Marras...

Art, moss, goblins, cats, chaos energy and archetypes

[catcrumb]

[santapau]

New Secret Knots comic, "Memory Weaver". I hope you like it!

[battlechick]

xiang yata house candles

[kaijuno]

[marrascomics]

“sometimes I’m struck by artistic envy” from around year 2011

I vaguely recall I drew this while in animation & game design school, frustrated at my favourite artists having a wider range for expressing themselves due to better skills in art.

[marrascomics]

Establishing self-portrait skills

2021-12-20

#2 Pre-instruction assignment: Self portrait using a small mirror taped to the wall. 

1h in: 

Completed to my best current ability (and mental stamina) at 1.5h:

The artist as seen by phone camera in the same position and lighting:

Drawing with a mirror was way easier than drawing from several hazy memories of the visage of my model from assignment #1, but even then the piecemeal nature of drawing was apparent. I'd often notice my glasses were drooping from their initial position, my hair had moved, my sitting position was different after a break, that the lighting was different with someone observing my behind my shoulder. Much like with the memory based drawing, I had to average out or correct these slightly different moments in time, slightly different perspectives and angles BUT without letting my logical side take over and try to make symmetrical things symmetrical on paper.

Hardest perception challenges were: 

Placing the initial shape of the head and measuring by eye where details go 

Placing details in accurate relation to eachother 

Disregarding lip color in favour of just looking at the light values

Technical things I had to solve: 

Setting up my "studio" to have controlled light during the second shortest day of the year

Getting back into position after a break 

Learning how to use a kneaded eraser (I LOVE IT) 

Only being allowed to use one pencil and struggling to represent the deep shadows

Other notes: 

Sometimes I could see exactly what shape and shade lines to use to draw hair, but didn't have the muscle control to draw it in one stroke 

There's only so thin you can get your eraser. I found myself missing Photoshop Eyedropper and thin brushes

When I did this assignment in art school 12 years ago, I had a hard time looking at my face and accepting it as is. Now I found it quite easy to draw my face as it appears, without trying to find the ideal angle or beautify anything. I don’t need to diminish my flaws, they’re all there composing my face. I actually purposefully didn't wash my hair for this when I noticed a strange small urge to put extra effort into making my face and hair all pretty so I can stand to face look at it for and extended period of time. My face is fine, spending time taking a shower for the wrong reasons is still letting the brain make excuses to avoid just looking at what’s in front of you and drawing. Drawing dirty hair is exposure therapy.

During this assignment I found it cool that I could notice different overlaying seeing modes get activated, especially ones evaluating darkness and lightness in different patches of skin. Demonstrated here with Photoshop filters, although my processes didn't include this much extra detail:

To wrap it up, a quick Photoshop edit to explore what a deeper range of dark values could do for this drawing. I could probably do something like this with dry pastels on a neutral color paper.

[marrascomics]

Establishing my art skills

2021-12-19

The Betty Edwards “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” drawing course starts with three pre-instruction assignments to establish what your skills were before the actual art assignments.

Here’s the first one: A drawing of a person I know, purely from memory, no references. Pencil, paper, eraser, 1h hour, my memory and technical skill.

It's clumsy, but it shows that I've truly looked at and perceived and committed to memory some aspects of my partner’s features from both real life and photos. I have also drawn a cartoon version of him at least twice, and that requires a keen eye for key features.

Some notes on assignment #1: 

I had a good idea of head shape, face shape, some distinct sense of the gestalt of the nose, lips, eyes and eyebrows, but poor memory of eyelids, mouth placement and distance from eye to ear.

Frustrating influence of manga & cartoon illustration on the key features, felt myself just go for stronger and more generic outlines when confused 

Neck tapers the wrong way 

Beard volume too small, outlines are wrong

Curly hair baffles my visual receptors, drawing it felt procedual and logical rather than drawing something I've seen and understood. 

