OccultusVenustas's Blog

Accurate drawing

OccultusVenustas — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:41 +0000

Kafkaesque

OccultusVenustas — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:17 +0000

Kafkaesque is a term to describe a situation that we do not understand often marked by a surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger. This term came from a man called Franz Kafka who wrote the story of the trial. It tells of a man arrested and prosecuted for a crime that is never revealed to him or the reader. For my example of kafkaesque I based the idea of being punished for someting that you dont understand. My piece is set in the future where a girl has been kept after school to learn dress code ettiquette because she still looks individual and has yet to conform. This is loosely based back in the 1930′s when Adolf Hitler became the absolute dictator in Germany and began exterminating other less pure races than his own to make everyone the same. In my modern piece I have a world of clones where evryone must be the same dress the same and act the same. The angle I chose was throught the wall like someone is watching.

Out of perspective

OccultusVenustas — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

There are many types of perspectives, military, political, emotional, social etc, and I decided on emotional. I have drawn a young boys perspective of the night and what he perceives to be monsters in his room probably created by shadows from objects. After feedback I realised I had ended up with an isometric drawing meaning all lines are parallel therefore there is never a vanishing point and so can’t be in perspective. So I had passed the criteria without even knowing it. I am quite pleased with this weeks exercise I think the precise use of line and minimal colour could work well as a future style. My aim is to develop into a more stable structured style.

Using elipses to get perspective

OccultusVenustas — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:22 +0000

Project Lies: Final Pieces

OccultusVenustas — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:00:55 +0000

For my final pieces I began thinking about scale and ways of conveying my ideas. My first lie is a children’s tale ”There are monsters in our house and if you don’t go to bed they are going to come and eat you”. I ended up creating a small set of a hallway with a cupboard under the stairs. The original plan was to make two one downstairs and one in a bedroom looking under the bed. I thought the monsters under the bed was a bit too cliché and obvious and with the time restriction I ended up with just one set. I photographed it from different angles with different lighting which were then touched up on Photoshop just to smooth out the rough edges. Overall I am pleased with the final outcome especially considering it was my first time of making a set.

My second theme was identity, shown through photographic images of myself that I played around with on Photoshop to convey plastic surgery, changing someone’s looks, what identifies them is a lie. The first image I tried to make look quite robotic showing no emotion to convey the idea of people having all the same idea of what is beautiful but really they’re just starting to look like everyone else like a clone. The second image shows half the face natural with the other with high contrast, high makeup quantity and highly fake outlook. The 3^rd is my favourite, the skin looks almost grafted and very badly at that, the makeup is painted on in a smile and the surgery lines almost blend in to the poorly constructed face.

Drawing Elipses

OccultusVenustas — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:00:01 +0000

Project Lies

OccultusVenustas — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:28 +0000

We were asked to prepare for today so I made a list of lies that are told to children, serious lies, silly tell tales etc.. It turns out there are many more types of lies than just speech as I found out when we went through a slide show of other artists that have used a form of lie in there work. Such as a lift small enough for a mouse but when photographed looks just like an ordinary lift and small cardboard and paper sets that look real life. For the time being I stuck with drawing out some examples from my preparation but all the while keeping in mind of other aspects of lying. Below are a few of my initial sketches including answering the question; “where do babies come from?” eating disorders, embellishment, pregnancy and surgery.

A Paradigm Shift

OccultusVenustas — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:37 +0000

Todays lesson was brief for we had visitors from China stay for most of the day. We all had time to communicate and make some contacts for the future before carrying out our visual drawing for the day.This was based on either a paradigm – The thing that everyone accepts, a paradigm shift – where normal things shift to the opposite or a point of view drawing. I chose the paradigm shift of a deer poised like a human about to shoot an animalistic person with a bow and arrow.

Three things – Photo referencing

OccultusVenustas — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:46 +0000

Basically pick a picture of a place, prop and person and put together to make one final image. For the first piece I used fineliner for the girl who is sitting on the wing of a plane like a doll with the prop; a stopwatch necklace around her neck blowing in the wind. I wasnt too sure how the proportions came out especially for the girl as i think her head is too big for her body. Because this exercise was about accurate drawing I decided to do another piece with the girl in a slightly different position falling off the plane wing. I also moved the wing higher up the image and repeated another below instead of sticking with the exact photo of the place. I believe this one was more successful and had more thought put into it. I think the pastel type colours and pencil worked well with each other.

The Ghosts of Planet Retail

OccultusVenustas — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:32 +0000

As war became more inevitable the relationship between men and women in society was changing and so came the creation of the concept ‘femme fatale’. The women having the power as the men trained for war. This leads to film noir and the specific use of shadows. It’s a poor time as money is rationed to build machines for war so the artist uses shadows instead to suggest that something is there that might not actually be.

The first image below is from a film titled ‘touch of evil’. It shows strong tension between male and female with the female almost in centre shot with the idea of her as the light , the one light shining out of the darkness. There is a feeling of danger for the woman as the male in front of her casts an ominous shadow on the wall and a dark shrouded figure in the background.

The second image is from ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and shows a spider-like woman also in the light with her head held high with the male looking uneasy, head downturned and a shadow cast across his face.

As all this comes in to play; war, femme fatale, poverty, violence so does the photography of Walker Evans. He photographed a dream that went wrong. The billboards in front of the house show hollywood films full of cheapness and brutality and a rise in crime as confidence drops showing the true mood of the nation.

Todays visual drawing is titled ‘The ghosts of planet retail’ and incorporates the use of machines, femme fatale and film noir with the use of shadow, black and white. I the composition of the escalators being off centre. I tried to make the female look like the only form of light but I could have created me shadow in the background. Alternatively I could have tried the composition the other way round with the view from the top of the escalators looking down with the male creeping up behind.