Studying art: books, courses and creations

Hello! I thought it could be a good idea to publish here my "art status", related to what I have been doing and learning related to arts, and how. To sum up: books I´m reading/studying; courses ongoing; and my plenty of drawing/painting or literary projects finished or to accomplish.

1) ART BOOKS STUDYING

1.1- "The Figure: The Classic Approach to Drawing & Construction", by Walt Reed.

This one was proposed by ladyashmire (Viverra), when she critiqued my sketch of a halfling. So, at first I had read a few pages available as preview on Amazon, and I got impressed on how the author can make easy, understandable and possible the figure drawing in all different poses and viewpoints you´d like to! I´ve read 30 of its about 140 pages, since last week, when finally it got delivered from Amazon (after more than 1.5 month of wait!), with the perspective book and also with "Animal Minds".

1.2- "Perspective Drawing Handbook", by Joseph d´Amelio.

It´s an amazing book about perspective Luaprata91 (Ariane Soares) proposed me. Really feel that I´m beginning to understand this matter now, with all the reasons of everything!!! Read about one third of its almost 100 pages. But I need to practice much more perspective drawing too, either by observation and/or from imagination.

1.3- "Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery", by Burne Hogarth.

Amazing and unique to learn how to draw clothes on the figures!! So helpful! The fact is that many drawing methods teach you how to draw the human figure, but only naked ones! Well... Actually in the most of the final drawings and paintings we see, people do wear clothes, don´t they? So don´t understimate this knowledge and get right now this preciousness! Until now, I ´ve read (fast) about 50 of its 140 pages.

Again, books by this legendary author were suggested by Luaprata91. I have on hand also his "Dynamic Figure Drawing" (but just one third) and "Drawing Dynamic Hands", although my teacher Cariello don´t like his method to teach anatomy. You can find them in pdf around too.

1.4- "Fun with a Pencil: How everybody can easily learn to draw", by Andrew Loomis.

Wow!! One can really understand and find out how to draw any figure, any viewpoint, using this precious masterpiece! Carefully studied 26 of its 120 pages until now, drawing each one of the recommended exercises.

Books by this legendary author were suggested to me by Luaprata91 too. His 6 books really seem excellent to learn!!! You can find them usually in pdf; if you can, buy them, either used or in the new reprinted versions. His other books, on which I gave just an eager sneak peek, are on my reading row: "Figure Drawing for All it´s Worth"; "Drawing the Head and Hands"; "Sucessful Drawing"; "Creative Illustration"; and "The Eye of the Painter".

1.5- "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", by Betty Edwards.

This book was suggested to me by my friend Paulo Fradinho. I´ve read/studied about half of it since last year, but Luaprata91 told me she thinks it´s not that good to draw new things, but rather to make good copies...

1.6- "Anatomy for the Artist", by Sarah Simblet, photos by John Davis.

I´ve finished almost all the reading itself (just a couple of pages left), with many drawing studies based on the book and reflections based on my own body; still many drawings to draw later, based on the photos and anatomy drawings here). I bought this book when I saw it been used by a classmate at Quanta, and I heard the teacher praising it. But this book is not as useful as others about the human figure which I presented above. This one is too "scientific" and detailed; the others teach you more general rules, making easier to understand everything and truely become an artist.

1.7- "The Nude Figure: A Visual Reference for the Artist", by Mark Edward Smith.  

I´ve drawn about 40 of the 200 pages of this B&W photo book, which comprise 318 poses, most of them of women. The interesting fact here is the poses are divided by categories: standing, seated, reclining, kneeling, bending, crouching, in movement and some others. I bought this book after seeing it at the art school, to be used as reference by the students.

But now, when I want to practice something like that, usually I go to one of these two websites: Quickposes or Pixelovely, which force me to draw really fast, from 30 seconds to 2 minutes, because I think I need improve a lot my speed. I was taking about 1 or 2 hours to make a single drawing in that book earlier... Other than that, I think it would be good to go back to the life drawing classes I took last year.

2) COURSES

I´m taking two courses at Quanta Academia de Artes, here in Sao Paulo, Brazil:

2.1- Illustration, by Rodrigo Yokota "Whip" (1 year, begun last November).

2.2- Perspective, by Octavio Cariello [aka cucomaluco] (4 months, begun last March).

2.3- I also finished last March the Quanta 1-year basic course on Drawing, in my case taught by the animator Carlos Luzzi.

(- I´m also on the 4th semester of a Japanese course, but nothing to do to arts, hehe.)

3) NOVELS READING

- "Xogum: A Novel of Japan", by James Clavell - half of its 1,000 pages read this month.

- "Kyoto", by the Nobel prize winner Yasunari Kawabata - read last month; review published in Portuguese on my blog for the Literary Challenge organized by Viviane Lima.

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CREATIONS

4) DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS

For sure, to learn how to make art, we need at least to try making arts. Along many previous years, I just tried to do that using pencil, without any instruction. Since last November, I started to try that using watercolours, after some tips by my new teacher of illustration Whip.

But nowadays I´m not that confident to finish more arts without more studying, mainly through the books quoted above (and my ongoing courses). Although I know that to learn I need to put all that into real practice and my girlfriend asks me to finish more arts to make a portfolio...

