Tuesday's Fundamentals of Life Drawing Class

I love this class! I signed up for an instructed life drawing class with Mitch Caster over at ASLD and I must say the class is awesome. Mitch is everything my old cranky teacher from my last fundamentals class was not: funny, interesting, and a great demonstrator of the craft of art. The class is packed and he makes time for everyone and offers great critiques.

RMCAD grad Jenny served as an excellent model. What I like best about these charcoal drawings is that it's the first time I've ever captured the true likeness of the person's face. These actually look like Jenny, which is exciting. And if you get the opportunity you should check out her paintings on display over at Carla Wright Gallery. Fascinating and colorful stuff.

Friday's ASLD Life Drawing Class: Now in Amazing Charcoal Vision!

Well some days you're on fire and other days, eh, see for yourself.
I am not too terribly impressed by these drawings. Danielle is an awesome model who I've drawn before with a great rockabilly, almost Betty Page-esque quality about her. That is unfortunately not reflected in any of these drawings.

But I tried.

Anyway, here they are. The one where you see her tattoo is quite awesome.

Life Drawing @ Lucong's Studio

Lucong hosted a life drawing lab at his studio on Tuesday and RISD grad Pippin served as the fabulous model. Hats off to Lucong for opening up his home and for Pippin for giving great poses.

I am pleased with the way these turned out and am delighted to share them all with you.
Enjoy!

Colorado Abstract Art Gala

Hello friends,

I hope that the New Year is treating all of you well! After celebrating the New Year with my honey I caught a nasty case of the flu - I know, AGAIN - and spent a week doped up on Tylenol. You know, you have VERY bizarre dreams when you're running a fever and your diet consists of juice, soup, and medication. What happened while I was asleep for a week? Even I do not know.

Now that I have rejoined the land of the living I've made some great New Year's Resolutions that will enable me to attend art school in Spring of 2010. For starters, I applied for federal aid through FAFSA. Free money! I also requested information from a number of fine institutions of learning, most notably CalArts, Loyola, RISD, MCAD, SCAD, and Sheridan. From what I have seen from their websites and from what I've heard from former students, those are the schools to attend for aspiring animators like myself. I will be receiving quite a bit of paperwork in the mail soon, and then this summer will visit all of these wonderful places of learning in order to make my final decision.

Which brings me to my next topic - preparing for school! I am now attending no less than four life drawing classes a week. I am pleased to say that my skills have vastly improved from my days in NYC and will continue to post my figures on this very blog. I've had a few reviews from friends and faculty members that have been quite positive - thank you! - and look forward to choosing the best works in the upcoming months for my portfolio to send out to schools.

I am also getting more involved this year in the Colorado Art's scene. Strangely enough, even though I worked for the Denver Art Museum last year I had no idea that there was an art scene to speak of in Denver. I figured it was limited to the large institutions like DAM and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Thanks to Laura Guese though, whose work you can see at Space Gallery, I have learned that I was sadly mistaken. There are art galleries all along Santa Fe, interspersed with Mexican restaurants oddly enough - but you know you won't go hungry.

And tonight Laura, myself, and fellow UT alumna Michelle attended a reception for 55 of Colorado's abstract artists that are featured in an upcoming book by Westword art critic Mark Paglia. I must say though that while I had fun with Laura and Michelle I was not impressed by the art. Half of it I found to be excellent works, the other half reminded me of work that I had seen before in New York and Houston that quite frankly I enjoyed better. It also didn't help that gallery owner Jim Robischon is a creep. Word to the wise Jim, don't grab women's elbows and say hello. That's what drunk, creepy guys at bars and clubs do, not old white men who should be acting respectable. Eww. Also, it's rude to come up to a trio of ladies and ask us if we're art students while eying us like we're little pieces of meat. I won't be going back to your gallery, thankyouverymuch.

Besides Creepy Jim though, the other people I met were quite lovely. I had the pleasure of meeting Space gallery owner Michael Burnett, and his wonderful mother, while at the reception. I cannot stress enough that you should visit Space Gallery. Laura is currently a resident artist and often you can chat with her as she works on the second floor of the gallery on her latest pieces. And Michael is an excellent artist and gallery owner in his own right who was featured in tonight's show.

