Small self portrait with hair

As I'm sitting here preparing for tomorrows lecture on squash and stretch, I pick up a small mirror and my trusty Bic mechanical pencil and do this little self portrait. I really am in the awkward stage of getting hairy.   I thought growing a beard was a good idea, but I'm definitely doubting it right now. I am one hairy man.

Blackfoot Crossing

Took the Aboriginal Youth Animation participants to Blackfoot Crossing for an off site field trip.

I have always loved the smell of sweet grass (Sipaattsimaan -Blackfoot). I'd like to be able to go out and gather it myself in the respect of tradition. On of my participants is a member of the secret buffalo horn society and gave me some to smudge with. While in the Blackfoot crossing museum I had the chance to study how sweet grass looks before it is harvested. Maybe I'll find it on my own while in the wild sometime. Here is how it looks, I haven't colored the drawings yet, and I only had the one pencil while at the museum.

The eagle fan is a sacred/ritual object of beauty.
I'd like to make one, but it's use in my reality is very limited.

More heads are better

I took a few books out of the library in order to polish up some sketching skills.  I realize that on some level I have a really difficult time drawing heads and bodies entirely from memory. Even more difficult is drawing beautiful women. I do a lot better looking at references. I need some models to come over;P

I am going to keep on my path to improvement, as much as it changes every day in terms of subject matter that interests me.... I'm still moving my pencil across the sheet.

Here are some examples from a book on the head and figure.

In contrast, here are some deer drawn from a reference photo. The blue pencil shows my construction method.  These are loose but feel complete.

Question and answer

What a treat to be asked by a former participant of a program we run at the Quickdraw Animation Society for some help on improving his work. respect.

Q: I was wondering if you could help me not be so picky about the quality of my drawings. I have alot of ideas for animations, but I lack the confidence in my own drawing to actually make them.

A: The Best advice I can give is: Draw. Draw. Draw.

There is a drawing teacher I think has a lot to offer to the animator. I think you can find videos for FREE on You tube. His name is Mark Kistler and he had this show called "the imagination station" It is a great teaching aid, I am currently using his lessons in my AYAP class. I bought some books for really cheap on Amazon.

I find remembering this one thing helps in not being too picky about drawings is this FACT: It takes 24 frames per second = 24 drawings per second, as far as I'm concerned that means every drawing is only on the screen for 1/24th of a second and should not be regarded as TOO precious, as long as the movement looks good. This can be seen in Disney works in the past, you'd be surprised what they got away with in terms of sloppy sketchy line work. But it does work.

And don't forget about Don Hertzfield an Bill Plympton, look at their work.
Good luck and keep on rocking!

Good News + 24 More drawings, this time from 2000

I just got confirmation that I have a Calgary Allied Arts Foundation St[art] 4Five Residency!

I applied to work full time in the studio on completion of works for my upcoming solo exhibition "Sacred Images" at the Untitled Arts Society in June 2011.
This will be in for a 3 month residency from April 1 - June 30, 2011.

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I uploaded about 24 more drawings to my website today from a sketchbook I made back in 2000.

Here is just one example. The rest can be found HERE on my website- Brianbatista.com under the Portfolio/past > drawings >2000.

Sketchbook uploads

I just uploaded two sketchbook collections to my website under the Portfolio/drawings tab.
The two sketch book examples are from  2003 - Isatanrabbit (17 images) below and.....

1999 - The A/B mini sketchbook.(40 images)

In the past, I tended to have more writing or titling on each drawing. This really helps to categorize and list pictures. The dates on the other hand are a little more elusive.

NOTE TO SELF and note to others out there making drawings. It may not seem important, but now that I look back on over 2 dozen sketchbooks I'm wishing I had done this tiny little thing more often.

Argo-nauts

Here is a sketch I did while my class was working away, I found it in an old National Geographic. I love drawing boats, there is something about the power of the ocean that is a big draw as well.  Look at the mighty waves crash and how they are harnessed by man an his need to explore and discover new places.

In Greek Mythology, the Argo was the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Iolcos to retrieve the Golden Fleece. It was named the Ἀργώ after its builder, Argus.^[1]

Blind Contour

I almost forgot about the fun of blind contour warm ups. I have been teaching drawing to my new AYAP class this week.  For warm up I had them take their sketchbooks, place  them out of sight but still within reach so that they are able to draw while looking at another participant. Here are 2 pages of blind contours I did while explaining the exercises.

