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KatsBrain — A2 Maternal Final
Published: 2008-09-09 20:55:50 +0000 UTC; Views: 1447; Favourites: 29; Downloads: 0
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Part of my A2 level exam in 2008 with title "Maternal". At A2 you get three weeks prep for a three day, fifteen-hour-total exam (read: three days of sitting on my arse drawing all day). I decided to stick firmly by my oath from last year not to draw anything manmade whatsoever, having managed it in my A2 project, and since humans were off the cards too, I looked at maternal animals. I went through a bunch of ideas with different animals, playing with ideas of having a mammal, bird, fish and marsupial - or something - in one piece, but ended up, after some rhinos, looking pretty much exclusively at elephants, an animal I'd never seriously drawn in my life before.So. These are photos of my artwork, so not as high-quality as a scan would have been, but they've been cleaned up as best I could, which is not actually very well in the case of the stuff higher than head height on the Art dept's walls.
I got 100% marks for this, pushing my previous B at AS up to an A for the whole A level.The final! Three five-hour days in May spent sitting on my bum in silence with the rest of the group, working on this - my index finger paid the price of all the blending I had to do. It's the biggest thing I've done since a really old totem pole picture somewhere in the depths of my gallery from GCSE, as it's just thinner and slightly shorter than A1, nearly double the size of my project final pieces. It's huuge. I think I might have periodically driven the rest of the room mad with my grass-making, and killed a yellow chalk in the process (thankfully, brown, orange and black all survived it). The black and white chalks - numerous incarnations of them - didn't make it through the elephants, and the less obvious colours (green, purple, red, orange, a different yellow, etc) outlived them to draw another day. It was all worth it, though - I'm absurdly proud of it.
The ivory in the foreground was vaguely symbolic - an attempt to show the strength and yet ultimate futility of the maternal bond... Mmm, deep. So, this is a composition of my three cow/calf drawings: Maternal Elephant 1 , Maternal Elephant 2 and Maternal Elephant 3 .
Chalks (pretty much like blackboard chalks, blending by hand) on a really big piece of black paper.
Image is © to me (=apocalypsebunny )
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Comments: 22
Thank you very much! 
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I hate AS and A-level art exams. At least you had three five-hour sessions. On my course, I had some sessions that only lasted an hour, and you'd spend most of the time setting up.
That's really pretty. Very realistic, fantastic detail... Also, elephants. :3
It's particularly beautiful the way you've done the light and shadow. 
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Oh, our normal lessons weren't three hours (though I can't comment, I did it out-of-hours), just the exam sessions. But if you meant you got 1-hour exam sessions, that sucks. O.o Can't really get into a flow like that, can you...
And thank you very much 
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No no, I was talking about exam sessions. I had several one-hour exam sessions, and it took me about half an hour to set up each time. xD
No worries. I only made those comments three months ago.
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Ugh, that's horrible D: How did you ever get any work done?! xD
And, three months is bad enough xDDD I had older things to reply to... I had to delete all the watches before december and all the faves before may though. xDD That was pretty crap.
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I dunno. I think I was the only one who was really bothered by it, though. Everyone else seemed to get on fine with their work, but my piece - a forest scene with giant vegetables sticking out of the ground like trees (don't ask) - was very bland and empty-looking, compared. Maze did an awesome American Indian thing with feathers and stuff, and everyone else had huge pieces of board they were splashing paint on, and building stuff on, while I was gently adding layers of diluted watercolour to a thin piece of card that started to crinkle up in the first ten minutes. So yeah, horrible.
What about you? You seem to have a lot of beautiful AS and A2 artwork in your gallery. Did you not have any problems getting that all done? I mean, that's a lot of stuff, and each piece looks like it must've been really time-consuming!
Sweet Jeezus. O_O; Why'd you leave it so long? You must've known that would happen. xD How long did it take to get things all sorted out?
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Hey, there's nothing wrong with watercolour (apart from the fact that I used to be scared of going too dark with it...) x3 My friends were doing such arty things as gigantic canvases, ripping things and sewing them back up, the works. I just scribbled away in graphite or chalk. xDD But dear god yes, it took a bloody while. It was definitely the most work-intensive subject - you just had to get stuff done, and it's difficult to half-ass rush off a drawing. I can cut down essay time, say, but not drawing time. The graphite stuff takes me hooours, but the chalk stuff is relatively fast; each animal prep chalk drawing was about 2 hours tops each, and the exam final was just under 15...the 3 coursework finals (bull, orca, hawk) were probably about 4 to 6 hours each (that bull's rocks background killed me, I swear).
