Putting down some practice

I thought I'd throw in a short one while working on another entry. While reading for my matriculation exams, I had this weird goal of filling an area on my wall with drawings (Yeah, I got my priorities straight. Drawing > Working towards a successful future. Story of my life.). While I didn't quite draw enough to fill that space, I did create one or two really interesting drawings. The one shown in this entry some of you might recognize, actually. A few entries back, I posted a drawing of a woman which is quite similar to this one. I actually drew both in the same evening, trying hard to figure out the female face.

Just because you know how something looks doesn't mean you're able to draw it. At least I can't do that. I see my foot every damn day but if you asked me to draw a foot... Yeah, no. You have to practice different things individually. If you draw a loot of hands, you really only get good at... Drawing hands. A couple other certain aspects of your drawing skills might also improve, but you will still have problems drawing things that aren't hands. 

I've seen that happen to a couple of artists. Eyes are a popular motive, and some people just draw tons of those familiar windows to the world (Or soul, depending on what kind of person you ask.), and they get really good at it. In the end, what they end up with is a deviantart account full of sweet drawings of eyes, but not much else. It's like knowing how to play one song on the guitar, and knowing it really well. It's handy if you want to impress strangers, but you won't impress any musicians.

Anyway, I'm a lot better at drawing male faces than female faces, so I wanted to put down some work on diversifying my repertoire.

I'm not blogging from home right now, and I didn't have any of my usual equipment or software at hand, so the quality is a little bit... Uh, crap. It's better than nothing, though. Many of my recent uploads were photographed using my phone, which explains why they aren't exactly as sharp as one might wish. I don't have access to a scanner, and it's a lot more work to photograph them with my DSLR than it is to snap a quick picture with my Nokia phone, which automatically backs up all my photos over the internet, onto my PC at home or wherever I need to access it. Alas, this time the quality suffered a little more than usual.

Great news!

The other day I contacted (Quite nervously and with much anticipation) the architectural department responsible for assessing and evaluating the hand-in assignments for the applications, and with great relief I was informed that my work had been received and accepted, and that a booklet in which instructions for what happens next had been sent to my address. To put it shortly, I'm up for round 2. 

I haven't actually read the booklet, as it was sent to my parents' address. It's about 30 pages worth of text, but I will summarize it here for anyone interested. In my experience, entrance exams (Especially to art-related educ-... things.) can be quite interesting.

To clarify before I begin; I am applying for all of the three educations in architecture that the finnish universities have to offer. They all share the same application, which means that I am applying to Oulun Yliopisto, Tampereen Teknillinen Yliopisto, and Aalto Yliopisto, all with the same single entrance process and exams. I've set my sights on Aalto, and while it is the most difficult school to get in to, I'd say I've got a good shot at it. But I don't want to speak too much of it before the applications are actually done with and I've got the results on hand.

The entrance exam process is split into three phases. I've already passed phase one, and I didn't want to write about that before because it would have been so embarrassing if I hadn't made it. Absurd, right? Yeah. Pssht. Of course I made it. In it to win it. I haven't been nervous at all. Nope.

Phase one consisted of three separate creative assignments to be handed in. We had a couple months to finish them (About the same time that I read for and wrote my matriculation exams.), and then they were to be sent by mail to be evaluated at Aalto. Phase one was entirely a passed/failed thing, and doesn't contribute to the final score (Phase 1+Phase 2+Points for Matriculation exam.)

The first and second of which were 2 dimensional, i.e. drawn/painted/made/whatever on paper, and were to be based and inspired off two texts. One text was an excerpt from a book by Tove Jansson, the second was a slab of text from a book about Japanese architecture. I don't have a picture of what I did for the Tove Jansson text, but below is my drawing of a Japanese room. 

Quite plain, as you can see. There wasn't a lot of room for creativity in this one. The Tove Jansson text require more metaphorical language, as the assignment was to somehow put the feeling of the rather gloomy text down using a visual medium (Photography, drawing, painting, whatever. It had to be in colour though.). Sadly, I never photographed my painting for that one.

The third assignment was to create a box with adjustable lighting conditions. This was achieved building two "roofs", one set in place, and one on hinges. The set roof was to be pierced with holes in such a way that it creates an interesting scene inside the box. You were also allowed to make holes in the sides of the box, so that some light would enter the box even with the adjustable lid closed. You also had to make a hole into one of the walls from which to see into the box. I quite liked this assignment, as I hadn't really done anything like it before.

As you can see, it's quite plain. I folded the sofa and the television from coloured paper (Crazy origami-skills.), and... Yeah, that's about it. I don't have a picture of it with the lid closed, but there's a hole in the left wall, just out of sight. That hole was supposed to let light into the box in such a way that it looked like the TV was illuminating the room. Which I realize would be pretty strange, as there's no picture... Oh well. But it's simple and I like it. The photo seems to be from when the box was still work-in-progress, as you can see some light is seeping in through the cracks. I fixed it up before I sent it in though.

And that's a picture of the WIP box from the outside. Working in surgical conditions as you can see.


