ACTION JARED's drawing - Building an expressive portfolio [NSFW]

ACTION JARED

So, for the past year or so I've been really beating around the bush about trying to get into Calarts. I want to go there to learn hand-drawn animation, it's (apparently) one of the hardest art schools to get into in the US, with an 8-10% acceptance rate in the hand animation program. It's been my goal for awhile, and I've really been wasting a lot of time just dicking around and not actually getting anything done, but now I'm getting SERIOUS.

Ideally, I'd like to submit a portfolio at the end of the summer and try to get in this coming schoolyear, although I doubt I'll be able to before then. Essentially, I need to sharpen my drawing skills by quite a bit, learn human form/structure/proportion better and somehow use all this information to make a portfolio full of expressive figure drawing.

This is my benchmark, the level of skill I'm trying to get to.

Here are some things I've drawn!

Oldish things

First couple times using charcoal:


I have no idea if I was using it correctly, though

Zooin' it up

Just roughing animals, you know.
This one is called Elephants Never Fucking Sit Still

(Elephant's butt:)

This one is fairly recent, and I'm proud of it regardless of the obvious flaw (Too big to scan, so it's a crappy iPhone photo). I call it Lowtits:


Most recently, I went to Barnes and Noble to draw some people today. But I forgot that the only people at Barnes and Noble on a Tuesday morning are a million years old

This one was just to loosen up, I did it really quickly. Just some legs, sittin', you know.


I could not tell if this old man was staring back at me (He was wearing sunglasses that were EQUALLY REFLECTIVE.)





My aim is to draw from 3 - 6 hours a day, at WalMart, Barnes and Noble, other places of frequent foot traffic etc., as well as going to the Zoo several times a week and my local drawing studio on Sunday and Monday (Thursday, too, if I can afford it.).

I really don't have a voice of criticism outside of my girlfriend (Whose, bless her heart, isn't the most useful.), so I'd really love any criticism I could get from you guys. Please don't pull any punches, I don't want to be the blissfully unaware of how far off I am. If you can give me any suggestions on what to draw that I need help in, or a resource that I need to make use of, please tell me.

ALSO: Should I post up some blind contours or gesture drawings? Can anyone get anything out of that? And, I'm new here, so I usually just lurk around, but I really like reading AC!

Angel_of_Bacon

I gotta say good luck to ya, I wanted to get into that program out of high school and didn't make the cut myself. The people I talked to at the school said the average age of entering students at that point was 22, meaning a lot of them had already been to art schools elsewhere just to be able to qualify to get in. I've heard of people applying every year for 5 years or some ridiculous number like that before getting accepted- I don't mean to discourage you, but when they say it's hard to get in, they're not joking around. The idea is that when you get in, you already know how to draw well enough that the next 4 years are almost entirely about teaching you how to animate, not how to animate in addition to how to draw; probably most people coming into that program could still lead a successful career as a professional artist even if they didn't go to CalArts. This means that if you want to get in, you should prepare yourself to be very, very patient towards achieving that goal.

What I was told is go to a community college or atelier first and just take a ton of life drawing courses, and not to waste money on going for a university art degree. (I really wish that I- and perhaps more importantly, my parents- had heeded this advice). Just keep drawing and keep applying, visit the school and reach out to the teachers to get their take on what you need to be working on, by email correspondence or portfolio day events that they'll be at. In addition to classes, try to attend any open figure workshops you can- a lot of teachers aren't going to teach the sort of drawing CalArts wants to see, so going to uninstructed workshops will give you an opportunity to work towards specific portfolio goals in your drawings, rather than what a teacher wants to see.

Looking at your work, I'd say the big thing to work on is construction, breaking objects into simple cones, cylinders, boxes and spheres- right now your work appears very contour oriented rather than being constructed, A good run down of these principles is done in the Glen Vilppu articles in the Questions thread OP. If you don't know who he is, he was a Disney animator and was one of the big-name instructors at CalArts, maybe still is I dunno.

