Tien Chiu

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May 13, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Paper arts

I dove into origami over the last few days, reading up on tessellation origami as well as origami sculpture. I even folded a model or two:

three-dimensional origami bullseye
three-dimensional origami bullseye
attempt at origami peacock fan
attempt at origami peacock fan

The models are folded out of dampened watercolor paper. Unfortunately, I rapidly discovered a problem with that medium: it is attractive to cats. Very attractive. Here is Fritz, investigating my first model:

Fritz investigating origami model
Fritz investigating origami model

I think it was the smell that attracted him: this particular paper, dampened, smells musty, like a wet dog. Unfortunately the paper is also tasty (if you’re a cat) – Fritz rapidly discovered an obsession for licking the paper. I’m pretty sure the glue in the paper isn’t good for him, so the paper went onto a high shelf.

The peacock fan model was only somewhat successful – I had a lot of trouble forming the curved folds. There is an origami enthusiasts’ meeting near me on Saturday; I’ll probably go there to ask for advice on curved folds in heavy paper.

In addition to the  books I mentioned in my last blog post, I remembered that I had this wonderful origami book in my library:

"Origami Design Secrets" by Robert Lang
“Origami Design Secrets” by Robert Lang

It’s a hefty tome (583 pages), but promises to be very helpful in understanding origami structures and how to design them.

So I have mostly been reading on origami the last few days.

But yesterday a package arrived with Yet More Inspiration:

"How to Draw" by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling
“How to Draw” by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling
"How to Render" by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling
“How to Render” by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling
"Color and Light" by James Gurney
“Color and Light” by James Gurney
"Perspective Made Easy" by Ernest Norling
“Perspective Made Easy” by Ernest Norling

So I expect I have a lot of reading and a little bit of practicing to do, in both drawing and origami, over the next week or so.

This may seem like a scattershot approach – a little bit of this, a little bit of that – but I’ve found that’s how I learn a subject fastest. Particularly in this case, I’m a generalist – I’m not interested in going deep into either form, as my interest in both is entirely ancillary to my interest in weaving. I don’t want to be an expert origamist; I only want to know what I need in order to design intriguing woven origami pieces. Similarly, I am not interested in being an expert artist – just enough to design for the jacquard loom. So I want a broad theoretical overview coupled with just enough practice to understand the basics. Hence the large collection of books, which I will mostly skim to get the underlying principles. If I have time and inclination later, I’ll go back and do a deeper reading.

Of course, there are challenges to learning either art. One of the big ones weighs about twelve pounds, is adorably furry, and finds any open space on my worktable utterly irresistible:

Fritz enjoying my nice clean worktable
Fritz enjoying my nice clean worktable

Clearly, under the circumstances, the only possible response is to give him a belly rub. (Or so he thinks, anyway…and he is occasionally right. 🙂 )

Filed Under: All blog posts Tagged With: drawing, origami

May 3, 2015 by Tien Chiu

A tale of three roses

I sketched two more roses over the weekend, and am pleased to say that my drawing skills are improving rapidly. I’ve developed an eye for light and shadows, and am starting to understand how light reflects off planes and curves. While it will be a long time before I can claim mastery, I’m doing pretty well for three weeks of study.

Here’s Rose #1, from last week:

original rose
original rose
rose sketch
rose sketch #1

In sketching rose #1, I was copying exactly what I saw, without trying to make visual sense of it. As a result, the resemblance to the actual rose is a bit shaky, and the shadows/highlights don’t parse all that well.

Now here’s yesterday’s rose, #2 in the series:

2nd rose sketch - original rose
2nd rose sketch – original rose
2nd rose sketch
2nd rose sketch

In rose #2, I was starting to get better with light and shadow, and the outlines of the petals look more or less like the actual rose. Hooray!

But the value scheme was badly off – many areas came out too sharply contrasted/too dark. (I later went in with an eraser and lightened up some of the darker areas.) More to learn!

