Ornery's Art Thread

[ornery]

Well this thread is long overdue.
Just a little show case of some of my more recent stuff that hasnt been put up on DA yet. Or some WIPs. Or whatever I feel like putting in, CUZ ITS MY THREAD DAMNIT.

Lets start things off with a conceptual light drawing.

I tried to make this one not too cheesy, which is what tends to happen when you draw someone with a cloak, so we added a bottle of Jack and stuck the light underneath it. Sadly I think I still ended up a bit on the corny side.

STATS;
Media- Pastel (chalk)
Size- 22 X 30 inches
Live model and photo reference
Time spent - ~5-6 hours

[Raguel]

This is nice. The lighting's very atmospheric.

[pitzwig]

Wonderful.

[ornery]

This was a statue that is sitting in one of the buildings of my school.

STATS;
Media - Charcoal (vine, compressed, white)
Size - 22 x 30 inches
Drawn from life (aka no photo reference)
Time Spent - 4 1/2 hours

[ornery]

How about a still life. Two glass/plastic bottles that were sitting on my floor.

STATS;
Media - White conte and white charcoal
Size - 30 x 22 inches (no not everything i do is that size.)
Drawn from life (no photo reference)
Time spent - 5 hours

[cuestaluis]

That is awesome!! Great lighting, volume, color balance, maybe it's the picture, but it could use just a hint more red on the fingers to give more of a translucid feel to the skin, but it is overall great!

P.s. I hate pastels, as I'm left handed I tend to smudge everything by mistake, and I get frustrated as hell, so I'm jealous, yeah (If you happen to be a lefty as well or know a way around my problem please let me know, please!!)

[ornery]

A W.I.P for a dramatic pose project. I couldnt get a model so i just used myself, which normaly means photo refrences. This is actually a composite image of like 10 different poses i took of myself.

If you look close you can see my psudeo grid working. I take a very very rough grid on certain areas of the drawing in order to get the composition correct and angles to fit properly with each other. And since this thing is a frankenstein creation of a whole bunch of poses i need to make sure they fit with well together.

[ornery]

At 10/8/08 05:32 PM, cuestaluis wrote: P.s. I hate pastels, as I'm left handed I tend to smudge everything by mistake, and I get frustrated as hell, so I'm jealous, yeah (If you happen to be a lefty as well or know a way around my problem please let me know, please!!)

Im not a lefty, but i know some tips on not smudging them.
1. put a piece of paper down under your arm or hand (whatever part of the body is smudging the drawing), newsprint or wax paper work good, the less texture and tooth on the cover paper the better.
2. Layer. Layer your pastels, dont go to thick to quick and you will smear less.
3. work from right to left. Work the right side of the drawing before the left side and you wont smear over what you have done. (righties work left to right)
4. Spray. Get some workable fixative, or even hairspray and spray your drawings so that what you have done stays put (warning only do this if you want what you have put down to stay. aslo dont over spray or you will blow away all your colors)

Try some of those tips and see if they work.

[ZVCH]

WOW! That is simply an amazing piece of artwork!

[Vousielle]

Gorgeous, as always.

[ornery]

At 10/8/08 06:13 PM, threadwood wrote: Good to see traditional artwork.

Yeah there really needs to be more on this forum, so far you are the only other one i can think of who does a good job with the traditional stuff.

Stuff looks good, I would just suggest making sure you have your structure down before you start rendering (I know how tempting rendering can be).

I dont really finishing rendering any part until the whole structure is done. The reason why I start rendering one area is sort of a pacifier. If i leave it all unrendered then i feel like its not going anywhere and looks like crap, so I put one area ahead of others and dont touch it till the others catch up, sort of like a goal motivation.

Also, try not to get too carried away with highlights. It's cool to make things look shiny, but I would stay away from pure white. It'll get a little MindChamber-ish (although very cool, everything is shiny).

Normaly unless im working on black paper I dont like using white because like you said it just makes things look unrealistically shiny, or it stands out to much. And if you try to blend it it just gets grey and ghostlike. But for this project the prof actually said he wanted bright white highlights to make it dramatic, if not for that I wouldnt touch white on this one.