So while the reception was hit and miss, it's good to know that art is out there if you are willing to look for it. Which pretty much, goes without saying no matter what city you reside in.

I hope that all of you are doing well out there with your New Year's Resolutions. Sweet dreams and goodnight!

Now On Deviant Art

I joined Deviant Art today and began to post all manner of cryptidity-goodness. You can check out my profile under Zephyr-Art.
Do post a comment or two and I'll be sure to visit your Deviant Art awesomeness as well.

I'll be adding more Cryptids to this site and also to theirs in the coming weeks.
Been working on something extra special for the past week that I will hopefully have finished by this weekend.

Have a great evening folks!

Lucong: Local Artist Extraordinaire

A Moment with Liza
Oil on panel, 18 inches by 24 inches, completed June, 2008

I had the great pleasure of meeting local artist Lucong at ASLD last night. He is a friendly guy with an amazing talent for painting and ink work.

As we spoke I learned that currently some of his work could by seen at Gallery 1261 in downtown Denver, down the street and around the corner from the Denver Art Museum. After meeting him and visiting his phenomenal website I knew I would soon pay the Gallery a visit, and I was not disappointed. His work folks, is quite simply, stunning. The expressions of the faces of his subjects are filled with awe. Subtle, yet startling at the same time. It did not surprise me either to discover that all of them were also sold.

Check out Lucong's amazing website for yourself and make sure to pay Gallery 1261 a visit. It's a beautiful converted auto repair shop with rich colored walls, engaging track lighting and even a gallery cat.
There are other artists featured there as well right now, including Daniel Sprick.

Enjoy!

RMCAD meeting with animator Sam Fleming

I went to the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design today to speak with animation faculty member Sam Fleming. Sam's a pretty cool guy. He's worked on shows like Ren & Stimpy, King of the Hill and Jimmy Newtron, as well as animated features like Anastasia.

I wanted to learn more about the industry and the school as a whole and Sam graciously took time out of his day - an hour and a half in fact - to talk to me about what's up in the animation world.

Here are the top three things I learned from Sam today:

1) You get out of school what you put into it. This may seem obvious, but he said that it's like pulling teeth to get students to produce the amount of work that's gone into Cryptids in a year. Crazy. So rule number one - do the work.

2) It's important to have a solid foundation in drawing, which is why majoring in illustration along with animation may be a good idea. Animation will teach you the technical aspects of the job, but it won't necessarily teach you how to draw.

3) I showed him my 30 Days of Cryptids ]and he recommended that based on that and my life drawing and character turnarounds that I should go ahead apply for school. Woo! That was very encouraging. I told him that one of the reasons why I had not applied was that I did not think my portfolio was on par with some of the work I had seen, particularly the work I saw on this website from a young woman who attended CalArts. He said the portfolio process can be deceptive - it's based on the number of spots they have open true, but art schools are expensive and art schools want your money. So rule number three is: don't second guess yourself. You may be better than you think, so have someone in the arts review your work and go ahead and apply to school!

Thanks Sam for your help. I have lots of schools to contact tomorrow.

Goodnight everybody!

Wednesday's ASLD Life Drawing Class

First off - Life Drawing! Class was quite excellent tonight. Not only was the model fabulous, but I felt totally on mark with my drawings.





The first poses were all for 30 seconds. That's THIRTY SECONDS to get something that resembles a woman.






The next four pages (minus the last drawing) are for one minute. You start to feel that you have all the time in the world after drawing a pose for only 30 seconds.

My favorite pose was this one:



I LOVE the turn of her foot in this pose. It's one of the best feet I've ever drawn.

The next group of images were for 5 minutes, which seems like an eternity of time to draw and is my favorite timing period of the entire class.











