artcontrol.me

Artwork of William Mckee

takaka

Weltak

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Good morning. I got back to Levin yesterday – my Fathers place. One of the first things I did was open GIMP on the desktop computer and produce a digital painting – and record it. I didn’t record the color stage, but managed to record all up to grayscale tone.

Here’s the painting:
wel-train-ref

The far left reference is a sketch book I did in Wellington at the railway station. I’ve taken this into GIMP previously and was happy with the result. I thought it was about time to have another go. On the right I added a drawing of a cafe in Takaka, and above that trees in Christchurch. 
wel-train-line

Line. I modified my pressure settings in GIMP to get more variety in my line – you can see this in the figure sculpture in the middle – very thin line. I’m happy with this line as it gave me enough information to develop good tone over it. 
wel-train-bw

Grayscale tone. I made up the tone as I went by just applying a range of tones over the page. For more important areas or foreground I used dark and light for less important areas. Darks for figures always seems to work best. Now, color. 
wel-train-col

I had lots of fun with the color on this. Mixed and layered. The colors are my normal ones, but I also included a different tone of the red that I use for the line


And the video, sorry for missing color. Better than nothing!

Digital Takaka Nudes

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So I scanned in over 50 pages of sketchbook and uploaded it to my blogs server – and only done one post out of it yet. The easiest way to work though these posts will be on my Mums Mac where I can view the files on the local drive easy. I may head around to her place later today to get sorted with this. 50 pages is quite daunting in order and structure, but for now – have some digital paintings that I’ve been doing with some of the scanned pages. I want to work with my scanned sketchbooks more in GIMP so expect to see more of these works.

I kept with the same color palette that I have been using in all digital painting recently. Everything is simply paint over so no obsevational skills were using – but it gave me good practice with using the tablet… especially those lines!

The standing poses. I use to only focus on certain areas – over time I’ve wanted to develop full bodys. I’m not sure if I’ll take these any further but rather just develop other drawings.

Sitting poses. The box he was sitting on I colored a darker blue, though the backgrounds in all of these works are simple. With the bottom figure I was inspired by the recent red mask attached to characters – he didn’t have a defined head so I just covered it in red. The top figure looks very much like James who I use to draw often at TLC

A life drawing that I didn’t upload with the others, missed this during the upload. It’s in fact the final drawing I did of the day. 

The most developed line work in this – though I wish the lines were thicker. Worked backwards somewhat with this – compleleing the blue background, then the yellow/red, lastly finishing up with the black line. The order doesn’t really matter since I’ve been working with 3 layers in these works.
Escape the Sandstorm is the EOW – I’ve done some sketches that I need to scan in and paint over. Till next time, stay cool honey bun.

Takaka Life Drawing – Murry

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Ok. So I’m back in Levin after my trip down to the South Island. Now it’s time to upload all the artwork I did well away. Two sketchbooks are full of drawings. I kept to just pencil and colored pencil. It made it easy when traveling.

The class was $15 for 3 hours of life drawing. Normally they have around 8 or so people show up but numbers were low this week. Different feel to life drawing at TLC and Vincents. The model – Murry modeled in front of a fire place which was a nice touch – plus cheaper than using a oil or elecric heater.

Here’s the life drawings from the Wednesday life drawing class in Takaka:

We started with a bunch of quick 30 second poses. I focused on breaking the body into some basic shapes. I’d recently read Bridgman’s guide to drawings so I’m somewhat infuneced by his drawings. Getting longer. These were between 5-10 mins – several sitting and a portrait. I didn’t use my colored pencils much with this life drawing – instead just using them for the negative space. I guess this can help with capturing more details since the pencil is far more accurate than colored pencils.
Standing poses. Managed to capture the whole body on the right drawings. Proportions are out of the window – especially in those hands. Someone mentioned that even though these are off it still looks like it works. Perfect.

20 min pose. I focused mostly on the portrait - Murry put his glasses on for these last few. I’m happy with these portraits – they are clean and the line is working to my advantage.
I’ve been practicing curvy lines – making marks with a S shape. I focused for a long time on straight lines but It’s important to practice curves – because not everything is straight.

Takaka drawing class

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I’m currently in the South Island. I left my laptop and Wacom tablet behind – I needed a break from them. Too long I spent working on the laptop, not getting much done. When I return it will be fresh.

I do have a A4 visual diary that I am planning to fill up on my trip. So far I’ve mostly just drawn 3d figures from imagination. On Saturday me and my Uncle Donald attended a drawing class. Portraits was the focus. I spent two hours drawing portraits of my Uncle. The tutor – Kare had exercises for the class to do. Many of these exercise I had done before – such as blind contour drawings – and drawing with your opposite hand. One I hadn’t explored before was creating using the media to create planes of the face – darker for deep and lighter for forward. This was interesting – rather then looking at the light and dark look for where areas come forward. This is something from the class I’ll take away and experiment further.

The final drawing of the drawing class. I had drawn Donald several times and wanted to include someone else in the drawing. The woman beside Donald is a regular for the drawing class. I decided to include her into the drawing. Here she is drawing  the person oposite her.

The exercise for this was looking at the planes – darker for closer and lighter for further. It was a exercise I hadn’t explored before so great to give it a go.

 

This was spose to be one continious line. I tried my best to keep the line going but may have forgotten at times and taken my pencil off the page slightly. People commented in the nose. 

Blind contor drawing. Tried to add some colored pencil in there as well! Instead of just doing the portrait I wanted to include areas of the shirt as well. 

I worked on this further afterwards, adding color and tone to areas. I know Dan is a big fan of this – keeping some areas loose and going in tighter in other areas.

The town I’m staying is Takaka. The hills are inspiring, tomorrow I’ll get out and the landscapes in the area. No point being stuck inside with Freeview and dialup Internet.

On Wednesday there is a life drawing class – 15 dollars for three hours. I haven’t had the chance to do any life drawing for a LONG time. 15 is quite expensive compared to the cheap 5 dollars at Vincents but what can I do!

Explore Takaka Drawings

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So I’ve been in Takaka for several days now, and drawing every one of these. It’s been nice taking a break from Levin and being in a different setting.

Here’s some of the artwork that I’ve done out and about in Takaka:

I drew this yesterday morning when up Pig Gully – my Uncle owns a mountain there. We drove up, giving the dogs a run. Once at the top I stood around for sometime before realizing there was a cold wind, and decided to get back in the car. This is a drawing of the view from the car. Sadly I didn’t bring my green colored pencil with me so had to use yellow instead of green. 

Another drawing from yesterday. This was in Takaka town district after I had lunch with a wonderful woman – Victoria Davis and her Mother (her mother is in a wheelchair and reminded me greatly of Nana). Lunch was delicious – I had a flat white, salad, and wedges. Great to catch up with Victoria and met her Mother.

After lunch Victoria headed off and I stayed in town. May as well enjoy the beautiful sunshine. I sat across from the building I had lunch – The Wheatmeal and drew the building. I love drawing buildings so much and I think i’m lucky to be able to document my trip with drawings rather then photographs. Drawings say much more then a photo ever will.

This is a view from the house I’m staying at. It was a beatiful sunny day so I decided to sit outside and draw the view. The hills are inspiring and this can only help my digital environments once I return to Levin. 

I want to show a sense of scale – by drawing objects in the distance as well as the foreground.  Sitting on a bridge in the morning I drew this of the mountains in the distance. The blue is spose to be white, but putting some color into it made it feel finished.