I left it so long because it piled up some time and then I felt guilty and didn't have time, and it looked so biiiig. xD And then I got scared of it and didn't do anything. Pretty much the situation with my deviations box now, it has 900+ in it... But I sorted the comments and messages, took me an afternoon/evening. x) Not that long in the end.
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I still am scared of going too dark with it, which is why I always repeatedly add diluted layers until the colour starts to come through. Takes freakin' ages. xD
Hm, well scribbling away with graphite and chalk is no bad thing. You certainly seem to have mastered them both.
Art in secondary school was a helluva lot more difficult than it is in university. You couldn't rush a drawing back then, but now we're encouraged to, and it doesn't matter if it looks absolutely terrible. I was expecting more detailed life-drawing, weren't you?
How on earth can you draw something like that, with chalk of all things, in just two hours?! You must have been using that media for a long time. I can't stand it, personally. It's just all smudgy and inaccurate for those of us who can't use the stuff.
Heh, well good luck sorting through that. Jeezus, you must be watching a lot of people. O.o
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That's exactly what I do with watercolour too. xD Takes me f'ng ages as well. I've recently started kicking the habit when I began using ink washes, but I'm still on the light side. You must have lots of patience!
Yah, I was totally expecting more...well, instruction in life drawing. Like, technical undertanding of anatomy and perspective and whatnot. Not "You spilled your coffee? Oh, wonderful! You could draw in it! With a stick!" ...which is actually approximately what Jan said to Maze once. xDD
I'd only used chalk once properly before I did all those, and it was weirdy chalk pencils, so it wasn't the same. xDD But you can do surprisingly detailed stuff as long as you have a sharp edge on your chalk available - so either I kept one end of the stick new-shaped or I ground it down on a piece of paper til i got sharp edges. The smudgy ability is fantastic for large areas, gradations and subtle texturing. And it's faster than graphite -at least for me - because I don't have to concentrate on putting everything down precisely - to a degree, you can smudge things into place once you've got the basic appearance down and then ad details. Just takes a good crack at it. xD Oh, and totally only ever use it on black paper because you can get a good dramatic effect really fast. 8D All the stuff I've seen on white paper just looks kinda dirty. O.o
Whoa, essay, sorry. xD
And...I'm only watching 51 people. O.o At least 9 of those never update but I know them offline. xD I just....keep letting it build up. I think this backlog is from before 2006.
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Really? Glad to hear I'm not the only one. ^^ Nah, I think we have the right idea, actually. I mean, better safe than sorry, right? :3 I do have a lot of patience, but based on what I've seen of your art, you must have even more. O_O; Maybe you share my attitude; I don't care how long my stuff takes, as long as the outcome is pretty. xD Actually, despite all this, my watercolour sucks, but it'd suck even more if I weren't so careful.
I'm currently working on something in watercolour. It'd be cool if you could critique it when I'm done, if you wouldn't mind? Actually, it's kinda relevant to you anyway.
Hah, Jan's insane. She told me that it's pretty much impossible to fail her course unless you don't turn up to any sessions at all. 
Once? 
Maybe you have something like that? I've not fully explored your gallery yet.
Hey, no worries; I like it when people actually talk, and I'm sending back a message that's even longer than yours, anyway. xD
Only 51? Heh, I'm watching 52. Far more difficult. xD Nah, I totally understand. How could you leave it that long, though? I mean, you seem to be on dA a couple of times each day.
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Better safe than sorry indeed. xD Though I do wish I could just think, yah, that's the right colour, and apply it rather than poking at it with coloured water. xDD But I think I do share the outlook that as long as it looks good in the end, I don't give a damn if it takes ages. x) As long as I like it afterwards. There's no excuse for being a whiny stereotypical emo teenage artist and uploading something that you then cry to the world that you apparently hate. Sorry, that really bugs me. xD If they hate it, they either shouldn't upload it or they should spend some more time on it and improve it.
And - of course I'll try and do a critique when you've finished.
Drawing with my other hand...I can see the theory and significance, but part of me remains sceptical. Mostly I can't be bothered, but it would be nice not to be tied to an inherent style... (And bejeesus, her ability to find meaning in naught but a slice of cucumber has saved me so many times. xD I can just put pretentious waffle in and she loves it. O.o) But what do you mean about not using guidelines? Surely you're allowed to sketch/block the form out first? She actually encouraged me to keep my sketchlines from where I'd roughed out the muscle masses.
You should give chalks a go, they're hilarious fun. :3 Tips: big black paper, and don't be afraid to get your hands messy. xP Acrylics...I just can't seem to use them at all. I think I'm too used to transparent media to use undiluted acrylics. you actually have to...manually get all the colours. ;____; And then it goes all blobby on me and I can't do detail. 
