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[Noah's Art Camp] AC Group of supreme organization.
Iruka
Registered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
Registered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
Herein lies our platform of excellent organization and reasonable posting structure. Take solace in it. Revel in it.
Would you like to join us? More info about the class is here:
http://www.noahbradley.com/artcamp/
A WORD OF WARNING: Please do not post links to any of the videos in this thread. I don't think Noah has any protection on them other than them being private links. No mentions of sharing class materials with non-registered folk in here, I'll consider it piracy talk.
I will Update the OP with the weeks assignment. Please feel free to post and discuss.
Week 9
Figures are some of the most difficult and most beautiful things you will ever paint.
They are an incredible challenge, but immensely rewarding. I hope this week as you approach these different studies that you begin your journey towards even better figurative work. You won't get there in a week's time, but I hope to set you going in the right direction.
Assignment:
50 gesture drawings - Don't take more than a minute or two for each of these. Focus on movement. Do not focus on details.
5 full-figure studies. Full-color or grayscale, painted or drawn, it's entirely up to you. Study the figure. Break it down into simple shapes and learn the forms of the figure. Work from either good reference or from life.
4 pages of drawings of strangers. Draw in a coffee shop or a bus or a train. Observe those around you.
8 hand or foot studies.
5 full-color master studies of figures. Don't worry too much about painting the whole piece, but rather focus in on the figure itself.
4 imaginative sketches. Try to invent a figure from your head. See what you've learned and what you haven't.
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
AC class roster:
@akanekun
@Fugitive
@ninjai
@Lexxy
@Iruka
@kevindee
@F87
@Agentflit
@skyturtle
@wn.mike
If anyone else joins, feel free to jump in the thread.
Would you like to join us? More info about the class is here:
http://www.noahbradley.com/artcamp/
A WORD OF WARNING: Please do not post links to any of the videos in this thread. I don't think Noah has any protection on them other than them being private links. No mentions of sharing class materials with non-registered folk in here, I'll consider it piracy talk.
I will Update the OP with the weeks assignment. Please feel free to post and discuss.
Week 9
Figures are some of the most difficult and most beautiful things you will ever paint.
They are an incredible challenge, but immensely rewarding. I hope this week as you approach these different studies that you begin your journey towards even better figurative work. You won't get there in a week's time, but I hope to set you going in the right direction.
Assignment:
50 gesture drawings - Don't take more than a minute or two for each of these. Focus on movement. Do not focus on details.
5 full-figure studies. Full-color or grayscale, painted or drawn, it's entirely up to you. Study the figure. Break it down into simple shapes and learn the forms of the figure. Work from either good reference or from life.
4 pages of drawings of strangers. Draw in a coffee shop or a bus or a train. Observe those around you.
8 hand or foot studies.
5 full-color master studies of figures. Don't worry too much about painting the whole piece, but rather focus in on the figure itself.
4 imaginative sketches. Try to invent a figure from your head. See what you've learned and what you haven't.
Week 1
Studying from the masters.
Assignment:
50 3-value compositional master studies
50 color studies
3 full-color finished master studies
Resources:
http://artrenewal.org/
http://www.googleartproject.com/
http://thegoldenagesite.blogspot.com/
http://www.wikipaintings.org/
http://19thcenturyrealism.com/
Noah's Suggested artists:
Albert Bierstadt - John Singer Sargent - Thomas Moran - Frederic Church - George Inness - bouguereau - Howard Pyle - NC Wyeth - Frank E Schoonover - Harvey Dunn - Mead Schaeffer
Assignment:
50 3-value compositional master studies
50 color studies
3 full-color finished master studies
Resources:
http://artrenewal.org/
http://www.googleartproject.com/
http://thegoldenagesite.blogspot.com/
http://www.wikipaintings.org/
http://19thcenturyrealism.com/
Noah's Suggested artists:
Albert Bierstadt - John Singer Sargent - Thomas Moran - Frederic Church - George Inness - bouguereau - Howard Pyle - NC Wyeth - Frank E Schoonover - Harvey Dunn - Mead Schaeffer
Week 2
Week 2 Demo & Assignment:
Get creative.
