Observational Drawings



 Observational drawings are incredibly important in lots of different ways. They help in the growth of an artist, they can help an artist understand the object(s) better and they can inform an artist for a piece of work that they're undertaking. In my case, I'm planning to do a piece of animation either in my reading week or over the christmas holidays. As you can probably guess from the sketches below, the stars of the piece are going to be hands and feet (I know, it sounds strange!). I'm using the exercise to teach myself how to use Adobe After Effects and hopefully, I should also be able to have some fun too!

Over the summer holidays, I went to Spain and was in a very rural area for the Fiestas in August; Villadiego. There I saw some traditional spanish dancing and that is what has inspired me. I took lots of videos of the intricate hand and feet movements and hopefully I'll be able to recreate the beauty of them.

Most of the time, I can use my own hands and feet for reference but for those occasions when my hands are crampt and I can't physically rotate my feet to the correct angles, I use these references for anyone who is interested:

Hands: Hand References by SenshiStock on Deviantart

Feet: Feet References by mostlyguystock on Deviantart

Until next time!

And It Begins Again!

Hi everyone! Today was the start of my 3rd year induction week and so the madness of term begins again! Here is my first post of the new year! To explain, over the summer I downloaded a trial of a piece of animation software called 'TV Paint'. I may be buying and using it for my film this year, so I thought I should have a go first!

Patito from Julia Young on Vimeo.

Throwback Monday

I've posted a few nostalgic posts over the summer and I promise that this one is the last! Finding these old drawings from first year is lovely on a few counts; it is good to see improvement, good to reconnect with old ideas I've had about creativity and good to reaffirm where I am now. It's made me excited for third year!

Drawn at Cardiff Museum, October 2012:

 

Drawn at home, the Cotswolds, Spring 2013

Drawn from photographs, Easter 2013:

 

Studies

It's almost time to go back to university for my third year! So, in the interest of bringing my observational skills from where I've let them slack over the holidays, as well as life drawing, I've been doing more observational drawing. This week it's been hands and feet.

 

 

Concepting

The other day I felt the need to both be productive and blow off a little creative steam by working on something different for a couple of hours. The result was that I put together a couple of concepts for my housemate's game project. His brief was to do an old abbey in the style of the 1992 'Dracula' film, on top of a cliff with waves crashing below. He also wanted a couple of interior shots. Here is what I came up with: