Art School Lessons 1-7

Good morning Diary,

In an effort to catch up to where I am in school this post is about the first 7 lessons of my schooling. Just the finished assignments. After this post I can start getting into more detail with future posts. Art school is like any other school anyway. The first few assignments are super easy and not that interesting to look at.

Week 1:

pg1pg2pg3

Yup. Lines and ellipses. Pretty exciting stuff. But the last page was kind of neat. I had to draw a round shape and then copy it over. Then I made faces out of them. You’ll notice the first two and the second two start with the exact same oval shapes. (Ignore the last face. It was an experiment with the brushes).

Week 2:

001 002-2 003

Shapes in perspective! Awww yeah. You’ll notice they don’t look quite right in some of them. If you’re like me and you draw a cube first to draw a cone or cylinder it’s very important that IT’S ACTUALLY A CUBE! Ugh. I suck.

Week 3:

1point 2point 3point

Shaded shapes in perspective! Those are some fine looking shapes, right? I was supposed to use the shapes I did in week 2 but they were so wonky that I chose to start over. Also look at those shadows! Those are mathematically derived perfect shadows. I really liked this lesson.

Week 4:

citynolines

Here we go. Now we are cookin’. I had to do a street scene. Any street scene. I chose a western street.

Week 5:

refinishedIt’s the same street scene! Only it’s way nicer. I lost some marks on my ellipses like on the barrel or water tower. That continues to be an issue for me. Seems every week I get an ellipse wrong somewhere.

Week 6:

figures1 figures2 figures3

Oh, I forgot to mention. There may be nudities in this blog. So like… don’t look at the pictures you just looked at if you don’t like anatomy. I gave you fair warning. (Just kidding. It wasn’t fair)

Week 7:

gesturesblogGestures. Ugh. These are not good actually. This assignment was done about a month ago (at the time of writing this) and now I’m actually starting over. You’ll see another post soon about all the gesture drawings I did last night. Not for school. Just because I really really REALLY (really) need to learn it better.

Ok so we got all that out of the way. The posts after this will get much more in depth into each lesson.

Love Michael

Scholarship Portfolio

Dear Diary,

Two posts in one day?! You lucky guys. I’m trying to catch up to the current assignments with school but I don’t want to miss any so I’m rushing through the first 8 assignments (currently on 9…duh).

BUT this is about the portfolio I submitted when I applied for the scholarship at the school. It’s not many images. Scroll past them to learn if I was successful.

butterflycreature3exteriorinteriorthreeshipsfemale1fox

I failed! That was the outcome. Yup. No scholarships. But that’s ok. I knew going in that there is a lot I don’t know and that it would be a stretch. I’m glad I tried so I don’t have to wonder.

And yes, the spaceships are from my Fuzzy Outlaws comic. What of it? I like them. Lemme ‘lone.

Lurve Michael

Concept Art Intro Class

Dear Diary,

As I said in the previous post, I am going to start posting all my assignments and adventures with the Vancouver Animation School concept art program. (I added a link to the school at the top of the website).

But first I’ll start with the concept art intro class that I took back in January. The school offers intro classes that last a month (4 lessons) to see if you like the school or can even keep up with the assignments. I loved every second of it. Before I even finished the course I was already signing up for the diploma class.

My teacher was Adrian Enciso and he was very good. A tough marker but he explained all your wins and fails very clearly. I always knew after where I went wrong. Here are the finished assignments:

Week 1:

posespgallWeek 2:

silhouettesWeek 3:

foxWeek 4:

landscape2smallYou can see detailed posts about all these assignments at my comic site www.fuzzyoutlaws.com (I didn’t have mikewarddraws back then).

The old posts said my final mark was 76% but it was actually increased to 84%. I’m not sure why they images were remarked but I didn’t mind the extra percents at all.

Love Michael

Portal Website

Finally a new website to link to everything that I do! I’ve been threatening to make one of these for 6 years.

This site will link to everything I do on the internet. I’m trying to both increase my web presence as well as connect it all. I created all the new accounts on tumblr, instagram, etc with the MIKEWARDDRAWS name and this website links to all of them but so far they are empty. They will all independently host the same images so if you follow me on one you will see most of the images/concept art/comics I make.

Animations (of which I only just started dabbling in) will be on Vine and Youtube. Youtube will also (one day) have drawing videos. It’s all a process.

More links will be added in time as well as an ABOUT page and official portfolio. Naturally I don’t want every doodle or silly comic in my portfolio so I will keep the best-of-the-best there.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: This blog will document my struggles through art school from sketches to concept artist. I’m currently in my first term of the Concept Art Diploma Program at the Vancouver Animation School.

I won’t post every little thing because I want to encourage people to sign up with the school but you’ll see lots of WIP’s and finished assignments. I will also post some critiques I got and explain why I lost or gained marks. I’m 8 assignments into the program now so I’ll quickly post how the previous weeks went on the site shortly.

That’s long enough but I always like blog posts with pictures so:

tapdancingAww yeah. Website is off to a good start.

Love Michael