Oh, yes. School happened. But really, it’s okay! It’s art school! It’s a very good thing! It just means that I’m extra busy nowadays, and I have less time and less drive to actually work on any of my own stuff outside of class. But, it does mean I have some in-school assignments and things I can show off. That’s always nice, huh?

I have already uploaded some of these to my LJ, so I apologize for cross posting for those who read both. Probably not many of you.

Read below the cut to see them. Be warned; there are lots and lots of images under here, some of them Not Safe For Work (NSFW).

Okay! We’ll start with some drawing class drawings. Self-portrait:

Contour-line drawings:

Gesture Drawing:

More contour-line:

A free-form exercise (I drew the tree shape, then this was passed around to about five other artists. This is what was given back to me!):

Negative/positive space drawings:

Contour line using negative space principles:

Right, now onto the ceramics work!

We had to make a coil pot. This is made usually by starting out with a flat base, then rolling out coils made out of clay and wrapping them around the edge and stacking more coils on top of that one. This creates the wall of the pot. Here was my pot after about 20 hour’s work:

When we were done coiling/finishing the pot, we let it harden to a rather stiff leather-hard stage, then took a metal spoon to it and polished it up, what is called “burnishing”. This closes up the pores in the clay and makes it shine. We also carved designs into it at leatherhard stage, if that’s what we wanted to do; I chose a pseudo-mesoamerican pattern. This was mine after about two to three hours of burnishing (the dark marks came from the metal rubbing off the spoon; the clay was rather hard!):

After that the pots were thrown into a kiln to bisque; or, get hot enough to harden up a little, but not fully fire. This makes them a little more resilient for the the eventual pit firing. Bone-dry clay is extremely brittle, so we usually bisque before going on with glazing or any other post construction work to minimize the chance of damage. This is what it looked like after bisque-ing:

After that came the fun part! We all traipsed down to the parking lot where there were a couple old, metal oil drums set up. We loaded the pots inside, all stacked one on top of the other, then filled the drums with sawdust. This was set on fire and let to smolder for about twelve hours; the resulting heat and smoke further hardened the pots and also gave them some absolutely amazing smoke textures, which were all different depending on its position in the drum in relation to other pots. Here is my finished pot after the pit firing:

Isn’t it perdy? I can’t wait to take it home!

The next ceramics assignment is a slab project that we haven’t finished yet. The idea was to make a geometric vessel of some sort (though it certainly doesn’t have to be functional). The few restrictions were it had to have 6 sides, an opening that could be closed, and some sort of foot. We constructed these using leather-hard clay slabs, out of which we cut out the shapes of the pieces we need and fit them together to form our vessel. Once formed we used different coloured slips (very watered down clay of different makes, almost like glazes) to add colour and design to our forms. Here was mine with the slip added:

Can’t wait to see what this looks like after it’s bisqued, varnished, then fired. So excited.

Next: Painting class! First up: Self-portrait. Here’s a bunch of successive WIP pictures:

And then the finished product (or close to it, anyway):And let me just get this out of my system now: Painting is hard. Holy crap. This is one of the most frustrating classes I’ve ever had to take, no joke. I think I’m improving, but I still can’t understand how people would work with such and unwilling and unwieldy medium out of choice!

There. Now I can move on.

The next painting was the one I did today in painting class, a total of 4 hour’s work. We had a few restrictions; the subject matter had to be a combination of interior x exterior; that is, something from inside ourselves, with something from the outside world. We were told to go out into the school, find something to paint, and then add a fantastical element to it from our own imagination. We had to limit ourselves to a certain colour scheme (whether it was analagous, complimentary, triads, etc.) and a certain composition (triangular, spiral, L-shaped, cruciform, etc.).

I chose to paint a door in the hallway and added trees and bunnies. I used an analagous-complimentary colour scheme (green/yellow/orange and purple) with an L-shaped composition. Here’s what I came up with:
Considering this is the first time I’ve ever painted in that class without gnashing my teeth and seething in frustration, I think it’s a winner. Bunnies!

Right, so that’s all I have to show for now! I’ll try to keep up with adding more as it develops. I hope you enjoyed this little foray into my schoolwork; I’m certainly having fun doing it. Thanks for looking, and let me know what you think!

I actually defied my law of procrastination and sat down and started one on Tuesday. Here’s how far I got:

Now I’m looking for suggestions/critiques/advice/what-have-you. I know very little about watercolours, really only the very basics of how to use them, and I still have a long way to go.

What I’d like some advice on if you’ve got any:

Shadows: Should I add another layer of shadows, possibly in a purple colour? What areas do you think would benefit the most from this? How stingy/generous should I be with this to really make it pop?

Background: Simple gradient, simple shadow on the ground, something more elaborate…? What colours do you think would work well in a background? Should it fill up the whole rest of the paper, or form a smaller rectangle/oval around the subject? Should it have hard edges or fade into the white of the paper? I’m pretty stumped here, actually!

Pom detail: Is there enough detail on the pom? Too much? Should I attempt to do more, and if so, what would you suggest? It’s kind of hard to see from the crappy photo I provide, but I did try to lift some of that yellow off the edges of the fur and in certain places to make it seem lighter. I also went in once with a darker orange colour and added some little swipes with that; blah blah.

Right. So, basically, I suck at colouring things. I have very little practice, and a lot of the time my coloured pictures turn out looking very preschool-ish. Since colour in watercolour paintings is so important, I thought I’d ask for advice; and any technical advice/critique you have to give for now, and for the next one would be so welcome!

Thank you in advance for any help you’re able to give; and if not, I hope you like the look of this (poorly drawn) pom. =) My internet was down when I started drawing it so I couldn’t look up refernces; I hope it’s recognizable. If not, I’ll do better on the next one!

Anyone interested in purchasing this for $5 when it’s done, or others in a series like this?