Seraphim arts

Original characters, LOTR, Genshin, Star Rail, and assorted animes

[mina-seraphim]

Hello, I’m an artist if that wasn’t already obvious. I do fanart and original work in both traditional and digital media. If anyone wants to be friends, I don’t mind a bit. I just want to be chill and do my silly little art things.

Currently on a quest to illustrate The Hobbit in my style.

Please DM or ASK me for requests or commissions. My Etsy store is live, new things will be posted on there every month.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/TinySeraphim

Other socials:

https://tinyseraphim.etsy.com

https://www.instagram.com/mina.seraphim/

[mina-seraphim]

Final Blog post: Life Drawing Class

               This semester has been a whirlwind to be sure. Thinking back on everything, its hard to separate it all because there was to much going on. fitting multiple assignments in each week was crazy. I never had time to actually focus on a piece and perfect it. Starting off with the charcoal portraits, I saw the largest improvement in that area. Week one was horrible, it had been so long since I had drawn people in a realistic way, it took me several weeks to get used to just that. For whatever reason, my pieces I did in class always turned out better than the ones I did for the assignments. The charcoal portraits I did never turned out to be quite right. Almost all of the ones I drew had very similar features. The only ones that I liked were the ones that I did in class. I think that was because it was focused time on the projects and also I had input from the teacher while doing it. Charcoal as a medium was difficult to get a hang of at first but the more I used it the more I enjoyed it. However I am unsure whether or not I would use it again for my own work.

               The second module when we did wildlife and animal drawing was probably my favorite. Once again my work during class was better than the assignments I submitted. We go to go to the local aqua zoo at the mall and draw all the animals there. I focused a lot on the lizards, they ended up being my favorites in the end. I think that a lot of the other people in the class had trouble with them, But I thought they were really fun. I sat and drew a gecko for two of the sessions we had. The first time he didn’t do much but sit there on a log but the second time he scampered around and I got to draw some good poses. My actual assignments weren’t anything to write home about, but I was happy with my work during class time.

               Urban sketching could have definitely used some work. I think that if I had looked at more examples and had something to go off of before starting I would have been more successful. That was one thing about this class I couldn’t get behind, was the lack of references we had. I didn’t even know what urban sketching meant at first. I wasn’t sure whether to add color or not, I should have just stuck to pencil and ink. I think one  of my first projects did turn out pretty well, I only used pencil for it and I focused on the textures and perspective in the picture. It was definitely too much having to do multiple drawings a week for this section. I could not focus on my work and this is where I started feeling incredibly scattered.

The final section of the class was dedicated to plein air painting. At this point in the semester, it was just too much. I was lucky that I chose to do watercolor because if I had done oil painting with the rest of the class I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the assignment schedule. A full landscape with barely any time to workshop it, is a lot. The first and last weeks of it were my most successful pieces. The first one I did a bit of my usual watercolor tomfoolery. It wasn’t amazing but it worked for me. I just enjoy putting random colors everywhere, it speaks to me. The last one that I completed was a digital painting on my tablet. That one was probably my favorite piece that I did all semester. I really should have just left the watercolor earlier and done digital for the plein air, but I honestly didn’t think about it. I wasn’t as stressed while using it because I didn’t have to deal with as many time constraints.

For the future, I think I will definitely use what I learned here. If anything, I now know I need time to complete things, and I won’t force myself into short deadlines with my own work. It just doesn’t work out well unless I’m in the right headspace. I did learn a lot while I was working on portraits at the beginning of the semester. I am able to pick out more features than I used to. I think I have a better understanding about the shadows on the face, specifically. The majority of things I learned are related to what not to do with my work. I do think I have improved, but I am very excited for summer to start.

