Fishspawn's Journey

**Lee W** · November 12th, 2006, 06:45 AM

I like those deer studies that you did

if you use that same technique when doing human figure studies, I believe it would be to your advantage.

**isair** · November 12th, 2006, 12:10 PM

like the deer drawings. showing great form simplification. nice and simple. keep up the good works.

**aph** · November 12th, 2006, 05:50 PM

Thanks for stopping by my thread again! Great work here dude, so keep going!

Those deer drawings are great. Definately try and think of the human form in this sense, resist all your desires to indulge in face/detail just yet. For your digi I prefered the first image, better composition and contrast in the piece. The second one is looked very flat and unreadable in comparison. Are these two the wrong way round?

**Fishspawn** · November 12th, 2006, 07:00 PM

Oldnoobie - thanks, i'll try that

isair - thank you

aph - thanks. I see what you mean about the enviro. Actually the first one i spent hours and hours on and the second one was 30 min, just to see what i could do with it. The contrast seemed greater when i was working on it, but i was mostly going for atmosphere. Tell me if you like this one better...

These animals are being reffed from the drawing animals book again, hence the awesome simplified forms, but obviously its a good technique so i'll try it on people for gestures. Here are some feet from sara simblet's anatomy for the artist, 80 min. And here's a quick fix for that enviro, still not that great i guess but i like it better than the old one.

**Lee W** · November 13th, 2006, 10:32 AM

great job on the feet

and I think I got that same book "Drawing Animals", by Norman Adams and Joe Singer, right? hehe, my copy was from the first printing in 1979.

**Spats** · November 13th, 2006, 11:31 AM

Good stuff here mate - and thanks for taking a peek in my SB!

Nice job on the feet... keep playing around with those values. Also your life drawings are very cool, nice flowyness in all your characters.

Keep it up!

**guitarjames** · November 13th, 2006, 02:36 PM

hey ,
The feet are looking like your best digi so far, try not using so much low opacity because its turning a bit muddy .The deer is great . The bears limbs look a little stiff and it kinda looks a bit like a teddy bear

keep it up .james.

**Fishspawn** · November 14th, 2006, 01:01 AM

oldnoobie - thanks, yep, same one, but yours is old

spats - thank ye

james - thanks, hehe i thought the bears were silly too but thats how they were simplified in the book.

hands studies from various refs and more work on the feet, just noodling around, i didnt use the ref this time.

**jdeegz** · November 14th, 2006, 05:03 PM

woooord those feeet are sick!!!!

**Fishspawn** · November 15th, 2006, 01:09 AM

thanks jdeegz

figgas, 11 1 mins, 3 5s, a 30 and an hour (which i did two drawings of)

EDIT: Here's my new avatar bigger.

**Hyptosis** · November 15th, 2006, 07:16 AM

Originally Posted by Fishspawn

guitarjames and sweetoblivion 314 - Thanks

Last day invovled costumes and lots of gesturing. I had a blast. For those who are interested my teacher was John Howarth. His passion for drawing was inspiring! Over all i filled up about 65 pages of newsprint and 100 pages of sketchbook, all in 5 days.

And this next week i will be camping so i will not be able to post, but i will continue drawing!

Awesome stuff, the work in the post, the girl kissing, they look kinda like nurses, very frekaing good gestures. Keep it up. Leaps and bounds man. =]

**Hyptosis** · November 15th, 2006, 07:17 AM

Oh, I also love the dude in the outrageous blue chalk. =] It burns my eyes but I keep looking at it. =P

**guitarjames** · November 15th, 2006, 03:03 PM

hey, gestures are nice ,some of the wrist look a bit limp and the pencikl ones the legs are to small. i really like the charcol and chalk woman and the blue man too.
I like the zoomed in portrait but the other one the lower half seems like it pulls in to much ,unless thats how your jaw is.Also the bit between the lip and nose is missing (cant remember what it is called).Anyway

keep it up .james.

**Fishspawn** · November 17th, 2006, 03:01 AM

hyptosis - wow you dug back there a while, thanks for the complements

james - thanks, thats why i cut that part of the portrait off >.>; it was done entirely without ref.

Here are some figures, early ones were 30 seconds, 1 mins, 5 mins, 10 mins, and the last one was an hour. Charcoal and conte on all but last, which is graphite.

**Fishspawn** · November 19th, 2006, 12:18 AM

Day at the zoo.

**max xiantu** · November 19th, 2006, 01:17 AM

Nice animal gestures.
I think you got some real good giraffe flava goin on there :.

**guitarjames** · November 19th, 2006, 04:34 PM

hey,
The red conte lifedrawings are musch better, and the animal drawings are nice but watch out for the proportions on them. Some of there legs look a bit wonky.

keep it up .james.

