Project 02 - Face Drawing

Life drawing session the other day. The model pulled various faces we had 3 minutes to draw before she switched.

I changed my drawing technique after almost every drawing; varying the ratio of time between looking at her and the page.

Some of these have nice detail but are completely inaccurate whereas others are fairly minimalist. I think the minimalistic approach works better.

In these drawings, the idea was that we'd only draw the shadow. My drawing are pretty inconsistent again and I switched up the ratios again too.

I'm liking the hatched shading technique in the top right picture. I used a similar shading technique on a smaller scale with the 3rd along the bottom. It's fairly minimalistic again but with just enough detail for the viewer/player to understand the features. 

Applying some kind of minimalistic render to my sculptures is almost certainly a bad idea. It might look cool but We'll probably be marked with finer detail so I should probably make sure everything is visible. 

I guess I could do something like that for promo shots?

or to see what it might look like in minimalistic games such as Obra Din (Lucas Pope).

The drawing do look quite a lot like the faces I drew in the cathedral. Something about weird expressions is spooky. Probably falls into the uncanny valley.

 Vsauce - Uncanny Valley

I think the uncanny valley is particularly strong with some of these life drawings. Like Michael says in the video, it often occurs when something sits between safe and unsafe and/or something which is ambiguous in its humanity. 

I think my proportions are off a little in this life drawing so the figure looks less human so much so that it's ambiguous to whether it is or not. 

I can definitely replicate this in my sculpts.

It's worth doing because of how uncanny so many gargoyles tend to look.

PS. I think uncanny-ness is exaggerated further when the figure is doing something human-like (but maybe slightly incorrectly?) too. A human-imposter.

Project 02 - Life drawing pt3

We had a live model recently whom I drew with chalk.

I like how much the chalk drawings assume of the viewer/player. We've got to use our imaginations to fill in the bits we don't see.

I'm not sure the proportions are that great on this drawing to be honest. It's difficult when you don't quickly flesh out a skeleton. The textures could be better too, they're a bit too rough in places.

Then I drew her with chalk and pencil. I like this drawing a lot more. I semi-blind drew the skeleton/basic shapes. The proportions seem more accurate and the shading is a bit smoother. One problem would be that she's leaning too far back; her center of gravity is behind her back leg. Nevertheless, I'd say it was only <= 5 degrees out.

I noticed when drawing that I didn't feel like I was drawing a person. Normally I let my assumptions of how the form should flow affect my line work but I was able to put that aside for this piece. It could've been the way the method of drawing causes you to only draw little bits at a time coupled with the semi-blind starting point.
There are clearly some issues still as I mentioned with the angle and also with the left knee a little bit and perhaps the right arm slightly. I like the drawing though. It's certainly better that the first.

Some blind drawings of my friends in the pub. The look very ghostly, like those creepy humanoid gargoyles. Similar to the face In the cathedral I drew multiple times too.

I think these images could have benefited from more detail in the lines. I thought drawing drunk would make them better but I'm not sure they are.

I like how animal-like they look too. Maybe this is a good direction to take regarding combining animal power with human depth...

The semi-blind method works better than the completely blind drawing method I think generally. My college tutors always said that 85% of the time should be spent looking at the subject and 15% at the page.

This last drawing looks particularly creepy actually because it looks vulnerable combined with it's 3D-ness. It could totally climb out of the page. It looks indecisive too. It can't tell whether to walk on by or not; the viewer has caught her attention  just temporarily. Maybe this IS the depth I've been looking for.

Project 02 - Life drawing pt2

After visiting the cathedral I made the most of my free student entry to the castle museum as I traversed the displays.

The first piece I found was this wooden dragon model. The information read that this model was used in the medieval times to commemorate the story in which it was slain by St. George. The story is similar to the founding of gargoyles and is from the same period.

These statues were in the fine-art section of the museum. old school statues always look so vacant, like they all have their own things to worry about and I'm watching them without their knowledge. There aren't many statues that I know of that really engage with the viewer/player other than play areas maybe? Do they even count. It feels like a lot of sculptures are 'DON'T TOUCH' with a 3 foot barrier all the way around but maybe I'm being ignorant. I visited the Yorkshire sculpture park a while ago and I do remember a few sculptures which were more like rooms you could walk into and a few you could climb on. I think a sculpture you could hug would be nice. Amongst all the vacant 'leave me alone' sculptures in a museum would be one sculpture  looking kindly towards you with arms wide open called 'hug me'.

Nevertheless I'm off topic now.

After visiting the sculptures I said hi to the stuffed animals in the 'natural history' part of the museum.







Like I said in a previous post, many gargoyles are based off of animals so it was in my best interest to get as much animal research as I could. Using my semi-blind drawing technique I drew a lot of them.

The energy in these drawings is awesome. and they all look very 3 dimensional. The ferocity of the polarbear to my right and the tiger further up really stands out in these drawings. This is quite a contrast to the vacant statues I saw earlier. The statues feel like they have a story behind their expressions where as the animals feel more simplistic in their emotions and this is expressed through a powerful engagement with the viewer/player.

It would be cool if I could combine the raw animal power with the depth of the fine art statues. Maybe that will mean I make a gargoyle from a combination of man and animal or maybe it'll be more abstract than that. I know what I'm aiming for now though with each part; power and depth.

Also, perhaps I can find a way to make semi-blind 3D work...

Project 02 - Life Drawing

I spent the other day traversing town in search of gargoyles and in the cathedral I stumbled across a variety of faces carved into walls.

I love this guys face, which is why I drew it so many times. It definitely has that creepiness so many gargoyles are able to evoke.

I call these kinds of drawings semi-blind drawings because I only look at the page when I'm not moving the pen. Not looking at the page when drawing allows me to express the detail accurately and quickly.

I thought this statue in the cathedral was gorgeous. One of the guides told me that it'd been hidden underground for many years to prevent it from being stolen. It's located right in the middle of the cathedral and the wings are wide open as to function as a board to rest papers on.

This organ gave me it's fair share of pareidolia (things that look like faces). It's definitely worth considering using something less lifelike as my gargoyle.

The way this light shone through the window left this hallway looking so beautiful I just had to take a picture. The coloring reminds me of Timothy J Reynolds low poly 3D illustrations.

Low Poly Timothy J Reynolds 3D illustration

I'd like to play with super low poly models in this project. I've been a fan of Reynolds work for a while so since I can finally make 3D it'd be a shame not to give it a go. I think what's so good about the pieces though is that although the models are low poly, the lighting and everything is modern. It creates a nice juxtaposition between low-poly nostalgia and modern vector illustrations.