Digital drawings.

The following are some digital drawings i have done of Chesterfield.

This was based around a building in chesterfield using a Graphics tablet and brushes in Photoshop, i added an opacity jitter and size jitter to the brush in order to give the shape some irregularity. 

Another graphics tablet drawing i have done of a gravestone in the churchyard again using Photoshop brushes with an opacity and size jitter. 

This final image was drawn using a tablet on an app called SketchbookX which i found really easy to use because it has a few different brushes, it allows you to change the opacity radius of the brush and you can have separate layers. I did struggle slightly without the use of a stylus but i still enjoyed using my tablet to create drawings as it hadn't been something id thought of before.

Sharrow Vale Market

Sharrow Vale Market is an event which happens a few times a year; a large amount of stalls line Sharrow Vale road in Sheffield with a range of different things on offer, such as art and crafts, handmade gifts, antiques, food and music.
I have been a few times before in previous years and I have always enjoyed it. I find it has a very friendly atmosphere and there is plenty to see and buy.

Alongside the market, various shops down the road open their doors and hold special events for the day. One in particular was called The Vintage Tableware Company which was a small building behind a large antiques centre. It didn't look like there was much inside at first until you went through; there were two rooms opposite each other. One contained The Vintage Tableware Company which has beautiful crockery and other 'vintage' tableware.

In the other room, there were two artists displaying their work, one focused upon lino prints and another concentrating on digital designs of buildings and cityscapes.

Jonathan Wilkinson is one of these artists- on his business card it says 'Jonathan Wilkinson is an artist and designer whose prints and products celebrate the buildings and sciences that define where we live'. His artwork is very modern and often portrays urban cityscapes and buildings. Jonathan grew up in Nottingham, however he studied painting and printmaking at Sheffield Hallam University and so therefore a lot of his prints are based around Sheffield.
I love his use of vectors and flat colours to build up an image; they look just as effective as a photograph or painting. Also, I think creating them as vectors portrays their modern and urban feel.

The other artist was James Green who is a printmaker that specialises in the use of lino printing. He likes to user simple graphics in order to compose his art and I really like his style. I find he uses suitable colours for each piece; they compliment each other really well.
There is no particular theme to his work concerning his subject matter, however I have seen that he often uses animals and buildings. One series of prints he did was based around areas of Sheffield- he finds Sheffield a very Inspiring place in the sense that there is a mixture of old and modern architecture, industrial and urban areas.
I feel quite inspired by James's prints; lino printing is something which I share an interest in and I would like to explore it further.

Storm Thorgerson

Storm Thorgerson, a graphic designer famous for album covers for bands such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Muse. Unfortunately, this week Thorgerson passed away after suffering from cancer but his work can still be treasured and I'm sure it will be remembered for many years to come.
One of Thorgerson's most famous pieces of album artwork was for Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon which features a prism spreading a spectrum of colour across the cover.

Another famous cover he designed for Pink Floyd was one featuring 700 hospital beds which were dragged down to a beach in Devon. Thorgerson liked the photographs rather than illustrations and as this was before the time of Photoshop, it had to become the hard way. The result is a very realistic and believable looking image.

Thorgerson will be missed, however he will still live on in his artwork and continue to inspire.

Storm Thorgerson 1944- 2013

Life drawing 12/3/13

This week we have been life drawing again, this time using a male life model. We did two ten minute and two fifteen minute drawings during which I tried to focus on certain aspects of the model’s body. I used charcoal for three drawings and pencil for my last, more detailed drawing of John’s head, neck and chest.

This is my first 10 minute drawing in my sketchbook. I found it hard to get the proportions right on this and the shoulders seem too wide, however i am still happy with this first attempt.

In comparison to the female model, I found John harder to draw because he is quite square shaped; I find it easier to draw curves. On the other hand, I think John has more visible muscles which allow more tone and detail to be added to the drawing. I didn’t find life drawing as easy this week because I was unable to get the shapes and proportions correct.

This is the second ten minute drawing i did on brown paper using charcoal. I was pleased with the results because i managed to get the proportions slightly better than the previous drawing.