[mina-seraphim]

Blog post: Plein Air

So its pretty obvious to me that I should have just been working with digital this whole time.  I was able to focus a lot better this time around and it didn’t take me too long to finish. I also wasn’t as stressed working on this piece, probably because I didn’t have to worry about ruining the piece since it was on my ipad. Plus I really enjoyed pushing all the colors and textures. The spot on the tree I picked is very complicated. The ivy is all over the place and made the picture very complex. So I had to find ways to simplify it. I started off in a similar way to how oil paintings are done and I covered the base with a brownish orange color. On top of that I decided to put the shape of the tree first. It took me a little while to decide on the brushes that I should use. Procreate isn’t my favorite for doing art but it works fine for this kind of thing. I have noticed that working on line art in procreate can be very frustrating, meanwhile doing more painterly works is less difficult. When I do use procreate for pieces with line art I tend to first draw it traditionally, scan it, and then transfer it into digital. The slippery feeling of the touch screen really messes with my art somehow, and I can’t get a screen protector with paper texture yet. I didn’t end up needing to do this whole process for this drawing thankfully. But it did take me a little bit to get used to after using just watercolors for a couple weeks. The blues that I used for the sky were originally lighter blues and purples, but I found that the brought blue worked a lot better with the composition. I think that the hardest part was deciding how much of the ivy to put into the picture. In actuality the tree is completely covered in ivy and a lot of the branches are just clumps of it just hanging there. But I wanted to bring out some of the bark of the cedar tree instead to give it some dimension. I layered a lot of yellows, oranges and purples with the green so the greens did not feel flat. I think one of the hardest parts to get right with plein air, regardless of media is getting the greens to vary enough. Usually when I’m painting with watercolors I have to dip into other colors as I go along to keep it interesting. I do a similar thing with digital painting but instead of dipping into other colors I just vary the shade of green or I go in with a low opacity brush and add complementing colors. Going into the last little bit of the project I just decided to roll with it and do what felt right. It’s the last painting we are doing anyway so what’s the point of stressing about it now. I really tried to push the colors of particularly the sky and the ivy but hold the other things back that could remain a neutral tone. I found some awesome texture brushes as well to use on the bark. With digital painting I have trouble with texture since the default is for everything to be smooth. It really relies on the brush textures to keep it interesting in that way. The end result was more graphic than I usually do, but I kind of like it. I certainly like it better than the past paintings I had to work on for this class.

[mina-seraphim]

Blog post week 13:

This week was chaotic to say the least. I’m just all over the place with everything and I always feel behind. This week’s painting was a real challenge because of multiple reasons. I was unable to complete it earlier in the week and even if I had done it earlier it still would have felt rushed. I am entirely unsatisfied with the result. When I feel rushed it looks rushed, there is no way around it.  I will probably do digital art for next week so I am able to go back and change things. I have a very specific style for water color that I always do but some times it just doesn’t work out. I’m getting pretty anxious about my grades too. I don’t know what it is about this semester but my grades have been off, everything feels so overwhelming and stressful. I might also be getting sick on top of everything.

I was able to head up the mountain to paint with my classmate Nina for this painting session. We spent a good couple of hours up there in her car. It was nice and relaxing but I just found myself getting frustrated with my work. I really wish we had at least two weeks per painting so that I could actually put the time in that Is needed for finished works. it was different when it was just charcoal drawing or sketching. Turing in full paintings every week just makes things get worse and worse. I see no improvement in my work cause I do not have the time to improve. Its just a rush to submit something so I don’t fall behind at this point. I suppose its not the end of the world if I don’t do well in this class. Summer is soon and hopefully I will have time to recover from everything this semester has inflicted on me.

I’m going to give the painting another pass while I’m waiting for class to start. My usual style is very eclectic and relies heavily on watercolor pencil. Yesterday my paper was too wet to do much with that so I am sitting down to do more of it now.

I have come back to write down more of my thoughts. I think it worked out a little better once I put down some acrylic paint. It isn’t the best. I should have been more intentional during the whole thing. But for some reason I was just not into it. Hopefully that will change next week. Of course we only have a couple weeks left. This may be the second to last week actually so maybe I’m too late. Reflecting back on the semester I think the only thing that I really improved on was the portraits. I at least got a bit farther with that because we really took the time on it that we needed to. Plus we had more input from the teacher and other students. I feel like everything after that has been too much too quickly. I can’t say I’ve improved that much this semester. But of course I’m my own worst critic. I can’t do anything about that though. I just am. I think In the future I need to lean into what I actually enjoy making. I feel so out of place in a lot of these classes. Realism isn’t my strong point. Even though its literally the basis for everything. I just don’t like it. It seems to work for everyone else, why not me. I can’t see anything without visual clutter, so everything is cluttered in my paintings.

