Events!

There's a few things going on right now and yours truly has some stuff up in all of them.  First off is the Fifth Annual Self-Portrait Competition at Gage.  This one's already up and comes down on April 15th.  Prizes have already been awarded.  2nd Place went to Stephan!

Coming soon is an Atelier show at the Phinney Neighborhood Association. April 8 - April 25
Artists' Reception: Friday, April 8, 7:00pm-9:00pm.  This one includes work from all the Gage Ateliers.

Also, there is the "From Pencil to Paint" show at Gage.  April 18 - May 13.  This one is just our Atelier.  I'm planning to enter the my two big pieces, and I'm working on finishing up the bird piece now. 

For all of you who aren't familiar with Gage, events tend to take place on the top floor.  There is a gallery at the end of the hall, but the walls tend to always be covered with month-long exhibits.  Also, our studios are here and as long as somebody is around you can check those out.  So if you're ever on Broadway and want to see art, you should drop by.

Second Quarter Personal Project Continued

When I first explained to Mark about the idea and scope of the totem pole, I was told that I would have a 50% chance of pulling it off.  Beyond that, because it was on such a massive scale, instead of doing to typical 3+ pieces for a personal project, I was initially told that I should do only one.  The problem is that I did pull it off and I did it with time to spare.  After finishing the totem pole I was informed that if I could crank out 3-12 more of these guys I would have a legit solo show.  Because I was able to complete one of these in under a quarter, my plan was to try and crank out two more next quarter so I started bumbling along with #2 just so I would have a jump on the 3rd quarter.  I never intended to finish anything for awhile.  Enter Mark's swift kick in the ass.

 

As you can see this one is not done, but it's close.  I need to finish the legs/shoes back of the woodpecker, pump some values, and put in a background.  My plan is to finish it up for the 2nd quarter Atelier show on I believe April 15th.

 The basic idea was the last one was people > nature, this is nature > people.  Disconnect and varying relationship between people and nature will be the themes running through this series.  Yes I am aware that I'm a total hippy.  I'm rolling around a bunch of ideas for whats next.  Because I seem to be working my way through using everyone in Atelier as models, the plan at the moment is to draw CJ with a stone cold expression holding a small dog for one and Stefan riding an ostrich and being really happy about it for another.  I'm open for more suggestions.

Personal Project: Second Quarter

Here might be a good place to mention that I am incredibly competitive.  So when I watched as the 2nd and 3rd year Atelier students created gold for the personal projects, I was compelled to step it up.  The chickens were fun, but lacked content.  One piece of note that really inspired me to step up was Garima's personal project from the first quarter.  Here's a link to her site.
http://garimanaredi.com/index.html
Beyond being an incredible likeness of the hardest model we've drawn, it's packed with symbolism.  Let the challenge begin.  While I have been drawing for a fair amount of time now, a huge majority of what I've been doing have been exercises in observation, life-room, doodles, or drawing from pictures.  Up to this point I had never really constructed a completed image from composition up to finish.  The point of the following personal project was really to see what I could do.  I have to admit that I'm giddy with the results.

The following piece is titled, "Totem Pole" and began as the simple idea of a real totem pole.  Basically a pile of animals.  The plan was for this to be NW oriented, so I would incorporate all those cliche NW animals.  However, it was pointed out to me that I should aim a little higher, so I dumped a person on top.  (thank you chris!)

This was an early plan for the piece so you can see that things didnt end of exactly as they started.  I have to admit that this one sort of ran off on me.  First off I drew the bear only to realize that I was working too small.  Then I drew it again and the same thing happened.  Long story short, the final piece ended up being pretty big.  

 

You can see the reference photos that were used here.  Chris was a composite of two photos, and the animals were constructed loosely based on the photos.  The salmon and raven were pretty much from scratch.  Their references were mainly for texture.

Tad Da!!!!  Including the black foam core that this is mounted on, the total size is 4'x8'.

Second Quarter

The beginning of my second quarter started out pretty much as a continuation of the first.  Casts! 