So here’s today’s rose, rose #3:

3rd rose sketch - original flower
3rd rose sketch – original flower
3rd rose sketch
3rd rose sketch

I had a bit of a challenge with this rose, because it continued opening as I was drawing! So I couldn’t stay entirely with my original sketch, and I couldn’t keep changing my drawing to accommodate the opening rose. So the result is a blend, with some guesstimating about light and shadows towards the end (the outside petals). However, I’m very pleased with the result.

What made rose #3 different was my studies of light and shadow on geometric solids. It gave me a rudimentary understanding of light, shadow, and reflected light, which allowed me to “think through” the lighting, and make sure each petal made visual sense. As a result, the third rose sketch looks a lot more realistic than either of the first two. Still quite a ways to go, but I’m pleased with my progress so far.

I’ve now finished most of the pencil exercises in Drawing for the Complete and Utter Beginner (Claire Watson Garcia). As I’m not primarily interested in physical media, I’m not going to pursue the charcoal, wash, or conté crayon exercises. Instead, I’m going to continue practicing drawing on random objects. I may also look and see if there are any useful exercises in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Betty Edwards) – while the book puts my teeth on edge with its constant harping about left vs. right brain, I can’t deny that many people have learned to draw through doing its exercises. So I will look into that as well.

I’m finding that I’m really enjoying the process of drawing. Which is good – I’ll be doing a lot more of it over the next three months! And I’m happy to be making real progress, not just chasing my own tail.

Speaking of which…here is a great video of Tigress spinning around and around, under the intoxicating influence of a laser pointer. Enjoy!

Filed Under: All blog posts Tagged With: drawing

May 2, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Learning to draw: process and practice

I’m making a two-pronged attack on learning to draw. The first is physical: learning to manipulate pencil on paper to create a realistic-looking drawing. The second is process: understanding the steps to making a good drawing or digital painting.

I hadn’t realized that drawing a picture could be broken down into steps. Not having had any experience with drawing, I just assumed it was a magical process whereby an artist sits down in front of an object and a finished drawing appears. Sort of like this phase of a mathematical proof:

"...and then a miracle occurs..."

As it happens, drawing can be broken down into logical steps: sketching the overall shape, adding more detailed lines, adding shading. They don’t necessarily have to be done rigidly in that order – the process seems rather iterative, gradually building up details – but it’s by no means magic.

Digital painting follows a similar course, but with a bit more elaboration. You start by brainstorming a series of thumbnail sketches, with just enough detail to capture the layout of each idea. Then you expand the more promising thumbnails into slightly larger, black and white sketches, to develop the idea a little further. Finally, you’re ready to start the actual picture. You start by laying down the bones of the piece – light and dark areas – on a background layer. From there you develop a few more details – still vague, you’re just doing the big stuff. But you add a bit more detail – and continue on in that vein, developing the piece iteratively and re-evaluating after each part you add, until you’re done.

Those who have read the book blog and/or my manuscript may recognize that this is exactly the creative process I describe in my book. I feel vindicated. 🙂

Anyway, to achieve this understanding, I have been blitzing my way through three books:

Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner, by Claire Watson Garcia
Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner, by Claire Watson Garcia
A Beginner's Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop, by 3DTotal
A Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop, by 3DTotal
Imaginative Realism, by James Gurney
Imaginative Realism, by James Gurney

(Yes, the black blob in the very top of the last photo is Fritz, helpfully blocking some of the light to reduce glare. An instant later, he decided to be even more helpful and sit on the book, but fortunately I’d already snapped the photo.)

I’ve also been working on my drawing skills, though less so during the week, as the cats are particularly active (helpful) during the times I have available to draw. On the weekend, though, I can draw while they’re asleep, which is about 11am-5pm. (And here I thought that by not having children, I could avoid waiting for nap time to get my projects done. Ha!) So I’m hoping to get a bunch of drawing exercises done today and tomorrow.

