Kittys Drawings

Hi!
‘Tis about time I posted these. Friday and I’m showing you Monday’s work.
Terrible quality pics – I’m sorry I just cant get these right! I think next time I will have to go to the trouble of scanning them and stitching them together in PS.

Getting better! Things I need to work on:
* Finishing in time!!! Five minutes should be enough to get the basic form down. Work faster Esz!!
* PROPORTION. As the teach keeps telling us – take a step back and analyse!
* Detail. Knowing which bits to focus on and when.

(in chronological order from the beginning of the night to the final pose)
20mins warm up – 2mins each hands & feet

5mins poses

And these last two were 10mins a piece:

Last one is hard!!

(oh my god these photos are BAD!!! So sorry!)

The model was good – he knew what he was doing and brought along his own props like a bow which helps show muscle tone.
Drawing a man is tricky! Where there is usually curves and smooth lines on a woman it’s all boxes and no definition on a man (waist and hips argh!)

But – ze classes are seriously awesome and our teacher is great. The gallery plans to expand on things by offering intermediate lessons after this course is up, along with perspective and spacial drawing on Tuesdays. Now that’s another thing I haven’t even touched on! So depending on time and budget constraints, I wouldn’t mind doing some of Tuesday’s classes also.

Tomorrow I plan on making a start on a brochure for my parents’ winery – and doing some sketching. Melbourne has finally decided to let winter settle in and staying inside drawing is mighty appealing. That said, I may become desperate for a coffee and I have overdue library books that need returning.
Hope you all have a great weekend!!

Hullo!

After yesterday’s little wine-induced whinge and all your subsequent supportive comments I have decided to do something about it. Not one to sit around moping for too long, I’ve enrolled myself in a 9 week life drawing course at Guildford Lane Gallery. I had plans to sign up to a drawing course offered by the Centre for Adult Education (CAE) but then I saw this one on a link posted on Facebook which is cheaper, goes for longer and you get to participate in an exhibition at the end of it. Not to mention, they ply you with WINE too! Fantastic!
That said, I am very keen to try out the CAE options also, so as funding allows I will be joining on those too. They have a larger range of courses available and we shall see about the quality of teaching at both venues.
But I have always liked doing classes of any sort (kickboxing and yoga are in my repertoire hehe) and the Guildford Lane one is on Mondays and starts next month. What a great start to the week they will be – sure fire way to beat chronic Mondayitis.
YAY I am so stoked!

Now on to a couple of sketches from the last two days. Nothing spectacular, just the usual scribbles from the train. I struggle drawing faces quickly but postures and figures are much easier. Wonder why that is.
Scuse the huge-o-mungo pictures but you should all be used to that by now

Seeya later then

Blah!

Sorry for the lack of posting…Been away for the weekend down at Wilsons Prom – frolicking in the waves and having fun….Posing for photographs and trashing a dress that only LOOKS vintage. Trashing I say, but I think it survived all the sand, salt and clambering over rocks. I picked it up at the Salvos around the corner for a mere $25. I will show you photos when they are ready….

Until then, this is a post to say BLAH – Not feeling it today despite my best intentions. Having a slight low moment and think I need to get back to sketching and anatomy before I try and finish something. Even though I feel like such a failure for not finishing anything decent in ages.

You know what I realised not too long ago?? That in all my years of learning art and calling myself an artist – I was never really taught how to draw. In primary school it was all about experimentation and basic rules of colour like what primary colours are etc. High school was mostly about art theory and learning particular art periods and well known artists in history. By the time I got to uni, it was expected that you knew how to draw or that you had no interest in actual technique and rather just wanted to paint. The most valuable thing I learned from school was my life drawing classes which comprised of one semester during my first year of my Fine Arts degree.
Everything else I know is self taught – Any inkling I might have of anatomy and serious techniques are from books, my parents and now ConceptArt.org. All I have going for me right now is my talent alone….I know I have it but quite frankly, that’s not enough. I need discipline and structured learning. I might have books on drawing the figure and calculating perspective, but they don’t give you feedback or the environment of a classroom where there is interaction with your peers and mentors.
I wonder if it’s a failing of Australia’s entire art education system or just the schools I went to? I know here in this country there is not much value placed on artists, instead we focus on sporting prowess. This is changing I know, albeit slowly. I don’t know that if I went and enrolled in another university here in Melbourne, if they would teach all the things I missed out on. It is all well and good to encourage the growth of ideas and the creative process, but if you don’t have a solid grounding of technique then what good is your art? Maybe this is a contentious issue and people disagree with me…If you do I would love to hear your thoughts.

