Criteria 1 - I think that I am both a student and a practicing artist because I do both of those things with my time. I think that the student part of my life far outweighs the artist part but I do think that art is also an important part of my life. A person that inspires me is my girlfriend Samantha. We are dating and have been dating for a year which is a long time in high school. She motivates me to succeed by always pressing me to do my assignments and to draw.
Criteria 2 - I like to explore a comic book style universe when I draw. It is very interesting to me and keeps me interested in drawing. I prefer to work with cartooning but a more realistic type of cartooning that has correct proportions and good structure. I like to use either pencil or pens to draw and I like to leave my drawings black and white without any color.
Criteria 3 - I ended up in AP Art because I planned on taking it either junior or senior year at the beginning of high school. I expected a fairly straightforward class that would allow me to work on my drawings and not put too many extraneous assignments on my back. I initially set out to improve my style of art and to try and tweak it a little to make it better. This perpective did not change as my work took shape because my work ended up taking shape in a new and better style, exactly what I wanted from the class in the first place.
Criteria 4 - My background influences my work because my work is always based on some sort of imaginary fantasy I have had, either when I was young or a current fantasy. My background must have influenced these fantasies so I think it is safe to say that my background influences all my work. Past experiences govern everything I draw in my opinion. Also, of the three choices I would say that I am an observer.
Criteria 5 - I really have no idea what I will be like when I grow up. I doubt anyone in this school knows what they will be like when they are older. Some people might have an idea but noone knows what will happen to them in life. Ideally I would make a decent amount of money and have either a small house or an apartment. I might live in this area but I might live somewhere completely random also. I will probably live with my wife, whoever that will be. My house or apartment would be very clean and well-organized because that is the way I keep things. I don't know how many pets or children I will have and I don't even want to speculate because I personally don't want kids or pets but I'm sure I'll end up having some. I dream about being done with high school and that is the furthest extent of my fantasies.
Final Artist Statement - I think that I am both an artist and a student trying to balance the two different lives. I am influenced by my girlfriend, who motivates me to succeed and do well in school and at art. I draw in a comic book style, and I have drawn that way for my entire life because comic books were important to me when I was younger. I work in pencil or pen and ink and usually combine the two on pieces. I haved worked on honing my art style in AP art and that is exactly what I expected to do in the class. My style is better than it was at the beginning of the year, clearer-looking and more bold. My background influences my art, I used to live comic books and so that has influenced me to draw in the style of comic book artists. When I get older I hope to have a successful career and hope that I am able to make enough money to live comfortably. I hope that my art will be my career, maybe I'll be a comic-book artist and that would be a job that I would love.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Part I: Concentration
I wrote that my area of concentration was costume design and comic book style art. In my area of concentration I mostly use pencils and sometimes pens and all of the work reflects a comic-book influenced style of art. Half of the drawings are figure drawings with costume designs that I created myself. Four of my pieces are sequential art, to show that comic books are my main style of art and all of those pieces are done in pencil. I didn't want to reupload some pictures that are already on the blog that I used in my AP Portfolio but I did use the 3000 AD picture, the picture of all the teenagers fighting the three beasts and some other drawings of my girlfriend. My style is heavily influenced by the artists I have previously blogged about, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Miller, Dave Mazzuchelli, John Romita and Jim Lee. My area of concentration is definitely in the realm of comic-book style art and is all drawn similarly. These works are from a number of different years but remain a coherent theme that I always use.
Part III: Lesson to the Class
For my lesson to the class I want to teach how to draw a person in a comic-book style way. My reference is a book at my house that I will bring to class on the day I'm teaching called "How to Draw the Marvel Way". It is the book that I use as a reference for drawing people and teaches you a simple way to draw a person. It starts with a stick figure that is anatomically correct. You draw the figure in any position you'd like and then begin to "pipe it up" by creating muscle-less joints with light pencil lines. After creating a pose and giving the figure some underlying structure you begin to add on muscle and smaller details. After adding muscle you use your eraser to get rid of excess lines that were used for your underlying structure. After doing this you can add whatever details you want and your figure should look good because you gave it a sort of scaffolding to draw around. With this "scaffolding" in place, it is easier to draw with correct proportions and anatomy.
Jim Lee
As you can see from the examples, Jim Lee is an extremely good renderer of anatomy and of superheroes. His art is very distinctive in its perfection and high attention to detail. He is very famous and his art is splashed all over merchandising such as the Playstation 2 game, Contra and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure box art. He has drawn many covers and is excellent at both drawing people and drawing backgrounds as evidenced in the Green Lantern and Batman drawings. In both those drawings there are very highly detailed cityscape backgrounds as well as well-drawn figures in the foreground. In my opinion, Jim Lee is the ultimate well-rounded artist. He really does not have any weak points and is excellent at rendering foregrounds, backgrounds and figures in space.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)