21 March 2021 - Reading time: 5 minutes

IN/BREAK, the Transept 2021 art exhibit, opened this weekend!

Link to the Transept 2021 online exhibit

Who they are (quoted from their website):
"Transept is a group of artists and theologians connected to The Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of St Andrews exploring the intersection of theology and the arts, where theory meets practice."

The exhibit is held online, and runs from 19 March to 2 April, 2021.

This exhibit features many amateur and professional visual artists, writers, poets, playwrights, and multimedia producers.  The curators are debuting works every day, a few at a time.  My series of four works will be released on 23rd March.  (It's not out yet, as of writing this Dispatch.)

I'm honoured that my artwork could be part of this fantastic exhibit.

I'm working on a 'Debrief and Reflection' post, as I've learned a lot from the month of producing my series of 4 works for Transept (aka: my "Big Art Project").  I want to also feature my artwork in this reflection, so I'm waiting for my art to debut in the exhibit to post it.  Expect an additional, special Dispatch in the middle of this week.

In the meantime....

Fun Art

Since I began writing the Weekly Art Dispatch, the vast majority of my art has been fanart, or drawing original characters that I already had designed before.  This week's drawing was my first attempt to get back into original character design/concept art. It was a bigger challenge than I expected.

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14 March 2021 - Reading time: 6 minutes

First things first--

My art is appearing in an exhibit!

Yes, this was Big Art Project that dominated my art life during February.  Transept 2021 is a themed exhibit of art and performance held by the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts, at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.  They sent out a call for artists (professional and amateur) in late January and I spent all February creating a series of drawings for the exhibit.

This year's theme is In/Break: "a breaking in: inroad, invasion, incursion."  Transept's online exhibit will open from 19 March - 2 April, their Facebook page has details for the events.  I'll post with more news later when the URL to the exhibit is released.

Creating art for a themed exhibit was a great learning experience for me.  I'm planning to write a reflection about my experience later on (after the exhibit opens and I can post those works here), but for now -- I'm honoured that my art can be part of Transept.

Now, to the rest of this week's Dispatch...

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1 March 2021 - Reading time: 5 minutes

Mission accomplished! The month of February is over, and I've finished both the Big Art Project and Figuary 2021. Much to celebrate!

Big Art Project

Piece #4 of the Big Art Project is finished! Here are a few previews.

Life this week was extremely busy. The Art Project was one of many deadlines I had to meet; plus, I left the hardest art piece to the last, and Art Piece #4 had a bit of a tough start. I don't think I would've been able to finish it while juggling all my other RL responsibilities, if not for a new development that happened last weekend: I acquired a drawing buddy.

Every day this week, this online acquaintance and I met up at a set time every day through private messaging on Discord (chat server), and we did at least one cycle of four Pomodoros together to reach our individual drawing goals. I'm usually pretty good at managing my time independently, but having an accountability partner is doubly good because their presence helps me maintain my productivity focus, and prevents me from slacking off around the edges.

So I finished Piece #4 on the back of daily Pomodoros -- and comfortably ahead of the project deadline too. With such a busy week, I don't think I could've managed to stay focused on my art project without the help of this drawing buddy. Many thanks! :) And it worked out so well that we're going to keep at this drawing practice every day.

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22 February 2021 - Reading time: 7 minutes

Big Art Project and Figuary continues apace.  And I bought a bunch of art instruction books!

The books are: Figure Drawing for Artists by Steve Huston; Color and Light by James Gurney; and Imaginative Realism by James Gurney.  Gurney's books have been on my wishlist since the day they were published (hey, can't have too much of his artwork).  Steve Huston teaches figure drawing courses at New Masters Academy, but I'd rather have his instruction book on hand.

That just about covers all the art instruction books I want to buy.  (I still want John Howe's Fantasy Art Workshop but that seems a bit harder to find.)  I've been reading Huston as I'm doing Figuary, and it's been extremely informative.  More about this, possibly, in a future Dispatch.

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14 February 2021 - Reading time: 6 minutes

RL was quite busy this week, but somehow I managed to make progress on that Big Art Project, more-or-less keep up with Figuary 2021, and even draw a bunch of other stuff!

Study art & Figuary 2021

Lovelifedrawing's Figuary month of figure drawing has been great, even though I was playing catch-up from the start and still haven't caught up!  I've already learned a new gesture drawing technique -- the block-in method, from the Figuary tutorial playlist on YouTube.  I used to begin figures with the head and the line of action, but the block-in technique begins with the torso.  It's a good paradigm shift: I think it's helping me improve on my proportions, and build more 3-D form into the whole body.

I'm doing the Figuary practice poses in batches of about 2-3 videos, the sustained practice helps me consolidate the techniques better than doing one video every day.

Some Figuary gestures, in pencil (top) and pen (bottom).  I prefer doing them in pen, but might switch between both to get the hang of the different tools.

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7 February 2021 - Reading time: 5 minutes

Progress on my Big Art Project continues.   I was quite worried last week that I wouldn't be able to recover easily from the impostor syndrome -- and while recovery wasn't easy, it only took a few days before I could get back onto the art train.  The last time impostor syndrome knocked me down, I took 2 months to get back up.  So a few days down is definitely a win!

The Art Life: Big Project

I finished the first out of a planned 4 pieces.  Continuing and finishing art is a major breakthrough -- especially for a project under deadline like this one.

The full Piece #1 will appear later, so in the meantime, have the supporting documentation.

Preliminary thumbnailing of the full image.

The "scratch file" where I drafted various ideas before committing them to the actual image.

A few glimpses of the finished work.  On A4 sketchpaper, includes a pencil tip (sharpened with scalpel) for scale.

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