I left it that long...originally because I was on an expedition in Venezuela in the summer of 2006 for a month and it built up beyond what it already had done...and I never truly cleared it. And I was too proud to write short comments and had to put alllll my thoughts down, which took me f'ng ages. So I got tired of it and guilty and it built up, and now it's scary. xD Oh, and it's only since I cleared the backlog that I've actually started replying several times a day. Remember how you watched me ages ago and I only just got round to watching you back? Same situation. I'm such an ostrich sometimes.
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Well, I guess it's just a practice thing, but it's still fairly unpredictable sometimes, isn't it?
Exactly. I know a couple of people like that (despite only having seventeen people watching me, including yourself). Some ask for your opinion, and then disregard it completely. :< It'd be different if they took any advice on-board and maybe tried to apply it to their future work. One of the few things I don't like about dA so far is that a lot of people don't really understand what a critique is.
Well, what I've seen of your watercolour is fantastic, and every critique I could get would be helpful.
It's relevant to you because it's Skywheels fanart.
She explained her theory, I just think I can pay attention to the form easily enough when I can actually draw it properly. Still, it makes her happier if you just throw down a bunch of squiggly lines. :/ Heh, I think to an extent, that's true for most art teachers. As long as you can read some kind of meaning into your work, they'll lap it up, even if it's ridiculously contrived.
No, she said thumbnails were fine, but she wanted us to just use a single line for the whole thing, with no guidelines. I hate that. >_<; Your group is lucky. Maybe she just likes you guys more?
How'd your first art module go, by the way? Do you know when we get our second module marks back?
Well, I don't have any chalks right now, but I may well get some soon. I'm not afraid of getting my hands messy for the sake of art. xD I used to model a lot of stuff in clay. You do much clay modeling? For one of our A-Level art modules, we were allowed to choose whatever subject we wanted, and I titled mine 'Norse Mythology and Cosmology', which meant a year of modeling giant snakes and wolves. It was awesome fun. :3 Actually, what other A-Level art did you do besides animals? Or were they all animal-related? xD
Yeah, I know. xD Acrylics are scary. Don't you find, though, that almost every art student can use them perfectly? ; _ ;
Cool. ^^
That's a good thing. Must've been hell to get through, though. I mean, didn't you say it took you a single evening?
That's frightening. O_O Hopefully it won't happen again. xD
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Yeah, with such a large member-base you run the risk of having immature people on there. NOT that I'm saying I'm mature in any way. xD But I do know what a critique is, how to give one and how to accept one. I agree with you that it's annoying as f*** when they ask your opinion and then tell you afterwards that they're "sensitive" to critique. ¬_¬ I think you've found one of my pet peeves here. xDDD
Y-YOU'RE DOING SKYWHEELS FANART? 8D Daymn, but we need to get that thing off the ground. No pun intended. |D That is truly awesome, I look forward to seeing it! 
That's really, really weird that she doesn't like you to do sketchy guides. O.o Are you sure it wasn't just an exercise? Because otherwise that's a really strange way of doing lifedrawing; doesn't help you understand mass and form at all, surely?
My first module was fine, got a 75 on it. :3 What about you? And I've no idea when we get the second one back. xDD First one took...3 weeks? Something like that?
You lucky, lucky bastard. xD We still had prompts given to us that we had to choose between. ;___; And our course was strictly fine art, so we didn't really get to do sculpture. Even the lower years got to do some, but apparently not our year. ¬_¬ The only sculpture I've done is stuff at home, and even then not in a while. I miss it.
Ahh, the animal thing. xD Y'see, my AS projects involved drawing several manmade objects, and I hated that so much you wouldn't believe. So I made a promise to myself that next year I wouldn't draw a single manmade thing. xDD And I stuck to it!
And I totally know what you mean about other students and acrylics. xD Two of my friends in art were just....godesses of paint. They could seriously do anything. One of them did a weird surreal twisted piping/tap thing and had the water running past a tangle of pipes - and the refraction looked abosolutely perfect.. I asked her if she used areference....apparently she just made it up.
(My god, the dA reply box is being reeeally slow to respond to my keyboard input. O.o)
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Well, you don't seem particularly immature so far.
Exactly! And you know all they're really after is the positive feedback, and on deviantART, the majority of it seems to be a single positive adjective, followed my a string of emoticons.
