Thursday Life Drawing with the Ringmaster!

Last night we had a very special drawing session. The Ringmaster was in the house! Jennifer surprised us with a magnificent costume, we had a new artist join the group and the best part of the night (I dare say) was Jenny's home made peach cobbler a la mode. Delicious! Before everyone showed up Jenny and I debated over what music to listen to. We both believe that music has powerful influences and that it's important to pick the right tunes before drawing. Having said that, agreeing on music is not always the easiest thing to do. For example, my pick for Thursdays circus theme was Mr. Bungle. Jenny disagreed with my musical choice, calling it geeky white guy music and instead suggested we listen to Louis Armstrong. These are obviously two very different artist but in the end I had to agree with Jenny's pick. Something as hardcore as Mr. Bungle would have been to distracting to listen to.

We made a compromise and settled on Louis Armstrong for drawing and Mr. Bungle for cobbler. In the future I want to put together a life drawing play list. I'm leaving it open so email me if you have any suggestions. I'm taking request! Aside from that we had some great poses, everyone ended up with beautiful drawings and I can't wait until next Monday.

Monday Night with Barbarella the vampire slayer!

This weeks drawing session was inspired by the classic cult sci-fi super heroine Barbarella. Jennifer and I came up with our own interpretation of her character, appropriately dubbed "Barbarella the vampire slayer". We pieced the costume together with various articles found in our closet. We even dug out the wig to make sure we got her hair right. The poses were nabbed from old movie posters we found on Google image search. Jennifer added her own unique perspective and to our delight she made a perfect Barbarella.

On the other hand though after seriously reviewing the groups drawings over the past few months. We have come to the realization that our subject had begun to grown stale. On that note we have decided to continue with the costume and character themed drawing nights from here on. This Thursday we will have a special appearance from a mystery guest. Come join us to find out who. Here's my drawing pick from last Monday, a 5 minute pose I believe, drawn by Oscar Arroyo.

Get ready to draw! It's Monday Night RAW!

A few months back I came up with an idea to start holding a life drawing meetup. I was surprising to find so few places in Los Angeles that offered life drawing. The one place closest that I found only met once a week and the other was 45 minutes through the worst rush hour traffic. Well I really felt like I needed do something to keep from getting rusty. So I found a willing model invited people to come and draw. Ever since I along with a few other artist and a very lovely model have been hosting bi-weekly meetups. We get together Mondays and Thursdays and draw! We have a very strict schedule that keeps the artist from taking advantage of the model. We are always trying to find a few more die hards to color in the negative spaces. So, if your are on the west side of L.A. and are interested in drawing check us out. To get more information and updates about future meet ups join our group on facebook (Westside Life Drawing).

Zzzzzz.....

3D Scanner DIY

The most innovating music videos I've seen as of late (House of Card' by Radiohead) has inspired me to investigate the process of creating 3d data animation. Aaron Koblin is one of the guys behind the scanning technology used in the video. These are very smart guys with all of the right resources and what they've come up with is beyond amazing. But I want to find a way to do this on my own. I started looking around for solutions when I came across the DAVID-LaserScanner a DYI 3Dscanner kit. Next thing you know I'm head deep in getting this ****ing thing to work. The good news is I got it to work after a few days of fiddling around. The not so good news is that in order to save the models I scanned I'll have to buy a licensed copy of the software. The genius behind this product is that if you have the time to spend tweaking your setup you can have a low priced 3D scanner at home that works moderately well. You can purchase a starter kit or do what I did and look around the house for parts. You can try the software out free but there are restrictions when saving object.

How does it work? Well the software does all of the hard work. The most complicated thing for me was printing out the calibration sheets and pasting them onto foam core. But that's just because I I'm not very good with cutting and pasting. After making your boards, align them with your webcam and run the David software. Once the calibration in David is done you're ready to scan your first object.


Although it is possible to scan an object by hand I had more success anchoring the laser to a pivot. I used servos to control the laser a small turntable. Also keep in mind, certain types of surfaces scan better than others. If you have problems scanning an object try a matte paint! Also keep in mind, in order to scan you'll have to spend several hours a night, at home, by your self, quietly sitting, in a very dark room. On the flip side, check out how cool this program really is. After spending way to much time with myself in the dark here is the payoff!
Not to shabby for my first try. Sure there are still a few tweaks I think I could make that can help to improve the end results. I'm looking into getting a better laser and using an HDVcam but for now I think this is perfect.

Although this is not the end goal it puts me one step closer to being able to scan live 3d data. My next experiment starting from scratch is to create a spinning scanner with multiple lasers and use Matlab for interpreting the data. This will require much more research and take much longer. Until then I'm going to buy a license of David and try to fine tune my setup.

www.david-laserscanner.com

www.velodyne.com/lidar

www.geometricinformatics.com