Writing 3 (blog posts) for Crit3

Last critique I got a lot of compliments on my character design and some good advice on my environment sketch. I don't know if I'll have the latter completed by Friday, but hopefully I will. So far, I've got these two ready to go:

 

Both are characters from a story of mine where Earth has merged with another dimension that was a fantasy-styled world, resulting in magic (among other things) suddenly being introduced to the modern age. The first, Vivienne, has the embodiment of life energy living in her, and Belvedere has fire (much to his chagrin). It's been really fun to figure out what that world would look like, and to puzzle through how different parts of our society would react to it. 

I'd like to have at least three character designs from this world to show on friday. Here's what I have so far of the main character:

 

He has the embodiment of death living inside of him, and I've been trying to figure out how to convey how his power looks in my head on paper. I know he has the ability to make shadows rise off of surfaces and become solid, but I'm not sure how to show that yet.

During the merging of worlds, if a human from earth happened to be standing in the same location as a creature or object from the other dimension, the two would fuse together into something called a Chimera. More often than not, the Chimera would die instantly or shortly after its merging, but sometimes they survived. Sometimes this merging would result in a harmonious fusion of the two beings, but usually they're left horribly disfigured (extra limbs poking out of chests, two heads, and so on). They're social outcasts from both worlds due to their condition, but a faction has risen up comprised of surviving Chimeras that offers shelter to them. The leader of this faction is Alastor, who I'm trying to sketch down below:

 

He's been the most frustrating to draw so far, as I can't quite get him to look like how I want him to.  Since there's so much backstory to this world, I've thought about writing out a short synopsis and putting it with my drawings during the critique. 

In this latest batch of character designs, I've tried to focus more on a variety of body shapes and more fluid poses. For the latter, I've been studying an artist on Deviantart known as Kate-FoX:

 

 

 

I really admire her range of styles, and she has some really helpful pose studies and tutorials. I think I need to practice more, especially with hands and fluid poses. I'll try to make some time for that this week.

You should also check out Molly McVey's work:

http://mollymcvey.weebly.com/studio-critique-iii-16sp-art-650-01/writing-blog-posts-1

I'm not usually a huge fan of black and white photography but some of her photos are really stunning (I particularly like the one of the chandelier).  I wonder if she's ever thought about leaving her photos mainly black and white, but then having a small part of it be in color (Or vice versa)? I see in her writings that she admires photographers who can convey story in an image, and I think that color can be an extremely useful tool in that aspect.

Writing 3 (blog posts) for Crit 2

Time for round 2 of demon designs for my webcomic. To be honest, I was frustrated with how the last critique went. My fellow students didn't really seem to listen to me when I said that the three were meant to be designs and not "art pieces". I wanted feedback on if they were scary or not, and how to improve them. They wanted each to have a backstory, which I can understand for more important demons (Of which there will be a few). For those, I do have backstories because they're involved more in the story and need to be more developed character-wise. However, these monsters I'm designing for class are meant to be 'monsters of the week.' They will appear, be scary, then be defeated, probably to never show up again. It felt like I repeated this dozens of times but nobody listened and continued to look at the designs as art pieces, which isn't how I'm intending these to be taken.

Here's what I have so far. For these, I used ink and watercolor pencils.

 

Carlie Gernhart- Demon Design 4

  

Carlie Gernhart - Demon Design 5

 

I intend to have at least one more demon design by friday.  These are still oddly therapeutic to work on and are a great stress reliever. :)  While I've been looking at Stephen Gammell a lot for inspiration, I've also been browsing around the web. I've found an artist on Deviantart who goes by the username Atenebris who has amazing and creepy creature design:

 

Shamo by Atenebris 

 

Rigel by Atenebris

 

Kitty by Atenebris

I love how elegant and intimidating the first two are, and the eyes on the third make me want to play around with lighting effects more. It's also interesting to me how the last picture uses a color range not usually associated with scary things (it seems to have a cooler, cyan-ish tint to it, with a bit of magenta).

This week I'd also like to draw your attention to the awesome work of Mattie Parrigon:

http://mattieparrigon.blogspot.com/2016/01/writing-blog-posts1.html 

I really like her portraits, and like the sketchy quality her lines. Her series of nursing home portraits are my favorite of her works that I've seen so far (I'm particularly fond of the picture of the old man with the tattoos). 

Writing 2 Blog Post for Crit 2 (Critique III)

In my last critique, I got a lot of good feedback on my original character designs. I'm supposed to push volume more, try out watercolor pencils, get a definite light source, vary body types and faces, get distinct motions down and not be so hesitant in my line work. I'll try to have some new Character designs ready for the next critique, but I'll also have some landscapes.