[mina-seraphim]

Blog post week 12: plein air

               This one went through several different versions before I even got to the painting. There are a few nice spots around my house with plenty of trees and greenery. At first I was going to paint the arbor with roses on it in the back yard, but the roses are still buds and I’d like to paint them when they are in bloom, it will probably be another week or two until then. So I looked around and there is a nice path, but that would still have the rose bushes in the image. Finally I settled on the tree in the front yard. I love photos and paintings that just focus on branches instead of the whole tree. Plus there was just one yellow leaf hanging on right outside my window. I keep spotting some squirrels scampering back and forth too, so I’m hoping to paint one.

While setting up for the painting I noticed how the tree limbs cross each other in a downward pattern. It’s a pretty massive magnolia tree and a lot of leaves are dropping at this time of year. The yard looks like its fall.

I started off with some yellow and blue background with the water color. I am trying out drawing with water color pencil instead of just plain pencil for the near future. I find that it makes a lot of neat textures as long as it isn’t washed out with too much water. I am trying to pick up more on the variation in colors even if everything is just green and brown this time of year. It would have been nice if the tree was in bloom but I’m not sure when that happens. I think late summer. Perhaps I’ll have to come back to painting this tree later in the year.

Once again I forgot to take process pictures until half way through painting. It is just not something I even think about while I’m working because I am so locked in to what I’m doing. I’m not thinking too much while I paint either. My brain just goes on auto pilot. I forgot to eat until mid afternoon today because of all the work that I had to do on this and other homework assignments that are due on the same day. It was a rough week, I barely got any sleep most of the days and that sent me into a whole spiral of illness just from sleep deprivation. That has not helped my focus at all.

I think for the next assignment I’d like to paint that rose arbor if possible. Either that or I want to go to the park and paint. I am planning to go there on Wednesday to hang out with a friend, so that might be a good time to paint and get it done. I’d like to find compositions with less green in them but I think I am doing okay with giving the greens a lot of variation. I have found that a good base tone of yellow gives the greens a lot more life to them, they aren’t flat or plain that way. For the dark tones I usually stick to a mix of purple, cool green and either a hint of brown or black depending on how dark it needs to be. I have found that it makes for a deep cool shadow that works pretty well for nature scenes. Next week I’ll try to have a more open scene where I can focus on atmospheric perspective and hopefully get some sky in it.

[mina-seraphim]

Landscape week 11 blog post:

It was a rather adventurous time working on this project this week. I met up with my class mate Nina at a local park and we sat down in the grass for a long while to pain the scenery. There was a lot of rolling hills and dense trees around. There was also a red dirt road going through it all but I decided not to focus on it. The trees in the distance were what interested me at the time. So I set up my supplies and sat down for the next few hours to paint.

I started off with some basic pencil strokes and moved on quickly to the painting part of it. I found that a lot of the greens in my collection were too cool and I added a lot of reds and yellows to the paint to help it have a warmer feel to it. It took a lot of layers to build up what I wanted it to look like.  Eventually I added some strokes with my water color pencils. They tend to have a brighter and more saturated tone to them. I laid down some of those pigments in certain areas and then moved on to some details. I used some ink pen in certain areas to mark out a lot of the trees and branches. But I sort of wish I hadn’t bothered and just left the paints to themselves. Eventually the urges took hold of me and I put a lot of squiggles everywhere.

I think that the main thing that has set me back on this piece is the lack of a focal point. I tried to arrange things in a good way that would make the eye lead through it. I am just unsure if it was completely successful or not. The dark lines on the tree lines really help lead the eye through the image but I am not sure if that was enough to push it to an acceptable level of interest.