[Savory]

Hands and feet BIGGER! The pelvis area feels a bit disconnected and broken as well. It is tedious.....but making a very good base above all the crazy techniques, will give the best results

[pitzwig]

At 10/8/08 05:41 PM, ornery-scotsman wrote: A W.I.P for a dramatic pose project. I couldnt get a model so i just used myself, which normaly means photo refrences. This is actually a composite image of like 10 different poses i took of myself.

If you look close you can see my psudeo grid working. I take a very very rough grid on certain areas of the drawing in order to get the composition correct and angles to fit properly with each other. And since this thing is a frankenstein creation of a whole bunch of poses i need to make sure they fit with well together.

I'll wait for you to finish before I judge. I'm not liking it now. It seems like an anatomical abomination, I'm sure you'll make it look good though. I'm damn sure!

[Rozner]

Very nice. I've been trying my way through oil pastels to do a portrait of my shoes and it's not done. It looks good so far, but... I'm not happy with it. It's not done and like many works of mine, it has gone unfinished.

How do you keep on going without being like me and not finishing it?

[Lemmiwinks91]

Great ciaro scuro on the first picture! and also i like how you made the model stand out in the second by black surrounding it, very clever. i look forward to seeing more

[ornery]

At 10/8/08 07:06 PM, Rozner wrote: How do you keep on going without being like me and not finishing it?

When its for my own stuff I do it when I am really in the mood to make something, and make sure to only work on it when I am in these moods. When its for a class its much easyer to be motivated because I know I have a deadline and will be graded on it.

Chances are if you are doing something and fighting the medium or object then you wont finish it. If you arent passionate about oil pastels, or drawing your shoes its going to be much harder to complete. To make a finished piece I recommend picking a subject that you really like and doing it in a medium that you know you enjoy as well. If you want to experiment with mediums just mess around with them on various surfaces using different techniques, dont have a finished piece in mind for things that are just experimental.

[Hammi]

Beautiful pastel work i admire em all, good job

f

[ornery]

And just so that you guys dont think everything I do is polished and balls to the wall awsome, how bout some paintings.

I hate painting, like really really hate it. Its not that I'm bad nessecarily, Ive done some decent paintings, but most of the time I dont give three shits about the piece so I put little to no effort into it because I despise the medium so much. Its just that I dont enjoy using burshes, or working with something that I have to allow to dry (I prefer oils over acrylics though, because acrylics are the fucking devil) or that once it is dry anything I do just covers up the previous stuff, which is really annoying.

I go to a supposedly elitist art school, have been creating art at a college level for something close to 6 years now, and because I am a drawing major I am forced to take at least one painting class, so being lazy I sign up for painting 1.... big mistake.

We do stupid shitty still lifes in this class that I havent had to do the likes of since I was a freshman in high school. So I give you an example of one of those crappy miserable still lifes.

STATS;
Media - Satans splooge (aka oil paint)
Size - 16 x 20 inches
Drawn from a piece of shit crappy still life in class
Time spent - 2 hours (out of a 6 hours class... yeah i wasted alot of time)

[InsertFunnyUserName]

Your art makes me wet.

moar >:(

[ornery]

Oh and to add a bit more to the rant above.

Fruit. Thats right fruit. Im a 22 year college junior (i transferd schools which set me back a few years) with 8+ plus years of what could count for basic art training, and Im painting fucking fruit.... FUCK YOU PAINTING 1

STATS;
Media - Shit (aka oil paint)
Size - 11 x 14 inches
Drawn from looking at a piece of stupid fucking fruit
Time spent - maybe 20 minutes on each if even that (we were supposed to spend 4 hours, yeah the prof couldnt tell anyway)

[megashell]

At 10/8/08 05:32 PM, ornery-scotsman wrote: How about a still life. Two glass/plastic bottles that were sitting on my floor.