 

I always like how these turn out. The line work seems so sincere and is one with confidence I rarely find I can maintain when drawing regularly. In this case we were drawing portraits but still life, family pets and crazy people on the bus all make for great subject matter.


I love this drawing tool. Great ideas can arise from these exercises.

Botero Show at the Glenbow.

Went to the Glenbow my AYAP class on a field trip this Friday. The museum really did a good job this time. There was a Fernando Botero show and the collection of grand scale baroque paintings and stellar bronze pieces was amazing.  I had been looking forward to seeing his work in person and I was impressed to say the least. They were so simple in their majesty, soft rotund characters in bold colors on a grand scale. This exhibition inspired me to work on larger scale pieces in the upcoming spring.

 Here are a few quick sketches I made while in the show. It was busy and I was running around supervising my students so I didn't really get a chance to draw as much as I would have liked.  My pens all ran out, so I had to work in ball point. C'est la vie. My Faber Castells have been retired.

I got the last copy of the BOTERO book sold at the show, it was damaged so I got 10% off. Not a great deal, but it was the last one and if I hadn't picked it up then I probably never would.  All the works in the show are in the book, including his masterful sketches on paper specially made for him by hand.


Ran into an old friend John Will, who also had an exhibition there, did a little catching up. It turns out he has a studio by my place in Ramsay, I'd like to go over and visit him sometime soon;)

Dr. Phil(McCRACKen)

This guy is a total crackpot, I can't believe he has a television show.
His quips of wisdom in that southern accent are truly inspirational!

Remembrance day - 21 Sketch salute

Here is a blast from the past. In no particular order.

This is my ode to Remembrance day - A 21 Sketch salute of sketches one when I was 21;)
These were made when I was in a period of HB mechanical pencil, free flow surrealistic ideas an straight ahead with ink drawings (no pre-sketch or erasing permitted).





 

 

doodling my noodle

This is what my brain feels like inside right now. Too much work to do before our Aboriginal Youth Animation project launches on Monday. I picked up most of the art supplies for the 14 participants to start out with.

I saw some amazing Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival Screenings check them out. The amazing Mr. Bickford is here tonight. Spike and Mike have a screening too.

Busy bees

I started a new contract with the Quickdraw Animation Society teaching animation for the Aboriginal Youth Animation program.   I have been swamped.  Building the calendar and courses for the next 5 months. Creating posters, advertising and doing outreach. It has been a very positive learning experience and quite the challenges. fortunately, it has given me some insight into budgeting and how to market a program in order to intake participants and the surprising costs related to it. I didn't know a small classified in the Sunday newspapers would be over $70. Plus, I used an entire tank of gas over the four days delivering intake posters to various organizations around town. You don't know it until you have to do it.

Here is one poster I designed, 300 copies were put up.

This is probably only the second time I have use Illustrator, it's an amazing program. The image use on top was by my past student Jesse Gouchey, his works can be seen on his website HERE.

I also got up at 4:30 in the morning to be on Breakfast Television on Tuesday of this week. I don't have cable an I  haven't seen it myself yet. I have to get a copy of it to watch. `When I do, I'll probably post it.  In the meantime we shot a quick video around the office leading up to the GIRAF Festival.(see below. or click HERE to go to my you tube page.)



GIRAF opened last night and Waking Sleeping Beauty had a packed house. I have never seen in my past 10+ years of working in film festivals, an audience all stay to the very end credit. That spells success.

8 heads high

Testing a theory....

Saw this ad that really caught my attention, and my friends made comments about how strong an suggestive it was to them too. Kept the ad, then transferred it to my sketchbook.
Anatomomical drawing theory say's the human is 8 heads high: I think it may be closer to 7 heads, in actuality, cause she's on the tips of her toes.  Drawn in HB with a mechanical pencil, along with a few sketches of objects I could see from where I was sitting in my living room.

 What is so suggestive about a gal in her panties?
An ominous piggy on a fedora and snakes and a ladder.

Cast Skulls

Back to making some stuff, ie: sculpture.I decided to do some casting of skulls and what not to build my creatures upon and to try some new casting materials out.  Here is how it's going so far. I'm not going to go into all the little details as I build it, it takes too much time away from making the object anyhow.

