Drawing Praha

Speedpainting

2005-12-27T06:37:00.000+02:00

Yes! Finally some work and not mindless photos featuring ducks and snow!

Time for some Photoshop-speedie paintings. These 7 together took about 3½ hours to finish. Some of them I started with a line/ink sketch from my sketchbook.

Santa Claus *spoilers

2005-12-27T06:20:00.000+02:00

*It's me!

Impersonating my childhood hero.

He used to bring me all kinds of presents. Now I have taken his form and used it to enter other people's houses and infiltrate their sacred family traditions.

How did it come to this...

Jonna playing some kind of entrance tune for Santa.

It all started with us preparing christmas presents with some beer and some textiles. The plan was..

...and it succeeded! It happened exactly like that!

- Christmas update completed!

Cau!

Darkest day

2005-12-23T23:21:00.000+02:00

Merry Christmas! (rejected draft version of a commissioned card)
Suggestions for changes included more positive colors for the card, no guns, no blowing out anyone's brains.

Fair enough.

So tomorrow is christmas eve! Somehow it's been the last thing I had time to think about in the middle of arranging a flat, trying to bounce around between seeing Jonna and old friends and getting a job, arranging myself back into school... what about taking it easy for a few days and just sleeping? Where the hell did that option go?

It's my fault of course. Who the hell decides to move back and try to take care of everything during the last week before christmas? Mistake.

So it looks like Andrea, Karina, Avigael and Teemu are all coming to visit Finland during January! Such good news. We can eat snow from roadside, suck icicles and also get to know other Finnish traditions.

Photos:

So, 21. Dec. was the darkest day of the year. It's getting better each day from now on. Strangely enough, the darkest day was the brightest one in a long time, since the sky was clear blue with bright sunshine all day.

I took a couple of lenses with me and went to lake to spend the last hour of sunset shooting. So nice.

big ass panoramic shot of Cattails (2mb)

Posting all these photos makes me think a lot more about composition. Taking a picture and then editing it to this widescreen format makes me go through the thinking process twice. So useful and never before I had a good reason to think about it: photos have only been a means to gather reference, ideas, textures for my paintings and drawings. I'm sure this is yet another way to develop my sense for creating pictures, another part of my brain in urgent need of training.

See you later!

This is what Finland looks like!

2005-12-20T15:38:00.000+02:00

Swamps!

Animation test - Blue cat

2005-12-18T19:49:00.000+02:00

.

5 seconds/4mb/quicktime

Settling back to Finland is quite hectic, but I took a few hours to take it easy last night, and tried out some After effects basics, 3d layers, etc. Too bad I concentrated on everything else but the actual animating of the cat.

Cau!

Praha I will miss you

2005-12-18T18:06:00.000+02:00

...

So I'm finally at home in Järvenpää, writing this from my dear computer. It felt so strange to be the FIRST one of the erasmus group to go, leaving everyone in the city I like so much.

At least I got a nice good bye committee to take me to the airport, thanks so much Teemu, Avi and Andrea. And Karina also... even though, yeah.. but it's the thought that counts.

So, I could'nt upload anything in a long time, due to some technical problems = NO COMPUTER and NO SLEEP during the last 2 weeks or so. These photos will be the last part of Praha, but I want to continue with the blog, so it will just stay the same and I will be posting work and unrelated things. Yay!

No figure drawings for the last 2 days of the course, I had my hands full with good bye beer. Instead:

The first 4 pictures are things found from the ground. And also the lousy December of Praha couldn't stop me from wearing my sandals.

Frozen asphalt can be so pretty.

Kiki the poor 4-toed baby-something.

Tipu!

The last three ones are taken with inverted 24mm lens:

Text!

Toilet paper!

Sink - chain - plug. This is the chain!

Praha can look so nice. This is from a good byeish party

Kristyna's boyfriend. Such a nice guy!

---

The final, last panorama from the Metronome:

So pretty.

Returning to Finland was.. dark.
Here's a view from Helsinki:

Equally pretty. Makes you want to visit, huh?! huh??

But! This cutie thing was waiting for me!

Finland.. next time more of that.

I found KEIKO pictures!!

Last night in Praha, Keiko buying me a beer. Thanks!

And finally, bonus images for everyone to enjoy!! Note: includes also the main tourist attraction in Praha! Keep your pants on!

Incredible.

The famously beautiful amazingly Charles Bridge!

Cau!

Other Praha blogs / leaving for Poland

2005-11-28T18:41:00.000+02:00

Hey!!

Go check out these blogs, its other people from our school studying in different departments. There's some animations, interior design, sketching, adventures.

Germán's Blog

Teemu's animation/photo blog

Avigael's adventures in Praha

It really took me too long to get this done.

In other news, last week has been crazy so no new drawings. School had its 120 year anniversary, we got to see Pulp Fiction on a big screen, etc. I started to work on a storyboard & different ideas for some animation that I want to start working on next year.

Tomorrow I will go to Camerimage film festival in Lodz, Poland. So I will be gone for about one week. I will see if theres a chance to update the blog or not.

Off to see Corpse bride.

Cau!