On my first fifteen minute drawing i did i concentrated on just the face, however i found this quite hard because i didnt get the proportion of his face to his hand correct and so the hand looks somewhat distorted and out of place.

My final drawing was done in pencil on brown paper over a time of fifteen minutes. I found that i could apply much more detail with the pencil rather than charcoal and therefore i prefer this drawing to my other three.  

A Brush With Spring

Over the weekend, i visited A Brush with Spring which is a small exhibition of artwork held by Whitepeaks Fine Art at Peak Village. There was a mixture of different styles of work from figurative to very realistic looking wildlife paintings. Some of the artists which exhibited such as Gina Marsh and Louise Jannetta i had seen before after working part time in a gallery last year, however there were artists such as Keith Maiden (a figurative artist) and Eric Wilson (a wildlife artist) who i had never seen before but found equally as inspiring.

Keith Maiden

Eric Wilson

Colin Halliday

Life drawing continued

Today, we have begun to do full body life drawing from a nude model. We used easels and A1 sized pieces of paper; newsprint and brown paper and drew using pencil and charcoal. The first two sections were 15 minute time slots where i used pencil to draw on newsprint paper, i found it challenging to fit the full figure on my page and i wasn't able to get the proportions correct. During the second 15 minute time slot, we were told to use charcoal and used an outstretched arm and a pencil to find the size of the head and how many heads make up the body. I drew on a line at the top, a line at the bottom and a line down the middle to help guide the proportions. I found using the charcoal made the drawing look much more effective as the lines could be freer which is helpful when sketching out shapes. The second drawing was a little more successful, however i found myself running out of space for the feet even though i had put down lines to guide me.

After doing some research into Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Vitruvian Man'  i found how important it was to split the page into sections to achieve the correct proportions. Using this, i split the page into 6 and a half sections (the heads) and measured where areas of the figure should lie. I found this very useful as it enabled me to get the head in proportion with the legs and feet which i had previously struggled with.  The next few drawings were done in charcoal over 20 minute, and two 10 minute time periods. I began to overlap drawings as the model turned after 10 minutes;  this would be a helpful skill for concept art designers who would need to create quick, accurate sketches.

For the last three drawings i had 5 minutes for each, after which the model would turn. I found these drawings the hardest because they were so quick, i think it was hard to capture the figure accurately. The proportions were rushed but these were the only drawings where i could fit the feet on.

Life drawing and Finger painting

Today, we have been creating finger painting images using inspiration taken from the work of Jenny Saville. We began by finding images by Saville that we thought were interesting and had a good use of colour; i found an portrait of a man where Saville had used a lot of green and yellow colours to create the skin. I liked this image in particular because the use of colour was both effective and appealing.

We used our life model, John, to begin our images. I began by drawing a central line down the middle and a line to signify the top of John's head, i then sketched in the basic shape of the face and finally some of his facial features. The drawing did not need to be detailed as it would be covered by the paint. I then added a base colour of white covering the area of the face and began to add shades of green and yellow to create a similar skin tone from Jenny Saville's image  This was quite successful, however i found it more effective to use strokes rather then dabbing the paint with my finger. 
I enjoyed finger painting; i think it allows you to be freer with the paint and doesn't give you boundaries to stick within. I found it enjoyable and appealing to mix the colours on the page, adding white to blend the colours better.

Life Drawing continued.

Today we have been doing more life drawing, this time using a male model. We spent 20 minutes on each drawing using different materials such as ink, charcoal and chalk.
The following are images of my drawings.

Jenny Saville.

Jenny Saville, born in 1970, is a modern artist who enjoys working on a large scale, usually basing her works on naked women. After exhibiting in the Saatchi Gallery in London, Saville gained much more publicity for her paintings and has since exhibited worldwide. I like Saville's style; i think she has an interesting approach of representing the human form and her work contains a great amount of depth and texture which makes them much more effective and realistic looking.

Life Drawing

Today, i have done some life drawing. The subject for my drawings was hands and feet. Here are some images showing the work i have done.