I took apart the pieces from a toy skeleton, and taped the inside holes so that when I make the mold it wont seep in.

Here it is, you can kind of see the tape, meanwhile I put back together the object for casting.

Here is my stuff as I get ready to get goopy. Covered the table, got stir sticks, a disposable cup, my smooth on product, nitrile gloves, a paint brush.

I decided to weight out the 2 part rebound 25 mix. It is a 1:1 ratio, because it is my first time using this product. Better safe than sorry. I found it quite thick and cumbersome to work with at first.

I use my kitchen timer to time the 3 min mixing period and decided to work the molds on foil for easier removal.  The next step is to paint on a thin layer of the rebound 25, to pick up the details of the object.

So here is layer 1. It takes an hour to set up. So I set the kitchen timer and do something else.  After this step, basically I keep doing the same thing, using a thicker version to fill in the eye sockets and any undercuts to ensure the material is extra strong there. It is recommended that you do 4 layers for maximum elasticity and strength so with await period of about and hour for it to tack up and about 15 min of work time with each layer the whole mold process takes about 5-6 hrs. I finished at about 12:30am, washed up and went to bed while I waited for it to cure completely.

Pink Haired Cutie Honey

every time I see a well drawn and enticing cartoon cutie, I want to raw it. The thing is though, I fond them really easy to look at but really hard to draw well. At least for me.  Something I am going to work on improving.  I'm great at making them look ugly by using too many lines, but this little honey turned out. 

I fist sketched this with HB pencil, while simultaneously watching a "Nature of Things with David Suzuki" (I love that show, learning while drawing.) The lines were drawn over with my Copic multiliners (I tried out various sizes) and then the outer line was thickened and the colors were filled in with both Prismacolor and Copic markers. My collection of copic is growing as the Prismacolor begin to dry out,they can't be refilled an they stink way worse, so I'm switching over....slowly as copic's are twice the price;P

Sea monster

I really like collecting images, but instead of just printing them out and glueing them somewhere, or cutting them out of magazines............I like to add them to my sketchbook an get some drawing experience from it. This is drawn from an old school comic strip about the Loch ness monster. It was one straight in copic multiliner and colored with various copic colors.

Exclaim This!!!

Cartoon Curses!

For a while there blogger wasn't allowing me to upload any drawings.
What you see above is how I felt, and what was said during this set back.

Sass and Satan

It has been a couple of late nights. Not once have I started my daily drawing before midnight;( And the past few times as I scraped myself up the house steps and sunk into a chair like ice cream, I began my yearly James Bond-a-thon.  My dreams have been super weird too, maybe late night snacking is to blame. My roommie is on night shifts for one more week of havoc on my schedule.

I don't know what I was thinking, maybe it's an extension of the pirate thing an my idea the other night to go as the devil for Hallowe'en this year. This cheerleader dressed sassy pants was drawn with HB pencil.  I added a skull where a basketball may have been. She has an evil clam/crab/little shop of horrors/ claw coming from beneath her skirt an that is where the sass comes from, near her ass.

After teaching my first animation class of the season, I grabbed this great graphic novel from the Quickdraw library called SEAWEED. It was a good read, instead of going out to the bar, I saw stuff that made me want to improve my craft. It made me feel like I have a long way to go, but with renewed inspiration, an that is always a good thing!

The artist, Ben Balistreri's work is exceptional. I love his extremes and the use of animals in his character design, he has won an Emmy for his character design work. Guess what, he has a blog!!!!!!! Check his stuff out his stuff HERE......if you have not just discovered him like I have.  He has this little devil character on one of the panels and I decided to do my take on him and see what I can gather. One thing is to use col-erase pencils for the initial thumbnail. I didn't have any on hand so I used HB.  He also said 'white out" is our friend.  Hmmm, I 'd better pick some of that up! I had a lot of fun using my prismacolor to play with the image.
I really like the idea of the devil having kinda useless hoof hands, it makes him way less threatening and far more clumsy. The Little wings and a silly looking body takes away from his ominous power.
I wanted him to have a trident fork of fire and a tail a dinosaur would be jealous of.  His soul patch is akin to a skunks however rather than peppery patchouli, it smells more of fire and brimstone. So that's Satan so far.