Last week we were 100% focused on looking at the work of artists we admire. Now we're going to start working on our own stuff. It might seem a bit early or a bit out of place to be doing work from imagination, but only by continually working from imagination and pushing our creative abilities can we test ourselves and see what we've _really_ learned from all of these studies. So this week, in addition to doing more master studies, we're going to flex our creativity.
I encourage you to do imaginative work in whatever genre, style, medium, or subject you prefer. Do the work you want to do. It might not be great and you probably won't be happy with, but that's ok. We're doing these so that we know what we need to study. We're doing them so we can take the theoretical knowledge we're learning and start to apply it.
Assignment:
- 1 full-color finished master study
- 25 color studies from the masters
- 25 imagined full-color sketches
Get creative.
Last week we were 100% focused on looking at the work of artists we admire. Now we're going to start working on our own stuff. It might seem a bit early or a bit out of place to be doing work from imagination, but only by continually working from imagination and pushing our creative abilities can we test ourselves and see what we've _really_ learned from all of these studies. So this week, in addition to doing more master studies, we're going to flex our creativity.
I encourage you to do imaginative work in whatever genre, style, medium, or subject you prefer. Do the work you want to do. It might not be great and you probably won't be happy with, but that's ok. We're doing these so that we know what we need to study. We're doing them so we can take the theoretical knowledge we're learning and start to apply it.
Assignment:
- 1 full-color finished master study
- 25 color studies from the masters
- 25 imagined full-color sketches
Week 3
Odds are you're surrounded by countless objects you've never _really_ looked at. Only by drawing and painting them can we fully understand and appreciate their visual characteristics. So this week we're doing still life studies.
Pick a few objects from around you, arrange them, and do a painting. Simple as that.
While doing your imagined sketches this week, try to use some of the shapes, textures, and colors from your still life paintings in them. Take the things you're learning and apply them to the work you want to do.
Assignment:
20 still life color studies. Not demoed, but set up a still life and do a quick, simple painting of just blocking in the basic colors and two values per object. Try to train your eye by observing the right colors.
8 full-color still life paintings. Fully finished paintings.
8 imaginative sketches.
Pick a few objects from around you, arrange them, and do a painting. Simple as that.
While doing your imagined sketches this week, try to use some of the shapes, textures, and colors from your still life paintings in them. Take the things you're learning and apply them to the work you want to do.
Assignment:
20 still life color studies. Not demoed, but set up a still life and do a quick, simple painting of just blocking in the basic colors and two values per object. Try to train your eye by observing the right colors.
8 full-color still life paintings. Fully finished paintings.
8 imaginative sketches.
Week 4
It's vanity week.
This week we're looking at ourselves. Self portraits are one of my favorite exercises and probably the easiest way to improve your figurative and portraiture skills.
The trouble with drawing portraits is that it's hard to find models. The beautiful and wonderful thing about self portraits is, of course, that your model is always around and willing to help out.
So we're going to spend a lot of time this week drawing and redrawing our face. So get used to looking in the mirror, y'all.
Assignment:
20 quick block-ins. Take 15-20 minutes and do a block in of the whole face. This can be done in black & white or in color--your choice. The focus is mainly on getting correct proportions and structure in the beginning. Also begin to establish the light and dark shapes on the face. Don't worry about rendering these. Just block in the shapes.8 full-color still life paintings. Fully finished paintings.
4 full-color, finished self-portraits
10 color studies from the masters. Pick figurative or portrait pieces. Even just focus in on a section of a painting to try and observe the colors in skin tones.
5 imagined sketches. Let's see some portraits of characters/creatures!
Get to work!
This week we're looking at ourselves. Self portraits are one of my favorite exercises and probably the easiest way to improve your figurative and portraiture skills.
The trouble with drawing portraits is that it's hard to find models. The beautiful and wonderful thing about self portraits is, of course, that your model is always around and willing to help out.
