Drawing At A Cafe // Life Drawing

After class today, me and a few friends ended up heading down to the nearest coffee shop to do a few life studies.  Since non of us had really draw from real life in awhile, we thought I'd be a good idea not to go rusty when it came to drawing stuff that wasn't trapped inside our heads.













I've never really sat down in public and draw people around me for hours before, so it was kind of awkward to begin with; I felt like some sort of ninja with a sketchbook. But after the first few sketches I really began to enjoy myself. Surprisingly, in a sort of odd way, it was fun to quickly scribble out a drawing. Almost like you were being timed or something to complete it, before your unsuspecting model would get up and leave. 

I used a few pens, some markers and fountain pens to do some quick line work. I also used the good old cheap colouring pencils I bought for 50p to do some colour work, turned out pretty well.


 I am proud of myself.

Yes, yes I am.

Myers Briggs Personality Test

The 'Myers Briggs Personal Test' is a collection of controlled questions aimed to categorise someone's personality or persona. I've never come across this test, so when I was introduced to the questions I was more then a little wary; over how these few and weird questions could possibly work out what goes on inside my head.

As someone who isn't very vocal about myself in general, I found it oddly embarrassing categorising my personality. Perhaps it was simply a dislike of the idea of being 'categorised' to begin with.

THE RESULTS

I completed the test and didn't find it at all challenging in the slightest, or nerve racking.  My results came back as '' I N F J '' which is described as ''An Inspiration To Others''...

 

''INFJs tend to see helping others as their purpose in life, but while people with this personality type can be found engaging rescue efforts and doing charity work, their real passion is to get to the heart of the issue so that people need not be rescued at all.''

 

I've been told a number of times, even in the last week, that I focus far too much on helping other people rather then dealing with my own 'problems'... so, this test? Pretty on point. huh? 

Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want to learn?

"Why did I chose to study on this programme?"
Back when I was studying Fine Art at college and even further back, studying for my GCSE in Art; I found it frustrating how stylized work was automatically classed as 'too cartoony' by tutors, teachers and even students. How everything we did or attempted to do ended up being more like trying to make your work as 'realistic' looking as possible. Which honestly, after 7 years? I really wanted to try something new. That's the reason why I wanted to study animation.

I've always drawn strange and often weird things, imagined worlds and thought of characters; but I've NEVER had the opportunity to pour my brain out onto paper like this before. And I'm so, SO excited to start working. I also found compared to other places, the environment within Leeds college of art is always so friendly and fun; not at all intimidating. Not only that, I found that the tutors generally felt passionate about their students work and had this constant exicitment when talking about what they taught or even just wanted to chat about.

''What do I want to learn during my time on the programme?''
I really want to improve my skills in traditional CEL animation further, but I would love to experiment with stop motion and even 3D animation. I also want to learn more about post-production, such as concept artwork and story boarding. And even script writing.

''What skills do I think are my strengths?''
I feel quite comfortable around the pallet of watercolours and acrylics, as far as painting goes; And drawing itself, of course. Also I've already done some animation for a past project. Which involved a mixture of story boards and hand drawn CEL animation. I like to think I'm slightly amusing, so hopefully I can come up with some good scripts to make at least one person chuckle.

''What are the things that I want to improve?''
In the next three years I want to improve many things. But most of all, I want to improve how I capture movement; Both in my animation and illustrations. And I would also like to further improve my life drawing skills. I'd love some day to work as a story board artist or even traditional paper and pencil animator, even if the future of traditional animation is unclear right now. But I'm also looking forward to developing skills within computer animation along with 3D.

''What ways will I evaluate my progress?''
Along with sketchbooks, this blog seems like the perfect thing for looking back at old work and projects. Just clicking back a few pages on my old 'art blogs' I can already notice an improvement in my illustrations. Also looking back at my first animation on youtube I can clearly see areas where I'd like to go back and improve it. I think just looking back at old posts online and old sketchbooks, I'll be able to clearly see progress within my work.