These are 10 minute poses:





And the last two are for 20 minutes:

Welcome Monday You Beautiful Day You

I've decided to start each week in a positive fashion. It's good to remain optimistic, especially in this dismal economy, so that you can do all the things you need to do and still enjoy your day. For instance, look at the little things, like the fact that the SUN IS OUT here in Englewood. I'm so glad. Yesterday was pretty hairy. I had planned to go to church, attend the Squidworks monthly meeting then visit the 'rents. I shoveled snow off the car, drove about 45 on the freeway packed with snow to get to church, shoveled snow off the car after church and thought "This is dumb, I'm going home." So instead I went home where it was warm. Time well spent ;D

Today I continue my quest to find full-time employment. I turned down an interview with a marketing company because I found out over the phone that it was for outside sales, which their website had not specified. Here's a tip kids - if you're not sure about the job call before you go in for the interview. You want to make sure you know what you're getting into so that you don't end up selling phone books door-to-door (true story, my friend and a guy I used to work with at the Apple Store were wrangled into selling phone books. Yikes).

I'm not interested in driving all around town trying to convince people to sell something. I'd much rather do inside sales or writing/editing work. You couldn't tell from the website what the job actually was and I was beginning to think it was rather shady. I called today and point blank asked the woman "What would I be doing 9-5 Monday through Friday? Inside sales or outside sales? Who would I be selling to?" and found out I would be driving around town over 40 hours a week giving presentations and not spending much time on the phone at all. No thanks.

Also, if you ever get a funky bill from Verizon - don't accept it! I got a crazy bill for $238 this month. My normal bill is usually $55 so I knew something was wrong. After speaking to two customer reps and a supervisor I discovered that the rep I spoke to back in June when I got my new phone had given me a promotion that didn't exist! HAUGH! I was gracious but serious about the issue and ended up receiving a credit totaling $171.45 as well as 50 bonus minutes. So rule of thumb kids:

1) Never settle
2) Be forceful but polite

I accomplished everything I needed to over the phone without whining, screaming, or expletives.

On a happier, more artful note, more cryptids coming later in the week. I found a great tutorial in a Photoshop CS2 book that I'm going to use for shading in the work. You'll see it later in the week.

Cheers!

Friday's Life Drawing Class

You ever have a day when you feel "on" artistically? That was today. I REALLY enjoyed drawing today - the drawings came out very well and I liked the color choices. Our model was the most tired model I've ever seen in the four years that I've taken life drawing classes. She literally looked like she was falling asleep during every pose. And every pose except the first three involved her lounging. Get some sleep, girl!

Friend of the blog Anne asked why all the pictures of naked women. Great question Anne! Life drawing means drawing from life, and art schools encourage prospective students to submit portfolios of 10 - 20 pieces of their best work from life, animals and people. When you draw from life, you train your eye to actually see what's really in front of you, as opposed to drawing something from your own imagination which may or may not be anatomically correct. The reason why all of my life drawings have been of nude women is because women make up the bulk (if not all) of the models at ASLD.

When I was in ASIFA-EAST in NYC we had a wider variety of models - black, white, Asian, younger adults, older adults, men and women. There is less of a variety here in Colorado for reasons unknown to me, at least at the Art Students League. Or maybe the fellas are more shy to show themselves. (Coincidentally my favorite model of all was a woman at Parsons School of Design's life drawing class. She weighed close to 250 lbs. She was great. Skinny people are not as fun to draw - there's not a lot to really work with.)

Looking at the drawings now that I am out of class, I feel better about them. It's hard not to compare yourself to other artists in the room. I watch others paint and draw and think "Wow, they're good." I have not yet reached the level I would like to be at yet. That level is Glen Keane, Walt Disney, John Lasseter, Jim Henson. I look at their work and think "I have so far to go."

My goal is to be in art school by Spring 2010. I would like to go to CalArts, although MCAD and KCAI are also great choices. Some days I draw and think that I am not progressing, but everyone has those days where you feel like no matter how much work you do you're not getting anywhere. It's like you've reached a plateau, and then BAM! You realize that you have improved. I'm waiting for that "BAM" moment. Soon, very soon.