I’m unsure if the squiggles and doodles that I am accustomed to, work in this kind of drawing. In a lot of my art I love to add random colors where they probably shouldn’t be. Lavender and lime green are my usual go to for this kind of thing. Another thing I would add in future projects would be to add some grass in the foreground to show some more depth. I did zoom in a bit and cut off the grass that was closest to me in the picture but I suppose it would have made more sense If I had just made it up and added some depth to the foreground. The sky wasn’t that interesting that day, it was just a plain blue sheet with no clouds but I think next time I will make up some clouds even if they aren’t there.

As for things that I learned during this project, I think the main one would be that I need to take more artistic liberties when needed. Not everything need to look just as it is in person. It isn’t that interesting to draw things like that anyway. I want to feel more free while painting for the last few weeks we have and actually try to have some fun with it. It has been a wild and stressful semester over all and I need to find a way to loosen up. There are only a few projects left and I am ready to work on some of my own things. I am very much looking forward to summer.

[mina-seraphim]

Urban sketching week 10:

It was a pretty hectic week all things considered. The first drawing that I did, I totally forgot to take process photos again. But that was partially because I got rained on the first day I sat down to draw it. I got myself a watercolor sketchbook and sat down in one spot outside of the school entrance. It is a pretty boring building but I liked the tree that was planted next to it, so I chose that as my focal point. I was able to get the basic sketching done but then the sky got all dark and my water color paper turned into just water paper. I was able to get back to my car without significant damage to the picture, however and I came back the next day before my Thursday class to finish it. The second session went by a lot better, but that time the sun decided it needed to be 90 degrees and I was forced to hide under a tree to keep from falling to heatstroke and sunburns.

I ended up falling back on my usual watercolor style and added a lot of watercolor pencil for texture. I am not sure I feel good with how it turned out. Since the assignment is for urban sketching I was not sure how far to go with it. If I was going to do a longer finished painting I would have added more detail and been more cautious of the structures in the image. But I suppose it is alright for what we have to do for the assignment.

The second sketch was more complicated when it came to the building. I was sitting across the road in a coffee shop to draw it and there was a lot of noise around me. I don’t know what possessed all these people to get up at nine in the morning to be loud in a coffee shop, but they were there and it was honestly pretty annoying. I made a few mistakes with this one but at least I remembered to take process pictures this time around. The building was pretty basic but had some weird angles going on in the back. Not exactly the best structure I’ve seen. And on top of that the windows were all different placements on the sides and it was hard to calculate the right spot for everything. I sort of forgot I was supposed to draw figures in this one so I added them in the window of the building. I thought I was done drawing people for the semester but they have returned to make my life difficult once again. I wasn’t satisfied with the painting on this one. Easter weekend was pretty crazy and I didn’t have much time to work on it.

Since the next section of the class is on plein air painting I think I would like to focus on the pen work that I do in my water color paintings. I vastly prefer doing water color to oil painting because of how long it takes to dry and also oil painting is extremely expensive, it is not something I can spend money on right now. Still I need to learn to not be as impatient as I have been. Watercolor can be messed up so easily and I have a hard time taking the time to make things right sometimes. Im  not completely satisfied with my work this week, but I’m also not unsatisfied with it. I think if I had been only required to do one drawing and had been able to really put all the time into it, I would have had better results.

[mina-seraphim]

Week 9 Urban Sketching:

