Creative Drawing: Body shapes and summing it up

David Phan

Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be by Kathryn Temple

In my last blog, we learned how to draw a face. In this blog, we’ll continue and learn how to draw the rest of the body. In Kathryn Temple’s book Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be, she delves into the idea in depth. In chapter seven of her book she says, “Simple shapes will help you draw the human body…Their necks, arms, torsos, and legs are all a series of tubes. The hips, shoulders, and elbows – all of the joints – are made out of spheres” (Temple, 92). Temple continues by showing simple steps on how to draw these tubes and spheres, outlining them, and adding finishing touches to create a more detailed body.

In my attempt, I’ve decided to draw a body, but add on to it by combining the skills I’ve learned like landscape and shadowing. First, I start by building the body. I use the tubes and spheres as Temple described to make a skeleton of the body. After I had the shape I desired, I outlined the body and added details such as clothing, curves, and finishing touched to smooth out the figure. Then I created the landscaping in the background with the landscaping rules I learned from one of my previous blogs. Finally I finished the tree upon which my figure had been resting on.

How would you combine your drawing skills from my previous blogs to create something new? What would you draw, and why?

Works Cited

Temple, Kathryn. Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be. Sterling Children's Book, 2014.

Creative Drawing: Drawing Faces

David Phan

Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be by Kathryn Temple

The face, and particularly the eyes, can be the most difficult things to draw due to the complexity of every individual’s unique facial features. To help with this difficult task, I’ve used the help of Kathryn Temple’s book Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be to understand the hidden quirks that seem to hide beneath these intricate illustrations. In chapter six of Temple’s book she iterates, “The endless variety of the human face makes it even more amazing that most faces follow some basic rules of proportion and shape” (Temple, 76). Temple goes on explaining the basic rules around the drawing of faces, and focuses on the idea of drawing simple shapes like lines and circles (from my previous blog) to create the complex illustrations that she shows off (Temple, 80).

My attempt at the drawing shows the guidelines of the steps she takes. I took a different approach by drawing the eyes first as I would rather change the face shape than change the eyes if the proportions are wrong. Then I create a rough outline of the head by drawing circles and ovals, making the round head shape. Next, I draw the nose, the mouth, and the ears, crating shadows and textures along the way and smoothing out the edges if the proportions don’t seem right. Finally, I add the hair and the finishing touches to my piece, and changed the curvature of the chin a bit to make the proportions look cleaner.

With the idea of using simple lines and circles to make complex drawings, do you think you could draw something as intricate as a face? And if you were to draw a face, would you draw your own face, someone else’s face, would you create a face based off of your idea of an ideal face shape, or something more creative?

Works Cited

Temple, Kathryn. Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be. Sterling Children's Book, 2014.

Creative Drawing: Landscape and Perspective

David Phan

Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be by Kathryn Temple

In order to be able to draw, you'll need to know where you're looking from, or your perspective. In Kathryn Temple's book, Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be, Temple talks about different perspectives and their purposes. The one I'd like to highlight here is landscape perspectives. Temples delves into the process by stating, "I used these tricks of what's called atmospheric perspective to create the illusion of open space: Things get fuzzier the farther away they are; Things tend to appear lighter in value the farther away they are; Things appear to get smaller the farther away they are; Things appear closer together the farther away they are" (Temple 74). These four rules of landscape drawing allow the piece to show where everything is exactly, and allows you to judge the distance between each object in your drawing.

In my drawing, I've decided not to use a picture this time. Instead, I'll use what I know of my own surroundings (living in Washington means there's plenty of trees to look at!) and Temple's advice on landscape drawing to create an image of a meadow with a forest and mountain backdrop. I decided to contrast the image with a wild fire as well to make it more interesting. Here, you'll see I used the landscape techniques by blurring the background, defining the foreground, and shrinking the backdrop. I also used the shadowing and realism techniques from before to give it a final touch.

Do the landscape techniques really seem to allow you to judge different distances in the drawings? How do you think the blending of shadowing and landscape techniques helps give the drawing better depth?