Here's a good example of the process for these.  The first stage is what we call a "block in" which involves only using straight lines to draw.  These lines are pretty light.  It's more like carving out an image than a more direct drawing of it.  The block in stage involves lots of measuring.  Here besides blocking in the general form of the horse, you also want to block in the major shadow shapes.  The stronger the block in, the easier the rest of the rendering becomes. 

 Once I was fairly confident with my block in, I started rendering from the focal point out.

If all goes well, than you end of with something like this.  This was and remains the most complicated cast that I've attempted so far and also marked the end of my cast drawing binge.  I think this took me a few weeks, but I'll admit I was kind of distracted for alot of the time.  This probably could have been finished in a week and a half.

Personal Project First Quarter

Besides all the other stuff we're supposed to do, every quarter, everyone is required to do a personal project of our choosing.  These go into end of the quarter shows.  I used this as an excuse to practice loosing up my drawing style under the guise of drawing the family chickens.

 Not a chicken, but all too common in my backyard.

Word of the Week

Along with all the other stuff we have to do, every Monday is "Word of the Week" in which we all get a word and have to do something with it.  Could be a drawing, painting, sculpture, dance, whatever.  We have yet to have a song or dance...fingers crossed! In theory it should be gallery ready, but there's only so much time in a week.

 Vessel.  This was our first one of these so I didn't quite know what to expect.  I pulled out all the stops on this one.  I haven't spent nearly as much time on any of them since. 

 

Journey.

Dream.

While I have fallen into a slump of line drawings in a more cartoony style on Sunday night, the best part of Word of the Week is seeing how everyone comes up with something completely different.  It can be a nice break from grueling observational work.

Observational Work from the First Quarter

While it probably would have made sense to have started this blog when I actually started at the KOH studio, I didn't.  My bad.  So traveling back in time, here are some observational studies roughly in the order that they were made.  Up until now I'd used charcoal but never realized that there were these things called charcoal pencils so I tended to use graphite instead.  Mark however insists on charcoal so a large part this was learning how to use the materials.  Learning to see the lights in shadow shapes was the big thing I took away from these.

Trying to choose a value for the half-sphere was especially annoying.  Thank you Aaron for introducing me to, and Elana for hooking me up with a red viewfinder.  It turns out that if you look at something through red glass (or plexiglass) it is much easier to distinguish between lights and shadows.  Green glass for midtones. These were easily in the top 10 tricks of the trade of the year and I strongly recommend this to anyone feeling overwhelmed understanding value. 

These have all been done with charcoal pencils (hard - medium - soft) and white chalk.  I tend to whip out the chalk for toned paper.

 So the thing about still lives is that they get boring really fast.  Enter cast drawing.  This is Brutus.  My biggest issue with the casts is that many of them tend to look a little wonky to begin with so trying to draw them can be infuriating.  Busts of head's especially because the human eye is incredibly gifted in 'knowing' when things aren't quite right. 

At this point I became a little overconfident at tried to bit off a bit more than I was ready for and chose this skull.  I'm happy with how it turned out but I'd like to take another crack at it down the line.

I've had this sitting on my windowsill for years and was really exited to draw it.  I was less exited when it kept falling over.  It never got finished

This was my final cast of the first quarter.

Here goes!

Hi there.  Josh here, and this is my first attempt at an art blog so bear with me.  For those of you who don't know me, I am a 23 year old aspiring Seattle based artist currently enrolled in my first year at the Gage Academy KOH Atelier program.  As of tomorrow, I will be 2/3 of the way through my first year.  It has been a wild ride, and promises not to let up.  The Kang O'Higgins Atelier is basically a practice artist's studio where we put in 6 hours, 5 days a week split between life-room and observational studies.  In short.  We work our asses off, and are blessed to have an eccentric Irishman (Mark Kang O'Higgins) breathing down our backs, kicking our asses, and otherwise pushing us, kicking and screaming, into the professional art world.  I can't plug this place enough.  If you're willing to put in the effort, there is no limit to how beneficial this program can be.  This blog will be my attempt to document my journey through this program.  Enjoy!