6th week / first snow

2005-11-22T04:27:00.000+02:00

Ahoj, ahoj.

So friday/saturday night it finally happened. First snow was here for 30 minutes or so, before morning traffic.

First snow

Second snow

Great.

Life drawings >

Tobacco-colored paper. I love it.

Tobacco paper + 4 beers.

Finished.

This one is charcoal + white, black, brown pastel.

Leftover pastel colors. I have so many more.

2 drawings are missing because of last thursday's Velvet Revolution anniversary, classes were cancelled.

----------------

Figurama05 >

I finally managed to go to the Figurama-life drawing exhibition, a couple of days before they closed it down. It was held at the Police Museum, close to I.P.Pavlova metro station. I saw the drawings/paintings at Figurama book, but the real thing was of course a lot better. Some really really amazing drawings there from different universities.

Roba and Pekka at the gate

Exhibition building

Chayenne, Roba and Graham at Figurama05

Chayenne

Amazing

My drawing... it was nice to see it again.

Zdeněk's amazing work.

--------------------

Last sunday we hit a local restaurant/cafe Velryba to some sunday sketching with Germán and Teemu. We ended up spending 8 hours in that place, Teemu even had time to have lunch and dinner without getting up from the table.

Sketching with ink and hot chocolate.

More

Tiny drawing, photo taken using inverted 24mm lens close to the camera.
The lines are normal ballpoint pen.

Another one.

------------------------

This is what I see every morning when I come back to the dormitory >

Tik!

When I leave >

Tak!

Bonus pictures!

I don't know.

Flatmate Radim at dorm

Dorm kitchen

Taking it easy at Product design department, Velvet Revolution annvrsr.

Hanging out with bara at nice statues.

Nice statues part two.

And finally!

Here's the official panorama at Letna park of week 6 >

5th week, drawings / nonsense

2005-11-17T17:54:00.000+02:00

Hei

I'm sitting in the horribly cold basement/computer room of our dormitory. No school today, everything here is closed because of the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, 17.11.1989.

So you can forget my promises of monday updates. Its more like monday evening photo editing, then update sometime during the week once the pictures are up for everyone to see. Jussi Kemppainen has been my lifeline in Finland, getting the pictures up to my website each time, on time. Almost. So bear with us.

Maybe you were wondering what I look like. I thought it's finally time to put up a picture of myself.

Dorm

In the bar with Joshua

Yes! I always wear the hat!

And then let's start with the actual work >

Sketch, wanted to take photo before I ruin it.

Ruined.

Devil guy

Quick head studies in the end of the class.

Graphite + patience

Started by blacking out the paper during the break, then erasing with sponge, and adding some light with pastel. Our paper is not white so erasing is not always sufficient for final highlights.

Radim holding the drawing to be photographed.

There's a GIF sequence of old woman-portrait I made last week. Teemu was king enough to take a picture every few minutes. The total work was about 20 minutes.

size: 1 megabyte.

And here's the result once more >

-------------

Last friday we went to the Zoo in Praha, our intention was to go sketch some animals, take some video footage for animating walk cycles and in general to spend a nice chilly friday afternoon outside. It turned out that the Zoo was too big to see through in 4 hours and we were so happy to see all those animals that no one sketched anything during that day. I was too busy to even take pictures, these are the only ones I got >

Here's Pablo, Teemu, German and Avigael

Giraffes!

What more can I say? It's giraffes!

I was walking to school the other morning, and I swear everything was so pink! Standing at the Metronome looking at empty, pink Praha. Seven-something o'clock in the morning.

Here's the Metronome ticking away in the nice afternoon light. People come to sit down and skateboard/rollerblade here.

Tik!

Tak!

Other views from Praha include standing at the worlds biggest horse statue:

After sunset panorama. Statue not included.

And another view from Letna park-Metronome statue:

Sorry but each time I go there, its panorama time.

Dormitory pictures!

Foggy dormitory building

Foggy scary tree outside my window

Scary nighttable beside the bed

That's it!
I hope the washing machine finished by now.

See you.

4th week, drawings!

2005-11-08T16:59:00.000+02:00

Cau everyone!

First week of November is over. There are only a couple of weeks left, but even that means more practise than I ever had before in traditional drawing/painting.

On top the drawing course we have been talking about sitting down to pose for each other for some portrait painting/drawing. But since everyone has their own departments with their comings and goings, its hard to find the time.

My Czech is getting better and better, although it is still understanding some words here and some words there. M o r e p r a c t i s e .

I found some really cheap pastels from the art shop the other day, so I\ve been using them a lot. With the box comes a huge amount of strange bright colors, so when I run out of the more normal ones, you can except some crazy colors in the future drawings.

Maybe I could grind the leftover pastels and mix them together and then with water.

I tried also to play a little bit with the proportions of the models. The drawings are the same as before > 100x150cm/3hours, except the last one which is a 20 minute portrait. I just happened to walk across classroom with some portrait drawing in progress, and took part in the final minutes of the class.

----------

Drawing class and animation department >

Class taking a break

Marie and Pablo on a break

Keiko, Pavel and Teemu on the animation department attic.