I might also throw a few books your way:

Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators (this covers the 'expressive' portion of figure drawing that isn't covered in a lot of art books/classes)
Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing From Life
The Natural Way to Draw
The Loomis books (Downloadable here: http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/ )
There's also this list of Disney animation's recommended books, the drawing and filmmaking sections being the most relevant ones:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=38716
(note, the Bridgman books listed here are all included in the "Complete Drawing From Life" book, so don't go nuts on amazon and buy them both.)

Arden Canelo

Try filling a page with quick gesture studies? Also work in different mediums. Like ink washes, watercolor, but still drawing people. I like going to the mall and going to the pet shop to draw the animals there. Can't say I get to go to the zoo often.

Eugal

Hello there. I'm new to the Artist Corner.

Let me start of by saying I am also in high school and aspiring to similar goals, Art school. Ive looked into SVA, MICA and some others. Any who my advice for your figure drawing is don't use another students work (even if they got in) as your benchmark. As ridiculous as it may sound set your benchmark at the level of the "grand masters". If I may suggest a book it would be http://www.amazon.com/dp/0823002810/?tag=tbook-20 and study of their work. Also use live models when ever you can. Outside of that I don't have much advice except for draw as much as possible from real life.

I hope to be posting some of my own work up on here soon to.

winter_combat_knight

Got the right attitude so far! 3-6 hrs will definately help.
I like the shape of your figures, but the line quality and shading is really lacking. These would be so much better if you put a little more time into those areas. (I know its hard, i have the same problem which needs beating into my brain!!!).
If you dont get in, dont let it put you down. Just keep putting in the effort.
Also, i agree with Arden Canelo. Pages of gestures will help so much in the long run. It can be really annoying when you find your understanding of anatomy is getting really kick-ass, but the lack of understanding of movement and weight is making the drawing look like crap.

Kendeathwalker

well bacon hit the nail on the head. I just want to plug glen Vilppus dvd's for teaching you how to draw like an animator- the mans been teaching people at disney for like 30-40 years.

I will warn you that the production quality of the dvds leave a lot to be desired but the info is gold and you can still hear everything.. just lots of random background noise.

ACTION JARED

Thank you guys a lot for your suggestions and criticism, I'll be working hard for the forseeable future on this stuff, so I need all the help I can get! I'll check out the books and DVDs you suggested, too, when I have the cashmoney. I'll probably order one tomorrow morning.

And yeah, I do an open studio nude model drawing thing twice a week, trying to do three times but it's EXPENSIVE. I can go for one long pose (3 hours) or short poses in increasing length (from one minute to one hour), what do you guys suggest I work on during these? I'll be posting up any work I do that I think is decent.

And if it goes how I think it will go, I will be probably be one of those people applying over and over, Bacon. Thank you for spelling it out for me though, it's really motivated me to take it all very seriously.

For someone who's worked out of Natural Way to Draw by Nicolaides, I cannot physically adhere to the schedules it proposes, with the resources I have. It ended up being really discouraging, and I can never tell if I'm doing what it says right, really. Do you have any suggestions? Should I do what I can to meet it's standards, or try something else? Am I thinking about this way too much?

Kendeathwalker

Well since animation is your focus what you need is a very strong understanding of the mechanics of the body and how everything fits together.(more so than edge/shape/value which are equally important- but if you are trying to simplfy you can save them for later) The typical way this is taught is you first begin breaking the body down into simple mass conceptions head- sphere(not a circle- you must think 3d-think mass) the neck becomes a cylinder the ribcage becomes egglike etc etc. But before you even start laying down those simple mass concepts you have to identify the flow or the rythm with a loose light scribble- some prefer to do it with just a few swooping lines- I personally prefer the light scribbling becuse it already has a sense of mass which you can start editing when you go to drop your simple form concepts down. The next step is learning what the simple shapes actually represent- and making your weird construct of cylinders cubes and spheres actually look like a person. Eliot Goldfingers: Human Anatomy For artists- the elements of form is one of the best anatomy books. He describes in easily understood language what each muscle does as well as everything else.