               It was an interesting week all around. I cannot say that my attempts at urban sketching were anything special. I sort of took the word sketching and ran with it. the first one ended up being very rough and I decided to try something with my ink pens and a colored pencil that I ended up not liking at all. I think it was alright when I just had the green colored pencil on the trees and grass but I went too far with it and then added an ink pen on top of that as well. It happened to be an ink pen that was way too thick for the situation. Not my best work I will admit. I didn’t have much time to redo it so I just let it be. It has been a crazy week to be sure. The second drawing that I did turned out a lot better in my opinion. I stuck to what I know best for the second drawing and kept going with the pencil. For the drawing sessions I met up with my classmates Grace and Nina and we just sat on my front porch yapping about Harry Potter the whole time. A storm was rolling in so we didn’t get to go out and draw what we wanted to. We had a whole plan to go downtown and draw some of the old churches and get coffee at one of the coffee shops. But if we had drawn the churches then we would have had to sit outside in the rain. It was lucky that my porch is large and sheltered so we just sat under there. Rain kept getting on my drawing and the pencil marks started getting all funky cause of how damp it was. I’ve never felt like I could be painting with pencils until then. My classmates had brought their water color sketchbooks and paint with them. I will have to invest in a water color sketchbook for next time. For my second piece focused on the path going up to my house and the house on the other side of the road. In actuality the house is a good couple of yards to the left but I ended up smushing it together to fit into the drawing I wanted to create.

I think in the next couple of weeks when we get into landscapes and more urban sketching I think my main goal is to focus more on one specific part of the scene to make it the focal point of the drawing. I tend to get lost with landscapes and I end up thinking I need to draw everything in detail when in fact I do not need to do that. I liked the sketchiness of my second drawing that was purely in pencil because of the effortlessness of it. Everything had texture to it and I didn’t try to overthink anything like I did in the first one. I am also noticing I am drawn to certain shapes like the railings and windows. I ignore the roofs and steps, perhaps because they are too repetitive and complex. Steps have always confused me and I end up just drawing the gestural lines of all of them. I think that in the future I wouldn’t mind working on those repetitive structures a bit more but that requires a lot of patience that I usually do not have while drawing. It has been a pretty stressful week and I am very excited to go to bed. Thank you for listening to the rant.

[mina-seraphim]

First half of the semester overview and critique:

For the most part the first half of the semester in this class was difficult at best. It was certainly informative, but I am very tired of portraits. I really like drawing characters but drawing realistic portraits is basically like pulling teeth for me. For one I have to stare at a human for several hours and pretend it’s not awkward for everyone involved. And then I draw one line in the wrong spot and it’s suddenly a different person entirely. It is just exhausting at this point, and I can’t wait to move on to other things.

Learning how to draw with charcoal was new to me but I did end up enjoying it. I liked the range of values I was able to get out of it, especially because I like pushing the darks a lot. I did find it to be clumsy when it came to details because the pencils kept breaking in the pencil sharpener and I was always using blunt tools. I think in general I prefer using pencil and ink pen for drawing, but I am glad I had the chance to work with charcoal and actually learn how to use it.

I would say that the wildlife portion of the semester was my favorite by far. Especially when it came to going to the zoo and drawing all the animals. That was one of if not the best days of the semester so far, being able to roam around freely and draw all the animals. I know we are supposed to go a second time and draw again and I am looking forward to that a lot. I think that the second time around I will go back t drawing more lizards, they were by far my favorite animals to draw and they are also very stationary so I can get all the details that I need while sitting there, Other than the lizards I think I would enjoy drawing the chickens again too because they are just big fluff balls with heads and feet, they are a lot of fun to observe.

For class critiques, I don’t have much to say. I think one of my biggest faults is not being able to tell where to put sharp lines and also just placement of the features in general. It is hard when I’m stuck working on a piece for a long time to not slip into drawing the same kind of face over and over. I definitely need to work more on backgrounds and vignettes instead of just leaving the figure there all by itself. I forget to be artistic with it sometimes and I just draw it flat like what I see. I think I did my best with portraits when I was in the exhibition live drawing extra credit event. Somehow that turned out to be my best portrait, and I wish it was one I actually was turning In for an assignment. I feel like all the ones I turned in were my worst work but the ones I drew during class time were fine.

For the next half of the semester, I plan to focus more on enjoying what I am drawing and working on the artistic expression of it. Since we will be moving onto plein air landscapes and that sort of thing, I think I will have a better time of it and I will be able to not have to worry about having a person there in front of me that I have to draw. It should be less stressful, I hope.

