Map Color Schemes

This is a color scheme exercise, featuring abstract patterns based on a collage of maps.

Left has tetrad featuring yellow, violet, blue-green, and red-orange.
A tetrad is a 4-color scheme with two pairs of complimentary colors (opposite on the color wheel).  The two pairs are yellow and violet, and blue-green and red-orange.  Because of that, two colors are on the warm side (yellow, red-orange) and two on the cold side (violet, blue-green).  To create the tertiary colors, I had to blend primary and secondary colors by coloring those areas with both pencils.

Middle has triad featuring red-orange, blue-violet, and yellow-green.
Triads are 3-color schemes where the colors are evenly spaced apart on the color wheel, resulting in 2 cold and 1 warm (or vise versa).  I enjoyed blending tertiary colors in the first one, so my choices were such that I would have all tertiary colors.  One regret I have is not applying water in the order from lightest to darkest.

Right has split-complimentary featuring orange, blue-violet, and blue-green.
A split-complimentary color scheme has 3 colors, with 2 being adjacent to the compliment of the other 1.  Like the triad, there is also 2 cold and 1 warm (or vise versa), but the difference is much more obvious.  This one is my favorite of the three.  I'm a fan of cyberpunk artwork, which is often dark cityscapes with a contrast between blue and orange.  To focus the color scheme on blue, that was the side I chose to split into 2 colors, while orange was only used for accents.

Self Portraits

Neither of these portraits are finished, but that's not going to stop me from writing!

On the left is an observed self portrait, done by looking at myself in the mirror.  To start, I used basic proportions to place all of the main features.  Eyes are halfway down the head, and the width of them is such that five go across.  Halfway down again is the space between the nose and mouth.  The corners of the mouth matched up to somewhere in my eyes.  The height of my ears would have been from the top of my eyes to the bottom of my nose, but because of my hair, they weren't visible.

Because I was working more on the second self portrait, I didn't get to finish this one.  Using my actual reflection as a reference was challenging, because I wasn't constantly still, and I had actually gotten a haircut at one point.  However, if I had finished it entirely, I believe that my placement of the facial features would have made a good foundation for an accurate final portrait.

On the right is the second self portrait, done using the grid technique.  I drew a grid over a printed photograph of myself (which was edited to be in grayscale and have a limited number of values), and a corresponding grid of the same size on a blank sheet of paper.  By making a window with pieces of scrap paper, I could focus on one square at a time, and draw only what I saw in it.

This portrait was much more finished and looked much more realistic than the first one.  The easiest parts were areas where the hair was pretty much solid black, and the more challenging squares were in the face proper and the top of the hair (hence why they aren't completely finished yet).  Although it does look pretty good, and have all the shading and the range of values, (besides the empty squares) there's some places where white space is visible as lines between the squares.  I wasn't working on them as I went along, so I only did a few before I had to go photograph the drawing at its current stage.

I like to draw myself, especially in a stylized way.  These portraits weren't so stylized, but even so, I managed an ok job.

Cityscape

This cityscape is a 2 point perspective drawing.

A horizontal line marks the horizon, and the two vanishing points are on it (but off the main page. The horizon line was extended with extra paper.)

Any vertical lines in the drawing are parallel, but all other lines were drawn towards either vanishing point using a ruler to align it.  For example, the middle building has lines defining the edge of the roof and the edge at the ground, but on the left of the center they go to the left vanishing point, and on the right it goes to the right vanishing point.

This gives the effect of the buildings appearing smaller as they are more distant from the viewer.  While the far-right building is drawn with a slightly taller line than the middle one, the perspective effect actually makes it twice the height.

Details on the buildings were also drawn by using the vanishing points, and not only the outlines of the buildings.  The design on the far left building is a simple grid.  The circle on the mid-left building, the text on the middle building, and the hearts on the far-right building were all made by first constructing rectangles, then drawing inside of them.  The windows on the left side of the middle building also appear to sink into the building somewhat, because of lines inside of them that actually lead to the right vanishing point.

Some specific successes in this project were the circle and the mixtape advertisement, because despite not specifically fitting to the lines, it was still done well.  I found this to not be very difficult overall, since I've worked with perspective drawings before.

However, there was a challenge with making things look proportional.  I felt that the size of the windows, doors, and sidewalks were off.  As I was drawing the buildings closer to the sides and with lines closer to the horizon line, it was difficult to distinguish the angles of the lines.

