- In Between the Headaches : Updated 12/4

[Gasbag]

I’m going to try to keep this short, but I feel I need to explain something about my situation here.

First off, hi. I’m Gasbag- known as Jay (or James) Nail by daylight. I’m 19 and in my second year of college. I somewhat compulsively decided to try for a degree in art when I’d realized that my life had consisted not of art, but a love for creative processes. I’ve only been on this track for about a year now, and I can say that with just this little experience I’ve learned a great deal about myself, and am sure that this is what I want to do with my life.

In the second semester of my freshman year however, I developed a medical problem. To avoid getting too personal and to make a long story a very short one, I’ll abbreviate it as very bad headaches. I’ve danced with my doctors and my medical insurance for about eight months now, and the problem has elevated to the point where I have near-daily migraines that range from slightly annoying to incapacitating. As a result, this semester I had to drop 4 out of 5 of my planned art classes.

The remaining class that I have is a life drawing class. Of all the subjects out there to draw I’d never imagined the figure would have been so intriguing, so against most of the advice given to me, I kept that one class. But now even my attendance in just one class is making it difficult for me to participate.

So here I am, trying to make up for it at home. It’s a frustrating situation, because despite being here at home, my free time is a valuable thing with the number of headaches I get. I’m not explaining all of this because I want sympathy; I merely want you guys to understand that this is basically replacing my schoolwork. I need to improve, and I can’t think of a better way to do that than to get involved somehow with this amazing community of like-minded artists. I really think you guys are all the incentive I’ll need.

Sorry for the semi-longwinded introduction. I tried to keep it as short as I could; here’re a few things to get me started.


:yayca:






812118

This is actually a study I did while I had some free time at the library a little while ago. It's a reference from Stephen Peck's anatomy book, as are most of my anatomy references.


812120

These are some more quick studies I did recently for my life drawing class. We're beginning to go over some of the skeletal structure, so I figured I'd start going over some of the more complicated sets of bones in detail. I'll have more coming I'm sure. Also a little note, I use a nero pencil to draw every once in awhile, which is why it comes out so dark.


812123

There's a ton of things wrong with this that I can't figure out. Feel free to tear it apart. Same goes for all of my stuff, I need all the helpful criticism I can get.


812124

Some gestures. Most of them are posemaniacs, but I spot a couple that couldn't be. I've got a few newsprint pads filled with these, but I don't think their worth scanning.

[clockworksnail]

Hey man, welcome to the site,
if you want to learn then this is definatly the right place.
youve got a good start to the sketchbook. that first skull is really great.
dont feel disheartened if your SB doesnt get alot of attention at the start, it happens to everyone. the best bit of advice i can give you is post your work up here, wether its commented or not, and browse round other peoples SB's, commenting them with critique(good or bad) it'll get you noticed.
i'll come back and see how your doing when i get the chance.
good luck,
cya
:)

[danlambert]

Hey man, good job on trying to keep your art going. Where do you want your art to take you? Concept art? illustration? etc. will be easier to give crits and stuff if we know what your end game is. For now I will say life drawing should be a priority, do it for as long as you can everyday. I THINK YOU NEED TO RETHINK THE CONTOUR OF THE (bloody caps) contours on that female sketch, you have her as being very flat and it really doesn't seem to be describing her form at all. Other than that, keep up your gestures and anatomy work, and maybe mix it up medium wise.
Good luck man

Peace
Dan

[glaudarien]

Hey man, sorry to hear about your situation, but your definitly on the right lines with your artwork! Great rendering in that first skull drawing and the figures are good and natural. Not sure how i could really help you to improve so my advice is just to keep posting as much as you can and always try have fun with it, goodluck mate.

[rth2art]

Welcome Gasbag!

Already mentioned, the first skull post is great. The other skulls are also nice. Have you tried studying the skull then drawing it from memory? This can help you remember placement without having to constantly reference. Keep up the studies.

Dan nailed it with the contoured body. It feels real flat, especially on the bodies left side where we should see more contour variation. I am also not sure what the gray value is meant to show me. At first I thought you were going for the skeleton underneath but the upper body does not give that impression.

