Class is in session!

Hey Oluseyi, wb.

I will be a few days late in submitting this assignment as i'll be studying for exams till the 24th. Expect a submission from me on the 25th

Hey I am here too :)

Nice to see you back.I am having a prolonged exams period though from this Monday until late February (maybe even March) due to some problems with my faculty.

Nevertheless I have bought the book and am reading it too.Might be a little late with tha assignment but I will be sure to do it :) . It is very nice and very interesting.

That's okay, everybody. I'm flying back tomorrow evening, to get into New York on Wednesday, so let's just give it a few extra days - say until the weekend. That also gives me time to prepare the next lesson, which will actually involve drawing.

I'm going to ask everyone to send me (privately) a drawing of their hand and their face, to mark where they stood when they started so we can compare as you improve. The difference between my drawings before and after studying the text for a month is amazing!

Keep drawing. I've done two more portraits in the last three days, which was very good for me after not having done anything in about five weeks! See y'all when I get back.

1st Assignment by Fukushousha:

I chose to observe my desk.It is made out of wood.Now that I observe a little more closely I can notice that the wood is forming waves(that's the worde we use in greece , don't know how to describe it in english.By waves I mean ripples .. the things you see when you cut a tree and look at its trunk.)It creates a very nice pattern.
On the desk is my student's pass , a rectnagle orange shaped.Shiny because it relfects the lighting of the room.Also my wallet a red , rectangle shaped bag , quite dusty.Also I can see a pen positioned on top of the student's pass.It is of transparent colour except from the top(cap ?) which is blue.The last thing that I can see on the desk is a deck of 52 cards.Only the top card's figure is visible.On the top card a windmill from a Greek Island is painted with the blue sea and sky as a background.It makes a nice contrast with the white of the windmill.



That's all ... actually my desk is quite empty today -.- ;
I am not sure If I understood the first assignment quite well , but well .. I tried :).IF there is anything you would like redone just tell me and I will do it.

EDIT: Reading the book now , it seems that the first assignment of the book is th e same as what you want us to send privately to you, except for the portrait from memory part.What troubles me is this viewfinder thing.I guess I will have to construct it using the instructions given in the book.I will visit the art store near here for the rest of the items it says in the book that are needed.

I don't udnerstand what the masking tape is though.

[Edited by - Fukushousha on January 23, 2007 3:09:33 AM]

Quote:

Original post by Fukushousha I don't udnerstand what the masking tape is though.

It's tape that has a paper backing on one side, and adhesive on the other. Usually used as a less damaging alternative to heavier tapes such as duct tape.

Hey Oluseyi: I do not have the textbook that we're working out of. Is there any way i can continue this workshop without it? My parents aren't big on me doing art. Possibly i can stick to doing the assignments you post here (such as assign # 1)? Thanks

Acid, the book is only $25 ( $16 online ) at Chapters. If you need to convince your parents that its worth buying, just show them the back cover. It has a before and after picture that will convince them. Theres also no nudity in it, so they can't object on those grounds. Or you can read it in Chapters if you buy a coffee every once in a while.

I've started receiving replies to our first assignment, and one respondent mentioned feeling shame at what he saw as the low quality of his work.

Never be ashamed of your work!

Yeah, sure, it may not be "good" - not as good as you want it to be, not a perfect rendition of what you saw in your mind's eye - but by creating it and continuing to work on your ability, you are embarking on the journey to make yourself capable of doing what you want. Let me show you something:

Self-portrait
October 11, 2006


October 30, 2006


My hand
October 10, 2006


November 19, 2006



Now, I've been drawing since I was a child, though I basically stopped for something like seven years, and I'd never had formal instruction. Look at what I was able to accomplish in terms of improvement in a month. "Do not despise the days of small beginnings," indeed!

I only read this today. Oluseyi, maybe an announcement in the other forums that this workshop is resuming would be helpful.

Quote:

Original post by Demosthenes I only read this today. Oluseyi, maybe an announcement in the other forums that this workshop is resuming would be helpful.

Good idea. I've posted an announcement to that effect.

