[T. Kuusama]

Is one of the paths leading towards light and the other away from it? 🤔 I can’t quite tell yet what’s happening but I can’t wait to see. Better than a murder mystery!

[T. Kuusama]

#8

I had forgotten I even had coloured pencils! Not really finished, but at this point the light was gone and the bugs were getting the best of me. Originally I didn’t plan to colour or even render it, which is why it has a lot of pencil lines showing through. My 20 minutes a day is quickly turning into 2 hours—which I don’t have but I’m having so much fun I can’t bring myself to care.

[T. Kuusama]

#7

First week in and I’m simultaneously enjoying the practice so much that Im developing sudden regrets pursuing a degree in science not art; and dreading it because I’m starting to remember how much I have to (re)learn.

[T. Kuusama]

Huh, could be the paper then? Maybe do gradations on different papers to test it? Another thing I learned through trial and error is to not lay any hard pencil on the areas where I want deep shadows. I’m really careful to dab all of my ghosting away before rendering. You could experiment with hard over soft vs soft over hard and see if you get different results? If that’s not it either, then I’m stumped and someone wiser should chime in!

[T. Kuusama]

@Peihong Jiang Thanks for the vote of confidence! Your anatomy challenge looks awesome, I’ll have to do something similar later. I’ve been meaning to brush up on AP anyway. I was drawing from Gray’s way back when I gave up art, but I should probably get something more current.

[T. Kuusama]

What’s the hardness of your pencils? If you want to get the blackest black, charcoal would be the best; otherwise use 8B or 9B.

Here the top row is done entirely with HB, the bottom left with 8B to 3H, bottom right 4B to 3H. See the difference?

[T. Kuusama]

#6

I might have gotten a bit carried away…

[T. Kuusama]

I love these. They are like daily short nature documentaries. I’m reminded of my childhood favourite book by Rien Poortvliet. I don’t remember the name of the book, but it was probably either Hunting Sketches or The Living Forest. I wonder if I still have it somewhere?

[T. Kuusama]

That’s great progress in a month! Just imagine where you’ll be in 100 days. I’m on day 6 and your before-and-after is a great motivator to keep working.

[T. Kuusama]

Your influences are definitely showing, I like it! It’s brilliant to see new work come alive in the old tradition. I like combining the two pieces, I think it gives the work a much more faceted and optimistic emotion when the peripheral figures are not only gawking or hurrying away from the central figures in the ditch, but some of them are pulling the others up from the ditch too.

Earlier in the thread you were wondering about how to show if a figure is dead. It struck me as an odd question until I realised not many modern people have necessarily seen dead people up close. I ended up writing a whole essay on how dead people look like, but I don’t know if you want that in your thread—especially if it was a rhetorical question. 😅 Anyway, I think it’s an interesting problem given that the medium might set some limitations (e.g. if your piece is monochrome, you can’t use skin colour as a cue) and considering how that choice affects the rest of the composition.

[T. Kuusama]

#6

Flashbacks from the first day of class: you think you know a ton and it’s dawning on you that you don’t even know the basics.

I’m consoling myself with the knowledge that in music, the difference between an amateur and an expert is not what they can do, it’s how they do it—even if it’s only a basic scale.

Might draw more later today, might not.

[T. Kuusama]

And now there are multiples. 😅

#5

Starting to work my way through the courses.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by T. Kuusama.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by T. Kuusama.

[T. Kuusama]

#3

1-2 min poses

Argh, so much harder than I remembered!

[T. Kuusama]

#3: 1-2 min poses

Aargh, it’s much harder than I remember!

[T. Kuusama]

I find the “one step back” feeling is fairly reliable when learning something new. Sometimes it’s even true and I temporarily get worse at it. But after a few days or weeks, the thing that felt so hard suddenly becomes second nature. I believe the feeling is the result of the brain rearranging neural connections. When this reconstruction is going on, things feel hard. Once it’s done, the brain has a much more efficient way to execute the skill in question.

I think there’s some evidence to support this, but at the least thinking so keeps me away from the deep end of frustration. 😉

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