Hi,
So work is kinda busy as of late....but I found some time today to compile these expressions that I had worked on for my head sculpture. All of these high poly sculpting packages continue to amaze me. I am still wrestling with the ZBrush interface a bit...but I think the fun part outweighs the technical interface gymnastics you have to perform when you hunker down to a ZBrush sculpting session....a little.
So my favorite figure drawing teacher had a favorite quote that he would often recite to his different classes. Because I had the fortune of taking an uncountable number of this teacher's classes, I had seen him refer to this quote many times. I have a theory that you won't hear something until you are "ready" to hear it. It was on a hot July day in a stuffy figure drawing room in the valley down in Los Angeles. We had just finished our morning session of drawing and I was ready for our lunch. Our teacher whipped out this familiar old paper back book and I knew he was going to break out the old "my favorite artist quote" chestnut again. So I ignored my grumbling stomach and listened. Going almost unnoticed, I could hear a lump in his throat as he read it slowly trying to communicate the gravity that this philosophy had for him and that he really wished that some of us could take away the spirit of the words with us throughout our careers as artists. I really did "hear" what he he wanted us to hear that day. The quote went like this:
From the age of six I had a penchant for copying the form of things, and from about fifty, my pictures were frequently published; but until the age of seventy, nothing that I drew was worthy of notice. At seventy-three years, I was somewhat able to fathom the growth of plants and trees, and the structure of birds, animals, insects, and fish. Thus when I reach eighty years, I hope to have made increasing progress, and at ninety to see further into the underlying principles of things, so that at one hundred years I wil have achieved a divine state in my art, and at one hundred and ten, every dot and every stroke will be as though alive. Those of you who live long enough, bear witness that these words of mine prove not false.
My teacher's name is Glenn Vilppu and the artist that he quoted was Hokusai.
Thanks Glenn!!!!!!!
later,
Chris
2 comments:
Wow, what a great quote, I love it!!!
Funny, I just discovered Vilppu very recently, last week in fact. (he is of course famous, I only didn't know of him because I am way out of the loop!)
I'd love to talk to you more about his teaching, all I know is what is published on his site.
I'd love to hear more too about how you model... you have avoided so many of the common mistakes draughtspeople make, for example your smaller details are well rendered without being distracting, and you've built up the structures even in concave areas like the eyeball socket with a series of convexities instead of one arching concavity.
Where did you learn to do this? Through animation teachers or through sculpture or both?
We gotta chat ;)
Hey Sadie! I am going to register for your class via snail mail tomorrow (I am going to be at Wondercon for most of the day and can't register in person) and am really looking forward to it.
My practical sculpture experience is pretty limited. I just went to a few of those workshops that Lenny ran in Mill Valley. I think that any success or lack of success that I have with sculpting anything can only be pinned on translating drawing form to sculpting form...in this case digitally sculpting form. We do have to sit down and talk about some of these high polygonal sculpting programs that are out there. I know it's something that you'd really take to and like. I'm sure you would be great at it. I think I would equate it to painting in a program like painter or photoshop...lots of great tools that you can take advantage of and the ability to do things that you just couldn't pull off traditionally...and no clean-up:) I just dabble in this stuff. Lots of people out there (like Gio) that probably have a better handle on the software and sculpting in general, but I would love to share any knowlege about my workflow and any other tidbits about this stuff that I can offer up.
I will definitely see you when I take your class (I hope it dosen't fill up before I register) and we can talk about all this stuff then. I'm always up for a brunch/sketch session somewhere in the city on the weekends too!!
Later,
Chris
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