Week 2, Day 4, CDW Workshop

Tried to copy Aaron Beck's gun today. I don't think I have much interest in a future in game design... Jaime continued to talk about his approach to painting. He's like an encyclopedia, he has so much knowledge. Things he spoke about today: 1. Pay more attention, do more life drawing 2. If you don't draw from life you will continually repeat the same mistakes over and over. It's not smart. You can't expect a different result if you're always doing the same thing. 3. He was influenced by comic books in his teens, but chose to be a more realistic artist. In his mind it was better in the long run. 6. Early on he decided to get more influences and studied a lot of art history to understand why people do things instead of what they are doing. 7. To really improve, you need to increase your mileage and put in the hours, and be intelligent - do things that will push you, aka. work hard and long but also smart. 8. Music affects his moods and his mood is reflected in his work, he listens to music that is appropriate for his work, with no dramatic change. 9. He learnt to ignore when he didn't feel like drawing or painting. 10. Tangents. 11. Draw very very well so that you will be more confident in your painting. 12. Artist's he mentioned - Wayne Barlowe, Doug Chiang, Craig Mullins "the Godfather of digital art", Birke, John Harris, Ian McCaig (star wars), Anders Zorn, K Bougliereau, Repin 13. Book suggestions - Famous artist course 14. Material variety in paintings 15. Weening himself off using reference I was very lucky to show him my sketch book of life drawings today too, I actually waited around til 8pm to do so. He told me I shouldn't be in such a hurry to get to the rendering stage, to focus more on getting the form. He said that I was good with showing movement and weight in my drawings which I think is huge for me. I really wanted his advice so I can improve. He also suggested that I read the Loomis books, and also, even though he hadn't read it yet, he'd heard that Michael Hampton's Figure drawing: Design and invention was great. So I'm definitely going to get it. I also got feedback on my black and white painting today by Simon, so I made the changes that were needed, basically fixing something in the middle and the clouds to get it more accurate to the photo... So I think it's better, and I'm leaving that for now to do the rest of them. I don't think I will be coming back to that.

These are some of the drawings that I got good feedback from Jaime on:

And these are some more drawings done today. I couldn't go to life drawing, so I sketched some hands and drew some bystanders and then came home to a very helpful dog, who did some posing for me.