Saturday, December 17, 2011

An Update a Day, Days Nine and Ten

Hopefully, this post will be the last one where I cover two days in one. My break isn't necessarily ideal, but I'm making the most of it. Here's an acrylic painting of an alpaca and a still life done in oil. I have to say that I've learned a great deal from these two pieces about color and temperature; something just clicked with each exercise.

The alpaca was the first piece where I really considered temperature and learned of its importance. Before this piece, I was trying to wrap my head around warms and cools and how temperature affected color and form. I'm not sure if the concept of temperature was executed well in this piece, but I can say I learned much about temperature in executing the painting. A big thank you to Matt Howley for pushing the concept of temperature onto my painting. You guys can check out his blog at: http://mattyhowley.blogspot.com/





















The pears were absolutely fun to paint. I've handled oils for a while now (unfortunately I still use student grade oils) but the approach for this painting was refreshing. I put down a "washy" cadmium red light underpainting of the still life, and then, I painted right over the underpainting while it was still wet. I considered the influence of the underpainting in my mixes, and when it was necessary, I simply overpowered the influence with sheer volume. The real fun was in painting the white cloth. I really struggled to see and exaggerate the colors on the cloth. Again, I probably walked away with more than I could put on the canvas. A very big indirect thank you to Andrew Theophilopoulos, a constant inspiration, friend, and teacher, for bringing to my attention the importance of saturation and color. You guys can check out his website at: http://cargocollective.com/Theonides





















P.S. I'll be posting more recent sketches and current projects starting next post!

Friday, December 16, 2011

An Update a Day, Days Seven and Eight

I'm kind of cheating here. Here's a couple figures I did in vine charcoal and in conte. Of all the mediums I've worked with, I have to say I've had the most fun with vine. Conte was fun as well but conte never gave me the freedom vine charcoal could.




Wednesday, December 14, 2011

An Update a Day, Day Six

The oil portraits were done within the first few weeks of the fall semester. I thought I should post them to keep me humble and to give you guys a good laugh.

The last piece is a portrait I did with nupastel with a limited palette, and I believe finished it within the last few weeks of the semester. Most of the colors I used were a bit impure and the darkest pastel was the violet. I thought a limited range of values would help give the drawing a softer more delicate mood. I hope you guys enjoy!




Tuesday, December 13, 2011

An Update a Day, Day Five

Here's an axolotl drawn with Micron pens. I ran into problems trying to find the right texture for the skin because I had two different references, one where the axolotl was pink and another where the axolotl was black with rough skin. I decided to weave the textures I saw in both references together, referencing the pink axolotl more where the values were lighter and the black axolotl more where the values were darker. Enjoy!

P.S. My mat was destroyed over the course of the semester. Sorry.


Monday, December 12, 2011

An Update a Day, Day Four

Here's some watercolor pieces I completed sometime first semester. I really enjoyed the technique for its fast pace and quick execution. For those of you wondering, the food was this weird fruit jam, or "fruit cheese", spread atop cheese and sprinkled with powdered sugar.



Sunday, December 11, 2011

An Update a Day, Day Three

Guess what? MORE FIGURES.

These were all done in graphite, a medium I was fortunate enough to explore during high school. I had a difficult time seeing the correct proportions with the pencil, and as evidence, I made a quick edit to the third figure down.

For my approach, I tried to capture the gesture as quickly as possible using simple strokes and shapes. Concerning the rendering, I approached it tonally until I captured the basic design of the shadows, and then, I went back and forth from a tonal approach to a mark making approach. I feel like the weakest part of the drawings, as far as rendering's concerned, was the line weight. A lot of the shapes seem to fall flat because of it. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy.




Saturday, December 10, 2011

An Update a Day, Day Two

This is a fairly recent painting done for Painting I. We primed the canvas with black gesso, so the process was to paint around the black and utilize it as we saw fit. My goals in this painting were to focus more on simple shapes and the design of the buildings around me, to explore temperature with a limited palette (the scene originally had a fairly limited palette, but I tried to simplify it even further), and to study the behavior of the sky.

I'm always fascinated with the sky. I used to see, at most, two colors, but now, the palette seems to be constantly changing. I left an impression of the changing light in the sky, the yellow in the middle of the shape, and I really enjoy it. I hope you guys like the study.


Friday, December 9, 2011

An Update a Day, Day One

I'm trying to keep myself busy by uploading a post a day. I plan to upload past and recent works, experiments, studies, failures, and successes. I hope you guys enjoy the series as much I will working on it.

The next was an experiment in both process and execution. I tried to represent the concept of Schizophrenia through figurative work, and the only part of the process that was planned was the juxtaposing of figures and the letterings' design.

A big thank you to my good friend, Sishir. He's a big inspiration as to why I'm pursuing more experimental work and his stuff is always inspiring. Check out his blog at: http://sishirbommakanti.blogspot.com/.


Monday, December 5, 2011

A Quick Exercise

I had a lot of fun doing this quick self portrait, so I thought I should post it. I focused more on manipulating texture and trying to prevent the painting from looking too "digital".





Also, here's a speed painting of an alpaca.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

A Quick Post...

I felt like making a quick post as an apology for falling behind schedule the past two weeks.

I learned a lot about pushing saturation, and how it interacts with the other elements existing in the picture. I'm especially interested in pushing the color and saturation in reflected lights while maintaining control over temperature, another subject that I've been trying to pay more attention to. Again, I can't thank my peers enough for teaching me and helping me along. Never a dull day.


Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Bad Days Are No Excuse for Not Learning

Here's some WIPs up to the final figure. I had a lot of issues with this figure: the light was cool, the backdrop was warm, and I was seeing brown the whole time. I learned a lot in those two hours though.

I blocked in the figure really quickly. Unfortunately, I failed to "look" at the model correctly, so most of the painting remained crude for most of the session until some of my peers gave me direction. It's amazing how a fresh pair of eyes can help clear the fog from your work.


Sunday, November 6, 2011

Old and New, Portraits and Figures

Here's some figures I've done over the past three months. I realize I'm still learning, but I have to say, I don't like most of these.











Thursday, November 3, 2011

Figure Paintings And Illustrations

Hello, my name's David Han, and I've just started my blog, Havid Dan. I am the most original blogger on the planet. The first few posts are going to be a little unorganized. They're simply there to give you guys a sample of what I've been up to.

The pieces in this post were done anywhere from 1-3 months ago.