Works Cited

Temple, Kathryn. Drawing: the Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be. Sterling Children's Book, 2014.

Working with Manual Mode. Photography Post #2

Owen Paznokas
The Beginner's Photography Guide
By Chris Gactum

It's time to take control of the camera. Working with aperture priority mode can alter depth of field and allow more light into the by width. Shutter priority mode is great for capturing motion, or blurring it for that matter and allows light in by rate. However, the next step is to combine these in manual mode to create more controlled pictures. Manual mode puts the photographer closer to the picture than the camera, you are pushing all the buttons, taking over auto focus points and altering aspects of the image that cannot be done with more basic renditions. 

"What it does...is allow yo to set the aperture and shutter speed yourself (as well as the ISO), and no matter where you point the camera it won't change the settings" (Gactum 74). No camera override can be daunting at first, but it can help in particular situations like low lighting. One thing to take into account when shooting in Manual mode is the Camera's metering system. Metering is a camera device that is designed to measure the light in the scene to create an accurate exposure (Gactum 76). Most camera's meter off the center of the scene and this can result to be problematic if there are different light levels in the whole frame. To combat this you can meter off multiple parts of the shot you want to take and determine what settings to shoot off then. 

I took my camera into my backyard a few days ago and worked with manual mode around sunset to create some vastly different shots. 

ISO: 400 135mm f:5.6 1/125 Sec

ISO 800 113mm f:5.6 1/1000 Sec

 The first picture had more light touching my subject, allowing me to use a lower ISO, my zoom lens put out it's full force to capture the plant, the shallow temperature blurred the background and the shutter speed fell into place to allow just the right amount of time in. This photo in other modes would probably not have had the same blurred background affect and would have washed out an image in that lighting. 

The second picture was being shadowed by my deck and created more of an orange light, it was slightly darker which made me bring the ISO up a little more. I got really close to my subject and only had to zoom my lens into 113mm. I used the same aperture to create the blurred background and allowed a very small amount of light in by a time of 1/1000 of a second. 

My question is, what cool affects would you try to create by taking manual control of your camera? How would you create it?

Recources
Gactum, Chris. Beginner's Photography Guide. Dorling Kindersley Ltd, 2016.

Working with Aperture: Photography Post #1

Owen Paznokas
The Beginner's Photography Guide
By Chris Gactum

Hey! I'm Owen, I aspire to be a better photographer everyday! In the past I have worked with basic digital cameras and 35 mm film cameras, but I want to be able to head out of the darkroom on certain occasions and start shooting on DSLR's. Photography is certainly a passion of mine and despite previous knowledge being able to work a DSLR and produce a quality image is integral for me to succeed in the world of photography.

On this post I will be fiddling with Aperture priority mode on my camera. Aperture is the size of opening your lens creates when you're taking a photograph. This influences the amount of light reaching the sensor of you camera and creating an image. "When you choose the aperture, you're deciding what depth of field you want in your shot, which is one of the most important creative decisions you can make when taking a photograph" (Chris Gactum 54). Basically, you are deciding what you want to hone in on.

I recently went into Seattle to take Pictures and the sights of the great wheel and the shops in Pike's place didn't catch my eye as much as other things, signs with Graffiti and fishermen down on the pier struck far more chords than the same things everyone else takes pictures of. I was able to create many photographs with different subjects in mind but I think the two below show a very good representation of how depth of field controls a picture (Gactum 55).

The first picture above is shot at an aperture of f12 which has a relatively small opening. It isn't small enough to get everything in focus but the background is clear. This picture also had a slightly longer shutter speed than it needed which overexposed it slightly.

The second image was shot from an aperture of f5.6 which is a smaller opening and is able to capture the sign in detail while removing the sharpness of the background.

My question for you guys is what image looks better? How does changing the focus of an image alter your perception if the photos meaning?

Recources
Gactum, Chris. Beginner's Photography Guide. Dorling Kindersley Ltd, 2016.