Keep up the good work, remember to keep posting and not get discouraged, and make sure to have fun.

[Gasbag]

@clockworksnail: Thanks for the advice, I'll be posting as often as I can. I hope to see you around.

@danlambert: I really appreciate the visit man. I think I'm still searching, but I fantasize about being the guy who comes up with a boss designs for games, or character designs for movies, though I wouldn't mind being one of the artists who paints up magic cards either. I lean towards concept art at the moment.

As for the cross contour, I think that's what was bothering me. I suppose that's what I get for relying on a photo reference eh? :^^;: Ah well, I'll hopefully be uploading some drawings from life as soon as I can find a good spot to take photos of my classwork. Thanks for the crit.

@glaudarien: Thanks man, I'll be posting as often as possible.

@rth2art: The gray value was just a delineation of light and shadow from the reference picture, but it turned out rather sloppy in the end. I don't think it can be salvaged, so I might try to do a similar piece soon with these things in mind. That drawing from memory thing is a great idea! I think I'd be pretty inaccurate if I were to go at it right now, so maybe a few more studies are in order, but that's definitely something I've got to try. Thanks for the reply!



812321

Here's some pelvis studies I did. Don't mind the little crude doodle below the first pelvis. I was struggling to wrap my head around the form, and that pelvisy-shaped thing that doesn't create the illusion of form in 3d space actually helped me figure it out. It's kind of like underwear.


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[p sage]

Great start, man. Beautiful skull.

Sad to hear about your headaches. Hope you can get them under control.

Do what you can; it looks like you're kicking ass.

[Gasbag]

I'm not quite dead, at least not yet (dramatization, I'm fine at the moment). Doctors changed my medications around because there were some conflicting drugs causing some really goofy side effects. When that happened, my headaches spiked pretty bad, so I've been somewhat out of commission for a while here, but I've still managed to make a bit of progress.

I really haven't been able to commit any concentration to drawing. There's my classes and a few studies, but that's about it. In the meantime I've started a collection of books that I hope to make great use of for awhile. I've got most of Bridgman's books, David Rubin's book, Stephen Peck's Atlas of Human Anatomy as a reference, Valorie Winslow's brand new "Classic Human Anatomy", and Loomis's figure drawing, head and hands, and successful drawing books all spiral bound thanks to kinkos. Hopefully that'll keep me busy.

I'm still not sure how I'll be treating this sketchbook. I don't know if my condition can afford me to be as punctual about updates as I'd like to be, but I do expect I'll be more active than I have been. Here's a few things to keep me going:






841001

Here's another library study I did from Peck. I like the library. So quiet. This is sort of a continuation of an experiment I suppose, connected to the skull in my first post. Both this and the skull were done over a few hours time with mechanical pencil in my school library as a study from Stephen Peck's Anatomy book. I'm growing very fond of mechanical pencils.


841002

This is a huge step for me. It's my first figure from imagination. I had to stare at a few pictures of raised arms to understand that scapula bit, but there's no reference; just memory. I'm not sure about form, proportions, muscles- anything here. I'm ignorant still to a loooot of things about the figure, and not just little things you can get away with, so I'm probably going to need a lot of help if I'm going to get this one right.



841003

As a sort of transition from that last one, my recognition that I know too little about the figure to be so ambitious lead me to the conclusion that I should focus my studies on something particular instead of all over the place. And that's muscles. I don't know anything about muscles, really I don't. Until this study I didn't know how they worked. But now I have a clue. This is the first of a series of studies I'll be doing on most, if not all of the muscles in the human body.



841005

Triceps and Anconeus. I learned mechanical pencil was better for accuracy. Yay for learning.

[Gasbag]

Finally bothered to get another SD card for my camera a couple weeks ago. Decided I'd take pictures of some of my classwork today.

For those who're interested, I'm only taking life drawing classes at Saddleback Community College in the Orange County area of Southern California. I lucked out though, because Lenny Vito Scarola teaches here. He really knows his stuff... I dunno how popular he is; I think I heard him mention that he's buddies with Vilppu and Vandruff, and he had a lot of artists working for him before he taught, but I honestly haven't heard anybody mention him who wasn't local.

