Okay, I’m not going to explain this any more, so if you want
to know what is all going down with #30in30for30, FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF. By
clicking right here. If not, let’s just get started with day 10.
PORTRAIT 10: Completed March 23, 2014
Medium: Acrylic/Collage
So things were going just great. I drew me a neat caricature
of my good friend Billy, and it looked something like this:
And I really wanted to use the black paper that I used for
my pastel drawing, but I didn’t want to use pastel again anytime soon, so I had
to think of what would show up on black paper. The first thought I had was
white paper, and because I didn’t have the time to think up anything better, so
I redrew the sketch with simpler angles because I was lazy and I don’t like
cutting with my sword of exact zero (If you haven’t seen the Lego Movie, you’re
awful and need to see it immediately).
But when I cut the pieces out and arranged them, I didn’t exactly get the
result that I was hoping for…
I needed something more dynamic, so I broke into my acrylic
paints and went to town.
Unfortunately, it still wasn’t at the level I wanted to get
it at, so I made a bold move. This move wasn’t bold for the sake of bold
artistic choices, but bold because I had just had three cups of coffee and my
hand was shaking like a Japanese kid watching a certain banned Pokémon episode
(LOOK IT UP I DON’T CARE IF YOU DON’T GET MY JOKES).
I decided to paint his face. I think it looked pretty neat.
Yes, that Easy Mac was vital to the completion of the piece.
Here’s a better picture of the piece. Honestly, this is one
of my favorites out of the entire collection of portraits that I made. I
managed to capture my art style with Billy’s attitude (he’s a very sassy
person) and in a medium that I was definitely not all that familiar with. It’s
my favorite in the list of portraits for this specific post, and definitely one
of the best in the entire set, behind Bill Watterson, and three or four that
you’ll get to see down the road.
PORTRAIT 11: Completed March 23, 2014
Medium: Pen
Yeah, so you’ll notice that I’m doubling up on some days. I
have pretty awful work ethic at times, so I found myself doing two portraits on
some days, and even three on one day throughout this entire project. So even
though I finished the portrait of Billy at a pretty late hour that Sunday
night, I decided to go ahead with my eleventh portrait. Fortunately, due to
certain circumstances which I will now delve into, I knew this one wouldn’t
take that long.
See, on the previous Thursday in class, I had finished my
Lincoln portrait pretty quickly, but I needed to let my first coat of
watercolor, so I decided to plan my “10 famous people” a little bit better.
(Proper planning ahead? What the hell, am I an adult now???)
As you can see, I chose three artists that I really felt
that would be fun to do. Specifically that one on the bottom, Walt Disney. I’ve
always been a fan of Disney, even though they basically own everything and have
a tight corporate grip on at least 80% of all reality. That love was definitely
reconsidered, as I spend every viewing of Frozen
drooling over the perfect animation. But that’s another story. Walt Disney
was actually one of the people that I originally planned to draw right from the
beginning of this project.
Those other two are Stephen Hillenberg, creator of Spongebob Squarepants, and Tex Avery, who created the cartoon dog, Droopy. Each of these sketches took about five minutes or so, and I
really liked the caricature aspect of them, so I decided to give that a try for
Walt Disney himself, which seemed fitting of a man who has amusement parks
glorifying his name. I found a picture on Google Images (speaking of companies
that own basically everything), and got cracking.
And after about twenty minutes of doodling, I got this.
I dug it a lot.
Now, I was really particularly happy with how this portrait
project was turning out, so I thought I could do basically the impossible. I
picked my medium for the next day, dedicated myself to continuing the
caricature style that I picked up for Walt Disney, and got ready to perform a
miracle.
But, oh, I was so wrong.
PORTRAIT 12: Completed March 24, 2014
Medium: Highlighter
I really thought that markers weren’t half bad. I really
did. After portrait number 3, I figured that we would work together exquisitely.
I really did.
Then I tried drawing with highlighters. And from that, I
have found what could literally be the worst thing to create art with.
You might think I’m kidding, but I cannot express how much I
despised this portrait, for two reasons. Reason number one is that I like to
keep this blog PG-13. Reason number two is because the words I’d have to use
violate my real-life moral code. And I’m in the theatre. I practically have no moral code.
Also, I learned that caricatures, at least in the traditional
sense, really aren’t my gig.