Do we need to have a thread in the forum to participate?Because my thread seems to have been lost :o.

Also I sent you the self-portrait and hand drawing you asked :)
I am not sure but I might have been the embarassed guy :D

Quote:

Original post by Fukushousha Do we need to have a thread in the forum to participate?Because my thread seems to have been lost :o.

The forums default to showing threads active in the last 30 days or so. Change that to a longer interval (60 or 100) and you should see your thread.

It's surprising how many people are oblivious to this function. [smile]

Quote:

Also I sent you the self-portrait and hand drawing you asked :) I am not sure but I might have been the embarassed guy :D

Since you mentioned it, yes, you were. [smile]

Okay then :D , when the next assignment is given out I will revive that particular thread :)

Here's my first assignment - better late than never? [smile]

I don't have a lot of free time right now, so it's shorter than I wanted it to be, and I only described a small portion of the scene. I felt like I could have gone on forever, but there were an endless number of details that I didn't have the time or communicative skills to capture.

Maybe that's, in part, what I was supposed to learn.

In retrospect, I would have picked a much smaller scene. Also, I feel I may have spent too many words describing dimensions and space rather than textures and colors.

---

Subject of Observation: The Window in My Room

The cut-out for the window occupies a white wall roughly eight feet tall and ten feet wide. The cut-out is centered horizontally on the wall, and is about six feet in length. The top of the cut-out is between one and one and a half feet from the ceiling, and is roughly three feet tall.

The outward edges of the cutout have tiny lips where the paint built up and dried, visible only by thin highlights and shadows cast by the light coming in through the window. The very right side of the lower edge of the cutout has the most paint buildup - it droops down briefly about half an inch from the edge.

The inside corners of the cutout are not sharp - they have a slight curvature, probably introduced by the layers of paint as well.

The lower left-hand corner of the cutout has a small crack, extending from the outward edge, along the wall. The crack, starting at the corner of the cutout, extends left about an inch, curving downward slightly, with the steepest part of the curve and its highest point at the start of the crack. At the end of this first inch, the crack line is level with the bottom of the cutout. The crack then turns immediately downward and continues on that course for about an inch. It then curves left and turns horizontal again, with the curve being very gradual and sweeping. The texture of the wall around this crack is flat, unlike the wall surrounding it, which has many small perturbations in the paint.
Under the top edge of the cutout is a set of blinds. The top portion of the blinds, where the machinery is held, is made from a thin, smooth metal. It has a shade of brown nearly the same as that of the wooden pieces below it - light, but rich, with a hint of orange.

The top left corner of the metal portion has a glob of dried white paint on it.
The wooden pieces of the blinds, those that do the actual light-blocking, are about two and a half inches in depth, and extend across the length of the window, with only a quarter of an inch or so of space between the edges and the inside of the cutout. They are dusty and grainy. The light that passes through the gaps in the pieces creates soft gradients of light and shadow on the underside of the pieces.

Currently the blinds are pulled almost all the way up. Three of the long wooden pieces are visible on the left side, while only two are visible on the right; the bottom, bunched-up portion of the blinds is titled down and left. The bunched-up part of the blinds is about four inches thick, with about a dozen wooden pieces stacked on top of each other, and a different, thicker piece on the very bottom.
The strings that hold the blinds in place and control the angle of the pieces are light-tan in color. There are four different places where these strings come out from the top part of the blinds. At each place, three different strands come out of the top. One goes through the middle of each wooden piece (in respect to the pieces' depth), and the other two fall on either side of them (again, with respect to depth). Each of these groups of strands falls vertically from the top, and then begins a rapid, high-frequency sine wave pattern when they approach the bunched-up part at the bottom, as the vertical distance between each of the wooden pieces gets smaller.

The string that is used to raise and lower the blinds is made up of four different strands, all emanating from the same hole, on the left-hand side. Three of the strands are twisted around each other at the top, but their twist reduces along the length of the string and is hardly noticeable at the bottom, where the string rests on the lower edge of the window's cutout. This string is the same color as the other.

