purb36 Portfolio Review

[purb36]

whats up, yall? welcome to my portfolio review. :teeth:

so, about me...

im a 23 year old mechanical engineering major turned English teacher/Professional jungle gym for about 300 or so 0-6 year-olds in the countryside of Japan. ive been drawing for a while, but drawing seriously since last winter, about since the time i found CA.org, no less. mostly self-taught with a lot of help from the .org; thx to all of you. i love kids and think that i would eventually like to be, among other things, a children's book illustrator. to that end, theres a lot of things that i feel i need to learn about art, so i am applying to Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada for the coming year. these are some of the works from the portfolio assessment part of the application that i recently sent in. thx for your time, and i would appreciate any crits that you have to give.

1. Life drawing of a group
http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/2269/file0254a5sh.jpg

2. Freehand historical building
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4651/file0293a8sf.jpg

3. Freehand pen and ink (no ballpoint)
http://img71.imageshack.us/img71/435/file0249a2dn.jpg

4. Still life (everyday objects)
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/1900/file0295a5nb.jpg

5. Still life (tells a story about a particular piece of clothing)
http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/1606/file0285a9mz.jpg

6. Landscape
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/2089/file0294ca5zz.jpg

7. Mechanical Objects
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/386/file0266a6xy.jpg

8. Self-portrait
http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/4488/file0246a0by.jpg

9. Hands
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/1876/file0264a0fz.jpg

10. Figure drawing (clothed, gives sense of scale)
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7172/file0296ba6zi.jpg


thats all folks. thx for stopping by. :yayca:

[vigostar]

Hey, Purb. you have some pretty neat ideas and structure but, what I think lacks over all is polish. for instance in that last drawing you did of the giant with the man behind the cup. your sense of scale is really good but, theres no depth in the picture where the def. should be and it looks well unpolished/ unfinished. Try to unify your lines more. Think about the general shapes of the objects your trying to draw, figure out volume, mass, space..... The lines on the table looks messy and even if you were going to for a more stylized approach soemthing like a table cloth would normally be very neat, not necessarily straight but, neat. Create contrast to bring to life your drawings.. Figure out your main light source and focus where that is and where your darkest points are as well. Create a harmony between the two.. When working in B&W contrast is really all you have when creating objects that are adjacent to eachother. The compisition in that drawing is rather good.. Think about some elements that you can add to the BG to make it more interesting to look at.. Fill the void in the BG, create space and depth there.. Its a huge house.. Make it look enormous, enormous enough for a giant to live in. Maybe add a dish of sugar cubes next to the smaller character or a spoon, slice of toast, grapes, anything that will further enhance that sense of scale. I didnt want to focus on all your works as a whole. I wanted to focus on your best piece and have you re-think the other drawings with the comments I made on this one. good luck to you and keep on drawing

[figure2]

In addition to vigostar's comments, when creating an image that tells a story like the Jack & the giant drawing, think about value (lights, darks & middle tones if you're not familiar with the term). Being that Jack is the main subject of the image, You generally want to put the lightest or darkest values into him. The giant would then have the 2nd lightest or darkest values. By prioritizing the progression of values, you lead the viewers eyes around the scene in the order you intended. This is how you tell the story.

My 2nd comment would be about mood. You want to create a sense of fear and menace in this scene to really communicate the danger Jack is in. One possible way to do this would be to have the giant reaching for his stein to make it really clear that Jack is in imminent danger of being discovered.

Overall, a nice range of images.

[purb36]

vigostar and figure2, thanks for the feedback. i have a lot to learn about illustration, not just drawing but really communicating a story. thanks for the tips. back to the grind...