Shading is fully based on memory and has a 2.5D relief-like quality to it

Body is fully 2D, I had very little visual memory for rendering it

First 10 minutes of drawing were daunting, but I just decided on a person (the person I've been looking at the most lately) and what size image to draw (not too close up to reveal blanks in my memory of his face; not too far to reveal blanks on his body) and got rolling. Once more in the zone than not I really enjoyed the physical act of drawing and feeling the pencil on paper, and visual recalling, problem solving and rendering procedually. Logic and art education also helped patch over the gaps in memory and skill.

While drawing I could tell I was craving having a physical model in front of me to actually LOOK AT, which is a good drive. I also noticed being annoyed with the limitations of physical media: Erasers not erasing 100% of the pencil, accidental smudges, no Photoshop tools. In Photoshop you can just do a sloppy sketch and cut and paste and stretch and rotate and darked and lighten parts of it to refine it. You can even trace or filter photos and avoid actually looking at things. 

Not having these tool-assisted shortcuts was very annoying for my efficiency-obsessed parts of brain.Sorry brain, we're doing the hardcore pure technical skill route now. No clever tricks and lifehacks and industry secrets. Just drawing what we see until we actually see it well and draw it well.

[marrascomics]

Learning how to REALLY draw

2021-12-19

I went to art school in 2009. I studied comics and graphic novels, animation and storytelling, game designand graphic design... but I never truly got a classical art education to back any of it up. On my best days I produce GOOD ART, but to be honest, it’s never FINE art. I don’t have the technical skill, discipline, perception or attention span to elevate my art.

I went to art school as an alternative to academics, because I was burned out and my soul was aching. Art and artists were healing to me, I wasn’t alone in my passion and weirdness and pain. But I can’t say I had it in me to truly get skilled.

Art was healing the inflammation of my soul, but I was still too scared and tired and sore to take harsh criticism or attend art history lectures and compare my silly little fanart and scribbles to the great masters.

Now my soul is finally no longer inflamed, and it’s time to put on the corrective braces I was too tender to wear earlier in my life. It's time I let go of my ego-defences around technical skill in art, and work on my weak points. 

It's time I re-do the Betty Edwards Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain drawing course. It’s how I started my art education in art school, and it was a powerful learning method. This time I won’t cheat and try to get away with as little as possible. I’ll actually truly do my best.

This is my current skill ceiling. I have very little patience for reference images and planning, and a lot of excuses for why I don’t need them. 

It’s less expressive if I plan it too much. If I wanted photorealism, I’d take a photo. My personal style is valuable, why would I draw something ANYONE with just technical skill can draw?

I’ll simply thank my brain for the clever excuses and carry on with doing the hard work.

[santapau]

What's funny is that all of these are actual body language reading tips I found on google.

[3000s]

mabataki88

[yellow-cat]

advocating mushroom rights

[infected]

Dogliani, Italy, photo by Andrea Ramasso

[dankmemeuniversity]

[kingsupermepat-deactivated20220]

Yea I want to rearrange your guts but first how was your day? Did you eat?

[get-thee-to-a-shrubbery]

surgeons before they put you under anesthetic

[kermitlesbian]

hey what’s up guys i’m still trapped in this abandoned grain silo

[bunjywunjy]

Why are there so many mammals with “crab-eating” in their common name? Crab-eating fox, crab-eating raccoon, crab-eating macaque, crab-eating mongoose, crabeater seal, etc.

Do scientists just see them eating a crab one day and go “now THAT’S a name!” Why don’t they do this with other common prey items. Why pick on crabs.

listen there’s a lot of crabs out there and SOMEONE has to eat them all

[arbane235]

And they need to hurry.  More things are becoming crabs every day.

[bunjywunjy]

nature MAKES a crab, nature EATS a crab. it is the circle of life.

[gigglepuffpixie]

caaaaaaaar-cinisation!

[thesewersofparis]

this painting came to me in a dream