Recently I bought 3 small square canvases, so today as I had free time I had some fun painting one of them. It was a lot of fun and even through the painting has its fault I still kind of enjoy the style. My reference image can be found here.

This year I have been enrolled in an one year art course in Norway called drawing and imagery.  As this year has now come to an end I figured it was time to show what I have done this year and write briefly about each of the assignments we have been through. It has been a different year for me and I have learnt a lot even though I wish I had worked even more on my drawing skills.

Drawing and painting: For this assignment we chose an artwork that inspired us. I chose this picture by Joel Robinson and made a drawing based on this with markers as can be seen on the left. This drawing was taken further for the painting part of this module, for this I chose to focus on the turtle shell and made a pattern out of it to fit a mug.

Artlab: This module was focused a lot on studying things from the nature through microscopes as well as trying to get to terms with having elements of chance which we can’t control. The painting underneath was based on some of what I found while studying things though the microscope and afterwards having played with this images in photoshop overlaying it and changing effects. I have to admit I didn’t completely managed to add an effect I couldn’t control into the painting, except for adding a lot of water and letting it just drip down. For the spikes I had taped off areas on beforehand.

Sculpture: This was a assignment were we used recyclable materials to make a sculpture inspired by endangered species. This sculpture is made from a mirror, paper, cardboard, see through tape and a transparent paper that could be used in the printer. In the eyes there can be seen some barely visible shapes, the black part contains a gathering of endangered species which I edited together in Photoshop and changed the values so they appeared darker. For the grey part of the eye there is animals that have quite recently died out.

Graphical design: For this class we had to design a candy box wrapping. We chose our own sweats and I chose Polkagris which is originally a swedish candy but they are like candy canes. The name Polkagris is actually two words put together. Polka is from the dance which this candy might have been named after because of its swirly stripes. Gris actually means pig, but apparently in Sweden in the old days that was also slang for candy. So from this I chose to take the pig part a bit more literally and made a box with characteristics that reminds people of a pig.

Product design: For this project we were making something that gave off light, it could be a light installation or a product. So as can be seen it was a very wide project were we could chose quite a lot for ourself what to focus on, which was part of the challenge. In the end I chose to make a light table from an old book. I thought this could be quite a practical object especially for people with not that much space since you can close it together and put it in the bookshelf. The surface area isn’t very big through so it is mostly suitable for small drawings or for small animations were you draw the different poses.

Independent project: This was the end of the year project for this course. We could chose what to do ourself, but we had to have a practical and theoretical part. The theoretical part had to result in a around 20 pages long report with a chosen question to research with case studies and a conclusion describing how the theoretical and practical work has answered the research question. For my topic I chose character design with the research question “What makes a character memorable?”.

A couple of months back I saw someone in my class use a liquid painting thing that was painted on the paper and removed after having painted over with water colours. This looked quite fun so when I saw a pot in the local craft store I bought to test it out. Please take into account that I haven’t used much water colours before so still learning and finding out how that works. In after thought I probably should have sketched up the fish a bit first or at least with a light coloured painting. Still found it a bit cute.:) The film was surprisingly easy to get off, I used a slim cutting knife to get a hold on it and then it was mostly to just pull it off. In the start I was a bit uncertain about how thick masking film I needed as well but it just takes longer to dry with thicker layer. So hopefully this cute Dory (from Finding Nemo) quote can now cheer me up and motivate me to work.:)

I recently started the 21 days challenge. Being amazing at finding excuses and procrastinating I had some issues starting and keeping it up, so in the end I made a schedule so I could cross off each day. It is still hard to be creative and draw when the mood isn’t up for it and might be even feeling ill. To have some drawing exercises to stick to I ended up using wysp a lot for trying to learn to get the main proportions down fast and this video was also helpful to get some inspiration for what to work on.

Unfortunately this only lasted 8 days since I had forgotten to take the easter break into account. My family had planned a skitrip in the mountains, Hardangervidda, where we walked from cottage to cottage for 5 days + 1 extra day for travelling. SO I will just have to start the challenge again after we come back.:) Still had some wonderful days in the mountains and got a bit sunburnt. Tricky in the mountains during easter where you can easily get sunbrunt even if u can’t see or feel the sun.

Anyway, I can’t say I noticed a massive improvement during the 8 days I managed to keep this up:P. However, I did notice it became easier to get something that looked like faces out of the wysp sessions. My focus was facial proportions and getting the lines down at the paper at the right places. So in the start I kept drawing after the timer had gone out, since I had barely gotten anything down on the paper. I thought it was more important to get the proportions right rather than the speed and hopefully the speed will come later on. I did set the timer per drawing on 5 minutes also for this reason, and eventually I did at least get some of the main features down before the timer ran out. So hopefully with a proper 21 days challenge I will get even better at this and drawing in general. Especially the faces from the front seems to be a weakness of mine as well as tilting of the heads. Under can be seen some of the drawings from this time period.

Sorry the quality, I don’t have a A3 scanner here.