the value judgement up to you.

Anyway, this is one of the pieces I ended up with, I call it "Obey Goobers". This one is three layers of printing with limited outlining in micron. Weird stuff.

What creative process?

2010-11-03T17:24:00.001-04:00

I thought a few people (ie my parents) might be interested in seeing some process images from my latest illustration assignment. The prompt was to create a New Yorker cover modeled after the original Eustace Tilley version. Our illustration class generally uses a two-week cycle of creation -- first week is concept sketches and second week is a finished product. For the first week, I submitted two digital sketches (see first two images in the triptych below). There's a lot of thinking behind each of them, but it suffices to say that they are both about bringing the character of Tilley to the digital age.

Unfortunately these ideas were not well received during group crit so I reinvented my idea to focus on Photoshop as a symbol for modern times. In photoshop, things are so quickly changed and their meanings inverted. It becomes a simple but chaotic process as toolbars and windows fill the screen; the process becomes unintelligible to anyone but the artist/manipulator.

What happens if we apply this to personal identity and style of the "hip" twenty-something?If Eustace Tilley is a symbol of the cultured, pensive individual, how would he feel obligated to dress or act today? Is changing one's attitude as simple as changing one's appearance to the outside world? These are the questions I wanted to evoke with my New Yorker cover.

The right-hand image is my first "draft" of the cover/screenshot. Below is my final piece after some revisions for clarity and composition.

Final image is an actual screenshot of a photoshop workspace with several small alterations (blue bar on left, mouse, etc.). I didn't quite accomplish what I was going for with this piece, but this kind of digital method left me pensive and curious to try again.

Hope this was, if not interesting, at least informative!

Working hard or hardly working?

2010-10-24T13:55:00.000-04:00

Too many colour charts.

Death of the Jabberwock

2010-10-20T01:09:00.000-04:00

This week's illustration project. I hate it a little. Gouache, 14"x21"