Backgrounds have been my least favorite aspect of drawing, as I get frustrated with them quickly. Lately I've been forcing myself to draw them and practice. Here is an in-process sketch of one I hope to have ready to show by next critique:

Since I want to be a concept artist someday, the more I can confidently draw the better; character designs, backgrounds, items, and more.

Another one of my classmates that I'd like to feature is Jaqueline Denton:
http://jacquelinedenton.blogspot.com/2016/02/writing-blog-posts1.html
I'm a fan of bright colors, and she definitely uses them. She does psychedelic art and I think is very good at using her medium of choice.

Research Blog Post 3 (Context & Analyzing, Interpreting the data, Reporting and Evaluating Research)

Ultimately I'm limited in my scope of this project, since I wouldn't be able to travel to any large cities to get a bigger sample of opinions. However, any direction would help me in my future monster designing endeavors.

By figuring out what traits make a monster scarier than others to a large group of people, I can design more terrifying monsters and hopefully enhance the feeling of danger in my webcomic. Once I've established which set of traits rank among the top most terrifying, I can pick and choose which traits I'll incorporate into which design. I'm not going to limit myself to solely these traits when drawing monsters. Each monster may have one or two of the scariest traits, but for the sake of variety I'd switch it up and keep things fresh for my readers. The monsters they should feel more threatened by might have more of these traits than less important monsters.

Research Project - Beyond yourself (Data Collection)

In order to research my question, I had to figure out how to narrow my parameters. While it would be really interesting to find out what scares people the most about images, there's simply too many flavors of horror to do this. So, I've narrowed my research specifically to what monster design scares the most people. This means no scary little children, no psychotic killers, or anything of that nature. If I'm wanting to create horrifying demons in my webcomic, I think researching monster design is the path that will help me the most.

The way I've decided to go about this is that I'll take a few of my friends or co-workers and show them a series of images. These images will show different common elements I've noticed while researching monster designs. The participants will rate the elements on a scale from one to ten, one being not scary, and ten being terrifying.

I know that horror is also very subjective, so I'll review the results once the surveys have been completed and ask why the participant may have rated one attribute higher than another. I'll probably use Survey Monkey to make the survey, so that it's easily accessible to my participants.

Once the results are in, I'll average out which elements got the highest scores, and create a monster design based on those elements.

Research Topic - Fall 2015

For the Fall semester of 2015, I have to research a topic in art. For this, I've chosen to dig deeper into what specifically makes a drawing or illustration evoke feelings of terror in the viewer.

This could be particularly useful to me in the future, as I'm wanting to make a webcomic that features demons, and knowing how to make something elicit feelings of unease or fright in my readers could enhance my work.

I've heard people say about a picture "Oh, that's scary" but they never really give a specific reason why. I'm hoping to break it down and find out which particular elements cause those feelings.

Personally, I'm intrigued by the dark and macabre, and get a thrill out of horror movies and scary stories. I'm curious about why I feel these things, too, and how a simple image that can't harm me in any way can cause such a panicked reaction.

Writing 5(blog posts) for Crit 4

At critique 3 I ended up showing the two images I posted last time, plus getting color feedback on two more that I didn't. I received a lot of positive feedback on them and a few suggestions. One of them was that I should try to push the story of my work farther, like giving the little girl a ferocious, rearing, monstrosity rather than the stoic horse-dragon. While I'm going to keep that piece as-is, I'll definitely try to push myself more in future pieces.

In the aftermath of my senior art exhibit, I haven't been doing much work (the few weeks before it were so insanely busy, I feel pretty burnt out). However, I need to start working on fanart for the two conventions I'll be doing this year. I've also got the 4th and final critique this week.

I have been doing some work since the show that I've found fun. I took the look and feel of old 50's Pinup girls and applied it to traditional fantasy races (Elves, dwarves, Drow, etc.). I also love clothing from that era. Right now I've got 2 versions of a Mermaid. I'm keeping their physical form fantastical, but basing the clothing on fashions of that era.

Two artists that I'm really looking to for inspiration are Gil Elvgren, and Duane Bryers. I love classic Pinup girls, because for the most part they are sexy, but still retain a certain amount of class that I really like. I'm also going to push myself and try to do them lineless and more painterly, to better mimic Mr. Elvgren's style. I'd also like to incorporate the humor of Bryers's work in some of my pieces, as well.

Here are some of Duane Bryers's works:

 

Here is some of Gil Elvgren's work:

 

 

As for my classmates, another whose work I'd like to highlight is Emily Westhoff. She paints a lot of pastoral scenery, and loves to depict the wide open spaces of midwestern prairies:



http://emilyrosepainting.blogspot.com/