Becoming a recluse!

I finally knuckled down to do some homework this weekend, and have literally not left the house all weekend. I've completed video 2 and assignment 2 of the Schoolism workshop I'm doing, and just about completed week 2 of the Start Writing Fiction course I'm doing with FutureLearn.

I've just finished watching video 3 of the Schoolism course, and realised I've just been drawing animals, not creatures, as the title of the course suggests 'Painting Creatures', duh! So now I need to go back and create some creatures. That'll be in next week's blog entry. However from video 2 I've been learning all about drapery, and had to sketch a couple of things to learn different drapes:

With hindsight the rhino didn't have that many folds in its skin to study, I should've picked something more wrinkly...

Video 3 is going back to my original creature sketches, but I now need to draw some creatures, not animals that already exist.
Also, for week 2 of my Start Writing Fiction course I need to write the start of (or complete) story, no more than 500 words. I'm finding the course quite interesting, and it's harder than I thought it would be, but I'm getting some good feedback from other people on the course.

I've seen this video before but thought I'd share it, as I particularly like the part about showing up to do your part of something, even if some other part of you struggles: https://youtu.be/86x-u-tz0MA

And, as promised I would do a Pinterest of the week. I spent a fair bit of time yesterday trying to find something, then I happened across something which I knew would be right, as it's so cute. Hope you enjoy! http://www.duitang.com/people/mblog/50764978/detail/

More of the same Schoolism

I've been working on the same ideas as last week, and I've come up with a few more too. I've sketched the ones I thought were better ideas:

Chimp Selfie

Hungry Worm

I quite liked the concept for Chimp Selfie. Children learn to copy their parents behvaiour, it's part of their learning cycle, and it's quite scary how a two year old knows how to work a mobile phone or tablet. I bet chimps would learn from the hoardes of people that go to visit them in the zoo or wildlife parks every day, so I wonder if the zoo keeper gave a chimp a camera on a selfie stick if they would copy the behaviour of the people observing it? Just a thought.
I'm really conscious that we're more than halfway through October now and I still haven't watched any more of the videos I've subscribed to on Schoolism. I've not developed my current ideas too far, as I'm intrigued to see what the next video will bring, and I want to get a move on with the course.

I've also signed up to another course: Start Writing Fiction with FutureLearn in collaboration with the Open University. Talk about burning the candle at both ends! I figured that I struggle to come up with good ideas for my art, so if I do a course on writing it may help. It's free anyway, so I have nothing to lose.

A new feature that I'm going to do on my blog every week is Pinterest of the Week. This will be where I've pinned something on Pinterest that was of interest to me. I have a few boards on Pinterest, fitness and baking to name a few, but I also have a board for Art and another board for Inspiration. So this week's Pinterest of the Week is:

http://www.sheknows.com/living/articles/1003285/25-pinterest-myths-debunked/page:3

I love the idea of melting crayons onto paper to make ink splats, I have an idea for this so I will revisit this project.

That's it for this week, let's see what the next part of my Schoolism subscription brings!


Liked this post? You may also like: http://kimshibbybob.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-start-of-my-schoolism-subscription.html

The start of my Schoolism subscription

Still back in the old habits I'm afraid, but it's not for lack of trying this week. I've watched the first lesson by Bobby Chui, and whilst there wasn't much visually in the video there was a lot said which has given me stuff to think about. He talks about the virality of art, and what makes art viral. So my assignment was to think up 10 creatures. I've thought of 3, and drawn 2. I don't know how far we're supposed to take the drawings, so I've done it quickly in a cartoon style. What feelings do the following inspire, and would you share them to friends or just move on with whatever you were doing at the time?

Something I know I need to work on is perspective, particularly in the top drawing.

The cool thing about signing up to Schoolism is that (if you sign up for the full course) your work is critiqued, but as I've done mine through Kickstarter I don't get that option. However I see feedback videos that Bobby Chiu has recorded, so I'm still learning a lot from those.

Anyway, I've not done, or seen, much else in the art world this week. I've kind of enjoyed the downtime of not having pressure to draw something every day, however trying to think up 10 ideas for creatures that could go viral has been so difficult. I'm thinking maybe the Tea Dogs idea could be one, however it would need a witty quote to go with it to make it truly humorous. I think I'm just going to go for 5 creatures rather than beat myself up over the fact I can't think of 10, otherwise I will probably spend the rest of October trying to think of good creature ideas. I only have until the end of November on my subscription, so I need to get a move on!

Drawing-a-day is done for now

Howdy doody people! It's Sunday and I've only done half a week of drawing... and here it is:

29. Somewhere you'd like to go - space! Apologies for my very quick, crappy drawing of our galaxy...

30. Imaginary friend. Well, I didn't have one as a kid, but I pretended I had a barn owl, as I think these are beautiful birds. I tried to paint with the biggest brush possible to not get lost in the details... and I think I'm finally getting the hang of it :) Quite happy with the effort to quality ratio of this

31. Latest dream. Just to put this out there I regularly eat cheese before bed. As I did on this night. I was pretty upset I didn't manage to get tickets to the latest Muse gig. So in my dream I dreamt that Muse had gone to shit, and Matt Bellamy was hiding out in a camper van at the foot of the Canadian Rockies, and I was there consoling him. Weird.

So, I only managed 3 drawings this week before my Schoolism subscription started... and I fell right back into my old bad habits. There has been nothing stopping me from drawing the rest of the week, as I should've done, because I didn't watch the first Schoolism video I subscribed to until tonight. My last drawing was on Wednesday, so that's been 4 days of drawing I haven't done.

Anyway, moving on from the negativity, the first video has given me a lot to think over, and quite a big assignment at the end! I'm not sure how much of the video I can give away, but I think it's safe to say we'll see how my future drawings go, and how much interest they generate based on my learning from this course. I can tell you the course I signed up to was Painting Creatures. I normally come up with ideas in my sleep (as long as they're not cheese dreams like the above...), as in I like to sleep on ideas, and then the next day, or the next few days once my subconscious has had time to process the information I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do. I have 10 things to draw, which is more than what I draw in a week, but this is something I want to work on properly, not just bang out a drawing a day.

I'm already intrigued as to what my next blog entry will bring (hopefully not a big empty space!) and I hope you can join me next week to see what ideas my crazy cheese-addicted brain comes up with!