Tonight was my first class of drawing looks like learning again in another area of art. I booked myself into a course (drawing with Hilmi Baskurt) with Melbourne Art Class.   It's going to cover the 4 elements of drawing  structural sketch, value sketching, Black and white (Chiaroscuro) sketching and contour sketching.
Tonight we covered contour sketching it was interesting trying to draw what I saw and not allowing the pencil to leave the page, I had some moments of in the zone but it was challenge to get what I saw drawn on the page.  Anyway here are the results.

First attempt at contour drawing.

Second Attempt at contour drawing.

This is the first painting I have done with just observation of a picture, the task here was to take a photo and using visual scaling (which is matching the photo to the size of the canvas) so using my judgement to create the art work.

Initially it was difficult to try and get my mind to adjust what I saw on the photo with the canvas, following the instructions of putting down the black lines first, even if it's just a rough line.  Once done I began laying down the shading as I have done with all the other paintings.

Once done laying over the black base before applying the texture of light grey and following the same steps I had done with the Golum piece.  It turned out ok for a first shot even though there were some parts to the finishing I couldn't be bothered to finish as it was way to hot which just made me lethargic.

Completed the Golum texture class work tonight. I did the finer detail by added more texture to the dark areas above the eyes, well the frowns, made his lip a little more pronounced added in a missing tooth, like he has many to start with and I go and take one away, once done it was ready for the transparent colours to be applied.

I used the colour by, making his skin have a purple hue to it, his lips and nose have spots of pink (red) and finally his eye with a nice blue. I felt that I could have done more detail within the piece but I learned a lot about doing textures and when I went back to fix some areas I found that my hand/arm did the right amount of shaking without it hurting so my muscle memory kicked in and it felt natural.

I feel that I have learned a new technique so I am very happy with that, even if the work didn't have my personal preference for being detailed. The next bits of art are small and it will be done from observation alone, I am excited about that as it opens up another layer of art that I want to experience.

Some more work on the Golum picture tonight, did the all of the texture across the face, my arm is so sore from vibrating the air brush that I think it's going to fall off. The result is good, I did see one of the other students finished theirs and it seemed to come up really nice in the end.  So with a bit of hard work next week I should be able to finish this for exploration into textured features.

Start of the texture unit, the focused shot of Golum is the subject we are tasks to do.  The initial painting contains all the shadows and shapes to give the picture some depth before I  start to do the actual textures of the skin.  I went a little heavy on the black, but about half way though the picture I lightened my touch to give the picture a goo level of realism.

Frank Sinatra Done - Yes his for sale, Email Me if your interested.

Last night was the final class for the year, I finally got to finish of Frank Sinatra although I was pretty close coming up to the final class and that I did some work on the painting the previous day at home it came up better than I was expecting considering that I feel my skill level should be higher than it currently is.  Yeah I am my harshest critic, but hey it's finished.

The Van of Inspiration

Since the weekend of the custom graphics course I have been airbrushing every day beginning on Saturday I didn't post the results of the custom graphics course but I have included the shots of the weekend in this post as well.  Hope you like them, I had a lot of fun working with the automotive paint and producing the classwork.  Not so much fun doing my little art project, I felt that I challenged myself way to much considering what I was trying to do but the result is the result for where I am now.

So Enjoy the photos and leave a comment if you like them.

The first three hours was spent doing this.. I am not happy with the result, but I learned a lot from the process.

Background done with most of the mask removed. 

Final class art work, with all the bling.  Great result.

Pick a happy Face!

Then shoot a gun at it.  Interesting effect,  creating water droplets with real water drops.

Worked on Frank tonight in class, my focus tonight was to complete the hair so that it would give the picture shape, I looked at the reference and filled in the line detail of the hair then used lifting lines to even them out and then blacked out the rest. This seemed to work pretty well enough, I will revisit it later to work out how to put some highlights if I have time next week.

After feeling good about the hair, I focused on the hand see if I could get that nice 3d effect to make the hand pop. I got pretty close with the fingers and the inside of the palm, felt like I was coming into my own as I was doing the lines and shapes.

Levonne demanded that I do the frown lines but use white, I had to turn the picture upside down. Which made it easier to do the half lines, I strained the white through a stocking and also watered it down so that it would flow the the iwatta brush smoother but I think it was too much, it go me thinking about buying a white with its own thinker so that I get a smoother white and that I am not fighting to get it through the brush smoothly.

So I had a very successful night and I am happy with the result.