That pun was totally intended, admit it. xD Whoa, wait a minute, you have no idea what it's gonna look like yet. I'm drawing the Ancona Aces & Faces in my style, which means soul-stealingly frightening eyes. :3 They're all standing on the observation deck of an airship, overlooking the cathedral and part of the city, with a train in the sky, in the distance. I'll be putting the line art up on dA when it's done, just in case I screw up the watercolour.
Huh, what's the kiriban for?
Whoa, how many do you have on the go? xD I guess this'd be a bad time to suggest an art trade between the two of us then, huh?
No, she warned me against it in a later session, too. Said it would be beneficial to try and draw the entire thing using a single line, and no underlying sketch. Maybe it's just me? xD
Awesome!
Our course was fine art too, but we were allowed to sculpt if we chose to. I mean, sculpture is a part of fine art. Why not sculpt something now? :3
Huh. What sort of prompts? We had to put up with some pretty sucky topics before we got to choose our own. Like, one was decay. While Maze painted a dead bird, I constructed a life-sized man out of fruit, which I then let rot in the cupboard. In the end, it was just a box of fuzzy slush. 
What's so horrible about drawing man-made objects? Helluva lot easier than animals, isn't it? One of my A-Level subjects was animals, and I spent that year doing art similar to your stuff. I'd put that up here if I still had access to it.
I know exactly what you mean! The others in my class did similar stuff. A friend of mine took a bunch of musical instruments, broke them up, painted them all white, and then flicked coloured paint at it, taking a photo each time. Ran it together as an animation. Then of course, Maze made a freakin' copper mask right opposite me, drilling and banging at metal, as I sheepishly hid my pale watercolour paintings. xD
Sorry, I'm making this ridiculously lengthy. O.o
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Tchtch, the pure fact that you're doing fanart is already awesome. xD And that does sound like it's going to be reeeally cool. :3 A lot of work though, surely? I hate drawing groups, m'self.
The kiriban...Maze got my 1,234 pageview. x) I was on dA in the studio, saw I was on 1,233 and told her to go on my profile and get it. xD So it was a little rigged, but you know.
I've only got two trades - the one with Maze and the other one - so I don't mind setting one up between us :3 Bear in mind it might be a while before it gets done, though.
Yah, sculpture is part of fine art but...I think ours was really narrow or something. We didn't get to do anything like that. 
Also: EW, FUZZY SLUSH. I recently had an orange that was mouldy in the middle. That was pretty gross, but then I nearly ate it. O.o
I hate man-made objects. xD They have to be perfect, they're all straight lines and calculated distances. If you get a bull slightly wrong, it looks like natural variation. If you get a camera slightly wrong, it looks Wrong. xD And manmade stuff is all boring and regular. ¬_¬
Tch, no worries about the length. xD Discussion is fun. x3
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I'm very glad you think so, but seriously, the people are gonna look creepy. Really creepy. I've already done the cathedral, the market, and part of the grounds surrounding it, but it's difficult visualising how I'm going to position the characters. I mean, this airship is gonna have to be flying incredibly low, and at an extremely weird - hell, impossible - angle. xD It is a lot of work, 'cause I decided to do it on an A2-sized piece of card, and add as much intricate detail as I could in ink. xD I don't much care for drawing groups, either, but Maze's half of the art trade was a group of five of my characters, and I don't think a landscape alone, or a single character, would have been fair.
Cheater. :3 What's the next kiriban at, if there is one?
Cool, I don't mind waiting for the art trade. You will remember though, won'tcha? o-o Okay, so, traditional or digital media? Any idea what you'd like me to draw for you? Do you have your own fiction? Huh? Huh?
Were you discouraged from sculpting, or was it just never brought up? It's a shame. Unusual Combinations, huh? That sounds pretty easy to do. Do you have any of your work for that one, up on dA? Ooh, and what did you do for Surveillance? Sorry, I've still not looked through everything in your gallery. 
Yeah, the fuzzy slush meant that I couldn't put my piece up for our art show. xD Although, it was very relevant. Uh... how far did you get into eating it? O.o Not too late, I hope. 
You hate man-made objects? B-but... precision is a wonderful thing! I like to juxtapose natural and man-made subjects. One of my GCSE Art exam final pieces was a pencil drawing of a log, with pieces of shiny, smooth metal sticking out of it. Took the whole ten hours to add all the little details. xD Surely after your year of doing nothing but natural subjects, you must've felt sick of that? Surely it would have been nice to some more angular stuff? :3
Discussion is fun, but most people don't talk to me this long on dA. Sorry, I've sort of hijacked the comments section for this piece of art. xD
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xDD I'm sure they'll be fine. Style diversity is a wonderful thing. x) Your humans look great, stop complaining. 
