Last batch of Figure drawings from AAU

I am graduating from the Academy of Art this week. I was going to write something profound about that, but I have to go pick up my mom from the airport (!). So here it goes... It's been a long ride, and a great one. Graduation feels like a lot of things, but it no longer feels like the end of my student days. There is so much to learn still, and I am looking forward to it.

This is an assortment of drawings, some are from a super hero costume carnival that the comic book club at AAU hosted. I am not a big comic book guy, but there event was really great! Check out the next one if you go to the academy. Was even more fun than the regular costume carnival.

 

 

Rarely do I do any figure drawing over 20 minutes, but I got the chance to do this one on a workshop a month back. Had a lot of fun playing around with softer charcoal like vine and go in heavy with some compressed charcoal I had laying around from a few years back.

Not the best drawing in the world, but it was a lot of fun, and I feel like that translates through the drawing!

Indian royalty

Getting lost in old images of Maharaji and Maharani's lately. The beautiful patterns and designs they dressed themselves in are just perfect to illustrate. A few vector spost, trying to update myself on working with Illustrator.

Wrapping up my children's book project with a couple of last minute illustrations. Pretty happy with these, all the figure drawing lately seems to have payed off. The structure and anatomy is a bit more solid now.

Satan's misunderstood daughter

Heavily inspired by Belgian comics these days.
Sketched out a couple of characters, watercolour on soft-press.

hitting up the workshops!

Some more acryla gouache paintings, hope you like em'

Figure drawing

It's funny, I am almost done in school and I keep revisiting the same exercises. I am learning so much from dealing with the apparently simple shapes of the figure, to try and further understand the basic principles of motion, anatomy and stylistic approaches seem to be the tool that is truly the driving force of artistic progress for me these days.

Half the semester is over, and these are some of the drawings I have done so far, Ill post another batch at the end of the term. Should be interesting to see how they compare.

acryla gouache

I have been playing around with a new medium lately, Holbein's Acryla Gouache. I really like the way it handles, it behaves like traditional gouache without all the tedious traditional parts. It doesn't shift in color and tone when it sets, I can layer more than i remember being able to with gouache, and it dries waterproof. The individual colours can be used transparent with the colour remaining fairly brilliant, or opaue in an easy way.

Colour mixing can be a bit challenging trying to get just the right amount of water and pigments floating around on your palette, and I think it would be nice to have a wider range of tubes available. The paints are a bit expensive for the tiny tubes, but I find a little pigment goes a long way. Obviously this medium travels a lot better than oils, and I think I might have just found my new plein-air medium.

Here is a couple of little tests I did, a landscape from a photo I had laying around from Muir Beach and a quick portrait done at a workshop at school.

Sargent copy

Did a quick study of one of Sargent's paintings, about 2 hours in PS.

I have been working on a children's book with my sister for a couple of months. We are in the process of wrapping up the production, and hopefully we will be able to print some books soon. Anyway, this version of this illustration didn't make it into the book, had to make it a sunrise scene instead. But I thought it turned out pretty good!

Also I got a new website up for my work, check it out! www.martinmausethhvattum.com

Big Island, Hawaii

Just spent 10 wonderful days in the sun on Hawaii with Liz. So great to get out of the city and back into nature, the place really reaffirmed in my mind that a life lived outside in nature is so rewarding. You can just get stuck in the everyday big city grind, it is even obvious to me to "go out and play", I just don't. Not like I am becoming a mountain man anytime soon, but definitely stepping up my plein-air painting the next couple of months.

To be honest we spend most of our time lounging on the beach and falling off surf boards but we managed to do a few paintings. This one is the only one I ended up pleased with, and it was painted on a small beach-park near Hilo, Big Island. The owner of a hostel we stayed at was gracious enough to take us snorkeling in the area, he took us to this spot to paint and it was an amazing place. Hardly anyone around except for some locals, and we even saw a couple of huge sea-turtles basking in the sun.

The Flying Dutchman / Narrative Painting final

Fashion history

Some homework for my fashion history class :)

"A Very Sensetive Ogre"

Narrative painting hw