So we're going to spend a lot of time this week drawing and redrawing our face. So get used to looking in the mirror, y'all.
Assignment:
20 quick block-ins. Take 15-20 minutes and do a block in of the whole face. This can be done in black & white or in color--your choice. The focus is mainly on getting correct proportions and structure in the beginning. Also begin to establish the light and dark shapes on the face. Don't worry about rendering these. Just block in the shapes.8 full-color still life paintings. Fully finished paintings.
4 full-color, finished self-portraits
10 color studies from the masters. Pick figurative or portrait pieces. Even just focus in on a section of a painting to try and observe the colors in skin tones.
5 imagined sketches. Let's see some portraits of characters/creatures!
Get to work!
Week 5
Go outside.
And bring your paints with you. This week we're focusing on plein air work--that is, painting outside. Landscapes, cityscapes, whatever is around you. We're going to break out of our comfort zone and go somewhere else to get our work done.
This is probably going to be hard and uncomfortable for a lot of people. Plein air painting is a foreign experience to a lot of artists, but it's one I think that all artists should experience. It's the reason I'm a landscape painter today and I hope it has a similarly inspiring effect on you.
Bring whatever materials you've got to work with and get out there.
Assignment:
20 pages of plein air drawings
10 plein air paintings
5 imaginative paintings
5 color studies from the masters
And bring your paints with you. This week we're focusing on plein air work--that is, painting outside. Landscapes, cityscapes, whatever is around you. We're going to break out of our comfort zone and go somewhere else to get our work done.
This is probably going to be hard and uncomfortable for a lot of people. Plein air painting is a foreign experience to a lot of artists, but it's one I think that all artists should experience. It's the reason I'm a landscape painter today and I hope it has a similarly inspiring effect on you.
Bring whatever materials you've got to work with and get out there.
Assignment:
20 pages of plein air drawings
10 plein air paintings
5 imaginative paintings
5 color studies from the masters
Week 6
Photos are your friend.
And your enemy. This week we discuss the pros and cons of working from photos as well as some of the best practices when learning from this pervasive resource. Avoid the pitfalls and maximize the potential of photography.
Assignment:
30 photo studies. Mix it up. Do some regular studies, do some specific object/element studies, do some memory studies. Do figures, do landscapes, do anything you can find.
10 imaginative sketches. Apply the knowledge you're acquiring.
Resources:
http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/
http://www.reddit.com/r/earthporn
http://sxc.hu
And your enemy. This week we discuss the pros and cons of working from photos as well as some of the best practices when learning from this pervasive resource. Avoid the pitfalls and maximize the potential of photography.
Assignment:
30 photo studies. Mix it up. Do some regular studies, do some specific object/element studies, do some memory studies. Do figures, do landscapes, do anything you can find.
10 imaginative sketches. Apply the knowledge you're acquiring.
Resources:
http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/
http://www.reddit.com/r/earthporn
http://sxc.hu
Week 7
Your days of monotonous rendering are over.
No longer will everything be painted the same way with the same edge.
Learn how to add character and texture to the elements in your work. And start to learn what to look out for when you're painting different materials like metal or fur.
Assignment:
10 metal studies
5 fur studies
5 full landscape studies - focus on rendering different elements with unique edges to convey what they are.
5 your-choice material studies
5 imaginative sketches
No longer will everything be painted the same way with the same edge.
Learn how to add character and texture to the elements in your work. And start to learn what to look out for when you're painting different materials like metal or fur.
Assignment:
10 metal studies
5 fur studies
5 full landscape studies - focus on rendering different elements with unique edges to convey what they are.
5 your-choice material studies
5 imaginative sketches
Week 8
Figures are some of the most difficult and most beautiful things you will ever paint.
They are an incredible challenge, but immensely rewarding. I hope this week as you approach these different studies that you begin your journey towards even better figurative work. You won't get there in a week's time, but I hope to set you going in the right direction.
Assignment:
- 50 gesture drawings - Don't take more than a minute or two for each of these. Focus on movement. Do not focus on details.