I think this little ramble has inspired me to pursue more formal training. There are adult courses out there and uni degrees…but I don’t want the same thing as what I was learning in Tassie. Time to look into it! Any ideas send them my way please
Thanks for hearing me out!!

Hi Everyone!

Something completely different from me once again!
A few weeks ago I got the CD with my latest schoolwork on it. This year I am going to be doing Certificate IV in Graphics PrePress – its the ‘post apprenticeship’ program which means only a couple more units that need doing. Two of those I am doing at work and the rest (I think three) I will be doing at school. When that will be I don’t know!

The most interesting of the on-the-job projects is the Advanced Typography one. There are two briefs we have to fill. One is a CD cover and the corresponding booklet and the second is this one – A muesli package design. Now this is really my forte I suppose when it comes to graphic design as it’s what I do every day. We don’t print on card but the considerations for food packaging are much the same across the board.

The most important thing is that type has to be legible. A lot of information usually has to be part of the design – things like the Nutritional Information, ingredients, addresses and the various certifications etc. These are often printed quite small and you really have to think about what font you’re going to use. A fail-safe in the food packaging industry is trusty old Helvetica. Many designers I’m sure think it’s boring and unimaginative – but really, nothing compares to Helvetica when you’ve only got a tiny space to fit 10 lines of text in.

Another thing to consider when creating a design for food packaging is colours. With magazine printing, you’re usually going to be able to get away with the standard CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). However, with packaging you are often working with special brand colours that must be very consistent across very large runs. Think of Bega red, Cadbury purple and Woolworths green. The only way to achieve the consistency you need is by using the Pantone Matching System colours (PMS). Plain CMYK can also get muddy and you don’t get such a wide variety of vibrant colours as you can get with the Pantones.
Also, sometimes you need more than just the colours you can see . In my line of work, for those vacuum sealed smoked hams you see in the fridge at the supermarket we need to add two opaque whites and also a clear varnish. It’s a bit easier to print on paper but it’s often you’ll need a varnish for that too.

Now for my design, the brief was to use CMYK plus two Pantone spot colours. I wanted to try something modern and sleek as it’s not something I’m often allowed at work (don’t ask!!!). The fonts I kept simple, using only Adobe Caslon and Neutraface. I’m loving Neutraface at the moment! It’s got a lot more edge than Helvetica, but it’s still easy to read and has a wide variety of styles within the font like small caps and different weights from thin to bold.
I’m no font genius, but I am absolutely obsessed with them! I can spend the majority of ‘design time’ picking a font. Each one has a personality and they all say a different thing. Neutraface is confident, timeless and cool
I chose Adobe Caslon for it’s beautiful ampersand (the ‘&’ symbol) – this was the basis of the design which I built the rest around. It’s also used in the Jasper’s logo.
The photos on the front I took off www.sxc.hu and comped them together in photoshop. I added the shadows and cut them out. Nothing too difficult there. The photo on the back came with the brief and is completely untouched at the moment.

There are still a few things I think that need tweeking. I’ve got to add a few more lines of text in which I’m a bit puzzled about at the moment. And I’m not too sure about the nutritional panel.

What do you think?

Speaking of apprenticeships and school…. I’m officially finished on the 28th of July! Yippee! I will get a proper salary (not that I’m not getting paid nicely already) and all that jazz. Yay!