Could I recieve a critique for my SOP?

[Lindzei]

This is my first draft for my personal statement. I am applying for the Art and Design foundation Diploma at Demontfort University

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The fact that the very images in my imagination have the potential, through hard work, of being brought to life on a piece of acrylic grounded card almost precisely as I envisioned them makes both my successes and failures an enormous source of motivation

 

I tell stories in both visual and written format. One of my goals is to show people and myself, the world from my point of view. For people to feel the same emotions I feel when painting or drawing something. Fantasy and surrealism, are my most favourite themes. I am drawn to melancholic, introspective stories with a sense of mystery and ambiguity to them. “The Burning Man” is one of my narrative based illustrations telling the story of an entity that is the physical personification of the shadow archetype from Jungian psychology. I try to avoid cliché stories with typical characters such as elves, or cyborgs and instead design my own creatures and settings.

 

I’m fascinated by the organic forms found in nature such as the curves of the nude human figure, twisting forms in trees and the waves created by hair both curly and straight. I get a sense of satisfaction  from drawing these curves in a single quick stroke. I study these forms to better learn to mimic them. Through my eyes, it looks as if all of nature is constantly dancing. I also love how the curves have a sense of rigidness beneath them.

 

I emulate realism in my work. This is because doing so makes my stories and drawings feel more alive as if one could walk into it and explore the world within. This also means I do a large number of drawings of real world objects around me to enhance my knowledge. I often times break down subjects I am drawing into rigid three dimensional forms to maintain their underlying anatomical structure, and use this to mentally rotate an object in my mind such that it can be drawn from different angles. For example, I reduce the thumb down to a triangle for its base, a rectangular prism for its mid-point and a pear shape for the top with circles in between to represent pivots. In my own home, I mentally draw over objects like cylinders and boxes to half them and better train my special awareness.

 

Hands, heads, and full figures are my favourite subjects to draw. I am inspired by the drawings of Charles Bargue and George Bridgeman due to their use of straight lines in their studies of the human form.

 

I use mostly dry media as it gives me the feeling that I am doing everything by hand. As if the every single colour, and form was of my own design and not an accident. I’ve gone so far as to draw entire A2 sized illustrations purely in colour pencil to maintain this feeling of control.

 

Light and colour are another part of art I pay heavy attention to. They have the ability to establish a mood and allow a unique narrative to be constructed from them. Whenever I am outside, I observe the angles at which light hits objects and the resulting bright and shadowy areas which I study through black and white value copies in pencil. I believe nature is defined by subtlety. During the rainy season, I would drive out to collect my father from his walks during a coming storm and watch the gleams and varying shades and tones on his skin as I approached him. I would attempt to trace back the light sources and predict the intensity of the shadows before glancing at my subject only to discover that I failed to take into account ambient light or specular reflection. While this brought great frustration, it also revealed to me how intricate reality is. I knew I had much to learn and my goal to master realism was further bolstered.

 

I’m mostly self-taught and learn predominantly from the internet. Though I’m aware I’m still a ways off from where I dream to be in my skill level, I have gained many skills via experimentation and from books written by experts in the field, mostly pertaining to perspective, basic human anatomy, shading, and construction.

 

 It’s hard to exactly break down my learning habits as many of my skills, construction in particular have developed to a nearly intuitive level. For this reason, I do not face great difficulty designing characters from multiple angles. Although I am partial to traditional media, I have made use of digital media in a lot of my work with some images done entirely on applications such as Photoshop or Paint Tool Sai. I use these applications mostly for photo-manipulation, a technique in which multiple photos or just one are creatively edited or altered to produce an art piece, or painting realistic portraits by blocking in large shapes down to smaller details.

 

 In my A level examination, I made use of Photoshop to create a reference photo that depicted a dark viscous entity composed entirely of blended and fused nude models which I printed and transferred to a large scale gouache covered card with pencil crayons. The process for completing many of my portraits can last of several days at times but I am kept motivated by that goal of realising a finished project.

 

I enjoy analysing things and one of my favourite subjects in high school was history which required picking apart facts and events.  In art, I analysed each subject I’d attempt to replicate. Things like foliage, clouds, waves, hair and fabrics bore a pattern in their form that gave each of them their unique shapes. I’d look at photos or go out and draw the patterns of these objects using a black fine-liner to learn how they worked in the same manner I’d turn well-defined three dimensional subjects into basic shapes to understand them.

 

My interest in design and analysis of three dimensional forms has now led me to the world of concept art. I am attracted to this profession because it brings together everything I love about art, storytelling and analysis. I had watched many videos on the industry straight from heavy weights such as Marc Brunet, the senior character artist of Blizzard, and Designer, Feng Zhu to gain a better understanding of what went one within it.

 

I enjoy going for long walks because of the sense of freedom it gives me. While I live in a suburban area, there are many open fields where I live dotted with large rock formations and a few lakes where large flocks of birds nest. I also travel occasionally down to a nearby nature reservation where Wildebeest, Zebra and monkeys can be seen in the distance. These walks allow me to observe the world around me and take in the subtle details of nature most people tend to overlook. Power cuts are frequent in my country and at night, I sometimes go out to observe the stars and a few asteroids.

 

I’m an overall calm and easy going person. I work well in groups with other people and am open to suggestions from those around me. I was a member of my debate team in high school as well as the astronomy club and have studied the physics behind stars, planets and space-time in my free time. I enjoy shooting clay pigeons and taking care of animals. I am interested in the science with a particular interest in Astro-physics and Biology. I am eager to further my development as an artist and overall person in university.

 

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