So for all that crap I just described the best figures sessions Ive been through were comprised of really short 1-5 minutes poses. The pose length increasing as your knowledge increases. Although its a good idea to do a series of short poses before any session.


If you only have access to one figuredrawing group and the majority want to do a long pose you are kinda fucked. You can move around the figure and study the same thing from different angles but when your first starting out its really important to get to where you can recognize mass relations very quickly. ID carry around a small sketchbook with me everwhere and practice the exercise on everyone around you.

All of what I just talked about is covered in much greater detail on vilpuus dvds

Angel_of_Bacon

ACTION JARED wrote: »

For someone who's worked out of Natural Way to Draw by Nicolaides, I cannot physically adhere to the schedules it proposes, with the resources I have. It ended up being really discouraging, and I can never tell if I'm doing what it says right, really. Do you have any suggestions? Should I do what I can to meet it's standards, or try something else? Am I thinking about this way too much?

Well, if I recall correctly, the schedules recommended in the book were tacked onto the book by Nicolaides students after he died, and would be more or less identical to that of a full-time student of the Art Student's League at that time- a rigorous schedule that assumes that one doesn't have all that much else going on.

What I would say is that, while of course the more time you put into to doing the exercises the more you'll improve, the real lesson to be learned there is that in order to improve, a student needs to spend a lot of time in general on specific, focused study, rather than doodling or working with no real direction. Whether that direction is coming in the form of the exercises in the book, or those in another book, or ones assigned by a teacher doesn't matter so much, as long as it's teaching solid principles.

To be honest, the book's idea of making the reader go, "holy fuck, this is a lot of work", is a good one, because getting good is a lot of work. The figure I've read (see: Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers) is that across any discipline, not just art, the amount of dedicated practice to achieve a level of mastery is 10000 hours- that's 3 hours a day, everyday, for almost 10 years.

So putting in 6 hours a week 5 days a week in independent study is awesome if you can do it, but obviously a lot of people can't, and will have to spread the same amount of study over a longer period of time to reach the same level of skill as someone that can afford to put in that amount of time. Probably not what you want to hear, but there's no getting around that.

The point is that if you're doing the best you can, you're doing the best you can, and that's that. So it doesn't make sense to beat yourself up about not reaching some theoretical ideal- worrying about such things won't make you any better any faster, so don't. Just work to the best of your ability, make the best use of your time as you can, seek out the best resources and teachers and classes that you can, and be patient and don't give up- beyond that, there's nothing more that you can do.

immilesaway

Calarts... i guess thats a pretty tough school. Why learn 2 animation though? I know Disney is trying to bring it back, but the industry is more or less all about 3d these days...

a good exercise is taking some of your favorite artists works, and try redrawing it exactly like what you see. Or mimicking their style, per say. Thats important, to be able to draw in other peoples styles, especially if your going for 2D, because unless your rich and make your own 2d movies, you'll be working for companies that already have a set style, if you get that far....

but keep practicing and keep going to those classes.

ACTION JARED

Well, Ideally I'd like to have 2D as a career, but (from what I've read) the idea of the animation curriculum at Calarts is that regardless of which medium you specialize in at the school, you learn how to animate well, and you should be able to switch between them without any terrible strife.

I'm ordering the Vilppu book with my next paycheck, then the DVDs, I'm cracking open the Nicolaides book again, and I'm going to be writing a schedule for the next few weeks to coincide with the book and what I can attend at the drawing studio. Until I can afford the Goldfingers book I'll be studying anatomy from Anatomy for the Artist by Sarah Simblet. I'm not bummed out that it'll be a lot of work, I just need to overcome laziness and get going. Honestly, I WANT to work.

Thanks again, everyone, you guys are ridiculously helpful. I wish I would've posted this a year ago.

Angel_of_Bacon

immilesaway wrote: »

Calarts... i guess thats a pretty tough school. Why learn 2 animation though? I know Disney is trying to bring it back, but the industry is more or less all about 3d these days...

I'd say the fact that 4 out of the 4 headlining Pixar directors (Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton, John Lasseter, and Pete Docter) all graduated from the program in question is probably a pretty good reason.