Line Exercise

This page was an exercise in producing lines using many different tools, with both the additive and reductive methods.

I used markers of different thicknesses.  At the right is a part where I created an vertical implied line using thick marker.  Around the center circle were lines made with thin marker, and a few thicknesses of marker defined the shape to the right of the circle.

A few different pencils were used in some places.  It was quite easy to make thicker lines and smudge the soft pencils, while the harder pencils could make thin, defined lines.

Charcoal lines go all the way up the right edge, as if everything is being pulled towards the darkness of the bottom corner.

ALSO I REALLY REALLY REALLY LIKE THE PEN THAT YOU DIP IN THE INK??? IT'S SO GUD. I L♡VE IT. I WANT MY OWN.
I used it like ALL over the place pretty much everywhere!! <3 For thick lines and for thin lines, and for making dots, both huge and tiny, for waving, curly lines and for lots of straight lines... You almost can't really see the pencil lines at the bottom section because the ink lines are sooooo pretty.  There's many thin lines around the circle that vary in length, getting longer and shorter, in a pattern that reminds me of sound waves.

As well as doing lots of lines, I also created some textures with stippling, hatching, and cross-hatching in some spaces.  The hatching in the bottom right corner gives the impression that the entire section is being pulled towards the corner of the paper.  There's a line of boxes near the top left corner that I also did with the pen.  I never really got to experiment with using a brush to apply ink, because much of the page was already covered at that point.

For parts of the page I used the reductive line method, which is to create lines by removing material instead of adding it.  I colored some spaces using oil pastels and painted over them with black paint.  Once the paint dried, I used some scratching tools to remove the paint and create lines.  I especially used thick lines in the center circle, and many small thin lines in the left section.  Thick and thin was contrasted in the top corner.  Unfortunately, I had painted some parts too thick and the paint chipped instead of being carefully scratched away...

A reductive line method I wish I could have used was to color an area with pencil and use an eraser to remove it, which is something I've seen somewhere else used to an interesting effect.

Filling the entire page with so many different types of lines resulted in a very interesting piece, and it was a good experience to test out so many different tools.  I love that darn pen..

Still Life Drawing

This is my still life drawing.

I'm not sure how the heck you want me to write this blog post.  I've never seen an example of what a good one is supposed to be.  The idea that I'm supposed to measure up to a super perfect score is intimidating me.  I don't want to mess this up just because I'm new to it.

I'm typically a digital artist, so the only materials I usually contend with are brush settings.  However, this is a drawing on paper, and to cover a full range of value, I've used charcoal, pencils, an eraser, and a white pastel.

Before starting to draw, I created a tonal ground by using charcoal for a light gray.

When I got my objects, I placed them... somehow.  I'm not sure if this arrangement really exemplifies one specific compositional device.  I was really feeling the negative space created between the roller and the tomato.  The tomato's placement is according to the rule of thirds.

I used the graphite crayon (6B pencil) to render out the general shapes and placement of the objects.  To more clearly define the outlines, I traced a contour line as I was looking at the edges of the objects.  The roller itself has slight perspective, with the far end being narrower than the close end, to show how it's being viewed from this angle.  While I do feel that the placement mostly accurate to life, the angle of the roller handle was too much and I hadn't noticed until it was already shaded.

The lightest parts were highlighted with white pastel and the darkest parts with charcoal.  The dark parts would be the shadows (especially under the roller+handle and inside the can) and light parts are where the light hit the objects most intensely.  The can had a very reflective surface, so there were many places where light and dark contrasted. I used the eraser to lighten the value of areas, but not as intensely.  The eraser was also used around the edges of the objects where there weren't shadows, and the light table could be seen instead.

A harder pencil was used for places where the value was in between that of the eraser and that of the soft pencil.  To blend different values together, I used a blending stick.  The blending stick was especially useful for the shadows of the objects.  Because of there being multiple light sources, there were multiple shadows, which overlapped and created places that were darker, lighter, or simply faded into the light color of the table.

Creating this full range of value and being able to blend and contrast the darkest and lightest parts is something I think was successfully done in this drawing.

To create an illusion of three-dimentionality, I drew lines along the surface contour of the objects.  This was especially done around the roller and its handle, but also around the tomato.  This makes the objects pop out more.  However, I feel that I didn't do enough on the tomato, and it still looks rather flat.

Overall this was a good experience, to work with the different materials and bring them together into one complete drawing.