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Today's drawing session was a flop. 5 hours wasted all because common sense was not used. When you have a very pale-skinned model, it is only with an incredible lack of common sense (or a great amount of idiocy) that one would choose toned paper that has the color of cocoa especially when the main goal of the exercise is to accurately portray the value range of flesh tones.

May God grant me wisdom. Terribly disappointed and tired but still hopeful about the days that are coming.

Soli Deo Gloria! Increase even more so as i decrease Lord!

Dupont drawing sketches

More live model drawing with the group.


Getting ready for long poses next week. Need to draw fully rendered eggs by Sunday so a better understanding of form through lights and darks and the value scale will be achieved. Still seeing some errors in proportion, masses and form but am currently pleased to see some improvement in the work and am excited about further improvement.


Soli Deo Gloria!

Spider Attaaaaack. Pewpewpewpewpew.

Need to remove them from rock, redo base, redo man and make him more realistic and add a clearer action line.

Sculpture 2

Second sculpture. Red clay. Around 10 hours put into this piece so far. Will try to add a couple more finishes tomorrow, God-willing. If not, oh well. 

John Stott in 'The Contemporary Christian' - “We stand between the Word and the world with consequent obligation to listen to both. We listen to the Word to discover even more of the riches of Christ. We listen to the world in order to discern which of Christ’s riches are needed most and how to present them in their best light.”

Sculpting Updates

Found the article below on Christcentric. Good stuff. 

“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.  All this is gathered up in that emotion which most cleanses us from selfishness because it is the most selfless of all emotions – adoration.” William Temple

Sculpture time again. My camera is slowly dying so everything is blurry. This piece is slowly drying but I am frustrated with the face and will have to rework it tomorrow, God-willing.

Arglfargl. Face is so off. I need to go back in.

New piece is on the way. The pose looked absurdly excruciating. I felt bad for the model but she was a trooper and wanted to get a more challenging pose for us since she was an artist herself. Props. Day one was today. More to come tomorrow.

Still not satisfied with the skill level that i have. Working towards getting better for Him. In the meantime, i shall continue to update this blog with progress pieces. It would be interesting to see whether improvement or retrogression will have happened a year from now.


"Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise!" - Neh.9:5

On watchmen and wonder

i just recently wrapped up reading through the graphic novel Watchmen since friends kept telling me about how this novel changed the superhero genre in comics and how it's a very good story. It was fascinating. The book is one of those written pieces that tackle the question of the common good. 


The graphic novel was definitely a much better medium for the story compared to the movie. i didn't understand the movie but the various side stories and the slow pacing that the novel allowed to wander around the additional subplots that helped explain some of the intricacies that were deftly woven into the main plot.


Novel Highlights


Quote 1. "Dead: I hear her pleading; see their yellowed smiles, their cutlasses carving relentlessly until all her personality, all her subtleties of posture and expression are obliterated, reduced to meat..dead." - Watchmen (Alan Moore)


This struck a chord with me in particular because i never did understand killing especially massacres of the kind committed in Maguindanao on November 23, 2009. i don't understand how people can destroy human beings, who at times, are painfully beautiful, and walk away.  


There seems to be a great lack of understanding in most people's minds of how miraculous life can be. At the same time, as the graphic novel also did illustrate, this lack of understanding has seeped so deeply into the human psyche that no one is safe from it's toxic sewage, not even myself. This part of the book and the story behind it cautioned me to truly evaluate events from a perspective that is not my own, because were i to be motivated by a zealous passion to pursue my idea of justice, i could very well end up destroying those that i think i am fighting for, and in consequence, myself. 


Nietzsche said that "when you stare at the abyss, the abyss stares back at you"; but the abyss is part of us, it already is within is and we are in the abyss. The necessity is for us to be plucked out of it from someone on the outside powerful enough to do so. Much prayer is necessary in order to align my entire being with the will of Him who sees all and knows all because apart from Him, my only aim, and my only end will be destruction.

Quote 2. "Manhattan: 'Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter [...] and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air into gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.'


Laurie: 'But... If me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean you could say that about anybody in the world!


Manhattan: 'Yes. Anybody in the world... But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.


Come... dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.'" - Watchmen (Alan Moore) 


Humans are made of fantastic stuff.

Figure Sculpture model 1

Around 7+ hours of sculpting Tara. Last 2 hours will be tomorrow and still so many things are still off. i am, however, happy about my growth progression so far and the fact that the teacher is not giving me any slack. The next piece needs to be bigger so that i won't have that much difficulty sorting out the eye areas. She was a really funny model in a really relaxed and fun class. i'm glad i get to be part of it. :)

This so far is the strongest view for me

Face is really off.

Figure sculpture sessions are far too short but progress is happening very slowly. Slowly but consistently. God is good! :D

The perks of getting lost

People often wonder why i enjoy getting lost in cities and towns without a map. I often wonder that myself until i bump into people like Jamey Turner and my jaw drops for a second from being struck by an unexpected glimpse of glory.


He makes music out of glass goblets! He calls his instrument a glass harp and i found him at the end of King Street in Alexandria, Virginia close to the waterfront. :)

He also justified my need for a new camera. There are just so many miracles happening in and throughout the mundane that slip through my hands. One may consider it very naive but i dream of capturing these fleeting moments of the majestic and store them in glass jars so others, too, may see, even for just a moment.

