Final Storyboard

In the final storyboard my unamed character was chilling at the dock in her PJs, when this glowing mermaid thing (which is the angler fish's lure) comes out the water. She's supposed to be like crouching while looking down at the lure, with a concerned look on her face. I'm not really sure how I fudged up her design, but somehow I did. I drew her pretty awfully.

Anyways, while the lure is trying to bate the girl into the water, the angler fish is waiting underneath the surface. I tried to make the sky an water look dark. If the water is dark then there's no way the girl would be able to see what's hiding below. Even though I did kind of want to darken the water more, I felt like making it darker would have messed it up.

 

I was feeling good about this, until I started drawing the human faces, then... I don't know. They just look bad. I also feel kind of silly for making my good character an amputee with an undercut (her hairstyle) because the view of the drawing is from the left, whereas she doesn't have a right arm and her head is shaved on the right side. I guess I didn't think about the until I had already been coloring.

Character Designs

First Character Design

Villain

Background (Daytime)

Background 2 (Nightime*)

I like drawing fat, brown people, so that's how I came up with my first character. She doesn't have a name, just a random girl. She is missing her left arm and lives near a dock, which is where she spends a lot of her time. I think I've set this to take place during the summer, otherwise she'd have better things to do than sit on the dock all day. The first background I've posted is during the day, so she's wearing a prosthetic arm. However, at night (the second background) she doesn't wear the arm, I guess since that's when she sleeps. 

The second character came up because I like to draw mermaids a lot. I needed a villain, so I thought that a giant angler fish would be perfect for that. The story is that this angler fish usually eats mermaids, and over time its lure has evolved to look more like a human/mermaid face. 

The overall story is that the tides got unusually high that night, the angler fish was caught in the tides which is why it's at the surface of the water, and the girl just so happened to be at the dock that night (being unable to sleep). It's not the best, or most realistic story, but I don't think I can really do any better. After learning more about angler fish I don't think that any angler fish would ever be caught in a situation where it would be at the surface of water (unless dead).

*Not taken in the best light, also couldn't rotate it

Figure Drawings

Desmond

Ed

Caroline

    It’s very important to have the right proportions in a figure drawing, otherwise your drawing could end up looking like a weird alien (or simply something that’s not human) Having correct proportions has everything to do with anatomy. Honestly, if your anatomy is right by default so are your proportions. 

    Practice makes perfect, so all of the time we spent practicing figure and gesture drawing helped a lot. We watched a couple videos about gesture drawing, which helped me understand the technical things about it (such as time management, technique, etc.)

    My work kind of always looks not good and this time was really no different. Since my anatomy didn't look right, neither did the drawings. What I'm trying to say is that gesture drawing didn't hurt my art skills, but it also only helped a little bit. 

Animals That Move

To make texture with prismacolors, you have to control your pencil strokes and make sure to put in the high-lights and low-lights of the skin, fur, grass, etc. Since I needed to make fur for my pig, my pencil strokes were long and linear. I needed to look at my reference pictures a lot, to know where the fur got darker or lighter or was just another color altogether. Making the grass was very easy because all I needed to do was use different shades of green and make it darker the further back it went. However, the mud was not so easy for me; I'm just not sure what kind of texture mud has, so it ended up being a guessing game. In the end, I decided to make squiggles and swirls in browns and black. The fence looks a little wonky, since it's more yellow than I wanted it to be. At first I had a lot of trouble making value in this picture. Everything was just kind of the same shade. It took a lot of layering with the prismacolors to make it halfway decent.

Sketching out the ideas first was very helpful. It helps you figure out where everything will go and what colors to use. For example in my sketch of this picture, the pig was more red than pink. After looking at the sketch I had done, I realized that the pig wouldn’t look right if it wasn’t completely pink.  

My pig isn’t showing too much movement, since all it’s doing is walking in mud. I’m not sure how well I actually capture that, but all I was hoping for was that it would look a pig in mud. So I suppose I achieved my goal.

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Whole picture

Dresser, door, and a bed post

Dangling legs, slippers, various toys

This is supposed to be a picture from the perspective of under a bed. On this project I only used pen and ink. It was kind of difficult because I've never used pen and ink before, and the different techniques take forever to make such a big picture! I used cross-hatching for the bedposts, the dresser, door, and the sheets (they are a little small, but are right in front of the legs). I used stipling for the boards underneathe the mattress (not pictured), the light socket, and the shadows the feet make. I used plain lines for the shadows on the legs, slippers, and toys.

I'm not sure why I decided to draw someone (or thing) looking out from under a bed, it's just one of the first things I thought of when I heard the idea "oh the places you'll go." My other ideas were the inside of a coffin, and falling down a pit, although that last idea wasn't exactly my favorite. 

I'm not sure how other people think I did, but I'm not very proud of this drawing. It just looks...not good, I guess. I am proud of my pen and ink techniques! It took me a long time to do those techniques correctly.

Bag Drawing

Why is value important and how do you feel you achieved the look of the bag through volume? 

Value will give an object dimension and make it look realistic. Real things have many areas of lightness and darkness, cast shadows, and are three-dimensional.    


Discuss how you used the material and your successes and challenges with this project. 

My main challenge with this project was that the top half of the bag looks very light compared to the bottom half. The reason is that I shaded the bottom half too darkly, so I limited myself in the values I could add. If I tried to make some of the creases on top look as dark as on the bottom it wouldn't make sense, considering the bottom half of the bag was completely cast in shadow. I think I did succeed with the all the creases of the bag and the shadow beneath it.  

Interesting Perspective

Describe how you developed your ideas for this project.
I came up with a list of about 15 ideas, and chose three to sketch out. The idea I liked the most was a sketch of an angle below my dog sleeping on a couch. In the background is a bookcase and a photo collage. My dog sleeps a lot and often enough I take pictures of him sleeping, so it seemed obvious that I draw that. 

 How does the point of view impact the overall feel of the drawing? 
It's a very interesting angle, I think, because I haven't seen too many drawings looking up at pets. 

Discuss your creative process and how you challenged yourself to produce a quality piece.
The process was very long and stressful. There were so many textures and shading that I needed to do, and as it stands I'm not a very good artist, so I freaked out for a good chunk of the project. 
I ended up using 7H, 8H, and 6B pencils for a lot of the drawing, but I'd never used different graphites before, so that was a challenge. The other challenge of this project was drawing the textures of the couch and the wooden bookcase. Making the couch look bigger as it got closer was probably the hardest part for me, especially since where it got bigger, it also got lighter. There was some trouble drawing my dog, since I didn't have the luxury of having him right in front of me to look out, but I think I did a decent job on him.