Liu Shu

I had a lot of fun yesterday, I went outside of my palette, I tried a combination of Orange Iron Oxide, Nickel Azo Yellow and Indigo. I really liked to work with these pigments, the azo is very very strong, but the two others are very transparent and need a good wit to have them to punch. They are very forgiving when making unsure marks, as they lift off the paper very easily. In this particular session, I had trouble with the head, the model had quite a large head compared to her body, so i tried to compensate, but... I guess I did too much. All poses were 30minutes.

Env Design #2

A second sketch following my yesterday's attempt. I'll do few more iteration of this one, to really get where I want. 2 things noted from yesterday: First the background wasnt distant enough with the foreground, I partially fixed this issue on the left part, but I still feel some fighting near the main tree and the bushes at the back. Secondly, the overal was too cool(in term of atmosphere not color) for what I wanted, so today, I forbidded the use of ultramarine blue(not completely) but mostly relied on Phtalo Blue, the overall result give a much more sun filled atmosphere. This is confusing because Ultramarine is a warm blue... and phtalo is cool... how cooling off a palette get you a warmer effect of light? Strange but it works...

Some Updates

Ok, so The short movie is done, we shot it last weekend, but we couldnt make it to the 48hours competition, the render time took 30min too long. We missed de deadline by a hair. Nonetheless the movie was still screened tonight, but unfortunetly I missed it... duh... yeah I know, I was already absorbed by something else... the other short movie I'm working on. Below are some recent studies I've been doing.

10,000

There is saying, every great artist has at least 10,000 bad drawings behind them. Considering another theory, to be excellent at something, you'll need 10,000 hours of practice. At 5000hr you can teach, at 8000hr you're good, but at 10,000 you're excellent. I tried to make a count... of how many hours I've been doing all this, since... 2001. I've reached a gross average of 6000hours. Considering my daily job is kinda related and the amount of actual practice I'm doing outside of the job. What is seen on this blog, is maybe 1/20 of what I'm actually doing. (All failures are usually tore to pieces before the water has dried out.)

There are 8760 hours per year, in which 2/3 is dedicated to work and sleep. The last third is to eat, leisure, transportation etc... so there isn't much left for self improvement. If you're lucky enough to work in your field of interest, you can leverage some of the 2920 hours you spend in the office for self improvement. Otherwise it's really hard to get off the office, reach home, be good at parenting, and then find some time to improve. But not impossible if you believe in it. And remember that....The only way for an artist to fail, is to quit too early.


 Below is a study for a character research I'm doing for an animated short. More to come later!

Zhu Fang Hua

Today, we had our first life drawing at the office. I had the pleasure to call on Zhu Fang Hua, an old friend I met in 2005 when she was modeling for us back then. She didnt change much, even her poses where quite the same style. I still have some of thoses drawings, it might be fun to compare a series and do some reenactment. Overall today was a very good session, and I believe one of the sketches could be another cornerstone of this journey. I'm not quite sure, because  I want to see it again tomorrow, with new eyes. But tonight I love it and I want to share it. When I saw the pose, I knew something was bound to happen, and it was up to me. The way the light was falling, and the gesture she was holding, I couldn't let it slip.

Palette is M. Graham, Cadmium yellow deep, cadmium red, ultramarine blue, and tiny touches of Alizarin. On Arches CP 140lbs, rough.

Movie studies

I've been doing some movie studies, practicing color mixing. I'm learning a lot doing this, especially how deceiving a color can be when juxtaposed with another. You might think something is blue, because you perceive it as blue, but in reality it's a dull green.

Change of Focus

I haven't post anything for while. I've been happily busy at home, at the office. I also find some time to do some introspection. Thru the course of these last few years, I've made tremendous progress, artistically and technically. I worked my patience with the whims of water. I remember when I settled for this journey in 2006, buying my first kit of watercolor, brushes, papers, reading Charles Reid instructional book. I didn't know much about what was ahead of me. It was an adventure into new territories. A typical  journey of self discovery :), sound cliche. It all started with a specific goal: Learn to paint with watercolor. Inevitably, all I could find along the way, under every stone I was flipping, was fragments of myself. I learned a lot about me and what I could achieve. I always had misconception about my abilities, things I thought I could or couldn't do. This journey, so far, has been everything except boring. On multiple occasions, I was fighting myself, my ignorance, my impatience, my stubbornness and so on and so on. I'm definitely more serene, when it comes to painting. Which is good, I guess only few people would know the internal gust of emotion such an enterprise could cast. The bitterness of failure or the intense joy of "nailing it down". So... where am I going with this thread... Change of focus, right. I've done a lot of observation drawings/paintings, I've neglected the storytelling aspect of art. My ultimate goal is still to entertain people. Characterization, mood, stylization....here I come.

Along with that goal, I have 2 projects in the pipe,

A short animated movie, I doing some characters & env design, and later  some shader, lighting and rendering.

A Short live action, which should be finished by the end of May 2011, I'm DOP & 1st Camera.

Stay tuned, I'll be posting more stuff as soon as I can.

Cheers,
Audran