John Mahoney's class: Drawing from Film

Yesterday's class with John Mahoney was "Drawing from Film", in which John asked us to draw out certain shots in the movie Frida, using materials like Pastels and watercolor. We tried to capture the wonderful color composition in the shots and we had a wonderful time! We also tried to draw out frames and treat the shots like a graphic novel. Each shot in the movie seems so artistically thought of, and I definitely learned a lot yesterday.


Last week's class was to draw from an old black/white movie named Othello. We used charcoal to draw out the interesting values in the shots.



Here's also some very old life-drawing art of a female model done 2 months ago.


And finally, some personal art from my trusty little sketchbook. Right now I am trying to flex my cartooning muscles, and taking inspiration from artist like Carter Goodrich. There's also a nice little color sketch which I named "I come in peace"

John Mahoney's class

For the past 2 days, I have been attending a class by John Mahoney, an artist whose point-of-view really inspired me to re-think on how I approach art. On yesterday's life-drawing class, he asked us to combine traditional life drawing with a few references of concept art and graphic art. We were free to experiment with the process, and the results that came out were very fresh and different. I did a crouching guy who's tied up with three vicious dogs and a Death-dealer guy who's arm is being swallowed by a massive dog. We are also free to use whichever material we want; be it watercolor, charcoal or pastels. I had so much fun and free from worry as there was no right or wrong in our creations. So this is what art is about: Personal creative expression.






My background history is a fairly typical one; I am trained in Industrial design, and I am used to drawing realistic items and be able to communicate through representational art. I have always thought that a good art is one that can mimic reality as best as possible so that it can communicate well. But since having exposed to John's ideas, I now view the world with a more open mind.

Btw, here's some other stuff:
Grim reaper crosses to the other side.


A sketch on birds, especially on a Little Bittern I saw at a nearby mini-lake.

Dead Fish

Here's a dead fish. This nice surprise should be enough for 2 weeks of food, if Gimeor preserves the meat. By the way, Gimeor has been sporting a nice deep tan ever since stumbling upon this beach.

Butthead and HammerEyes Alien

Microbot

Getting busy back at work, so I won't be painting so many personal stuff from now on. Here's a sketch, in which I'm particularly intrigued by a girl who slept in the MRT train.


Look what landed on my fingers! Miniature Alien robots from outer space.

Prawnsusochus Crabilis

A tribute to The Iron Giant (a great movie by Brad Bird). In the case, his big bad metal evil cousin.


Off the coast of the Malacca Straits, researchers have recently captured amazing photographs of the long thought to be extinct gigantic crustacean Prawnsusochus Crabilis. Here's one of the amazing images. This gentle giant feeds on small organisms in the sea such as krill and plankton.


"Big Structure floating in the clouds". I wanted to capture a "heavenly" atmosphere, where the sun is shining brightly above the clouds. This attempt is by no means satisfactory, so I hope to re-visit this concept soon.

Lots of stuff

This was supposed to be an easy color exercise but slowly turned out to be a hard-but-learned-much exercise. I just wanted to paint a scary scene which has a door that this guy would think twice before entering. I found out that it's definitely not that easy to create a scary mood; the door's lighting keeps on becoming somewhat like "a light at the end of the tunnel" which brings up a positive mood. In the end, I realized that it's better to have dimmer lighting behind the door. Phew!
5th attempt (Final):





"Here's one featuring Dr. Loonie's wacky pet creations. He takes his pet for a walk in the park just to take in a little sunshine." This is my second attempt; the first attempt (at the right) didn't look like it's getting enough afternoon sun and the pet's gray horns were too dull. Didn't work for me.



Silver-Red giant falls to the ground. KO and you're out !



Gimeor's point of view before before being pecked by a big bird.


Just some mysterious looking steps that lead to a candlelight party. :)


This sketch below was done some months back while trying to create a Photoshop Brush that hopefully looks like pencil. It's a guy with horns as chins, long ears. You know, the typical Narnia meets LOTR types of characters.