Some people complain that he talks in circles when he lectures (which he'll sometimes do, but that's why you bring you sketchbook to class right?), but when he gets with you one on one he finds your weaknesses and just really attacks them. He's good at pushing those who want to be pushed a lot, so he's been a great help to me. Anyway, here's some classwork from this semester. I've got a little more in my car somewhere, and some from last semester under my bed, but this's what I took pictures of today.






845224

Forgot to format this one. Oh well. I think this was from September. New model, practicing delineation.


845225

More stuff from September into October I think.


845227

Just after I started this sketchbook. Was trying to practice cross-contours like the one in my first post; it actually went along with the lesson.


845228

More of the same. Didn't get enough time to finish either of them. I don't finish most of my work unfortunately. Those legs. oof...


845233

This was a couple weeks ago. We were trying a new model, and she was very good. I tried a sort of pose-maniacs approach to my gestures that didn't work very well.


845238

The model did so well she came back the next week. I tried to develop my gestures a little differently, and I think most of them turned out more successfully than last week's. Still kind of sloppy though.


845241

Awhile back, I think back to October again. it was just before we started studying the skeleton, but we had a ragdoll skeleton hanging in the corner to reference for areas we were unfamiliar with.


845243

Most of my classwork is just gestures; Scarola's big on ... drawing big. He likes to emphasize form, and if I get enough time I'm usually pretty confident about rendering, so I'm pretty cool with that. I'm so slow about calculating form though that I only allow myself like, a fifth of the session to render the final picture at most - so most of my longer pieces end up looking like unfinished crap when the model's finished. I really need to work on my speed, though Lenny's recently told me not to worry so much about it and just focus on what I'm doing.


845249

I wasted a lot of time trying to draw her face. I ended up giving up and trying to salvage what I could of the body. Made a pretty big mess.


845246

Now here's an example of how annoying my headaches can be. This was just yesterday, I had some painkillers for the morning so I was alright when I arrived to class, and when the session began I learned we were going to be going at it all day on just one pose (which we rarely- if ever do), so I spent a good hour getting an excellent gesture with the forms all figured out. Lenny even came by and told me it was one of my better drawings, when my headache comes back before lunch and I can't concentrate. I come up and try to draw the face, get the likeness, start rendering half of it and realize I only did half of the face. Redraw it 4 times, etc. I end up ruining other parts of the drawing, and Lenny comes by to ask me what the hell'd happened to my well planned gesture. I ended up just leaving class early and laying down, since I couldn't concentrate.


845250

Unfinished, but about as finished as my classwork gets. Another one of my favorite models; because yes- her hips really are that big. Very fun to draw... She's my girlfriends favorite, mostly because I believe she just loves drawing hips. She modeled in Anthony Ryder's "The Artist's Complete Guide to Figure Drawing".


I'll post more soon.

[OmertA]

Nice sketchbook ill be staying tuned :sungod:
have a good one
-Jamie

[glaudarien]

Thanks again for the comment on my journal.

I think you've progressed a lot since i last check you out here! The gestures look great and i really like your rendering values - they really leap out from the other line-work. I'm not sure how i can really give advice so i'll just wish you luck and keep it up!

I'll try check back every now and then :)

[Gasbag]

@p sage- Thanks man. Sorry I didn't catch you in my last reply, was a little groggy. I really admire the format of your sketchbook- the thousand page idea is pretty intense. If massive improvement's your goal, I think you've already reached it. Can't wait to see how far you get once you've reached a thousand pages. Thanks for the words of encouragement.

@OmertA- Thanks for stopping by. I really enjoy looking through the sketchbooks off people who reply here, yours especially. I'll be returning the favor :D

@glaudarien- Of course, and thanks for the comment :) . It's nice to kind of go back and forth, I'll be checking up every now and then to see how your doing as well.

Just a short update here. Some more muscles and a few very quick Bridgman hand studies.





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I'll post more soon.