I got the delivery and started in tonight! (and that ani T-shirt is awesome, thank you very much for including it in the box as well as the show brochures for inspiration).
I can’t seem to find sky blue canson mi-tientes in the uk at all. I can however get light blue, so got a half size pack to test, this looks to be a slightly darker shade (going on sky blue via a laptop screen) though not too vastly different. I suspect this will be okay to use - but are there any reservations about it before I buy a bunch of big sheets of this?
I’m finding myself changing grip on the pencil automatically depending on the target point orientation. I assume this is okay and I’m not meant to be maintaining the same grip across all destinations for training consistency?
I already know i’ll need to do a lot more of these, to focus more and slow down a tad, I am missing the points far too often. Nice straight lines though for the most part though, next time I should do the line first and add the dots after…
Drawing across the seam actually wasn’t that problematic and I have certainly noticed an improvement towards the latter stages of this combined page, I’ve adjusted to a far more controlled pace which gave me some fairly consistent point hitting (I was going way too quickly before and not holding the pencil lightly enough). I’ll flip this and go again tomorrow.
GREAT job Martin! The lines do indeed look very straight and confident. What I would recommend now is to push yourself to get them as light as you can. Early line work, surveys or cartoons will often need to be absorbed into subsequent value application in the tonal layers of more finished works. We want these early lines to be covered or absorbed with ease.
Also–it is very common to change grip often in these early exercises. That is fine. I do not believe that there is any “one right way” to hold the pencil but there can be wrong ways. I would define a wrong way as a position that causes one application to somehow damage a previous application (like hand smearing for example.)
PS—The light blue should work just fine. Let me know if you have any issues with it. Again—great job so far!
Hi Martin, I had the same problem with the colour of the mi-teintes paper. (I’m also in the UK). Although I think it won’t matter much during practice, ultimately, I think the colour of the paper is meant to match the mid tone of the charcoal-white pastel value scale.
Thanks for the input @thomas, that’s good to know! Did you go about obtaining/assembling the form box in the UK? I’ve not quite decided whether to go down the 3D printing route or try to construct my own as best I can (cardboard box, hockey ball, block of wood, paper cone, etc).
The form box is problematic! At first I had to miss it out and move ahead. Eventually I got my hands on some kids geometric toys. They look similar to the ones shown below, but note that I have no idea if these ones from Amazon are any good.
As for the box itself, I gave up on finding one. This perhaps is lazy, but to be honest, as I had been doing art for some 13 years before I did the LOP course, I found it very hard to get motivated by some of the exercises, and so apropos the form box I just moved on, deciding it wasn’t worth crying over.
That’s a really good idea. Will look into those and see what could work. I’m a lot newer to this so replicating the form box as close as possible to the official one and grinding through all of the exercises in full is going to help me a lot more.
It looks like an improvement to me, and I’m noticing more things in process too; like depending on how I adjust my grip to account for an awkward angle, if this makes the pencil more parallel with the paper surface I’m going to get a fatter line which under light pressure is going to bump across the crests of the paper texture and leave an almost dotted finish, and it’s difficult to keep the pencil point facing paper-ward in such an instance.
fortunately the lightness makes these very easy to erase and try again.
I also have limited space around the easel to get comfortable enough and hit the lines on the lower half of the paper as easily - can’t do too much about this at present other than try harder.
I did another half size page of origin/destination wheel just to be sure, and while I’m still a tad shaky here and there, I’m content enough to move on from this stage.
Thank you all for your kind input so far, I’m very much looking forward to getting stuck into the shape replication now
and I have certainly noticed an improvement towards the latter stages of this combined page, I’ve adjusted to a far more controlled pace which gave me some fairly consistent point hitting (I was going way too quickly before and not holding the pencil lightly enough). I’ll flip this and go again tomorrow.
Nice!