- 5 full-figure studies. Full-color or grayscale, painted or drawn, it's entirely up to you. Study the figure. Break it down into simple shapes and learn the forms of the figure. Work from either good reference or from life.
- 4 pages of drawings of strangers. Draw in a coffee shop or a bus or a train. Observe those around you.
- 8 hand or foot studies.
- 5 full-color master studies of figures. Don't worry too much about painting the whole piece, but rather focus in on the figure itself.
- 4 imaginative sketches. Try to invent a figure from your head. See what you've learned and what you haven't.
Resources:
http://www.noahbradley.com/blog/2011/8-great-anatomy-books-for-artists/
They are an incredible challenge, but immensely rewarding. I hope this week as you approach these different studies that you begin your journey towards even better figurative work. You won't get there in a week's time, but I hope to set you going in the right direction.
Assignment:
- 50 gesture drawings - Don't take more than a minute or two for each of these. Focus on movement. Do not focus on details.
- 5 full-figure studies. Full-color or grayscale, painted or drawn, it's entirely up to you. Study the figure. Break it down into simple shapes and learn the forms of the figure. Work from either good reference or from life.
- 4 pages of drawings of strangers. Draw in a coffee shop or a bus or a train. Observe those around you.
- 8 hand or foot studies.
- 5 full-color master studies of figures. Don't worry too much about painting the whole piece, but rather focus in on the figure itself.
- 4 imaginative sketches. Try to invent a figure from your head. See what you've learned and what you haven't.
Resources:
http://www.noahbradley.com/blog/2011/8-great-anatomy-books-for-artists/
AC class roster:
@akanekun
@Fugitive
@ninjai
@Lexxy
@Iruka
@kevindee
@F87
@Agentflit
@skyturtle
@wn.mike
If anyone else joins, feel free to jump in the thread.
Iruka on
+4
Posts
I am going to try and do 10-15 of the composition studies tonight.
Also Google plus maybe?
http://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/116825616491201013657
If people want to hangout
I'm going to start off slow. 50 of each may be a little much for me, I want to do a bunch of them and move fast, but not so fast that I stop learning. I'll go at it on full blast this weekend.
I can't wait to see your color studies iruka
In order of appearance:
Jean Leon Gerome: Arabs Crossing the Desert
Jean Leon Gerome: Memnon and Sesotris
Jean Leon Gerome: Selling Slaves in Rome
Jean eon Gerome: Pygmalion and Galatea
Frederick Leighton: Invocation
Frederick Leighton: Nausicaa
Frederick Leghton: The Nymph of the River
James Jacques Tissot: Hush
Am I doing this right?
Mine is done with brush and india ink. Oh god, some of these compositions are complicated :O Most of these (except hush and selling slaves) are about 3x5" is that too small? It's really taking about half an hour for each one. Getting some proportions wrong, and I'm noticing some value differences (selling slaves, the podium) IDK if I'll be able to swing all 50 AND color studies AND 3 complete studies. :O
Critz if you got em please
edit: On memnon and sesotris I was wondering why all the placement was off when the centerpiece was right, I just made all the camels too big.
edit 2: I suppose I need to simplify more? I sort of forgo about the 3 values (white being a value :O) It's hard to get a consistent value though with ink. I'll mix some, but over time water changes the value. I mixed 3 values to begin with but they all washed out over time. I'll try to do more focus on 3 values tomorrow. I'm going to do 25 ink, and 25 oil monochrome. Should be fun! Off to bed now.
heads up: portraits are a total bitch, getting a likeness alone takes up 10 mins, so I'd try to minimise portraits for colour comps
Does anyone know how Noah selects work to critique? Does he crawl through each of the subgroups' picture folders, looking for something interesting, or do we have to do something special?
Although I don't have time for this right now, I definitely want to do these exercises down the line. This looks like it could be super helpful.
