Zhangger's Artist Journey
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April, 2011
01
My Journey
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Drawing after Neufforge
4/8/2011 10:32:31 PM
This is the first time I worked with tri-color charcoals. I like it as a media. I can get the work very soft by blend it with a piece of paper stubble. At areas that I want to show the lines, I can just leave it as it is. I can lay color together in a cross cutting manner. This allows me to put the cool and warm color on the lady’s face.
The concept is light here. The way that the light reflects off the body in this drawing is very realistic. By adding highlights with my white charcoal, I was made very conscious about how light hits the body. It really makes me think about bone structure on human face/body, and how it contours causing light reflections.
I started by sketching in the rough composition in general shapes, then slowly fine tone the shape of the face. I then add in large block of color, then render more carefully with different colors and rubber to lighting up certain areas.
The necklace in the beginning looks very tight on the lady’s neck. This was because I used sharp lines around the pearls and very dark color for the shadow. To correct this, I removed lines around the necklaces, instead using color blocks to show the highlight on the pearl and lowlight on the shadow between the pearl. I also softened and lightened the pearl shadow. This made the pearl looks much looser on the lady’s neck and more realistic.
Here is a look at the finished picture.
Art Journey Week 1
4/8/2011 9:52:00 PM
I am an artist, who is currently trying to focus on becoming more serious about my art. This is a long journey I would like to share with you for the next several years.

Let me introduce myself a bit here first. I always liked drawing when I was a kid. Growing up in China, under the strict academy studies, I was unable to explore my artistic interests fully. However, through my childhood, I did have regular art classes twice a week in middle school. On my spare time, I would copy or create animation drawings. I worked mainly in ink, pencil and watercolor.

Fast forward, 2 years ago, I rediscovered my passion through attending an oil painting class in experimental college. There I met my current oil painting teacher, Diane. I have been going to her on and off once a week since then. I really loved oil as a media. Recently, I started to sale my work to friends and through art shops.

Meanwhile, I have grown more and more unsatisfied with the amount of time I spent on my art development. I have a strong desire to find my style and become a better artist. Remaining a hobbyist is no longer satisfying my artistic desire. I find myself etching to spend more time painting and drawing. This is when I had a serious talk with Diane, who happens to be a self-taught professional artist that masters multiple media.
 
She has suggested that I took my artist growth to a new level, to develop a professional portfolio, going back to the beginning and seriously invest in learning my basic skills before leap into finding my own styles. She suggested that I should expand my media and form of fine arts to 5 different categories at least. The 5 categories that I am interested in are so far:
 
1. watercolor
2. painting (oil or acrylic)
3. drawing
4. pastel
5. digital arts (photography included)

I am currently looking for people who can help me building knowledge around watercolor, pastel and digital arts.

This is my first week into my program. I have finished a charcoal copy of Neufforge's drawing, and started a painting copy of Frans Hals’ work.
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