[mina-seraphim]

Week 7: wildlife drawing

               I didn’t have anything more interesting than cats to draw again this week, but they are little goofballs so I didn’t mind trying to capture their essence again. My gray cat Kakashi in the first picture was a good boy for once and actually sat stull for the entire time that I drew him. He was laying down so I didn’t get his white paws into the drawing unfortunately. I used pencil for this one since we could use whatever we wanted to draw the animals. I much prefer pencil to charcoal, and I rank ink pen even higher than that for all of my drawing needs. I used a bit of ink pen in certain areas that I wanted to define more or make darker. I wasn’t sure how complicated to make it so I drew the basic shapes and then did some shading with the pencils. I didn’t go too dark on either of the drawings cause I was worried about making the pencil too shiny and over worked. I was more relaxed than with the portraits and I was able to be more expressive in my marks for it. Once the basic shapes were done I got into the face and drew the details with ink. For the second one, my cat Tobi did not sit still longer than five seconds. I had an awful time trying to keep him occupied and I eventually just gave him a lot of food and tried to sketch as quickly as I possibly could. He moved around a lot but I was able to get his shape down and then I sketched his features. Since he is a tabi cat its hard to draw his features without also drawing all his markings. But they are so complex that I could only get the basic shapes down. I worked on it a bit more and I think I like how it turned out but I think I would have liked to have a more stationary creature as a model.

               For improvements for other drawings like this I think I would have liked to study more drawings of cats before embarking on another one. They have such interestingly shaped faces that it is hard to capture them right on the first try. I think the most difficult part is the eyes and nose. The bridge of their noses is difficult to get the right length. Next time I would like to get their paws in the picture’s but the only time they stay still is when they are napping.

               I think I have enjoyed this part of the class a lot more than the charcoal portrait drawings. Not having to look at humans for hours is very nice indeed. Just drawing animals has been a lot more relaxing, especially because I don’t have to coordinate with someone in order to draw them. That being said, I am definitely in need of a break from school work. I have the urge to draw a lot of my own stuff but I can’t right now because I have to draw so many things for classes. Hopefully spring break will be a much needed rest from all of this and I can be less stressed for the second half of the semester. I am looking forward to the plein air and urban sketching assignments that are coming up. I hope that I can do some better work in that area. Since my online class is finished for the semester I’ll have more time for actual artistic things instead of just writing about art.

[mina-seraphim]

Final from last semester inspired by the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo.

[mina-seraphim]

Segment of my finals from last semester. This is my OC Layla.

[mina-seraphim]

Wildlife / Animal Sketches: week 7

For this week’s assignment I had to do multiple gesture sketches of animals. Luckily, I have two rambunctious cats to draw. I decided to do just a cluster of sketches instead of spreading them out neatly. Over the course of the time, I spent drawing it was difficult to get a hang on the exact shapes I was going for because the cats kept moving. They did not stay still longer than two seconds unless they were taking a nap on the bed. Even then most of their bodies were obscured by blankets, and they looked like little sausage rolls. The best ones I got seemed to be when they were looking out the windows and looking at birds or squirrels. When I tried to make a few of the faces, they came out rather cartoony, but that’s probably also because they were moving around so much. In total I did two pages of rough sketches, and I tried to make a few of them a bit more detailed with the fur, facial features and markings just depending on how long they sat there. I was only supposed to draw for 30 seconds to 2 minutes, and I was usually around those marks I am pretty sure. My favorite sketch is probably the one on the second page where my tabby cat, Toby, is standing in an S shape with his tail all curled. Unfortunately, the scanner lightened the images significantly, so I had to darken them in editing later, but it still looks a bit strange. I am not entirely sure if I captured the assignment well enough this week but that seems to be an ongoing thing with me. I am never satisfied no matter what I do.