God, I hate this portrait. Sorry, Alycia. I shoulda drawn
you better than this.
PORTRAIT 13: Completed March 26, 2014
Medium: Charcoal
By this point in time, I was in getting a little nervous. I had
already made one subpar portrait, and I was not going to make another. The
grade, my future in the program, and my future as an illustrator depended on good portraits, and I was not up for
ruining another. So I thought I would try a more familiar medium. Charcoal.
We had a live model again that day, the same one as the one
that I drew for portrait number three. So I sketched him out, and with brand
new charcoal pencils and paper, I started to apply the charcoal. It started out
pretty well.
But something along the way done goofed up.
Actually, as time has passed without me looking at it, this
wasn’t all that awful. It wasn’t good by pretty much any stretch, but I hate it
a lot less than I did. Something about it really wasn’t working for me as I
continued the piece, and by the time I had his whole body (or at least his
bust) finished, I wanted nothing to do with the thing. It was then, once I
finished, that I would not strive for realism for the rest of the project.
And then, to add insult to injury, I ripped the paper as I
tried to take it off the drawing pad.
Stupid paper.
PORTRAIT 14: Completed March 27, 2014
Medium: Watercolor/Ink
I was hoping for a miracle now. Two bad portraits in a row
was two more than I wanted, so I decided to try again. While the live model was
still live modeling, I had put aside my charcoal pencils in frustration and
attempted to start something new…or old. It was actually pretty old. I made him
into a cartoon. Almost immediately, things took a turn for the better.
In fact, I finished the original line sketch in about as
long as it took to shade the neck with charcoal, which is particularly sad,
because charcoal is one of the fastest mediums to work with. And it already
looked better!
Now, I don’t advertise myself to be an excellent painter, by
any sense of the word. My art skills pretty much stop at drawing. And
sometimes, even my drawing isn’t that great (but you’ll see that one next week). So, I have to admit
that I was a little nervous when I started painting. But the great thing I’ve
noticed about watercolor is that it applies like inkwash, which, if you have
been following my art skills at all, you’ll know it is my absolute favorite
medium to work in. It’s a lot less saturated, and it’s a bit more challenging
to get straight washes, and it also is waaaaaaaaaaay too easy to blend colors,
but everything else is exactly the same.
So I treated this like an inkwash.
Almost immediately, things were infinitely better. The
colors, the brush strokes, most of this painting just kind of worked out for
itself. Sure, there were a couple hiccups here and there, and the colors in his
face got really muddy, but overall, I’d say it was the first truly successful
one I’d had in almost a week. So I’ll take what I can get.
PORTRAIT 15: Completed March 30, 2014
Medium: Charcoal/Ink
Despite the almost-success of the previous portrait, I still
was not yet satisfied, and was even feeling a little burnt out (read: incredibly
burnt out). I had been expecting this, and I knew for a fact that I’d probably
start sucking it up around the fifteenth portrait, and the fact that I started
losing momentum earlier than I had planned was definitely not something I was
all that excited about. But as the next day dragged on, I knew that I couldn’t
afford to not keep on trucking, so on
Saturday, I grudgingly pulled out my drawing pad and started sketching. I
decided that I would go the easy route for the next few portraits and finish
off my famous cartoonists. Next on the list: Gary Larson.
I always loved The Far
Side. The surreal humor is something that I just can’t get enough of,
partially because I’m not so good at nonsensical humor anyway. I also
specifically loved his cow cartoons (cowtoons? Get it? GET IT???), so I thought
I’d do something a little nonsensical myself, and give him some shoulder angel
and shoulder demon action of the bovine variety.
But despite a successful sketch, I was still in a funk. But
then I had an idea. An awful idea. I
got a wonderful, AWFUL i—oh just let
me have fun. My idea?
REVENGE...
...on charcoal.
Okay, so that was really anticlimactic (that’s what she
said). But I still felt like the one way to regain my momentum on #30in30for30
was to enact my chalky revenge, and then throw a little ink onto the piece just
to say that I mixed the medias I was supposed to.
And oh boy, did I have the gusto to do so.
I was actually happy with the turnout of a portrait again.
But did it actually revitalize my efforts in producing portraits?
Find out next week!
Side note: The critique for my 30 portraits went pretty
well! I won’t know my grade until I turn in my final project for the class and
get the portraits back, but I think I did adequately. Thanks again for bearing
with me, folks.
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