I did manage two quick sketches yesterday, though – simple geometric solids, so I can work on my shading skills. (I’ve decided to study physical drawing before digital drawing; the direct feedback of pencil on paper is much simpler to manage than the digital form.) Here are a ball and a cone:

shading exercise - ball and cone
shading exercise – ball and cone

 

The ball looks a bit ovoid and the shading on the cone doesn’t quite match shadow and light source, but they do capture the basic idea of light and shadow. And I’m learning a lot about how to see/draw shading, so I’m pretty happy with my efforts. Later today I will do more geometric solids, to practice shading on simple things. Tomorrow I’ll try something a little more complicated – perhaps a flower or two from the farmer’s market. By alternating between simple and more complex drawings, I figure I’ll get plenty of practice without getting bored. And perhaps someday I’ll be able to draw these clowns:

Fritz and Tigress napping in the cat tree
Fritz and Tigress napping in the cat tree

But that will be the advanced class!

Filed Under: All blog posts Tagged With: drawing

April 28, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Arachne

I got the rubber tarantula on Sunday and spent a few hours staging the photo. Here’s the one I like best. (It’s in black and white because we’ll be drawing with graphite pencils, i.e. in monochrome.)

Favorite photo rendition of Arachne's story
Favorite photo rendition of Arachne’s story

And here are a few of the runners-up:

1st runner-up - Arachne's story
1st runner-up – Arachne’s story
2nd runner-up - Arachne's story
2nd runner-up – Arachne’s story
3rd runner-up - Arachne's story
3rd runner-up – Arachne’s story

I like the first one best because the angles are more exciting than in the first runner-up, where the shuttle is nearly horizontal, not as dynamic as a slight diagonal. Also, the spider is close enough to the shuttle to look like it’s weaving, but not so close that it’s hard to recognize as a spider (the problem with runner-up #2). The 3rd runner-up is a bit too full of horizontal and vertical lines – it feels rigid and static.

I love all these photos, though, and would be happy to draw any of them. I’ll be bringing them to my drawing class tonight – will be interesting to see what the instructor picks.

I’m also bringing a sketch I made on Sunday. We planted roses along our driveway soon after we bought the house – they are now well-grown, and flowering abundantly. (And fragrantly; I wanted roses that smelled like roses, dammit – to me a rose that does not smell sweet is not a rose at all.) Anyway, I cut a flower and spent about an hour sketching it. It does look more or less like a flower (hooray!), but the shading was guesswork, and looks it. Here are the original rose, the desaturated version (what it theoretically should have looked like), and my sketch:

original rose
original rose
desaturated photo of rose
desaturated photo of rose
sketch of rose
sketch of rose

I’m actually quite happy with it, though the resemblance to the actual rose is pretty faint. At this phase I more or less expect my work to look crappy: I’ve just started learning, after all, and early work is always awful. But I learned a lot in the process of drawing it – small insights, like shading parallel to the faint veins on the petals to make them look more realistic; and bigger insights, like learning to observe and draw the shapes of shadows. I still don’t know much about how to create a value scale or to translate colors into their black and white values – but we’ll cover that in class tonight, I think.

In addition to doing some early sketching, I’ve also started reading up on digital painting. I did manage to get into the college class on digital painting, a small miracle considering all the things that needed working out! But the Dean kindly waived the prerequisites, the instructor agreed to let me attend only one day a week, and my manager agreed to give me a half-day off every week for ten weeks. So I’m in the class. Of course, the waived prerequisites mean I’ll have some catching up to do, so I’m starting work on that now. I’ve ordered the books recommended in the syllabus, and have already started reading through the first one. So far it’s about creating brushes in Photoshop for detailed effects – which is great, but which assumes you already know how to draw in Photoshop. So I’ve also ordered a book on digital painting for beginners. Class doesn’t start for another month, so I have some time to catch up.

