Drawing for games: first attempts

27/09/2012

First session in class we were asked to chose from 2 photos and reproduce them. I have chose Salvador Dali. Time allowed for this was 30 min and for my first attempt, I must say, I'm quite happy. Coming into this course with no background whatsoever in drawing, I am really interested to learn techniques, and all different types of drawing and medias.

Second assignment was to draw our hand in an awkward position. Again, I was quite impressed with how it came out. Again, as far as I remember, time allowed, was 30 min, so considering you can actually recognise a hand, I am happy.

Third assignment on the same day, was to pick a corner of the room and draw it. Not too sure about this. I do recognise it as a corner of the room, but I'm not sure if anyone else does as well...

Fourth task of the day, was to look at some famous artists and study their techniques and then chose one style and draw something in the room applying that specific technique. I have chosen Delacroix as my inspiration and have drawn something from a poster on the wall, using curved lines.

1)Matisse

2) Van Gogh

3) Delacroix

4) Ben Shahn

5) My own drawing

We were then taught how to warm up for a drawing session. Because in a normal day to day basis, as a right hand user, we normally engage the left side of the brain in order to accomplish basic tasks, when doing anything to do with art, we need to engage the right side of the brain. In order to do that, the following exercise is very useful.

Vase / Face contour drawing

The next exercise we did, was to copy an upside down drawing. We were given a black and white portrait of Igor Stravinsky done by Pablo Picasso, in order to engage the right side of the brain, as apparently, by drawing upside down, you copy lines not things (i.e. body parts, chairs, etc). I realised that my proportions are totally off, as his head did not fit on my page, so I will definitely have to practice more on this.

Pablo Picasso - Portrait of Igor Stravinsky (upside down drawing)

For the next exercise, we had to draw our hand without looking at the paper. It was a very interesting attempt. Of course it looked slightly like a hand, in the sense that it had 5 fingers, but apart from that, it's quite far from a human hand.