Good job, extralongpants - and fukushousha, and Big B.

The point of the assignment is to illustrate the level of detail in our surroundings that we typically take for granted. In trying to draw something you see, you must be aware of similar levels of details, and also be aware of the spatial relationships between the details: how large is the ridge of the nose in comparison to the curve of the lower eyelid beside it, etc.

Has nobody noticed the second assignment?

I posted the first assignment in my thread as i cannot do this workshop as i don't have the book and am in the mood for typing out run-on sentences. I'm kind of going to shadow this workshop and do what i can and post in my thread as i go along.

-Karan

Don't worry I have noticed it :p , but because of being a little busy with stuff I have not done it yet.I am planing to do this later today.You know there is a time difference between greece and the US so I don't know if it will be still monday there :p but here it will be ( I hope ) ^_^

I got a bit distracted away from the workshop last year, but I will try to give it another go. I already have a copy of The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain; I've already tried doing some of the exercises myself last year, but I only got a little way in before something cropped up that derailed me. The self portrait in my forum thread here was my attempt for a "before" picture, although I'd like to try drawing another one some time this week.

Here is my observation piece for this thread. I decided to describe the objects on the top of the bookcase directly to my left as I type this, as those objects are at eye level if I swivel my head to the left. I didn't go into as much detail as I think I need though.

---

There are four items on the top of my small bookcase; a boxed chess set, a box of tissues, a box of manilla folders, and a wooden artist's mannequin.

The boxed chess set is in an orange cardboard box, set on the left of the bookcase. The box is creased at both edges diagonally. There is a picture of the board with th epieces in a starting position on the top; the board itself has a vaguely Aztec appearance with a triangular pattern around the edges, the pieces made of wood. There is a thin layer of dust on the box itself, although there is still some gloss even in the low light levels.

The box of tissues sits on the left of the chess set box, oblong twice in depth as width, smaller side towards me. The box itself is angled from parallel about 15 degrees. The box surface depicts a series of ducklings, with creased cardboard at the near end showing its construction. A yellow stripe marks the base of the box. A single tissue is partially pulled out of the top of the box, creased majorly in about seven places. There is considerable gradiation between white and grey shown in the tissue.

The wooden mannequin sits at the back right of the chess box. The mannequin consists of a circular prism at the base, with a metal pole jutting out to support a series of geometric shapes that look like a human figure. The head, which looks like a rounded circular prism with a slice taken out of the front, is pointed slightly to the left from my view. The neck joint is a sphere, connected to an upper torso shaped like the head except broader. The upper and lower torse are also connected by a sphere. The lower torso is shaped like an egg with the bottom half sliced away and part of the top sliced, with the front also sliced. The upper leg joints are spheres with a joint strip showing, connected to bulbous long circular prisms for the upper legs. The knee joints are spheres, left one with a strip showing, right with a screw. The lower legs are similarly bulbous long circular prisms, connected to feet which look like the top of egg shapes. The shoulder joints are spheres with a single screw showing, connected to thin long circular prisms for the upper arms. The elbow joints are similarly spheres showing screws and joint slots, connected to circular prism lower arms, spherical wrist joints (right one showing a screw), and half egg shapes for hands.

The wooden mannequin is posed almost in a vertical standing position, except the upper body is skewed to the viewer's right. The left arm of the mannequin (right from viewer's perspective) bends around to almost touch the left upper thigh, slightly obscuring it from the viewer's perspective. The right arm bends out some distance from the body, with the hand nearly perpendicular from the vertical. The left of the figure is illuminated more than the right due to the positioning of the light.

The box of manilla folders sits on the right of the bookshelf. The box itself is mostly blue, with diagonal creases at the far end. The lid is ajar by nearly 50 degrees, showing the manilla folders contained within (which are buff). The box lid has half circles cut out at the centres. The top of the lid has writing in white, a red stripe and abstract pictures of manilla folders on them. The near corner on the right of the manilla folders visible is illuminated, gradually getting darker deeper into the box. The blue folder box has fading and roughness on the bottom edge and far edge on the left.