In fact, I think I need to alternate studies and finished arts. Let´s try to ballance all that. You can see what I´ve already could done in my gallery. But I got many other projects I´m dying to finish (or begin) since months ago. Well, if I finish 3 or 4 each month, I can do all of them until the end of 2012!

4.1- SINCE APRIL

1- Emilia!


2- Leave us dragons alone!


3- Good Friday


4 - Chinese Dragon and his Friends

5- Audrey Hepburn
6- Madonna
7- Marilyn Monroe
(these 3 pretty girls were suggested by my girlfriend Renata Milan, aka Anouk84)

8- The Beatles (suggested by my friend Bruno Andreotti)
9- Indiana Jones (suggested by my friend Rafael Roldan)
10- Elvis Presley

11- Dodge-Chrysler car contest moonbeam13.deviantart.com/jour…
12- Hahnemuhle cuisine watercolour contest

4.2- SINCE FEBRUARY

13- Halfling rogue in action


14- "Save the Last Dance for Me"
15- Against Archer Papers
16- Natural Evil Brushes
17- The Fairy and the Humming Bird
18- Hands Battle!
19- Tiger (suggested by shirls-art)
20- Werewolf (suggested by be-a-sin, after my own suggestion to her)

4.3- SINCE DECEMBER

21- Alphonse and Edward play basketball


22- My girlfriend with shorter hair
23- Ares, her little dog
24- Jacob Black
25- Frog playing guitar
26- Flowers
27- Fruits (other of my girl´s suggestions)

5) BOOKS AND LITERATURE WRITING

Since my childhood, I got the wish to become a writer someday. So...

5.1- Last January, I finally could finish my first novel: "The Girl who Heard Too Much"!!! I began its first lines on handwrite, during my stay in the hospital, in May 2010. It´s comprised of about 85 pages, if printed in Times 12, 1.5 line spacing. It´s already reviewed by some friends (including an professional reviewer of literary books and an illustrator of books for children) and revised afterwards. I´ve proposed it to almost 20 publishers last month.

5.2- I have other 10 long stories in project to write. One of them with 25 pages written, story itself or for plans; other 5 have a couple of pages and/or planning written too. And 3 of them I had begun in my teenage years. (Of course, I´ll need to choose a couple of them and others may become short stories or be aborted.)

5.3- There are also 4 non-ficcion projects of books of mine in the row. One of them is based on my essay written to got my bachelor´s degree on Journalism; other in my project when I tried a master´s degree; and another in my writings and experiences during my two trips to Japan.

5.4- For the time being, I´ve written 15 very short stories and 30 poems (one of them with 13 chapters and 11 pages, named "Repressed Romanticism"), since my teenage years. Among other really short ideas published for example in the blog Impulses Expelled, which I created with my friend Fernando J. Vieira.

5.5- As next task, I´m going to correct the English grammar in my translated poem "Playing Marbles" (with the precious help given by CJWilde). It´s my first literary attempt in English.

Playing marblesOnce, I´ve ended up in London
The kind we have in our imagination
Full of mists and classic buildings
Buildings which look like castles – as they really are, I saw!
My glasses became dimmed with that fog, that haze
I did make my efforts to clean it, but I couldn´t.
I´ve tried a lot this cleaning, but my stylish glasses
Blue and orange
Keep dimming.
And a childhood memory came to me
Before I was 12-years-old
Glasses I didn´t need to use
And I got to the stationery shop,
One of our school days
Where we buy every kind of stuff
That teacher is always asking us
The little kid as I was,
Got to hurry before the seller
Pushed down the paper display stand
The transparent cellophane falling upon me
So, equipped like that for my arts,
I had no doubts anymore,
Just lacked a sweet sign of nature.
For this reason the bees´ home attracted me
Honeycomb: just that can I see now.
There isn´t nature
Just in forests and mountains
My nature is to be different
In all ways

5.6- Afterwards, I plan to translate to English also the poem "Slaves of Nowadays".

Escravos de HojeOh, Castro Alves,
Eu não posso negar
Que sua luta e sua causa
Eram difíceis para triunfar
Gente de pele escura
Era tratada como animal!
Mas me diz, grande poeta:
Por que o animal – até hoje
É tratado como coisa qualquer?
Evoluímos, pois no século 21,
A turma de pele negra
Não é vendida, não é comprada
Tem sua liberdade pra lutar
Pra montar família e próprio lar
Ainda que essa luta
Seja muito dura
E por herança do passado,
Na minha faculdade pública (e aqui também?)
Não vejo
Os amigos do colégio público
Não tão claros como eu.
Hoje ninguém discorda:
Cor da pele não é desculpa
Pra botar corrente
Ainda que tenha tanta gente
Amontoada em presídio
Da família – ainda que distante
De Pelé, o nosso rei
Mas poeta, te pergunto a razão
Pra gente hoje, e de todas as cores
Botar na linha de produção
Pedaços de indivíduos peludos
Escr

5.6- Finally, I want to write my first poem originally in English, named "Ffff...". I have at least a draft for the time being.

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(Wow! I took about 5 hours today to write this journal! I hope this can be really useful later, for me and for you.)

I published another journal here in January about other artistic experiences of mine: "The Challenge of Creation".