Goldfish in Pastels (video)

So, here is another speed video of me drawing something. My first one can be seen here; it's a drawing of Alicia Keys. This drawing is of a goldfish and the final finished drawing is below the video.

I really like drawing with pastels, they're so...fluid. You can make them blend smoothly and you can make sharp lines for those tiny details. In all honesty, I'm not too pleased with this drawing, especially when compared to the currants that I did in a previous post. But I have one more Pastelbord to use (I'll probably just end up buying more), and maybe for that one, I'll draw flowers. Who knows?

As a stock photo, I used this photo from DeviantArt (and now that I compare them, mine is a lot fatter, oh well). I also made a few minor edits to the drawing in-between finishing the video and taking the final picture. The entire drawing took me a little less than 40 minutes while the video editing took a few hours.

The finished drawing

Hmm, I might add some more orange or yellow to the background to make it less pure blue (or I might not out of laziness).

Typography etc.

I've really taken a liking to typography, especially quotes and Bible verses. It's interesting to see how different people visualize them and place importance on different parts. In the previous post, I hand-lettered quotes, this time I used Photoshop. I do admit, I like the ease with which I can use an "Undo" button or quickly change colors if I don't like the initial ones. 

So here are two of my favorite Bible passages, 1 Corinthians 13 (aka the love chapter) and Jeremiah 29:11-13. I love the Jeremiah passage because it reminds me that God is in control and I don't need to worry about my future so long as I trust in Him. 1 Corinthians 13 is not so much the actual chapter but a representation of it in the form of a checklist of sorts. The passage is easily visualized as such.

And here is a watercolor sketch I did of some flowers. I also outlined it a little bit using a thin marker. I really like how I did the background; I used wet-on-wet techniques. That basically means I wet the paper before painting on it to make it look cloudy and to make it recede in the background. It was fun, I might do more quick little watercolor sketches.

...And Cue Creativity

How long has it been since my last post? Meh, who's counting? But with freshman year at MIT over, I can finally get back to doing art. As much as I love physics and calculus and differential equations, I couldn't wait to get back to being creative. With the left side of my brain ready to tackle all sorts of mathematical and scientific problems, I'm ready to start exercising the skills of the right side (and utilize all the art supplies I got from Blick).

I started off slowly with some practice in lettering. A steady hand and good eye-hand coordination (notice the reversal) are basic necessities for drawing and painting. Since around the beginning of this year, I've been wanting to do some artistic renderings of quotes, famous or otherwise. It's good practice for having good judgment on layout and composition for graphic design projects or other art projects. Keep in mind, these aren't meant to be finished works of art, just practice sketches. Oh and my camera's batteries are dead, so until I can find new ones, the camera on my phone will have to do.

From one of my favorite poems by my favorite poet; "since feeling is first" by ee cummings

Going from design, I went back to traditional drawing. The first picture is just a tonal sketch to practice for the actual piece which will have the local colors. It's my first time using sanguine and bistre (the light and dark browns respectively) and I rather enjoyed using them with the black and white charcoal. The second picture is done with chalk pastels on pastelbord, a surface from Blick. It makes the pastels come out so smoothly and blend nicely, I love it already.

Expect more pastel paintings and quotes later! I might have some more fun with them. 

And everything was done whilst listening to my Piano Guys Radio on Pandora.

Glass Art

I was one of the lucky ones to take the glassblowing class here at MIT over IAP (that's Independent Activities Period). It was super fun and I'm planning on continuing it, probably through making pumpkins for the annual glass pumpkin patch sale. Anyways, here are some pictures of what I made (photo creds for the first 9 to a good friend of mine, Abdi). They are only the ones that actually look nice and that I can actually give away. I have given away a couple though, and I'm hoping to make more pumpkins and such.

Usually, I shy away from 3D art and sculptures. It's difficult for me to get a blob of material and shape something out of it. But I find glass blowing and glass art to be a lot easier since it's very abstract (at least in my point of view).

Natural Paintings

Second semester has started and now I unfortunately don't have as much time to paint anymore. But I did paint quite a bit on my semi-break; I painted mostly nature, flowers, a bird, and a butterfly. I'm testing my abilities with watercolor and oils, and so far, I'm liking it. I find watercolors to be loose and easy to use but they tend to test my patience a little; it seems to take so long for it to dry. Oils actually do take forever to dry, and whenever I want to put a new layer on, the new layer just blends with the old one. It can be pretty frustrating.

But regardless, I loved being able to paint after so long of not doing much of it. Photo creds to a good friend of mine, Abdi.

The flowers are in watercolor and the butterfly in oils. I might end up making a series of watercolor flowers at some point.

And remember this pen and ink drawing? It was from a previous post and I promised to do a bigger, colored version later on. Well I did, actually a while ago. I just never got the chance to take a picture of it.