For improvements next time I think I will try to focus on using longer lines instead of the short strokes I am used to. I think that would help a lot. Especially since I tend to get caught up with smaller details while drawing. The hardest part is capturing the lines while the cats are moving, they are very silly and when they are not asleep, they are causing problems. They often try to eat my drawings while I am trying to work on them. They also kept leaving the room while I was trying to work. They are very chaotic creatures. I’d like to be able to work a little more on the faces next time. They didn’t turn out too well except for one or two of them. They kind of look a little too human in the eyes with some of them. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to use a pencil or a stick for the project so I did end up using a pencil. It is just what I am comfortable with for most things. Perhaps for the next one I’ll use a stick charcoal instead, but I am still unsure since I do enjoy doing these smaller studies and I don’t know if the larger strokes will make it more difficult. For things that I have learned I think the most important is to be more patient and not rush the first couple lines of the gesture drawing. Secondly I think that I need to be okay with making mistakes, I am such a ridiculous perfectionist to the point that everything I do that I’m not satisfied with is just garbage in my mind. I really need to work on that. Anatomy would be my third thing I need to work on, but its exercises like this that will help with that.

[mina-seraphim]

I’m in need of some practice. If you have ideas then comment below!

[mina-seraphim]

Charcoal portrait week 5

For this week almost my whole class got together to work on the project in the art lab. We ended up drawing a friend of one of my classmates who was Indian. It was a lot of fun getting together as a group to work on this one, it made the assignment feel more like we were focused in class as we usually are on Mondays.

I did my best to work on the placement of the features at first. I realized after I already had some strokes down that I had picked a terrible place to draw because the light that was shining on the model was also shining right into my eyes and causing me to have a headache. It also made the lights and shadows that I could see hard to differentiate since things were blending together too much. But I pushed on and kept going. I definitely went too fast with the blocking in of the shades and went too dark on a lot of it. The main thing was the hair because our model had very black hair that only had some reflected light on the top of her head and to the side. For a while it felt like it was just a giant black rectangle.

I forgot to take a picture of the under drawing because by the time we took a break I was already knee deep into the shadows and lights. I slowed down after that and took everything bit by bit.

I found the angle a bit difficult since the models face was turned down quite a bit and it was hard to line everything up, but I believe I got at least close to what she actually looked like in that regard. I once again tried to draw the shape of the hair first before the facial features and I accidentally made the hair way too large for her face and it was overpowering the image. I took the kneaded eraser and rubbed away some of that hair. It was on pretty dark so I ended up making the background smudgy and dark. There was a lot of drawing and erasing happening during this assignment. I think I ended up slipping back into the one face I keep drawing. Its hard when I spend so much time on a piece, I always tend to overwork it and they all end up looking the same. Plus, it was pretty late when we finished up and I just wanted to go to bed.

I tried using a paper towel for smoothing out the shades and it also helped to lift some of that charcoal. I turned out I was pulverizing the charcoal into the paper. There were so many layers I’m unsure if this thing survived the journey home. I’m honestly scared to look at it. I think I am somewhat satisfied with it though. However my assignment from the previous week is still by far my favorite. I think that in the past couple of weeks I have certainly learned a lot regarding portraits. I also hadn’t used charcoal for any length of time before and I really did enjoy it. however I didn’t love how messy it was. I think in the future I’ll stick to graphite for a lot of my own work unless I really want a piece to push those darks.  I can definitely tell a difference between what my first week portrait looked like and the ones I’ve made the past two weeks. Overthinking seems to be my downfall and I have to break myself out of that.

[mina-seraphim]

Charcoal portrait 3:

               This week for the charcoal portrait I was able to draw one of my best friends. It was getting pretty late at night when I started drawing so unfortunately I forgot to take process pictures for this one. It had been a long day at my friend’s wedding party and so I wasn’t very aware of my breaks or anything like that. I actually didn’t take any more breaks except once half way through when I hurt my thumb by jamming it into my art board. I didn’t know art could be such a dangerous profession.