Good luck and keep posting
I almost want to announce that we have a forum thread in the FB group, but I don't know if that would create an onslaught of stragglers or not. The forums are better equipped to handle a group, though, and I cant imagine more than 5 or 6 people would actually sign up for the forums just for this. Maybe fug is right and the FB group will slow down when people fall off the wagon.
Mine so far today. This was all done before work. Now that I'm home going to do more
John WIlliam Waterhouse: Windswept
Jean Leon Gerome Thebes Colosseums?
John William Waterhouse: The Flower Picker
Roelof Jansz, Van Vries don't know the name
jean leon gerome moorish bath
James Tissot on the Thames
Thomas Moran An Indian Pueblo Laguna New Mexico
Bruce Crane Long Island Landscape
Turner Slave Ship
MORE. I'm too tired to type out the original artists!
My favorite so far is the 2nd one on this and on the thames from the previous post. The compositions are getting more and more difficult. The one with what I'm assuming are sirens might have been a little too heavy for how late it is. Kind of lost it on that one. Am I doing it right now?
I'm gonna be out of town all weekend so I'm going to have to try to cram all these in Monday/Tuesday ahahaha 8')
I was finally able to sign up and watch the first video.
I used too many values on my studies, I can't believe I forgot about that along the way. I still felt like I learned a lot from these. Probably going to revisit this week's assignment after the camp is over and I have more time. Maybe I can get a full study done this weekend.
Value/Comp Studies:
Definitely need to get in the habit of doing these, it just feels "healthy". :P
I'm excited to start the next assignment on time!
I know that mine are on the rough side, I am trying to think critically about how I approach these. A few things I notice
1: I always make the figure too big.
I will try and get into some landscapes on my next 3, because its hard for me to not make faces and figures bigger than they are, even upside down. I need to learn how to treat the composition and shapes independently of the subject matter, especially in my own work.
2: I see color instead of value
I need to work on that. I get very focused on color relationships, so trying to pull B&W out of a color work is pretty hard for me. Its good practice.
3: I am slow to commit to shapes
Alot of the time, I will leave a mush blob for a long time if its in the right area. Looking back and forth, I can see shapes that I should have made but didn't take the extra leap to, rather accepting what I had already put down, leading to inaccuracies.
@flay my canvas is big but I'm working zoomed out and rotating the canvas and such. they are still relatively small, maybe 600X600px each.
I'm alternating between comp/value and color 3 at a time and I'm working on a large canvas but I stay zoomed out so that the picture is never larger than 2"x3" on my screen.
I need to pay more attention to value when I'm looking at colors I kind of get overwhelmed
I wonder if it would be a good idea for me to do a value/comp study on a set then a color study on the same set.
Iruka, I think you're spot on in your self-crit, and I see a lot of those issues in myself as well. I think your comps are just about right roughness / time spent -wise, they give a good read and aren't overworked. Also, I appreciate you posting the originals; a lot of people don't and then what is even the point
To spare the thread I think I'll only post my remaining master copies, rather than everything. There's only so many value studies you can see before you go crazy :c
Edit: Ah sack it, I'll post another batch of value comps and another batch of colour comps - just to see for myself if they have improved slightly and what I should look out for, as it does feel less of a struggle after doing a bunch of them.
I think I'll probably just post 5-6 thumbs for the value and color studies, and my 3 master studies, because there's only so much you can crit on quick thumbnails. (Though I might hide the rest of my stuff in a spoiler tag and post it anyway, just to keep myself accountable)
[edit] ALSO someone posted these brushes in the FB group.
Maybe I'll play along from the sidelines and post in here.
Anybody wanna do a Google hangout in the next 45 mins-1 hour?
Fun tip: If you want a quick way to switch between greyscale and colour while you're working, make a new layer, put it on top of the pile, change its layer setting to Color and then fill it with black. Then you can turn the layer on and off real quick like if you want to just compare values.
