Phew, That's week 2 done!

Week 2 went great!! I had my first Perspective class which was a fun experience! I think it might get a little tricky as the weeks progress but I can see now how Viscom, Perspective and Figure drawing are all going to come together.  :D cant wait!

So despite having the full work load this week we still manged to arrange a couple of get togethers as a term!  Tried out this great local restaurant and had my first Tai Tea which was realllllly yum!

We also had a pizza and Cards Against Humanity get together, which is kinda obligatory when you get a bunch of students together.  Its also great to test how fun a group is especially when you get cards like 'dead babies' and 'a sassy black woman.'  Everyone had a great time though which I think bodes well for the next few years.

Oh and I got some space in the fridge at the apartment allocated to me so I did some baking this week! Brownies were a must obviously but I also tried out Beef Empanadas which look like mini Cornish Pasties.  They came out pretty well I think, i'll have to consult with Angela one of my Colombian classmates.

Anway onto the pics :D

Group dinner outing 

Yum!

More yum!

Viscom moving onto spheres and cylinders... and droids! 

Perspective homework was to draw a room and a view of two buildings from above.  Each was only allowed to take 20min.

 We also had to do a self portrait but i'm not alllllllll that happy with mine so I will probably not be posting it :p 

More figure drawing.  Tried out the sepia toned pencil this week.  It lets me experiment a little bit more before committing to a curve with the black charcoal pencil.

Anyway off to bed Figure drawing tomorrow yay! Onward to week 3!

Week 1 Done!

Wow this was an intense first week! and I know that its actually like the easiest week in the next 3 years :p still it was a tonne of fun!

So I have had the intro lesson for all but one of my classes and they have all been amazing.  Viscoms was a lot like the basic perspective exercises I did at UWE when I studied architecture so it was kinda familiar territory.  Part of the homework however was to draw some boxes free-hand on top of a grid and man my free hand skills have all but dissipated :p I had a small paper bin full of failed attempts before I finally settled on 5 pages I liked.

Figure drawing was fun too, I think I spent most of my time this week working through the gestures and then rattled off the hands feet and master copy in the last couple days.  The master copies were way harder than I thought they were going to be! I guess I am just not that good at the static orthographic poses. But I wound up drawing the given poses about 5 times each so by the end I had something passable :p

Photoshop class was nice and simple and the homework was actually a lot of fun! We had to design 5 Facebook banners any way we wanted.  

Art history was nice too since it was mostly discussion based rather than essay writing.  Each of us were given a time period to research and develop into a project by week 10.  I got Gothic which is awesome! plenty of cool things to look into for that.

Lastly on Wednesday our entire term all got together and had a lecture from the Head of the school! which was very inspiring and at the same time a little sobering!

Each of us also had to go up on stage and say a little about where we came from and why we are here.  I have met some really cool people at the school and it was crazy to hear how many of us have almost the exact same stories!

anyway that's enough text how about some cool pics :P

Fist off my 5 facebook banners!

Vis Coms (All the boxes!)

And lastly we have some figure drawing from this week

First Class

OK I probably wont be posting after every class but I just had so much fun in my figure drawing class with April Connors!  I'm a little rusty but its slowly starting to come back to me :) Though with my homework for this week (30 gesture drawings, 2 master studies and 5 hand and feet drawings I'm sure by next week I will be back where I was a few weeks ago.

I'm going to post my work even though its a little terrible mostly so I can look back at it in 10 weeks and see where I started.

We had a pretty simple introduction with some basic warm-ups and then moving onto some gesture practice which I will definitely be using in the future to warm up with and then finished with some proportion practice and guidelines for measuring out what we are drawing.  I am going to get a little extra practice this Friday though with an Indiana Jones and Lara Croft themed 'clothed figure drawing' session! Cant wait.
Well time for bed, tomorrow I have my first Visual Communications class.  I've heard this is one of the big time consumer classes so I hope its as fun as figure drawing was!

One day to go!

Friday was soooo fun (yes those extra o's were completely necessary).  We got shown round the amazing and very confusingly laid out campus, then we got grilled for a couple of hours on Gnomon policy etc. Doesn't sound as much fun on paper but the atmosphere was great. The studios look so cool and there is tonnes of fantastic art every time you turn a corridor. I am very looking forward to seeing Gnomon up and running on Monday!

I met a bunch of very interesting people too some of which were taking the 2 year track so I will see them from time to time panicking about render times etc that's a whole year off for me :p.  The majority of us on Friday though were taking the 3 year program, I am really looking forward to seeing their work and working along side them too.  Again though I can't wait to start on Monday!

So today was mostly errand running I cycled down to the Grove which is a very classy kinda shopping street I guess, I don't really have anything from home to compare it to.  To be honest it mostly reminded me of walking down a theme park like Alton towers or Disney land with the large departments, green features and walkways, maybe a couple of rides would make it an even more fun experience.

I did find Santa and his reindeer just chilling in the parking lot though. Maybe he is outsourcing some of his work this year.

On the way back I stopped off at one of the biggest art stores I have ever seen. I probably sound a little naive saying that in the USA but I still can't get over the size of just about everything here! The cars the roads the stores just everything is so big! And I love it! I've traveled to the US a few times before but it still amazes me. 

Lastly before I sat down to fully unpack and prepare for my last day of freedom for 3 years I used my Gnomon enrolment sticker to jazz up my bike! It fit almost perfectly on the coloured tag on the top frame.

Induction today!!!!!

So after a few weeks of boring paper work stuff, visa application etc I finally made it to LA! It's an amazing city I've only been on a 15 minute walk and a subsequent 2 hour cycle and I saw so many cool and diverse areas. Apparently the weather had been pretty bad over the last week with lots of rain but thankfully it's gotten much better! I saw the sun and everything!

Today though is the induction day for new students and I am so excited I woke up at 5:00am though that might be jet lag.
I have been working on a mini project while I was sorting out everything to leave the UK and here it is:

To be honest I was hoping to get a little further and try adding glowing textures, rigging and briefly animating this character once I found out that Sketchfab now allows you to post animated models.  But I ran out of time so I just got to the basic texture painting stage.  I might pick this up again later but I doubt I will have time with Gnomon's workload.  Still it was a lot of fun and a nice break from all the travel/immigration planning.

I will try to post more regularly now and show some of my work at Gnomon.  I considered taking this blog down and starting a new one but I kinda like the idea of looking back in a few years and seeing where I started from.

Anyway here goes!