Creative Drawing: Shadows and Realism

David Phan
Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be by Kathryn Temple

Simply drawing shapes and figures is great, and even looks really nice if you have a knack for it. But what really makes your drawing pop, what makes it seem alive? Kathryn Temple delves into the concept in the book Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be. Temple's introduction to Chapter 3 really shows the importance of shadows, saying, "To make our drawings look as realistic as possible (or three-dimensional), we need to recognize that an object's shadows really define the shape of that object" (Temple 34). This shows how shadows in drawings accentuate the realism of a piece, which is a huge step in becoming a better artist! Temple continues by explaining how the process works: identify the shadows, differentiate the lighter and darker toned shadows, then apply them using techniques of your choice. She even adds examples of shadow techniques you can use (Temple, 35). By doing so, she provides a simple step-by-step procedure to create a more refined and realistic drawing.

Trying these techniques out was a blast. The artwork without the shadows was just an outline sketch of the bear (and not the greatest looking one either!), which takes more time than artistic capabilities. The transformation from no shadow to shadow was amazing, and the final product is shown below. Here, I used my old teddy bear as my test subject. The realism is truly displayed in how the lighting and position of the object is shown. In my drawing, the shadow shading technique I used was hatching, in which you represent shadows with rows of small lines, making them darker and closer for darker shadows. I used the advice given by paying attention to the different shades of grey in the shadows, and drawing them accordingly to make the drawing more vivid.

What do you think about adding one thing to a piece of artwork dramatically changing the result? Do you believe there are more important factors to the detail and realism of a piece than shadows? And if you had to choose an object to draw shadows for the first time, what would you choose to draw and why?

Works Cited

Temple, Kathryn. Drawing: the Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be. Sterling Children's Book, 2014.

Chic Easy Hairstyles Part 5

For my last and final hairstyle, I would like to show you the Half-Down Twisted Topsy Tail. The thing that I like about this hairstyle is that you can get creative with how you want to do this hairstyle and it is so simply easy! All you have to do is split your hair in half and secure the hair with an elastic like a half-loose ponytail. Then divide the loose pony tail in two and bring the ponytail through the divided sections a couple times depending on how loose or tight you want to twist to be. In result, you have a Half-Down Twisted Topsy Tail, but you do not have to stop there. You can put a little more effort into making your hair look interesting by getting creative with the rest of the hair that is down. There are many options, you can form the hair into a braid you like or like what I did was curl the rest of the hair. Jenny Strebe in 5-Minute Hairstyles, also recommended to curl the hair to “help add volume” (Strebe 102).  

In all this hairstyle is great for beginners and above to practice getting creative with your hair, or you can leave it simple and still look good as Jenny Strebe says on page 102. I hope this hairstyle inspires you to get creative and have fun with your hair. What would you do to get creative with this hairstyle?

Chic Easy Hairstyles Part 2

Welcome back to my blog! In my previous post I asked how you would personalize the Full Fishtail Pony, because in this post I will continue off of that braid. In the introduction of the book 5-Minute Hairstyles by Jenny Strebe, she talks about how the braids in the book look great but it’s even better if you add your own special touch (Strebe 6). Meaning to be creative and add your own twist! 

                 After reading Strebe’s introduction, I began to look at the hairstyles and thought of ways to make them unique to me. On page 66 I had found the Braided Bun, looking at the picture steps I found them to be similar as the Full Fishtail Pony. I added my own unique touch to the Braided Bun by combing the hairstyle with the Full Fishtail Pony. Taking off where the Full Fishtail Pony ends, all I did was wrap the fishtail around in a bun and there I had a Braided Bun. The only difference between the two hairstyles was that the Braided Bun was a regular braid and you just wrapped the braid around into a bun. 

Images 1-3 Braided Bun modeled by Angela

                By making a little change in the hairstyle, I had made it personalized. The hairstyle was still quick and easy but it looks totally different. As Strede says on page 6 “Weather its adjusting the style of braid you use, or adding a special accessory, you can make each of these styles your own.” So get creative and have fun with your hair, it’s all whatever you think looks good on you.  

                How do you like your hair? Add a little twist and see what happens. Read my next blog to find out what hairstyle is next!