As for strange angles of flight...maybe Zak gave the pilot a few ah..."tips". xD
...Bu-bu- YOU'RE DOING IT ON A2?! Jesus, that's...well, impressive and amazing and awesome and oh, y'know, suicidal all rolled into one happy drawing. xDD Wow. I'm really looking forward to seeing this. x3
Next kiriban...probably 20k. It'll give me time to finish up the rest of everything and probably forget about the damn thing again. My recent one was 15k, but *bellsab got 15,015, so I gave him that since nobody got the real number. xD
Of course I'd remember. xP I put all trades in my trades journal and shoutbox, so there's no way to escape them. 
I don't mind either traditional or digital, I'm faster with traditional, but then I do less with it, so I more often use digital. I also have no idea what to ask you for. xDD I have a characters journal , which is poorly organised and totally not up-to-date...and I have so much of my own fiction it's retarded. xD I have a futuristic universe , a fantasy/sci-fi universe , a bunch more random things, rp characters, a folder of character sheets ...and I am the worst ever at decisions. I guess, first, what are you comfortable with drawing?
And secondly, what do you want me to draw. xP
We were just...never encouraged to do sculpting at school. I'm not sure it was a viable part of our course. O.o It's a pity, but I did enjoy what we did. I've got all of my school art up here , or at least most of it. Some of it just wasn't worth putting up.
Surely you could've just...taken a photo of your fuzzy slush? xDDD And no, I only got as far as peeling it and I was about to halve it when I noticed the middle was...mushy and grey. .___.
Precision is awesome, and I love doing it with natural objects, but I hate it when angles and straight lines are involved. ;____; I don't think I'll ever get sick of natural subjects, there's just so much variety. 
Most people don't talk to me this long on dA either. xDD I think we've just got a good conversation going. I don't mind at all, but we can always move it into notes if it's cumbersome. x)
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I'm glad you think they look okay, but trust me, you're in the minority. xD There's no need to infiltrate my gallery; the door is wide open, and my guards recently quit.
Well, the angle of the airship is still impossible, unless Zak can alter the laws of physics. xD
Yeah, I always bite off more than I can chew when I trade art with people. It started off at GCSE, when I couldn't really draw at all and the only person I traded art with was Maze, and I would do something big to try and impress, and take her mind off of how sucky the animal-people looked. xD Nowadays, I just wanna please anyone who's interested enough to accept an art trade with me. Wanna wow people, and I guess I just think, the more there is, the better. Quality and quantity. ^^
Okay, cool. How could nobody get the real number? O-o You realise, of course, that I'm gonna obsessively reload your page when it nears the 20,000 mark? xD
Okay okay. :3 A year and a half late? Jeezus. I'll just have to keep pestering you. xD
Okay, digital it is. ^^ Well, you have a helluva lot of stuff there. O_O; Could you not just pick something? You must have a favourite. Wait- what do you mean 'comfortable with'?
Huh, well I'm gonna request the same thing I always request when I'm trading art with someone for the first time: Fenrisulfr the Hrodvitnir. Based on the Norse god of the same name (though usually shortened to 'Fenrir' xD), he's one of the primary antagonists for a Norse mythology-based webcomic I have in the works called 'The Yggdrasil Cycle'. He's in my gallery, but I can send you more reference images if you like, along with background information if necessary?
You guys missed out.
Oh, I did take photos of my fuzzy slush. I documented the decay process and called it 'development'. x3 Damn, in my Art class, oranges like that were very valuable. I covered a bunch of fruits in PVA and hung them from the ceiling of a cupboard. ...Gods, I hated the decay project. Meanwhile, you were drawing elephants, hawks and cows, having a whale of a time.
Wow, you sound obsessed. xD So, do you look into, like, muscles and bones 'n' stuff when you're drawing? I just have a very loose idea of that sort of thing, but some people are ridiculously knowledgeable about it. I'm quite jealous of your drawings as is. o-o
Heh, we sure do. Gah, I hate the notes system. Perhaps via e-mail? Either way, my e-mail address is wolfodonnell@googlemail.com. :3
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...WHY HASN'T ANYONE COMMENTED?!
Holy God, woman, this is gorgeous! I apologize for not commenting on all of your new work yet, each piece is incredible, but this one really caught my eye. The realism, wow! Beautiful contrast and use of color, wonderful composition, I could go on. I certainly hope you got a top grade! Definitely deserve it!
Again, absolutely gorgeous work.
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I-I Thank you very much! :3 First off, I'm sorry for my extended dA absence; uni kinda ate me. And secondly, thank you for the lovely, lovely comment! 
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