This week actually lasted two week, due to Glenn being away teaching in Florida.

I confess I had great plan for the week off: I would work on my comic, and do everything I always want to do and never have time to do….. and of course, I did not do anything of all that, cause I started to have health problem on day one!

Now, what do you do with rare free time on your hands, a brain that cannot do anything brainy (line analysing something or having an idea)? Answer: you make the most of it, at least I tried: what can I do, being brain dead, that I would not do “normally” and that would benefit my art? It would have to be something that is better done when not thinking.

Being unable to think finding an answer obviously it took me a while, but I found the solution: copy a biiiiiiig thing!

I choose Raphael’s School of Athens (not one of my favourite painters, I personally prefer Pre-Raphaelites like Leonardo or Michelangelo… sorry, very bad joke, but I could not resist – and yes: I’m feeling much better :-D). I decided to copy the whole 55 characters and their draperies, but as right now it’s values that interest me the most, I took that painting (got a great good copy of it), copied it in shades of grey (get your mind out of that dirty book) and exaggerated the contrast. I used copic markers and….. copied away.

Here is my version of the beast, click on it to get a larger version.

This is not an assignment for my compo class, but I showed it to Glenn anyway.

His reaction (short – as it was not an assignment) holds in two expressions: number one: “you are crazy: this was supposed to be a week off!” and number two “you are right you must have learned something from copying all this”.

Grouping figure, doing folds etc, yes I learned something. Since then I have a different attitude to folds in clothes, I am not scared of them anymore – mind you, I still do them wrong too often, but I’m not scared!

As scientists say in Japanese Gojira movies (the only ones worth watching): “let this be a lesson for mankind!” I’d also add that I’m also far calmer when faced with many many figures. Grouping shapes is ok: I’ve done it before!

55 figures in this painting, including a woman who is supposed to be an egyptian philosopher that the client for the painting did not like (she opposed the christian church) but Raphael painted her anyway, made her look like the favourite nephew of the patron (clever!). Also Raphael did a self-portrait in the painting (easy to recognise by the clothing), added old Diogenes on the steps as an after-thought which was a stroke of genius and made the composition work. And exclusive news:  there is an extra foot in this painting! I know I copied it all. Yes a leg that cannot belong to anyone in the crowd! It seems that Raphael, like his fellow mutated turtles had a sense of humour (if you don’t get the turtle joke, or if it makes you mad, email me, I can help) and like them loved hiding easter-eggs in his work.

Meanwhile, at the ranch – or should I say meanwhile, while sick, I still had to do my assignment for compo 2, the topic of the week being “subjective frontals” (and for the second time please take your mind out of the gutter!)

I have been in the Vilppu academy for two years now, and I have never seen anyone draw or paint a tentacle. As in compo 2 we can choose our topics freely, and I wanted to do something not too heavy but fun, I choose a spread, like a final page for a comic. Topic: old Cthlhu.

Here is he result of my work:

 

That’s a lot of tentacles, right? Takoyaki anyone? I found out they are very convenient (tentacles, not takoyaki) for composition, they can come and go which ever direction you want – cool and convenient!.

I was hoping to tell a story by showing only the end image.

Something very odd happened: for two years, not a tentacle in sight in any class, as I said. When I got  Glenn critic for this week there were…. 3 other students who had included tentacles in their work!

Either Cthulu is coming back and sending us mental messages or we all saw something about Lovecraft’s birthday online…. in any case….

Glenn’s critic was meeeeeeeeeeh (facebook expression meaning: “so so”): is this happening in a cave or tanker, the rock they stand on look like a tree trunk, the water looks solid, and my plan (which I described in the accompanying email) of having a yellow light come as main light from the right (possibly from under water – the eyes of the creature, of course) and a blue rim light coming from up left (night light) was…. a tall order: it would mean each tentacle would cast several shadows on the shapes below them – let’s face it:  I have created myself a hell of a job to do for next week, Glenn obviously felt sorry for me.

Shall I persevere of do something else? Well, my health will answer that. In anycase Glenn did a lengthy demo of how he would tackle the lights problem by drawing over my drawing (I love it when he does that, it makes things so clear) and indeed….. I agree, Glenn: I’m crazy! I caught and understood a few ideas about lights during this demo that are going to be very useful to me in the future, whatever I choose to do with this piece, and that is perhaps the main thing.

We’ll see next week what happens in my mind (for the moment I have a picture of 4 ninja turtles jumping into an image to beat the crap out of the guy in 50 shades of whatever…. that is not an helpful idea as both franchises are trademarked lol)

See you next week with an answer, and no cowabungas or I’ll loose my classic art loving readers!

And draw a lot ! At least once everyday!!!!