And that's phase one. A link to the full instructions can be found here: http://dia.fi/media/25165/ennakkotehta%CC%88va%CC%882014_EN.pdf



Phase two is a fairly straightforward maths test, based upon skills I should already have (And attested to in the matriculation exam...). It's in a months time, so I've some time to polish my calculator and put on my maths-face. The biggest problem we're faced with is that we aren't allowed to use the same calculators we used in the matriculation exams, because they're too "smart". They simply do too much for the user, and we have to use simpler calculators. Basically the same level you get on your phone's calc, which is miles dumber than the CAS enabled MACHINE that has been writing my exams for the past three years.



Phase three is another creative challenge. Actually, more like 10. Those who pass the maths test are invited to a four day drawing "competition". Putting it simply, that's exactly what it is. This is the most important phase, because it's where you gather most of your points, with which you compete for the limited amount of spots available.


Points are calculated as (Maximums) 3p for Phase 2, 15p for Phase 3, and 12 points for how well you did in the matriculation exams. Additionally, 25% of the spots are distributed to the people who do best in Phase 3, which means you can get accepted purely on the basis of your drawing skills (You still need to achieve like 0.4 (40%) times the average in the maths test, which... is really little.).

The total amount of spots available at the three universities is about 110 per year. According to my approximation, that means only about 10% of the applicants actually get a spot. That's pretty stiff! And less than a third of these people get into Aalto, the toughest and most desired of the three. You can be pretty damn good and still not get a spot at all. According to my calculations, I need to get at least a thirds of the points in Phase 2 and 3 to get in with the results in the m. exams that I'm expecting to get. That leaves me in an okay position. Enough to get in at Oulu and Tampere, but not quite enough for Aalto.

Anyway, one thing at a time. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Phase one was a success, in a months time (Exactly, actually.) I'm doing the maths test.

Hopefully this answers some of the questions about my entrance exams. I've explained it so many times in person already, so I thought I might as well write it down here too.

Oil painting and "talent"

I recently picked up a set of oil-based paint, mainly for the exhibition-related project. This piece was actually the first painting I made using them (and maybe the third oil painting altogether. We really didn't get to do a lot of this in class.), and I think it turned out nice. It's not completely finished yet, I just realized, but I don't have access to it right now, so I'll just have to go ahead and upload it anyway.

There's some work yet to be done on the hands, the waist, his shoulders and eyes... Well, basically everywhere. And his tusks are missing, which is a real mistake. If I finish it, I might upload a quick update, so you can see what was done.

Anyway, so this was among my first dabbles with oil-based paint. I actually felt right at home straight away, it's really easy to work with. It's quite forgiving, as you can easily redo things, just slabbing some paint over it.

I am using quite cheap paint (Actually, the cheapest paint I could find.), and the difference between this and some quality paint I once used back in art class at Arbis (after school.) is that by diluting the quality paint with oil, you could cover a really big area with very little paint. On the other hand, with the cheap paint, mixing it with oil easily diluted the paint, making it thin and reducing the visual thickness. As a result, I use way more of the cheap oil than one would use of the quality oil, to cover the same area. Both were quite easy to work with, though. I suck at mixing values and hues, so the bigger set of different colours I got with the cheap paints is the biggest benefit I felt over the more limited set of quality paints.

As I've always felt, though, the tools are seldomly very important. Sometimes, getting better equipment can help, but this is mostly true with digital art. Photoshop, or some comparable software, can have clear benefits over some cheaper or free counterpart. For example, Photoshop has a WAY more advanced Brush engine than GIMP (Ironically, I never use Photoshop. GIMP and OpenCanvas are my go-to programs for digital art.). Still, you need to have the knowledge to make use of whatever features your digital tools offer.

Low-quality art tablets can also hamper your progress. But getting a new tablet doesn't necessarily make your art any nicer. In the same way, you can create pretty awesome stuff with really cheap, 6-pad watercolours, but you may be able to work much more efficiently with a good advanced set. To sum that up, it's more important to have tools that you're comfortable with rather than expensive, high quality equipment.

In the end, visual artistry is a skill of the mind, not an ability of the hand. You need to think in certain patterns, and see things perhaps differently than others. Some of this can be learned from books for example, there's a lot of theoretic knowledge on what works and looks good (e.g. The golden ratio, colour combos, the rule of thirds and compositional rules.), some of it can be picked up with experience and practice, and a little part of it has to do with... Uh, I don't like to call it this, but talent.

You can become a great artist without talent, and it's not like it's a binary system. Everybody has a bit of it. And even though one may suck at drawing, this person may still have that artistic predisposition that we generally call talent, this person just failed to put in the hours. Because at the end of the day, you have to put in a lot of work to become good at drawing, or painting. You have to practice.

That's why I don't like to talk about talent. It's the practice that makes you good. Some need to practice more, others less, because that's the benefit that "talent" gives you. Almost anyone can train their mind to see things the way an artist does, and anyone can train their hands to make the necessary pencil strokes, just as almost anyone can learn to play an instrument, provided this person puts in the hours and hones his skill long enough.


I don't like to hear that I'm a talented artist. While I know they mean to say that I'm pretty good at drawing, saying someone is talented really just deprecates all the practice and work put into acquiring that skill. Talent is this thing that sort of implies you just magically got good at something.