9th week, how time flies! one more week and end of compo1, a week of vacation (that I’ll spend finalising the so-called “final” versions of my work) and then composition 2 – YES! a new class, the continuation of compo one, tougher, funnier, interestinger….. and yes, I know “interestinger” is not a word, but who cares!
Compo 2 will be fantastic, and due to all the positive feedback from my blog and forums I’ll go on blogging about it!!!

Just like that, here is a little bonus, a few heads I did with a thick pen (Glenn’s idea, and of course it worked wonders for me – the man is amazing)

in case you wonder, the ink is chocolate brown from diamine.

        Now something very unexpected happened, I had already added some 4 image funnies to my assignments just for fun and to comment on the tough life of the art student. This week I added this:

        During the critic of my work, Glenn literally ROTFLed at that last “funny”, which made me happy: “it’s really funny” I thought, then he became dead serious and told me I had a jewel-like (his words) talent for fast simple drawings that read immediately and I should now start working on creating a comic or strip and get it published.
        Now, according to my husband (for those who forgot I’m female even though Anton is my screen name) I spent the rest of the day with on my face the same expression our dog had the day she found herself face to face with the hedgehog in my in-laws’ garden and the hedgehog *sniffed* her! “WTF” or rather “what just happened? Is this the right reality or am I still in bed dreaming?”. Took a while to sink in that I was considered marketable by someone like Glenn whose experience, honesty and knowledge of the market is considered by all to be perfect, up to date and totally trustworthy.
        Ok, I’ll be really honest: I am writing this 5 days later and it still hasn’t sunk in even if i’m beginning to get to work on “it”.
        Funny but people who know me and are themselves artists are not surprised at all, I’m apparently the only one in WTF mode 😀 makes sense!
        More about all this later, I must chew on this before talking further about it.

        This week, Glenn was teaching in Japan, but he made the impossible possible: he found a time slot that was compatible with both US and Europeans students. he combined the compo chat and the “all the rest” chat together and we got a magnificent 2 hours drawing with comments, questions. Like I said to my classmates: it really made waking up at 6AM while on vacation totally worthwhile for me, a great great demo by a master!

        The critics: this week, as per order of the Master I did my assignments on paper with pencil (why do I imagine Yoda saying: “ in paper and pencil the Force will gather Hummmm no cintiq thou shall use, young Padawan!”) LOL

        Assignment one was about mass and space, and number two about diagraming space, here they are – considering they were illustrations for imaginary books, I wrote the sentences they were supposed to illustrate. Apologies for the bad scan quality, next week will be better.
        Here are the two new version of those beasts:

        (((aside: Why did I call the geek Sheldon….no idea (cynical grin, ask Mr Spock – he knows).)))

        Glenn found both to be big improvements on the previous versions – pencil is good for me (I did about 20 different versions on paper of both of these).
        The family sitting under the tree read great, the mass of the rock is rrrrreally a contrast to the space behind the family, that’s finally good! I could work the big rock on the right so that the lines, lumps and veins of it add to the compo by repeating (or not) the figures on the left. One annoying little thing: the bit of lake shore on the left of the tree and Mama is not quite well related to the rest of the lake. grrrr.

        The office scene READS too!!! loud and clear at long last! Glenn think I could concentrate all the good things in it by making it a narrower drawing (less characters, less cubicles) and having the “camera” move lower to that effect.

        The new topic of the week was… diagramming space 2 (the revenge of the sequel of diagramming space from last week which was “1” but we did not know then). It’s an important and very difficult topic. Here is what my pencil came up with:

        Glenn likes it: the eye goes around from arm against door to bottle; to fist and face of good guy, to his arm protecting the mom and babe. Also the floor, walls, and landing behind the dad are creating lots of space.
        Two little things: the door and window have no thickness! (not such a tiny thing: do that at Disney and you get sacked out!), also the protective arm of mr good guy could be better drawn (let’s be honest: it could be “drawn” instead of just “indicated”)

        Next week is week ten, final week of compo one, then compo two starts.
        And now on top of that I am also working on a comic.
        If any of you have special prices on vitamin C get in touch with me 😀

        NEXT EPISODE (JIKAI YOKOKU for anime/manga fans) the big all paper-and-pencil final of this number one compo class – but certainly not the end of my compo studies (compo 2 coming!) or blogging here.

        Will our hero …… er…. get out of WTF mode and let it all sink in, cause I may be already working on a comic but…. I’m not sure this is the right reality – things don’t go that well for me usually, even when I work real hard. So either I have a nasty low esteem problem, or I’ve finally found my “calling” and “tribe”… or both!

        see you in a few days!