Did these yesterday while taking the MRT ride back from work. Done with a ballpoint pen in my sketchbook. Excuse the poor quality – I was too busy to scan them properly so I took a picture with my mobile before assembling and tweaking the levels in PS.

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I wrote about OIC’s Portrait Day April 2009 session here which covered the basics of what it’s about so I won’t go into it again. I can’t believe I’ve only attended one session so far and it’s been more than a year since!

The registration fee has increased ($10 now as opposed to $5 then but still worth every cent) and each sitting now lasts 20 minutes instead of the previous 15. I managed to get 6 portraits done in the 3 hours I was there. There was a decent mix of models that day ranging from singles, couples and children. It’s not without it’s minor issues though: since the models are usually non-professional volunteers (I believe most signed up on the spot) some find it hard to keep still for the duration of the sitting (kids especially), and the breaks in between sets can be a little too long. I also feel the staging can do with a little more variety, perhaps with judicious placement of lights to get some interesting shadows. Regardless, I’m enjoying attending these Portrait Day sessions; getting in some practice time and examining other artists’ interpretations on display. The wide variety of styles showcased goes to show how open and unpretentious the event is. Anyone can sign up and put pencil (or pen or paintbrush) to paper. And as stated in the OIC website: “Posting your work for view & sale (compulsory ) is a sign of appreciation to the patron/sitter/ poser.” Thank you to the family that bought my drawing of their kids (refer to picture above)!

I’ll upload the rest of the portraits done once I have them scanned and montaged. I’m still dying to try out some markers I bought awhile back and use my brush pen more often. I still just can’t seem to spare the subject or risk ‘spoiling’ what I’ve sketched out. I really need to try harder to be less precious about my attempts and keep telling myself “It’s JUST a drawing!”. Oh well, maybe next time!

Kudos again to OIC for keeping the event going and giving us another avenue to flex our drawing muscles. I hope I don’t have to wait as long before I sign up for my next session!

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All the portraits (minus the one sold) I did at the event. Each sitting lasted 20 minutes. I came in late for the first one that’s why the guy in the top left looks so sketchy (it’s my warm up drawing I suppose ). I did all sketches with a standard 2B pencil on bleedproof paper. The guy at the lower left was detailed with a Copic brush pen on top of a rough sketch. For the girl in the top right it was pencil, Copic 0.5 pen then brush pen for the darks.
For those curious, the sequence was: 1. Sketchy guy 2. Brush pen guy 3. Pen girl 4. Sold picture (refer to blog post below) 5. Couple and 6. Mother and baby.

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Smiley as at 21st May 2010.

I attended the 3-hour masterclass organized by the Singapore Science Centre in the morning of Wednesday 19th May 2010. It was conducted by Pixar sculptor Jerome Ranft as part of the on-going Pixar exhbition. I had a great time listening to him talk about how he started out, his past experiences working on projects such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and on characters like Sully in Monsters Inc. He also showed us some stuff he did on Toy Story 3 as well as a sneak peek at his present project at Pixar. These nuggets of information were littered sporadically as he explained his typical workflow for creating sculptures.

The class then moved on to having the participants to build sculpts of our own with the tools provided. We first had to come up with a character design before the lesson (the guide was a 6-9″ piece of art extending from the head down to waist at most).  I thought it’d be cool to briefly describe the stages I went from the start all the way to the final result above.

Step 1:
I had to drill a hole (not all the way through though) into the piece of wood that would be the base of my sculpture (I call him Smiley). Then I fixed up a thick piece of wire that would form Smiley’s armature into the base. A 2-part epoxy glue was used to secure the wire in the hole. Since Smiley was just a head-to-shoulder bust, I only needed that 1 main standing wire as support. Then I had to wrap a coil of thinner wire around the support (this is so that the Super Sculpey would stay fixed on the support and wouldn’t move around as I work on it). After which I started solidifying the thicker parts of the bust with aluminium foil (this results in less Sculpey needing to be used and keeping the bust lighter).

Wood base, armature, aluminium foil and reference drawing.

Step 2:
Using Super Sculpey I began padding the soft clay onto the foil and along the armature to build up the most basic shapes. The idea is to work on the big generic forms first before going into the details.

Roundish basic-shaped Smiley (front view).

Roundish basic-shaped Smiley (side view) and a bag of Sculpey block.

Step 3:
After building up the shape and holding up the reference behind the form to check that it’s sufficiently bulked up, I start layering on the Sculpey that would form his hair fringe, his nose and cheeks. Basically taking chunks off the main clay block and flattening/pinching them into the intended shapes (exactly like how I used to play with plasticine when I was a kid) before fixing them onto the base. I use the tools given to blend the edges.

Smiley starts smiling. Beside him are the tools used to shape and blend.

Smiley's got to look right from all angles.

Throughout the hands-on session Jerome was walking around giving tips and showing us how to improve our work-in-progress. After about 2+ hours of layering, massaging and tweaking our time was up and we had to pack up (very reluctantly) and leave.

This is how Smiley looked right after I brought him back to the office.

Not too bad for a 3-hour session right?
Of course after I brought him back to the office, I couldn’t resist touching up Smiley whenever time permits. You can see the slight improvements I did post-masterclass in the first picture of the post. I haven’t baked him (the final step) yet as I still think he needs some more work before he’s ready for the oven. I’ve also decided that I will not be painting him after baking as I really like the “clay sculpture” look. So in the meanwhile, he’s sitting in the ‘IN’ tray at my desk ready to welcome any visitors with a nice big smile!

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This is another sketch done in my Monologue sketchbook while taking a ride on the MRT.

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