Xiangshan Campus Dormitories.

Settling into campus life in the Chinese Academy of Art. I study at the Xiangshan campus, and live in the Shanbei Student Dormitories, Building 5 Room 619.

I'm still in the middle of making my room feel roomy. My fellow international students have come in here and told me that it looks like an office. *A*;



I've been decorating the walls -- I've decided the theme of the room will be blue, orange, and green. <8d src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v228/twisted666/PHOTOS/9d9337a1.jpg">

The view from my balcony. Yes, that's a mountain and a small lake. Down there is where I first and finally learned how to bike. ^^; Took me about three days to get the basics. It's still very dangerous to bike too close to me ATM.





My still meeessy work desk, featuring Mewmew the cat, Fei-fei, and Lan-lan the goat, courtesy of Denise and Ellaine. ♥



Only three textbooks for the rest of my four-year degree course: College Language and Literature (1st year), Chinese Art History (2nd year), and Foreign Art History (3rd year). My Chinese classmates received a lot of books on learning English -- a course foreign students are exempted from.



My first ever attempt at creating a wholly traditional media piece. I think this style is supposed to be called 'speed drafting.' In my case -- minus the speed. @___@;



I came to this college not knowing that I have to take basic fine arts classes before I can get to my elective (most likely 2D animation). To start off, I tried copying this bust with my ignorant, barbaric methods -- I gave up two days into it. You can say I naturally phailed at generating contrast. As luck would have it, a few of my fellow foreign students have offered to teach me...



Mika is a second year architecture student, and one of the first foreign friends I made here. She was also the one who informed me that I had to take basic FA classes. I showed her my previous sketch, and she did this crash course demo for me, focusing on which ways to shade. She made it look so easy... Like, she only measured the proportions in her mind. D8

This was what I came up with after Mika's demo. Basically, I made sure my strokes were clean and even... This little chunk still took me around eight hours. This is a big deal because on average, students should only need 3-4 hours to finish such a decent bust sketch.

Inhye is a Korean student attending high school here. After seeing my first two attempts, she showed me step-by-step how to measure and effectively flesh out the three-dimensionality of the whole bust before delving into the details. She did this in less than two hours.



Here, I tried to do the same thing that Inhye did -- tried... and promptly lost interest. XD; I took a lot longer than she did, but at least I know how to already. I still need to practice a lot to gain speed, accuracy and confidence, however.



Some speed drafting trials.



Random sketches.



All of us taking up Cartoon and Animation get three months of Speed Drafting real-life models. Each piece should take only 15 minutes, whereas this n00b took little less than an hour.