Week 2 - Leicester Archway, Texturing Models & Life Drawing

The Archway in Leicester

This week I spent my time visiting an old archway in Leicester. An older, partly preserved area of the city. Just like before, I have done numerous thumbnail sketches here to help me decide on the most interesting composition, to use for my final drawing.

The first 6 sketches seemed fairly detailed which was a good thing, but I found this to be a slight problem as I was spending too much time on drawing so much detail, so accurately. I aimed at marking down as many interesting compositions, as possible but such a long drawing time held me back. I decided to spend less time on my next sketches, to focus more on planning and drawing the actual composition.

The sketches I drew afterwards, were much different. The perspective was more accurate, as I could more easily tell, towards which direction all the walls were disappearing. Also my rendering here seemed to have defined the shapes of surfaces better, what made sense as I focused on it more. Now all walls and corners had more volume, and shape with much less detail. More importantly I drew the next 6 sketches faster, leaving me more time for my final drawing. 

I aimed for a lower eye level on my final drawing. One mistake I'd point out is the thick, dark lines which I used too often, they made the drawing look a bit dull and flat. At least I'm satisfied with the perspective which I think I managed to draw accurately, it was a great  challenge to draw, since most of the bricks in the archways walls are not in line, but randomly spread out.
To help me improve my process of drawing my thumbnail sketches, I want to challenge myself next time. My target will be to produce roughly 15-20 thumbnail sketches and this time 2 or more final drawings.


The Development of 3DS Max experiments

This week I have started texturing my previously made models such as, the machete, battle axe, as well as the table and chair set. The most successful texture work turned out to be the machete, what I found more interesting is that I have spent the least time on this model. It was a basic, model wih few segments, as I planned it to be easier to texture later. It was my fault for not planning the other models as well as the machete, making their texturing process more complex and time consuming. 

I will try to move onto something new, during the next week, maybe a different kind of weapon or a different house object. This time I'll make sure I model it properly and at the same time, plan how it should  be textured. Running into problems like this is a very helpful process to me, I really learn from my mistakes and now it's becoming more obvious to me.

Life Drawing

In the second week of life drawing, I began with quick 2 minute, continuous-line drawings, shown on the first image. The left 2 were drawn with my left hand, while the other, with my right hand.

I was surprised by my results, since I was right-handed, I expected this hand to draw better. It turned out the other way around, as that my left-handed drawings were surprisingly neater and more readable than the right-handed ones. This exercise proved to me that, challenging my brain to use the opposite hand, to draw something so difficult, made me think more about my subject and so I ended up drawing more accurately with this hand.

Also I realised how much more I enjoy drawing with continuous-line. I found it to be a much more interesting way of drawing as I often ended up with very unique and distinctive drawings.

I continued with this way of thinking and in my following drawings I managed to draw much more efficiently. I've spent just as much time on planning as before, but this time I was confident enough to lay down my final marks earlier. These drawings on the second image, described the whole body better and had depth without any tonal marks.

As I moved onto the final drawings I was given more time, roughly 10 minutes for the first and 5 minutes for the second. In the first one I was very satisfied with my outcome, even as it wasn't fully drawn, the shape of the body was clearly visible. My opinion was similar with the last drawing, it wasn't as developed as the previous though due to my time limit being shorter. An area for improvement, for me, would be to work on my timing, to make sure I define more of my subjects shape and proportions, before I start making any darker marks.