Clearing Corners and Closing Quarters

I'm excited this first quarter of my sophomore year is coming to a close. Winter break is only 10 days away, so it's time to start wrapping things up here at SCAD.

Drawing for Sequential Art has been an outstanding, much-needed class. I can already see the improvement in my work from this rigorous, 10-week course. This class has really put me outside my artistic comfort-zone, especially with the challenge of learning perspective grids over the past couple weeks.

So you may recall my thumbnails from earlier of the museum interior perspective assignment.

This was a class favorite, and I dare not go against the grand council.
Oh and for real---like I honestly wasn't DYING to draw that triceratops.

The initial illustration I completed was really anemic... Not bad. It just was really...empty.

The class critique was very helpful. It became very apparent I was lacking a lot of texture and interesting spacial depth. Also, there's a super freaky tangent with the boy's hand and the plant against the wall. It REALLY looks like he's giving the triceratops a flower. Also, a few classmates threw a fit about the child climbing the dinosaur's horn. I really am embarrassed at how dutifully people try to find something sexual in a drawing. Awkward.

Lots of changes in the resubmission. I added more texture to clarify the planes of the exhibit, I added more plants and carefully placed them near the back so that I could cover that awkward vanishing point. My professor helped me construct the dinosaur exhibit to the right. Oh, and this time the little girl climbing the triceratops doesn't make my whole class snicker.

This assignment was tough---- but it was honestly just a warm up to what came next. This past week, our class was asked to invent our own scene based off an iconic location in New York City (i.e. Gapstow Bridge, Washington Square Arch...). Like a dummy, I picked the Washington Square Arch, completely oblivious to the fact that the thing is decked out in ornate sculptures.

The fun I had.

It's always fun to see someone's thumbnails. In these dinky little drawings, you can always see what part the artist thought was the most important (fun). And of course, for me, it was a big, hulking monster.

Originally I mused with some rhino-lizard...thing...But then it evolved into something else entirely.

I looked up Washington Square Arch on google maps and chose an angle that I liked. from there kind of dissected it in Photoshop. I looked for the vanished points and how I would position the monster.

I ended up drawing to replicate my Photoshop deconstruction on an actual piece of paper.

You can see that I'm way more interested in the monster than anything else. And that's definitely one of my faults in my art. I get all excited about one element of the drawing and then save the hard work for later. And it usually kicks my butt.

From there I gridded the final 3x2" thumbnail and transferred it onto a sheet of 15x10 bristol board. It took several hours of hard work. Mostly because I had overlooked all the ornate sculpture on the arch until the final drawing. It still turned out all right.

I am very proud of the finished result. After the critique yesterday, I am aware of several things that could have been a bit better. My clouds resemble the tree foliage. The vanishing point at the end of the street should have been hidden so as not to see the ENDS OF THE EARTH. On the plus side, everyone thought I was pretty brave for tackling the Washington Square Arch. It was difficult, but it was worth it.