My worst fear came true. I had a lot of fun with the oil. I was hoping I'd hate it so that I wouldn't have to spend money on oil stuff too but now I'm going to have to give it a shot again :C
@iruka, if I can add a critique. This is sort of a self critique also, you're missing a lot of the big light shapes, such as the face. I've noticed this in a lot of the value studies in the thread or on facebook. Faces tend to be the lightest in value, particularly if the figure in question is the focal point. Take for instance your number 4, his face and helmet are some of the lightest value in the painting, number 9 their faces almost disappear when the original has their faces in highlight, or your first post value study with the 2 little girls, the one on the left's face is in highlight, yet it's missing on your study.
I do the same thing with big highlight shapes (girls arm on wattersons windswept). Sometimes it's because the ink gets too wet on the paper, other times I really don't see it until after I'm done. I think it might help if you shrink down the image you're copying from to a much smaller size to reduce the detail so that you can focus more on the shapes. They seem to be easier to see for me anyway.
@kevindee I'm learning a lot from looking at others value studies, good stuff and bad stuff, i hope urrbuddy posts all their work
@Ninjai, thanks for the tips. I may do a few traditionally, mostly because for me it would probably go faster for me. Some of the mushiness in shape comes from drawing with the tablet, which I'm actually quite shit at, and should draw on paper more anyway.
@Jingiss Welcome aboard. Its cool to have some of you art camp people join up. I encourage you and @Juliodoodman to check out the rest of the forum as well, and not just stay for art camp!
If you do Ctrl+~ you can switch between opened windows that are tabbed, and he might just have all of those references opened and is switching between them with a hot key.
also having a hard time not using black.
Oil was so much easier I could just whack at it til the shapes were right, but it's the exact opposite with watercolor
What should I do? Or if you have any advice how to work with it better?
So am another "rogue participant"...
Small background: Am an architect, who for the last 3-4 years didn't draw anything not directly related to my straight-lined creations...so now that I got some free nights I re watched PATV, Gabe stuff and ultimately I started doodling...after 2 months drawing stuff every night on my lil moleskines I ended up buying a intuos 5 on impulse.
A week later (now) I take the opportunity of this challenge to play around with it. Needless to say I should have picked something easier to develop my skills but I kinda had a lot of fun doing it, only in the end - when I copied the originals next to my drawings - the frustration sinked in.
Couple of 1st tries , messing around with random brushes
The remainder of my atempts at something.
Up to attempt 4 I had transfer on, after that I decided to go on flat colours, black and white with 2 grays... trying to used at most 3 of them, failing in many.
Theres a couple of images (5 and 7) that I didn't draw all of them because I as I was "on a roll" I didn't notice the continuity of to the right... damn noob.
All of attempts had a time limit of about 10 to 12 minutes, and I'm quite disappointed with my lack of proportions and perspective errors, guess theres a lot to improve.
I accept any kind of critics, you can be harsh if needed
(in case you wonder "what or why the f**k is he doing this", well I didn't enjoy drawing or even my drawings teachers @ uni, and now I do enjoy drawing by myself. Thats why and am also looking to improve... slowly as I only have free nights and weekends.)
Here goes nothing...!
I'm putting waaaay too much time into these. Ensuing ones'll have to be faster & simpler. Don't have the originals on there 'cause I'm doing this on a netbook.
Hey 'ruka can you add me to the list? You're awesome for this thread.
Ok, so since I was having a hard time with the watercolor (if nothing else waiting for each layer to dry was taking way too long) I decided to do longer studies of stuff in oil with what I had. These are done larger than all the other ones I've been doing and I would say about 3 hours for each, but both had serious problems and so I went back to fix some of those things. On selling slaves I was struggling with a few forms that weren't working, seeing it 2d I feel like the problem stemmed from her not being tall enough causing the right side to look off.
Ok.
Who's got some good resources for oil paint?
edit: OH and color theory. When doing color my eyes sort of stop working and I stop seeing colors, or like, I just don't recognize that they're a color or what color... i can't explain. I've been doing monochromatic for so long I have no idea waht I'm doing. Anything you have would help
edit:
Jesus, who knew color was so complicated
http://handprint.com/HP/WCL/wcolor.html
THis guy answered most of my questions
http://www.drawmixpaint.com/