I started out the usual way with sketching out the basic shapes. I did add one new component to the under drawing which was blocking out the basic shape of the hair along with the shape of the face and neck. I think that blocking in the hair early made it look less flat as I continued with the drawing. I was just listening to my friend’s talk in the background so I was able to just lock in and draw for a couple hours. The nose and mouth came together pretty fast. I tend to avoid those areas because I am a perfectionist and I get in my head about drawing those very defining features. But for this time I decided to just tackle them head on and get it done. I’ve been trying to find the process that works for me and I’ve found that dragging out the middle part of defining the features is detrimental to my artwork. When it came to the eyes I had a bit more trouble. There is a lot of shadows and very small hints of light in that area that are hard to keep a hold on. The eyes turned out a bit darker than I had intended at first, but I think it is an improvement on the previous charcoal portraits that I’ve done in and out of class. I think that the best improvement in this particular piece is the mouth. When I showed it to my best friend who was modeling for me, she said the lips were the most accurate part of the drawing. The nose was less accurate, I think the angle was a bit off in my drawing of the nose. But my model did move a fair bit so it was hard to figure out the placement. I did appreciate I could draw someone with larger eyes so it wasn’t just downturned lines like in my other charcoal drawings I have been doing. The hair was perhaps my favorite part of the drawing process since my friend has very curly hair that caught the back lighting nicely.

I think I have learned a lot through the process of this drawing, perhaps the most important being to not overthink everything. I get in my head a lot about these things and if I am able to stop thinking and just draw, My work turns out a lot better than if I’m thinking about every little thing. When it comes to my future drawings I am going to start off by drawing the basic shape of the face and the hair before the facial features to get the overall structure correct. Other than that, the use of my charcoal pencils and compressed charcoal has switched up a bit. I only used my pencil for the under sketching and also the details later, but the compressed and vine charcoal was used for basically everything else. Other than that, I am pretty pleased with this one, aside from my forgetfulness with the process pictures.

[mina-seraphim]

Charcoal portrait 2:

               Thankfully this week I was able to coordinate with a classmate to draw someone in person. The set up was not the most ideal since I was drawing from the floor at an upward angle. I started off by sketching the placement of the features, but I am afraid I rushed through that part which caused issues later. I find that when I am tired and stressed I draw worse than usual. Perhaps its because I was working on this assignment past 7pm but all I could think about was the time and how nice it would be to get home and go to sleep after an already long day.

               During the first 20 to 30 minute session, I finished the initial sketching and moved on to the basic shadows. This is when I realized I had gone too far and I back tracked several times. My charcoal pencils continually broke unfortunately and I had to rely on my compressed charcoal sticks which are much more difficult to manage because I cant fully control how heavy the layer of charcoal is. So the drawing ended up darker a lot sooner than I would have liked. I had to keep adjusting the facial features on the drawing, specifically around the chin area and I am still unsure if I got it where I want it to be. For a while the highlight on the chin made it look like it was sticking out a lot more than the rest of the face which was not true for the model. Continually, my favorite part of these portraits is the hair, but for a while there it was just looking too flat for my liking since it was just straight and laying over her shoulders. But I tried my best to just focus on the facial features for the time being. As time went on I noticed it was starting to look a lot like the other drawings I did in class, I’m unsure if that is because of my skill level or because the models were all looking down and had similar lighting. I know it is hard to ask someone to stare in a different direction for something like this but I would like to try to draw someone with wider eyes in the future so I can study the details of the eyes. For this project and previous ones the eyes are little more than slits and I cannot see much light in them.

               I did forget to take photos of the earliest stages of the drawing so the few progress shots I have are a bit too similar. As I was getting to the end I felt like I was just beating a dead horse with this one. I kept getting frustrated and erasing parts and then redrawing them with little improvement. In the last session with the model, she had unknowingly moved her hair which did add more interest, I had not ruined the hair yet so I decided to add the new definition to the drawing. At least to me it added some much needed interest and helped me cut through some of that flatness. Still I think I need to focus on making these portraits look different from one another. They all seem to be turning out like I’m drawing the same person. I think perhaps the best thing I can do for future projects would be to focus on the under drawing for longer and also to try and be as relaxed as possible for these drawing sessions. Apart from that I don’t see much improvement in my work this week unfortunately.