3rd week of drawing!! Part 2/2

2005-11-03T00:25:00.000+02:00

Here we go with actual pictures!

So, life drawings, week 3 >

Wednesday >

First one is charcoal, 3 hours.
2nd and 3rd ones are painted simultaneously, I was in the middle of the class and the models were sitting on both sides. Not so many people in the class that day so I just used to boards to paint. 3 hours, acrylic.

Thursday >

First and second picture are the same, but after drawing black/white for a while I wanted to try out some color. The end result is pastel and acrylic paint. The third picture is on blue paper, started with pastel only, ended up messing everything up with paint. Yellow pastel for final light touches.

Monday >

First one is charcoal with correction pen on top, second one is pastel/acrylic.

Bonus image! Here's my hand after one of the charcoal drawings.

3rd week of drawing!! Part 1/2

2005-11-02T20:46:00.000+02:00

Hi!

This time I have some actual pictures from the dormitory!

Problems with bouncing emails caused the 2 day delay, I try to update on mondays.

No figure drawings this time, since I seem to be stupid. I will post them tomorrow, meanwhile, this is the rest of what happened this week.

My 1/2 room

Bathroom window view

Streeeet

A view From Letna park at night

Ok. I promised to take some pictures from the drawing class, what other people are doing etc. Here are some shots from the past week. >

The assistant for the professor talking with students, charcoal drawing in the foreground.

Our head teacher for figure drawing, professor Boris Jirku, and critique for the class.

Zdenek's pencil/graphite drawing

Pastel/water/acrylic? mixed media

Charcoal drawings, class getting ready for critique

Heres another shot from the Conceptart.org workshop, some people doing portrait paintings.

2nd week!

2005-10-24T22:55:00.000+03:00

Alright.

So I got a place to stay now, im at the school dormitory, getting a good chance to use my novice czech with my flatmate, he doesnt really speak much english.

So this is my place >

(click everything to make em bigger)

This weekend has been interesting, since there was an international digital artist workshop, not far from my school. I couldnt afford paying for it, too bad.

but! as luck would have it, I met a guy from paris, on the street, and he was one of the teachers of said workshop and invited me to join in for a day or two, so I went to check things out and met some interesting people there.

Heres a couple of shots

This first shot is about some kind of character design assignment, one of the teachers giving critique.

Heres a demo of digital painting, about light and shadows, environment design.

I write these updates from the animation department of my school, which looks like this. There are some Finnish, Japanese, Bulgarian and Czech students, teacher commenting hand-drawn walk cycles.

There is also an exhibition in Praha, about the figure drawing of several European schools, put together and it has been going around different cities over the summer. I didnt see it yet, but I guess there is one of my works in there. At least they have it in the book they published. Lots of nice drawings in this catalogue/book.

Alright. Thats all the more and less related babble, here are the drawings for this week. Only five this time since one class was hopelessly full.

The technique is combined ink, water, acrylic paint and dry pastels. They all mix nicely with water so you can just paint with everything together, making the pastel work like paint when you want it to.

The size is as last time, about 150 x 100 cm, or 5 feet by 3 feet.

I will see if next bunch will be charcoal. Using paint to block in the basic sketch is just so much faster, and we have only 3 hours so its tempting to go with water and paint, but the vast majority in the class draw black and white, dry charcoal. I need to practise it a lot, so we will see.

I need to limit my colors, anyway! In chronological order >

(horrible light in that class)

Thats it! I will try to remember to get some photos of the whole class so you get an idea of the drawings and premises.

See you

First week of drawing

2005-10-19T13:27:00.000+03:00

Hey!

After some minor technical problems I have the first bunch of drawings up for show. Thanks Jussi!

This is what my school looks like, its situated next to the Vltava river and lies on the edge of the old town area of Praha.

View of Praha from Letna park, at the Metronome statue.

And a view of Czech Republic countryside from the airplane.

Here are the first drawings from the class, two drawings each day, in chronological order. Each drawing is about 150x100 cm across, and each one took 3 hours to complete. The materials I use are charcoal, oil pastels and dry pastels and water to mix them with. We draw from 1PM to 7PM which is divided in two sessions, 3 times a week.

On top of this Im studying anatomy from a few different books, sketching out bones, muscles, tendons, etc. Ill post some of that later, when I get to do some hands, portraits, etc. from life.

Packing

2005-10-09T17:16:00.000+03:00

streetview
Originally uploaded by PekkaPraha.

I set up www.flickr.com to host my drawings. Here's another sketch.

Packing my anatomy books, acrylic paints, charcoal, pencils, brushes..

Can't wait to get started.

t-36 hours to go

2005-10-09T03:02:00.000+03:00

I'm at home. Getting all ready to move to Praha.
Setting up blog, packing clothes and materials. which will be mainly my life drawings and paintings from figure drawing classes, anatomy practise and cafe/bar sketches.

I will update weekly, making a diary/archive of my stay during the fall semester of 2005/2006 at VSUP (University of Art, Architecture and Design, in Prague).

Here's a starting sketch for the blog. Click it for full resolution version.