All in all, it’s been an exciting couple of days. Can’t wait to see what the next few weeks will bring!

Speaking of excitement, Tigress is thrilled at the change of seasons. English peas are now in season at the farmer’s market, and pea pods are one of her favorite cat toys! Here is a short video of Tigress carefully inspecting, comparing, selecting, and making off with a pea pod to play with.

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: drawing

April 26, 2015 by Tien Chiu

A crash course in drawing

I’ve decided that if I’m serious about designing my own jacquard patterns, I really must learn to draw. So, in my typical happy style, I’ve signed up for not one, not two, but three classes in drawing. The first is Drawing Foundations, a class in drawing with traditional media (i.e. pencil and paper), at Pacific Art League. The second is Jane Dunnewold’s online class in composition, which begins right after Drawing Foundations ends. And the third is the most exciting one – a class called Digital Painting at Cogswell Polytechnical College. (That one is still uncertain, though – it depends on whether my boss will let me take the time off, as it’s only offered during the day. I’ll know more next week.) It starts in late May and ends in late July – just before the loom arrives. Hooray!

I’m not entirely certain whether I can handle two concurrent classes in drawing along with a full-time job and finishing the book, but I figure I’ll give it a try. I can always drop one or more of them if it turns out to be too much work.

The Drawing Foundations class has already started. Here is my first effort:

drawing exercise - copying a jar
drawing exercise – copying a jar

The exercise was to copy a drawing of a jar, first freehand (top left) and then using a grid (bottom right). You can see how much more accurate the drawing done with a grid is.

Our next assignment is to take a photograph that tells a story. I think we’re going to spend a couple of weeks analyzing and then drawing a copy of the photo, to get practice in rendering and shading. I’ve been thinking about the assignment for several days now – unfortunately, the objects I own are almost exclusively craft tools, so I didn’t think they made for exciting stories.

But then I decided to approach it from the other direction. I wanted a photo that I liked enough to spend a month drawing. So what kind of photo would I like?

Well, that was a no-brainer. I wanted to draw a photo related to weaving. In fact, I wanted to draw some cloth on the loom, with a shuttle in the background. So what would fit with that story?

The first thing I thought of was the legend of Penelope and Odysseus: Penelope weaving and unweaving Laertes’s (Odysseus’s father) burial shroud as a way to fend off her unwelcome suitors. But that would be way too complicated a concept to get across in a single photo.

Then I thought of Arachne. Of course! Arachne was a Greek weaver who was so brilliant (and prideful) that she dared to challenge Athena, goddess of wisdom (and weaving) to a weaving competition. There are various endings to the story – one that Arachne won, but Athena (being a sore loser) decided to curse her for her pride, and turned her into a spider so she would weave forever. Another is that she lost, and hung herself, but Athena took mercy on her and transformed her into a spider. At any rate, Arachne wound up as a spider, spinning and weaving for all time. (This is why spiders are called “arachnids”.)

Obviously you can’t tell the entire story in a single photo, but I thought I could tell a little bit of the ending in a photo. So I’m going to take a photo of a spider atop a partially woven piece on the loom, maybe with a shuttle and a spindle thrown in. (I still have my hand-hammered silver spindles from my trip to Southeast Asia, and I think they’d look great in the photo.)

Towards that, I’ve ordered a rubber tarantula (which I’m sure will be more cooperative in photographic staging than the real thing), which should arrive today. And I spent an hour or two last night designing and weaving a suitably themed cloth:

Beginnings of Arachne's story
Beginnings of Arachne’s story

I’ll likely use a smaller shuttle for my photo, as these feel a bit too large – wish I had some miniature ones! A tiny damask shuttle would be just the thing. But I have some small Swedish shuttles from Bluster Bay that might fit the bill, leaving space to include a tiny spindle.

I’m really excited about drawing this photo- I think it will be a lot of fun.

 

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: drawing

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