Quick Studies by Alton Szeto

Drawing from the Mind

2009-10-07T14:04:00.001-07:00

I have not posted anything in a long time. The reason: I've been hard at work, drawing and constructing countless figure drawings and characters from my mind each day. I will start to post a few each week.

For those that don't know, I'm currently attending the University of Hartford for my masters degree in illustration.

Upon entering the program I promised myself that I would learn human anatomy again. Now I've taken that to the next level. I've memorized everything from bones, muscles and ligaments, and understand their attachments to specific places. Everything posted below is drawn and labeled from memory.

This past July, I had an opportunity to study under C.F. Payne and Gary Kelly. They are a tremendous influence and I'm blessed to have learned from them. Chris encouraged me go back to drawing with a pencil to define my style, while Gary emphasized learning from my influences and old masters. Upon coming home I decided to stop painting on the wacom tablet and go back to my first love, drawing with a pencil. I also gathered a ton of books and images by Frank Frazetta, Mead Schaeffer, Norman Rockwell, and the American Orientalists. When studying Frazetta I realized that he used no ref. for his figures in his illustrations. He constructed everything from memory. I was so inspired by this. As a concept artist you rarely have time to light and shoot a model. After memorizing everything, I realized how fun, fluid and easy drawing is.

I must thank my wife, Dr. Tsui for helping me, as she has a deeper understanding of anatomy. She also taught me to make sense of the Latin names of muscles etc. and ways to memorize all those complicated words.

I hope this blog inspires you to draw!

-Alton

2009-10-07T14:03:00.004-07:00

2009-10-07T14:03:00.003-07:00

2009-10-07T14:03:00.001-07:00

2009-10-07T14:02:00.002-07:00

2009-10-07T14:02:00.001-07:00

2009-10-07T14:01:00.000-07:00

Big Sur 2: Water

2009-04-27T11:49:00.001-07:00

April 24, 2009

"Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend." -Bruce Lee

Big Sur 2: Sky

2009-04-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

April 23, 2009

Big Sur 2: Rocks

2009-04-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

April 22, 2009

Big Sur 2: Water on rock and sand.

2009-04-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

April 21, 2009
45min

Loading Zone

2009-04-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

April 20, 2009

Reflections, water and snow on pavement.

Big Sur Project: upper tree in detail

2009-04-17T15:12:00.000-07:00

April 17, 2009
1 hour

I woke up at 6:00am to finish this upper tree section. Quickly printed it, and brought it downtown, to show a gallery owner. We had a great meeting and my art will be in their downtown gallery soon. Amazing what can happen when you work freely.

Note my wacom pen has ground down to a tip because I've been painting to much. I didn't think this was possible.

Big Sur Project: Water detail

2009-04-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

April 16, 2009
30min

Very fun to paint this. I did not use any photo textures. I never do. I painted everything.

Big Sur Project: Pine

2009-04-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

April 15, 2009
1 hour

Pine Tree in detail. This was a great exercise to paint an accurate pine tree. Instead of making it look like a Christmas tree from a distance.

Loose Trees

2009-04-17T14:52:00.000-07:00

April 14, 2009
10min

A quick block of the overhead tree foliage. I really liked how it looked so loose, but my wife urged me to finish it.

Big Sur Project: Bark

2009-04-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

April 13, 2009
1 hour

Focused on getting the bark of the tree to look convincing.

Iowa City Frisbee golf park

2009-04-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

April 10, 2009
1 hour

This is where I play frisbee golf. I changed the lighting and color to make it have that "romantic era" feel.

Plateau

2009-04-17T14:40:00.000-07:00

April 9, 2008
10 min

Iowa Red Maple

2009-04-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

April 8, 2009
15 min

I was inpired by Erik Tiemens and his use of Romatic lighting and color schemes. So I started looking at old master works from Albert Bierstadt and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. I remember seeing a bunch of these in NYC recently, absolutely beautiful.

"Red Maple"
Iowa City is a beautiful place. I love observing nature as it changes through the seasons.

Technical:
I usually always fall back to the square chalk or round brush in PS. Today, I've added some variations to make my brush more random, to avoid that "perfect photoshop" look.

I also made a brush that simulates an oil palette knife.

Cliffs

2009-04-08T15:59:00.000-07:00

Tue April 7, 2009
10 min

Another Mt.

2009-04-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

April 6, 2009
10 min

This is totally from my head. No ref. used.

Mountain 2

2009-04-03T17:35:00.000-07:00

I painted this zoomed way back. I had to get the values right first.
The lighting and color was fun. I played with casting cloud shadows too.

Time: 45min

Time to take a break. I’ll be back on mon.

Mountain1

2009-04-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

The time factor killed me on this one. I didn’t get what I was going for. Painting mountains is difficult because it’s hard to make up the random forms. If I had more time, I could have put in a mid ground element. Maybe a structure would be nice.
Time: 1 hour

Fortress

2009-04-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

The idea was to build a fortress, guarded by its natural environment. I put the waterfall in because it wouldn't make sense to build a fortress on a plateau, and not have easy access to H2O.

For lighting, I chose the morning sun because it cast a long shadow against the plateau walls.
Google sketchup was used to create the fortress, lighting and perspective. It’s what Kemp does at Massive Black. Sketchup is sooooo cool!!
I'll have to finish this later because I ran out of time.
Time: 30min modeling, 30min painting

I did another painting this week using the same process. It’s very refined, so I’m going to post it on my website instead, because it really doesn’t belong in my sketch blog.

Forest

2009-03-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

March 30, 2009
45min. 15min playing around making brushes.

Park in Iowa City. I enjoyed painting the ground to make the snow believable and convincing. I particularly liked painting the ground path and shadows. Notes: Blue shadows from blue sky fill light.

Foggy Day

2009-03-30T14:01:00.000-07:00

March 29, 2009
45min. 15min playing around making brushes.

Study of a dark foggy day. Notes: Diffuse shadows, some bounce light from snow onto tree bottoms. The challenge is to let it go after 45min. Must get faster.

2009-03-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

After our Harford Illustation MFA program met up in S.F. in March, Ed Tuttle and I wanted to start painting everyday. Inspired by Kazu Sano, of course! The man has an incredible work ethic.

My Goal: Complete a quick study or painting in under 30-45min each day. I decided to work on quick comps, textures, color, and observing from nature.