Georgetown atelier

A couple days ago I started a part-time Illustration Atelier at Georgetown Atelier in Seattle, WA. Upon recommendation of my good friend James, I’m going to do my best to keep a blog about my time there. You can learn more about the school here: http://georgetownatelier.com/

The school has actually -just- signed a deal with Gage Academy of Art to help with bookkeeping and the like.

About the class/ teacher:

This class is only one day a week, three hours per session and broken up into trimesters throughout the year. I’m not sure how many trimesters the program will be… my guess is that it’s going to be dependent upon how many students return. Our instructor is Brian Snoddy (Pronounce Snoe-dee), a professional of 28 years. He got his start just 2 months after I was born, so he can actually get away with saying he’s been doing this shit as long as I’ve been alive. He gained popularity doing work for Magic the Gathering in its early days. More recently he’s done stuff for Privateer Press (warmachines) and is currently a full-time designer/illustrator with Flying Frog.

The class is kind of unknown right now. We know it’s going to be broken into phases. Working with pencil for a few weeks, then pen and ink and finally Gouache (probably just sticking to black and white for this first trimester). Beyond that we don’t know what we’ll be doing. Being an atelier, the class will probably be almost entirely drawing. Learning by doing rather than just a bunch of lecture. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to get out of my own head-funk and work in a positive and encouraging environment.

Day one:

After all the introduction (most of the first session, actually) to Brian and his work we settled down to do some drawing. We were given printed pictures of random surface textures and asked to choose one (or a few) and start working on recreating that texture with pencil. Being a littleoverly ambitious I decided that I was going to try my hand at designing a character that I could apply my chosen texture to. Which lasted maybe ten minutes. Brian didn’t actually say anything to stop me but I realized that I was being cocky so I put that out of my head.

THAT WAS A GOOD THING FOR ME TO DO.

Sorry for yelling. Part of this class is me teaching myself more positive habits with art, both internally and externally. Once I started actually attempting to render the texture itself (cedar bark, I think it was) I found myself fumbling about more than anticipated. Come on, I did my hard time at DigiPen, I’ve been drawing my whole life. How hard could it be to draw some bark. WELL I forgot that I hate everything I draw and it takes most of my effort to just keep drawing, let alone worry about how I’m drawing.

Man oh man is that the thing I need to work on the most. Really. Like, I nearly frustrate myself to tears. And for no good-god-damned reason. That’s the benefit of having that time sectioned off each week, away from home and with other people who are all there to learn. I can just grit my teeth and keep drawing. With some guidance from Brian and just continuing to slam my head against my self-erected wall I got some good work in by the end.

Day two:

We were all asked to bring in a photo of an object we wanted to draw. I love armor and weapons and junk so I grabbed a photo of some ancient chinese stone-tile armor. There was no dilly-dallying, we got in and started drawing right away with Brian working on his own stuff right along with us (“If I can’t do it in front of you all then I’m a hack and shouldn’t be teaching this class”). He would get up every 20 minutes or so and make the rounds, offering pointers and showing each of us a bit of technique to help tackle whatever challenges we were facing.

In retrospect it was a good class. At the time, though, I found myself getting so upset that I had a really hard time keeping myself there in class. Feigning illness (shit, not even going that far… just saying, “ I don’t feel good….”) to leave early seemed more comforting than continuing on that train of self-loathing and dersion. BUT I DIDN’T. God damn it. I stayed up in that fucker and kept on drawing. And it was a good thing I did, too. Not that anything brilliant came out of the class but it was a triumph. A triumph over whatever it is in my head that gets all screwed up when I do art.

So it seems like the class is going to be a lot about rendering. Which is perfect, I think. That’s what I get hung up on the most. I can thumbnail and sketch and do some pretty nice drawings, but when it comes to really finishing a piece I get lost and flustered and give up.