His website is: http://jameyturner.com/ and he, also, wishes to give the glory back to God. Fantastic day has been fantastic.

WAT

My brother and i were wandering around the national gallery of art and found these two pieces at the top of one of the wings of the gallery. They were part of an entire series that filled up a small room. i don't know what to make of it. All i know is that i'm glad my motivation to make stuff doesn't lie in what is the current vogue of the times. 


Um.

Time Traveling

Today, a 3D file I opened indicated that I traveled through time.

I neither remember doing it nor do I have any recollection of where I parked my time traveling apparatus which makes me conclude that the surveyors of the cosmic rifts are up to no good again and are erasing people's memories of chance ventures into inter-dimensional peregrination. 

I need to update my life insurance. One of these days they might lose their patience with my insatiable curiosity and just fry me on the spot.

Mhm.

Life Drawing Session 3

"Don't be afraid to make a mistake. We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us so the sooner you get them out the better!" - Walt Stanchfield

9,600 more to go! I hope the good drawings come out soon.

Next time I'll actually scan the images and not be lazy and just take pictures. A new sketchbook is needed. Woopwoop!

Life drawing session 2

More drawings from the drawing group. Both are 20 minute poses of Mary after 11 gesture poses ranging from 2 minutes to 10 minutes. The masses are still unclear due to the ambiguity of the values but hopefully it will be amended a bit after anatomy drawing on Sunday.

Also, due to the lack of space in the classical drawing class, I ended up in figure sculpture. The first day was relaxing and I am glad that the instructor didn't go easy on me. Correction was dished out from moment to moment and the piece is still out of shape but it is coming together. Rhythm, balance, proportion and the focus on gesture through line was emphasized. Really excited to go in again on Friday and I hope to bring my camera this time so that I can document progress.

Life is moving slowly (sometimes disappointingly so) but the pace is steady and He is walking with me. All is well.

Soli Deo Gloria

Drawing Group Sketches

Got my pencils back into figure drawing again. Posted above are two 20 minute poses with the Dupont Drawing group. I'm thankful that the group exists and that the Church of the Pilgrims allows us to use their space for a minimal fee. Getting out of the house to draw beats staying inside, attempting to draw, and then falling prey to a plethora of distractions, hence failing at the attempt to draw.

I still seem unsure of my value shifts as the range is still around heavy darks and lights. The figure's mass is also unclear from my renderings. Anatomy and proportion should also be reviewed. Seeing truthfully and drawing truthfully keeps becoming more of a daunting task than I expect it to be. However, it's an exciting kind of daunting and not the crippling sort, so the whole experience becomes a fantastic run!

Got the sketches critiqued by an art teacher, and hopefully, I can interpret the figure better next time.

Work is going well. The world is still revolving. God is good.

Psalm 8

LORD, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory

in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants

you have established a stronghold against your enemies,

to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels

and crowned them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands;

You put everything under their feet:

all flocks and herds,

and the animals of the wild,

the birds in the sky,

and the fish in the sea,

all that swim the paths of the seas.

LORD, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

_____________________________________________________________

Pondering on this passage as Life Drawing exercises shall begin soon. Figure sculpture would also be a treat if God wills it. The human figure is a fascinating, fascinating subject to study, but it still, truly, does boggle my mind. Why is God mindful of us? His Grace is such a strange gift to creatures made of dust; not that the gift in and of itself is aberrant (it is, as a matter of fact, most magnificent and is a very eloquent expression of the character of the Giver) but that the beneficiaries of said gift are undeserving.

The psalmist in the passage, instead of lingering on the question and drawing out why God could possibly choose mere human beings, focuses on how He instituted man's place, ordained his responsibility in his stewardship of creation, and ultimately brings back praise to His majestic name all over the world.

As these studies continue, may He show me more of Him to be in awe of, may He allow me to be an instrument through which others may also "taste and see that the LORD is good" and may He increase as i decrease.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Need more poses!

The model and rigging that the 11 second club made available rendered out so well and had more variation so I couldn't help myself and ended up making more poses but this time with partners and I added backgrounds in PS to tell the "story" better. Heeheehee. Fun times! xD

Eleven Rig (better model and rigging!)

The default rig and an individual pose.


Beta Rig from the 11 second club. Excited to see what more input the 11 second club will have. Exciting exciting stuff and more posing practice yay!

http://www.11secondclub.com/

Ashrafi Rig Individual Poses

Playing with posing using the Ashrafi Rig

imax camera woooooooo

Playing around with Maya cameras because lighting has officially frustrated me. YAY! :D



On second thought, this view is making my brain and my eyes hurt... and I feel a little dizzy now. For this, there is only one solution. TO THE SCULPTURE LAB! Wooo weee wooo!

Not quite there yet....

texturing nearly done... onto lighting tests

this is the maya interface that i work with at school...

Mental Ray versus Maya Software Renders with same lights(start)

First Renders:

Maya Software


Mental Ray



We gots a long way to go and it's almost midnight.


Rage, rage against the dying of the light! Sa binisaya pa, "Walay katulganay!"

xD