**Blue Severin** · November 19th, 2006, 10:16 PM

nice, bones in the figures are cool. Like the animals. concentrate on getting your value system right. You're putting darks, midtones, and lights in the right places, but you're not looking to see if the dark on the leg is darker than the dark on the arm. You can get a ton of depth noticing the subtle value shifts between large areas of the form. And line quality nees work with the conte, some of em are wide smudges.

**Lee W** · November 19th, 2006, 10:23 PM

great job on the figure drawing

though I like the animal gestures more ...

**Fishspawn** · November 20th, 2006, 01:03 AM

max xiantu - thanks

giraffes are weird >.>;

guitarjames - thanks, i was going for proportions but animals don't like to stay still

Gotta study more animal anatomy to remedy the problem i guess

Blue Severin - thanks.. hmm i'd never thought of it like that before. I will pay more attention to overall values, although generally there are like 5 light sources, which makes values harder to nail :/

oldnoobie - thanks, i enjoyed doing the animal gestures a lot, going to have to do that again.

I'm sick of not being able to draw faces/hands from memory, so i'm going to try to practice them daily now, only from ref/life for a little while to clear my memory of habits, Here's the frantic anger sketches, all really quick attempts to nail proportion/likeness. Once i got into the groove i felt a little better

corbis.com is my new friend

**Fishspawn** · November 20th, 2006, 09:52 PM

As promised, here's my portfolio from portfolio day in october. Working on my portfolio for calarts admission, will probably put that up soon.

**Lee W** · November 21st, 2006, 08:56 AM

nice portfolio, these are the ones I like most

I noticed they are almost all figures, I would suggest adding a couple more still lifes and environmental works to give it a more balanced portfolio

**max xiantu** · November 21st, 2006, 04:49 PM

I agree about balancing out your portfolio.
I think the SP and the Dali-esque landscapes are your strongest works. I like 'em alot.
The figure drawing seems to have more of a rushed feel to it not present in those other pieces.
Best of luck in your application process. I look forward to seeing the CalArts portolio :.

**Fishspawn** · November 22nd, 2006, 01:15 AM

Oldnoobie and Max Xiantu - thanks for the input

, the reason why my portfolio is like this can be explained by this quote, taken directly from the calarts website

Submit a portfolio of at least 20 drawings from life. At least 80 percent of your application portfolio should be drawings of people and animals from real life -- these drawings ought to range from one-minute gestures to longer poses. Landscape drawings (including interiors as well as exteriors), animal, bird, marine drawings and floral studies, both linear and color, are a plus. Do not try to clean up the drawings by erasing the construction lines. These under-drawing/construction lines are especially helpful to the faculty in understanding how you approach life drawing.

Here's my in progress portfolio. Some of the drawings are from tonights figure drawing session. I may chop up some of the gesture pages and take some from other places as well, and I am planning to add in some of those animal pages, and possibly a printout of a digi. Let me know what you think.

**guitarjames** · November 22nd, 2006, 11:35 AM

hey ,
portfolio is looking good .I like the faces too keep on doing them and you will improve lots.Maybe try puting some construction lines on your next drawings just too meet all the specs.I dunno

keep it up .james

**paberu** · November 23rd, 2006, 08:26 AM

Hey fish, sorry for not popping in for a long time!

The figures are coming along nicely! Much improvement there, animal studies are good too. I think your sb is a bit lacking in imagination department, while drawing from life is great - I think putting some focus on drawing from head would be worthwhile. Maybe also some study on industrial design/architecture to balance things off.

Keep rocking!

**Fishspawn** · November 23rd, 2006, 04:18 PM

guitarjames - thanks

rayk - thanks - the main reason i haven't been doing that so much is because of my portfolio... but i do miss it

So, here's a speedie.

**Fishspawn** · November 24th, 2006, 04:07 PM

Here's my calarts portfolio in the order it will be in and everything... going to ship it off today.

EDIT: Going to ship it monday, so if you think there should be any severe order changes/stuff added/removed let me know!

**guitarjames** · November 24th, 2006, 04:51 PM

hey, like the nviro maybe spend some more time on the sand and just some more tie on it genrally.Also i think th man should be smaller because it kind of ruins the scale .the tower looks big but then you see the man.

keep it up .james

**Fishspawn** · November 24th, 2006, 07:02 PM

james - thanks for the crits.

Little more work, this might make it into the portfolio if i keep getting good feedback on how to improve it.

Edit: Another version - fixed some perspective issues. I'd still love crits on this one.

Edit2: Another version. Would love some input, running out of ideas.