STATS;
Media - White conte and white charcoal
Size - 30 x 22 inches (no not everything i do is that size.)
Drawn from life (no photo reference)
Time spent - 5 hours

THAT'S AWESOME SO REAL UBER COOL!!!! i actually thought this was a photo! But its drawn! That's unreal your amazing incredible wow! i need to see more MORE M-O-R-E

[CaptainQuartz]

The lighting in the first one is good, but in my personal opinion the rest are pseudo-intellectual drawings.
I won't say they're not good, because they show potiental.
They're just stuff that everyone who draws good does.

[Savory]

that's kinda because...they're class assignments.

[ismellarat]

I'm baffelled that you can make such amazing work with pastels, yet spew out such crap with paints.
No matter how long I take with pastels, I can't make anything that doesn't remind me of preschooler's drawings. On top of being hard to handle, if you touch the page you leave a huge smudge across it. Balls. Paints are way easier and better in my opinion.

[ornery]

At 10/10/08 03:13 AM, DemonsRemorse wrote: The lighting in the first one is good, but in my personal opinion the rest are pseudo-intellectual drawings.
I won't say they're not good, because they show potiental.
They're just stuff that everyone who draws good does.

I agree, my stuff has always had that problem. I once had a professor describe me as "give Neil (me) some pencils, an apple, and a bunch of time and leave him to his own methods and he will draw you the most realistic but boring apple you have every seen." I understand completly, none of my work really has any feeling or emotion put into it. Its something im strugling with because even when i get a drawing that very well could have a big significant meaning, the way i do it makes it lifeless and generic.

At 10/10/08 11:02 AM, Savory wrote: that's kinda because...they're class assignments.

Is this in reply to DemonsRemorse, or to my hatred of the paintings. If its the former see above, if its the latter then yes it definetly dosent help my liking painting when we are forced to paint that kind of garbage.

At 10/11/08 02:19 AM, ismellarat wrote: I'm baffelled that you can make such amazing work with pastels, yet spew out such crap with paints.

slightly different techniques, no brushes.

No matter how long I take with pastels, I can't make anything that doesn't remind me of preschooler's drawings. On top of being hard to handle, if you touch the page you leave a huge smudge across it. Balls. Paints are way easier and better in my opinion.

If you can use charcoal, you can use pastels. Very similar techniques. Adding color changes things up a bit, but then you just need to practice with a few color swatches much like you would with colored pencils.

[Savory]

nah I can't downplay people who try, I was just responding to that guy saying they looked like what everyone else draws.

But in second looking, yeah things are kinda bland. That might stem from your dislike/fear of abstraction. A lot of making a picture interesting is to put things in that aren't really there, lighting, shadows, slight deformation of form. Doing this well requires a lot of practice and understanding of the forms you're abstracting. I honestly feel anyone can take the time and effort to copy what they see to the last tiny skin pore, or crack. What you add to it is what brings it life and makes it aesthetically pleasing.

I think if you studied how people like animators draw you'd come to a better understanding of how to make things look alive, and like they have motion, even when it's just a single frame.

[ornery]

Recongize this? Its the end rushed result of the WIP a few posts back. I left it on the back burner for a while because I was sick and had about 5 other projects to do. All of the sudden the due date snuck up on me and I had to throw something together that looked somewhat finished. Not my usual style but meh. If i had more time this thing would be much more polished.

STATS;
Media - Charcoal (vine, compressed, white)
Size - 16 x 20 inches
Drawn from multiple photo refrences
Time Spent - 1 hour

[ornery]

How about more painting crap.
Wow, the camera really butchered this one. Completly butt fucked the colors, man i need a better camera.

STATS;
Media - Oil Paint
Size - 18 x 24 inches
Done from life
Time Spent - 4 hours

[Blain-The-Pain]

At 10/8/08 05:32 PM, ornery-scotsman wrote: How about a still life. Two glass/plastic bottles that were sitting on my floor.

STATS;
Media - White conte and white charcoal
Size - 30 x 22 inches (no not everything i do is that size.)
Drawn from life (no photo reference)
Time spent - 5 hours

Love this one, it looks like it's a photo, not a drawing. Well done.

[Hellknight1000]

:|
Amazing! You've got talent! I love how you do your see-through and glass.
Way to go!