practice, practice, practice...

I'll be updating with some New York stuff soon, as soon as I can be bothered to organise some photos.

For now here's what I've been up to today. I decided that I'd have another go at doing portraits, so this is my second attempt, I decided to try a profile this time. So here's a step by step of the last 2 and a half hours of work.

I've also just downloaded an app for my dashboard too so I can time stuff as I'm working on it.

"Ta Daaaa" AKA "One down, many more to go..."

Once I'd had enough of faffing on with her face I drew in the hair roughly...

On a separate layer I coloured in roughly what I thought I wanted the hair to look like; where the dark and light areas would be...

Then I tried to tidy this up with a finer brush ...

I really struggled with the hair (I kinda wish I'd made her bald!) so I decided to cheat and colour the background.

The point in this exercise was to do something different as everything I draw is so flat and I've never drawn anything this way before, and I do feel like I've learned a bit. Although it doesn't look like Alex's style of colouring, I've reached the conclusion that it's a good thing, I've used her advice and come up with something that reflects me and my style of work; neat and clean. I'm actually pretty pleased with it.

...

Tonight I've been working on the mouth and eyes. I'm pleased with how it's going as it's my first attempt but it hasn't got the same painty finish to it that Alex's stuff does which I really like, I guess, like she said, I need to not be so neat with it. Oh I shaded the ear too, which I can't seem to get right, I actually did that first, but I had a few attempts at it then decided to move on 'cause it was annoying me.

work in progress...

Well it's not turning out as bad as I thought it would and I'm actually enjoying doing it! so much so that I've stayed up far too late considering I'm at work all day tomorrow :s

Noooooo Yorrrk

I had the opportunity to apply for a free place for the New York trip with college, so I wrote a personal statement about why I thought I deserved a place and handed it in with a copy of my record of attendance and crossed my fingers... and the finger-crossing worked! So a week after being told I have a place I'm offski! and I can't wait! :D hopefully I'll take a million photos and see some uber cool stuff that I can post on here too. And maybe even come back with a few goodies!

Here's a doodle of me in NYC, which I put on the bottom of the statement I handed in, I thought a cute little drawing might be nice and show i'd spent some time on the statement, definitely didn;t do me any harm! Was quite fun to draw as it was the first time I'd really used my 0.05 pens so I drew it really tiny, kinda wish I'd just drawn it straight onto the statement though 'cause the scan doesn't look as good.

Once I get back from NYC the college is closed for 2 weeks (boooo), so Pa Gray was nice enough to pick me up from college today so I could take pretty much everything I need home. So when I get back next weekend I'll be making the plaster moulds for the band members and casting them in silicone. so once again fingers will be crossed that it all works!

Rather than stressing myself out trying to get stuff done before NYC when it ain't gonna get done, I decided to have a night off, and tonight I've been doing a little drawing. I'm rubbish at life drawing shizzle; faces, people etc etc and I really need to learn because I should have some in my portfolio, pretty much all of the job roles I looked at on Skillset required evidence of life drawing skills.

Our student teacher, Rachel, did a lesson this week with us using http://www.posemaniacs.com. They have these 30 second drawings with various poses, each pose stays on the screen for 30 seconds and you have to draw it, then it changes to the next one. It was pretty frustrating, but useful! She said that she would do a few a day or week and keep track of how her skills progressed, so I think once I get back I might try that myself, even if I spend 10 minutes on it a day.

I love sitting watching Alex Davy drawing and colouring in PS cause she's freaking awesome at it, I'm always trying to pick up tips and asking her stuff, and tonight I thought I'd give it a go, so I found a picture I liked on google with some nice lighting and have been having a go at drawing it up. It's also the first time I've drawn something with my tablet as if it was a pencil! I usually draw stuff by hand and scan it in then use the pen tool to create the outline, which works 'cause everything is usually very clean lines, so this was new for me, but it works well for Alex so I thought I'd give it a bash. So here it is so far, it doesn't look exactly like the girl in the photo I used but I guess it's more an exercise in colouring. I'm taking screen shots as I go so I can refer back to it if it goes well. Here's hoping!

Finishing the mould...

It's taken me a while to get round to updating this! The next stage with the Alice mould was to start adding the second half of the silicone. First I painted the top of the first half of the mould with a solution of melted vaseline and white spirit, so that the two halves wouldn't bond together...

I then added Silicone to the mould bit by bit until the feet were completely covered too...

Once the silicone had completely set I removed the cardboard box by cutting the sides with a craft knife. The silicone came away from the sides of the box really easily thanks to the layer of parcel tape...

The vaseline and white spirit solution had worked an absolute treat! So i'll be recommending it to everyone! There were a few bits where i'd dripped silicone on the side of the box so the second layer had bonded to it (the mould in the photo below is upside down) but these were easily cut with a craft knife...

The mould opened really easily with little Alice in tact and a really clean impression of her. The pencil holes to act as pegs also worked really well...

The model pulled out really easily, and as the plasticine had dried out and hardened there was none to clean out of the mould. There were a few bubble in the bottom half of the mould, but these are very small and will be filled when painted with vaseline ready to cast the silicone body...

Alice concept art...

So this week hasn't gone quite as I had hoped, and then I've been in London this weekend so haven't been able to get much done.

I had a meeting with the band I'm doing the video for this week and told them my idea for the storyline, which kind of ties up a few loose ends, and they liked it, so I've started on the storyboards and can start working on designing the sets and other characters etc.

I've been gathering up stuff for my portfolio too, though I haven't got a lot and most of what I do have I want to rework so I have a lot to be getting on with, maybe for over the easter holidays.

For now here's the concept art for the Alice book cover I'm doing. Once the model is finished i'll be recreating this image in 3D and submitting it to the Penguin competition.