Feral Friends

[Feral Friend]

Hello and welcome to my sketchbook, soon to be home to my imagination.

I am completely useless without routine, I have wanted to 'work on' becoming an artist for just about ever, but everything is very distracting. So I'm going to set my self the goal of spending 3 nights a week here, working.

I'm looking forward to getting some critique, encouragement and to making some friends along the way.

[Feral Friend]

Ennnnd of evening one.

[Feral Friend]

Life drawing dump

[Feral Friend]

I started evening school at the Putney School of Art earlier this January which is so far fantastic, every class I produce something better than I could have on my own which after so many years drawing untutored is a really exciting thing. The course is oil painting and our project for the term is drapes.

Having barely ever painting with actual paint before let alone with oil paints I'm glad for the soft and forgiving forms! Ian the tutor has a background in art history and chatters away about colour theory and which artists paint in which ways and who influenced who. I should take a note book, he lays out a selection of books with work from the artists he is discussing but it would be great to remember the names and look them up later.

We began the course trying to express the colour of a fabric using chalk and charcoal on black cartridge paper. I have only used chalk and charcoal once before so Ian stepped in to show me that to avoid making the picture to high contrast I could get some scrap paper and make a patch of black and white and use my finger to pick up the dust and apply it much lighter with my fingers! Can guess what colour my fabric was?



Not a master piece but I am crazy happy with it, the whole experience and way of approaching drawing was new to me and I learned a lot and enjoyed it.

Since then we have moved on to oil paints which completely threw me at first, its much more like sculpture than drawing digitally and you can't be as much of a control freak as you can with digital stuff, I think that might be why a lot of digital stuff can look lifeless, the restrictions the medium put on you add to the picture. I don't know why this hasn't occurred to me before, I some times feel a bit lost by the ability to control absolutely everything in digital drawing and tend to get lost with something ridiculous like zooming in and spend 2 hours making sure my line weight is even.



The class is too short to finish anything but the above is my best effort so far. The area I spent the least time perfecting is the most obviously fabric.

I think this is my 3rd attempt at oil painting, I'm surprised how much I like it.

[Feral Friend]

I have always loved the way hands are drawn in manga, they hold the hands in these elegant but completely unlikely poses where the fingers are very long and slightly bent to reveal the gap between them, the tension it creates is pretty but if you pose your fingers like that its not exactly natural or comfortable.

I was drawing hands mimicking the style and it meandered into the above slightly creepy line art.

[Feral Friend]

Some digital doodles.

[Feral Friend]

Lurid colour warning. I'm normally much more sedate. Digital WIP.

[Feral Friend]

.... double post

[MrParker]

Feral Friend... that's a cool name. Good start to the sketchbook. I think your figure drawings are pretty good in terms of contour, but the shading is very flat. It needs to describe the figure form more, and give the illusion of depth.

You're heading in the right direction with your recent work, so no need to fret too much.

[Feral Friend]

Thanks MrParker! I will keep it in mind


At evenin' class last friday we did 1 hour 30 min portraits from these tiny shitty inkjet print outs. It normally takes me hours to do as much but the limit in time forced me to try and reach a point where it felt part way complete a lot faster.
I struggled with the colour mixing for the dark tones, Ian our tutor teaches the colourist way of painting and when the colours were on my pallet I could hardly tell if it was a greeny black or a reddy black or if it was too dark for the area I planned.
The whole picture looked terrible right up until the last 10 minutes at which point I was wishing for just another half an hour to get some more detail and softer shapes in.

Baring in mind it is my 4th oil painting ever I'm quite happy with it.

[knoxie]

oh man.. they one you did yesterday is beautiful! reminds me of a james jean piece... great cloth studies too.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.

[Feral Friend]

I LOVE James Jean (with fan girlish stalking glee) so that's about the sweetest thing ever

Spent most of my sunday on this and I'm eager to colour it.

[Feral Friend]

A legend from the west lake in Hangzhou, China. Graphite on paper.

[FightingSeraph]

So far, your studies are excellent, but you might need to do more. Namely color, perspective, and composition are in need of work.

[Feral Friend]

Thanks FightingSeraph! your completely right, a big void in colour perspective and composition. I'll keep it in mind

Update on the below WIP

[Feral Friend]

Been away on holiday in Morocco and feeling arabic vibes!

Painted this at evening class over 2 sessions.

[Strassenpenner08]

hea there

nice stuff so far
I really like the colors of the last post ^_^

[teroteki]

some really lovely ideas and yummy figure sketches here!
that 3rd eye painting is beautiful! keep on pushin'!

[SirGreenSock]

Latest painting is awesome! You should try more in this style.
The hard work is showing and paying off, keep it up!

[Feral Friend]

Thanks guys! Kind words much appreciated!

The 3 eye painting is a study from two pictures by another artists, it was a task set at my oil painting evening class that was mostly about learning to use stand oil, its a mixture of two paintings my teacher gave me a print out of.



Did a bit more on this, I should probably start a thread for it rather than reposting my efforts here, hope the repeats aren't too boring!

[Feral Friend]

Last 2 sessions at my painting class before end of term spent on the above, it's Yangshuo in south China where I studied kung fu and taught english. Trying to scrape together enough money to pay for another term! I feel like I have learned a lot very quickly.

[Feral Friend]

Spent a couple of hours softening and bringing in more pink and brown to the light side of the face. Again I struggled with the dark side using the colourist method for creating black partly because its really hard to tell what type of black your mixing on the pallet and partly because I juts couldn't get dark enough for the eye socket.



Photo is slightly blurry but too big (and wet) to go on the scanner

[Feral Friend]

This is a drawing I did in 2005 that I spent about 4 hours today re doing. the castle and karst mountains and elements of the dress and hair are original, everything has been repainted. Cheesy but so preeetty

[Feral Friend]

Close up!

[jskotte]

Nice studies, I really like the last painting you re-did. I also like the WIP from your first post, is it finished later or are you still working on it. The colors are a bit solid, maybe try and add more detail on the foreground character, but nice composition.

[Grunden]

nice stuff, the painting of south china is sweet

[Feral Friend]

Hi Jskotte, it isn't finished yet, I'm not really sure where I'm going with it. I changed the colour scheme and keep re cropping it and now I can't remember what my original vision for it was. It's at 300 DPI to print at A5 so it is fairly big and I put so much detail into the background that I am all dried up and tired of looking at it for the fore ground. Any ideas welcome!

I find I often get bored with a picture and come back to it 6 months later to finish it. Or in the latest picture 5 years later....

Grunden: Thanks! Most lovely place on earth.

[Feral Friend]

Finished this really quickly under pressure to have it done in time for Uni interviews.

[SLIMEface]

Great stuff man!
Really like the painting in oils of the mountains. I like the diffrent edges and hues, maybe thats something you could play around with in your digital pieces.
Keep up the hard work.