Who's ready to study?

Well, exams are coming up. Or rather, exam. I only have one (I know, we art kids are so spoiled). And instead of studying i've decided to update my blog instead. You might ask, 'but why, Alex? Isn't passing your first year really, like, important and stuff?'
Yes, it is like important and stuff. But I must confess, writing about not studying is much more interesting than actually studying.
good lord, sorry to interrupt that train of thought, but i'm bleeding! i'll be right back.
ok, bleeding seems to have stopped. Sorry about that.
Anyways, today I thought I might put up some work from first semester of this academic year.

While this one isn't really technically 'academic', it was done fairly early in September or October. It's graphite and pen on paper. The pen is actually nothing fancy, just a ordinary Bic ballpoint. They have terrible ink flow, which allows you to create shading with them without spending a whole lot of time on the mid tones. With respect to the pig-headed character, I do realize that the whole 'people-with-animal-heads' is getting a little cliché. Ah well.

This one is a picture of a colour explorations project at an unfinished stage. I actually preferred the piece in this unfinished state without the background distractions. After having the project marked, I cut off the background sections. I'm considering putting it back onto a plain white sheet of paper.

Rough work. I like rough work. I find it really improves the quality of the final project, and helps when making choices about colour and composition and all that jazz. Even on its own I find rough work to be visually interesting, especially when presented with an entire page of thumbnail sketches. Anyway, the rough work here is for a series of paintings I did for my Coloour Explorations class. I did three paintings of ships, based on the movie 28 Days Later, directed by Danny Boyle. The colours used are taken from scenes in the movie, with the underlying themes mirroring some of those in the film. Oh, and if you haven't seen it I would recommend the movie. I don't think my girlfriend was a huge fan though.