Eddard Stark - Game of Thrones

I have been watching Game of Thrones series on HBO and I got to say that I love the show! I have not been this excited for a TV show in ages. So I found a hi res image online and did a pencil rendering of Sean Bean as his character Eddard Stark, one of my favorite characters from the show. I have been taking a long pose figure drawing class this term and I feel like this has complimented what I have been doing in class well and vice versa. I am going to guess that this drawing took somewhere between 20-30 hours.

Anatomical Sculpture Class Parts 3-5: Deep Muscles

I have been slacking a bit on updating my sculpture, but mainly due to the fact that my camera has been shooting blurry pics. It is working fine now, I don't know if it was because of the time of day or if its just old, I use an old, not professional crap digital camera. Anyways these are the last 3 weeks of me working on it and since its all deep muscles, I don't have much overlapping ones in yet, so you can still see everything that I have done so far. I got to say that I have really enjoyed sculpting, its been a lot of fun. Tomorrow I will probably do some sketches from this sculpture tomorrow.

Anatomical Sculpture Class Part 2: The Skeleton

So here is the next part of my anatomical sculpture of the arm, the skeleton! I put a lot of extra time out of class working on this. It could still use many more hours of work and is probably far from be 100 percent accurate but should be more than sufficient for what I need it for. I got to say sculpting is a lot of fun, and its good to break away from what I typically do, drawing and painting. I feel its forcing me to pay much more attention to subtle details of the forms. Usually when you think of a typical bone you think its round and cylindrical, but that is far from true. There are many sweeps, turns, and hard edges, its very complex. Tomorrow I will bake it before class so the clay gets hard making it easier to put the muscles on top of the skeleton. I have not sculpted the hand due to the fact that we will not be going over the muscles of the hand in class, but I plan on adding the bones of the hand after the whole sculpture is finished. I am really happy with the way it turned out, the sad part is that I will never see it again after I sculpt the anatomy on top of it, these pictures will be all I have left of it.

Figure Drawing and Zoo Sketches

Figure drawing I did last semester at Watts Atelier that I finally got around to shooting a pic of. I remember last semester I was struggling with my figure drawings, but was pretty happy with the way this one turned out. And some zoo drawings I did a week or so ago. I really wished the monkey and the lizard held their poses longer!

Anatomical Sculpture Class Part 1: Armature

I am take a sculpture class at Watts Atelier this semester. We are sculpting out the anatomy of the arm. So this week we had to build the armature that the whole sculpture will sit on. I am no sculpture, but typically the armature itself is the skeletal structure for your sculpture, but since this is an anatomy class as well, next week we have to sculpt the bones of the arm, and then the following weeks will sculpting muscles over muscles. In the end you would be able to see a lot of what is sculpted so I am taking progress shots along the way. Here are a few pics of the armature that I built.





So next week I will have pics of a skeleton.

Godzilla Revisit

So almost a year ago I did a Godzilla painting where he is fighting Mecha Godzilla. Well I went back to that painting and did some digital work on top of it, making Godzilla more rough and scaly. So here is the new painting, below is the original.

Figure Paintings!

So this last semester at Watts Atelier I took a figure painting class. Now I haven't done figure painting in 4 or 5 years, lots of portrait and still life, but not figure. These were done in Sir Erik Gist's class, yes he has been knighted by the unholy undead, scary stuff... Anyways the class was quite the challenge and a lot of fun. Paintings wouldn't have come out as nice if it wasn't for his help. The girl sitting was done in broader range palette and the other two were done in Zorn palette. Paintings were done in 6-9 hours.

More Arms

Arm studies from today.

Anatomy - Arms

Some anatomy studies I did today. I wanted to focus on doing just arms. I have been slacking on my anatomy studies and I need to do more of them. I am waiting for one more painting to dry and then I will post some figure paintings from class.

Anatomy

I havent posted in a few weeks mainly due to the fact that I have been in a drawing rut. I feel like I cant draw well and the last several life drawings I have done I have not been happy with. I haven't done any anatomy studies in some time, so I thought I should do some and finally update my blog. I do have some life paintings that need to be posted as soon as I get the chance to photograph them I will do it. I probably should shave my face too, I haven't done that in awhile as well, maybe that's why I feel like I cant draw lately, cant focus cause of the itch.

Sketches From The Zoo

I went to the zoo today with a few friends to do some sketching. I felt like I had a real good zoo sketching day. First one in a long time. A bunch of these sketches are from previous trips. The monitor lizard is one from today that I am happy with.

Figure Drawing Fun

Figure drawing I did last night at Watts Atelier. As hard as figure drawing is, it has never been anything that I have stressed over. Its usually fun and relaxing for me. Anytime you are faced with a short drawing session though you should never beat yourself up over it, just be happy if you render out a cool eye, or just get a strong foundational lay in. In the end its just practice and it should be fun.

Costume Figure Drawing and Anatomy Study

Costume figure drawing I did on Friday at Watts Atelier. I spent the whole 3 hours trying to figure out the forms and structure of the drapery. Right now rendering is not a huge concern for me, but learning how to analyze what is going on in the figure and trying to draw it 3 dimensionally with just line is. Rendering can often be a crutch in an attempt to make your drawing look better when in actuality it doesn't. The drapery was very difficult to capture, while I like what I did here, following the folds was tough, especially since they changed substantially after each sitting.

Mas Anatomía

More anatomy studies. With the 2nd piece I wanted to try to get a more anatomy feeling to them and less of a diagram feeling while still trying to retain the 3d look to them.

Yesterday's Figure Drawing

Figure drawing that I did last night. I am real happy with the way it turned out. I just wish I had more time to spend on the feet, the only part I don't like. Next time I am going to make sure I have a more solid drawing down first, so if I don't get the chance to render it, at least the drawing part of it will look good.

Drawn in Black Interview

I did an interview about my art on the web site www.drawninblack.com, here is a link to the interview, http://www.drawninblack.com/2011/01/the-drawing-is-the-most-important-part-interview-with-matt-k-smith/

Anatomy and Structure Studies

Here are some tracings I have done over old master drawings. Basically taking their drawings which tend to be ambiguous and trying to find the anatomy and structure to give them a more solid 3d look to them. This is a very good way to learn anatomy and structure, it is like solving a puzzle and gets the brain thinking.

Figure Drawings

Here are 2 new figure drawings I did at Watts Atelier, one from yesterday and one from last friday. I think this semester I am going to mostly work on linear figure drawings really to to nail down 3 dimensionality of structure and form with mostly lines. I feel that this is much more difficult, it forces you to really analyze what is going on when drawing the figure. When you have a stronger understanding of the forms, rendering will become much easier and you will have a better idea of how to pull your lines and strokes.

Ochocinco

Here is an oil painting I did of Chad Ochocinco from a photo I found online. I have enjoyed the commercials he has done this last year, especially the one where he is playing the NFL game on Wii and he gets beaten by some other guy playing the game. This painting was also done with the Zorn palette as well. The Next painting I have in mind I will be moving away from the Zorn palette and probably be painting with 10 or so colors instead of the 4 used in Zorn. I am doing a few "warm up" paintings before I tackle a bigger personal piece I have been working on, just practicing painting more refined images that life painting doesn't allow for and concentrating on creating interesting brush work.

Portrait Drawing

Here is a portrait drawing I did last semester at Watts Atelier. Class starts next week, cant wait for it to start. I will be taking a figure painting class, haven't done that in ages.