Kilillan's Sketchbook

[Kilillan]

Hello everyone!
This is my first post here (and the first time I've ever posted art online)
Almost 2 decades ago (when I was in middle school!) I used to lurk Conceptart.org, but I never really drew anything. My job is unrelated to anything creative, but I wanted to learn to draw before I got too old. I started drawing this year in May, 2021 (about 6 months ago from now) with a goal of drawing 4-5 hours every single day and I want to continue drawing at this pace for another 18 months.

I really want to improve my drawings, and any advice would be appreciated. I definitely need to work on line quality and anatomy. 
I do 100% of my art on procreate, I did go to a trial of a life-drawing class where I was forced to use a pencil and paper and I felt like an idiot... I kept trying to use two fingers to "undo" and I kept trying to zoom in by pinching the paper :/.

Thanks for looking!

[Kilillan]

Oh and I was also trying to learn Zbrush in the beginning but I gave it up to focus on drawing

[Mutley]

Hi Kilillian,

Those face studies are beautifully done. As far as advice goes for getting better drawabox.com has a lesson plan and exercises that will help with pen control, draughtsmanship and accuracy.

I also think it's important to always have a short term goals and a long term goals.

So you already have two long term goals - to improve line quality and to improve anatomy.

Short term goals for improving line quality might be:

1). To study and try to emulate the line drawing style of artists you admire.
2). Swap back and forth between practicing using traditional media (pencil, different types of pen, brushes etc.) and digital and experiment with different line drawing widths and tools when working digitally. Basically explore line work with different tools.
3). Explore subjects for line drawing you haven't tried yet (landscapes? object studies? abstract drawings?)

Short term goals for improving anatomy might be:

1). Try a practice routine of lots of very quick studies (10 drawings at 30 seconds each, 10 drawings at 1 minute each, 5 drawings at 5 minutes each, 5 drawings at 10 minutes each, etc.).
2). Swap back and forth between drawing from references and drawing from imagination.
3). Identify a specific weakness from your studies and focus on studying and improving this in your existing practice routine.

Hope this helps.

- Matt

[Kilillan]

Hi Kilillian,

Those face studies are beautifully done. As far as advice goes for getting better drawabox.com has a lesson plan and exercises that will help with pen control, draughtsmanship and accuracy.

I also think it's important to always have a short term goals and a long term goals.

So you already have two long term goals - to improve line quality and to improve anatomy.

Short term goals for improving line quality might be:

1). To study and try to emulate the line drawing style of artists you admire.
2). Swap back and forth between practicing using traditional media (pencil, different types of pen, brushes etc.) and digital and experiment with different line drawing widths and tools when working digitally. Basically explore line work with different tools.
3). Explore subjects for line drawing you haven't tried yet (landscapes? object studies? abstract drawings?)

Short term goals for improving anatomy might be:

1). Try a practice routine of lots of very quick studies (10 drawings at 30 seconds each, 10 drawings at 1 minute each, 5 drawings at 5 minutes each, 5 drawings at 10 minutes each, etc.).
2). Swap back and forth between drawing from references and drawing from imagination.
3). Identify a specific weakness from your studies and focus on studying and improving this in your existing practice routine.

Hope this helps.

- Matt


Hello Matt, 
Thank you for the advice!As for the short-term goals, Ive made a mid-long term plan on what to study. 
I plan on doing two week "sprints", where I study only one subject for 2 weeks (70 hours, ideally). Last month I did 2 weeks of torso studies, and I just finished 2 weeks of only faces. From today I will do 2 weeks of only clothing/fold studies. In the future I will do 2 week studies of mechs, landscapes, composition, "form" etc. I don't know if this is the correct method of study, but this is my plan for the next 6 months at least. 
Thank you for the other advice, I will try to keep them in mind, and I will experiment with new brushes. I actually don't want to draw with "traditional" media...graphite on paper feels so "rough" and charcoal seems like it would be super messy. 

[Kilillan]

I just finished 2 weeks of only faces, now moving onto clothing/folds, wish me luck. My time on Procreate for the past 10 days dropped below 40 hours for the first time this year due to work... I need to grind to get it back up to an average of 50 hours/10 days 

[cgmythology]

Great studies here! Those latest sketches were done with ProCreate? They look great but I never would have guessed they were digital if that's the case! Keep it up!

[Kilillan]

Great studies here!  Those latest sketches were done with ProCreate?  They look great but I never would have guessed they were digital if that's the case!  Keep it up!

Thank you!
Yep, 100% procreate. I'm using some custom brushes though, I never liked Procreate's default pencil brush

[Zorrentos]

Your sketches are looking great, but don't fall into the trap of only making drawings of cute girl's faces (or handsome guys). Try to mix up the ages, genders, and proportions as it will make them look much more interesting. I'm saying this from my own experience (I used to have countless pages of nothing but hot girl faces in my old sketchbooks).

Keep up the good work! :)

[Kilillan]

Zorrentos: Thanks, I try to vary it. Especially if I don't draw from reference all of my females look very generic, that's something I need to work on.

Age of Empires 4 released a couple weeks ago, so that's been eating up a lot of my free time. I'm still managing to get in 3 hours a day or so. I've been trying to work on my line quality, especially for full body sketches. Just a few sketches I did during zoom meetings at work.

[Kilillan]

So I started a 2 year illustration course at Kyoto Art University. It's completely remote, so I can work while doing it (https://www.kyoto-art.ac.jp/t/course/illustration/) for those interested (it's in Japanese)



Some random crap I drew

[Crowbit]

loving the sketches. looking forward to seeing more of your future sketches.

[Jephyr]

Lotza great studies and concepts here. Hope you get a lot out of that illustration course and share what you're doing,

[Kilillan]

Crowbit: Thanks a lot!

Jephyr: Yeah, the course is probably very different from an illustration course in the west... many students are aiming to be manga artists

This is a piece I did for my Clip Studio Paint class. Interesting enough, they don't have any classes on Illustrator/Photoshop, everything is aimed for Clip Studio Paint. It appears to be the industry standard in Japan.

This is also my first "painting", and the first thing I've ever done in color.
I thought I wasn't prepared for color, but it wasn't that different from B&W

[cgmythology]

Very solid painting/study! The tones look great, very natural with some very convincing reflections as well!

[Kilillan]

cgmythology: Thanks!


This is a WIP for my color composition class.  I haven't really tried to finish anything, so it's been a struggle to try to draw something "clean". I kinda hate it, but I'm also not sure how to improve it.
I'll be attempting to color this later. If it's too terrible I probably won't post it here

[darktiste]

Make a mess of the room or atleast put on some additional furniture and stuff hanging on the wall that would add more interest to the scene.It just to clean and empty not much personality transpiring.I also feel like you didn't give us the best camera angle to connect with the story.It almost as if she watching a tutorial her hand aren't anywhere that would make sense to beon a controller if you were to be engage in a video game season.

[cgmythology]

I like your use of perspective with your latest drawing, and the figure is very well drawn with an excellent expression. I agree with darktiste in that some more details in the environment would help improve the image as everything is a bit 'empty' at the moment. Keep going!

[Kilillan]

darktiste:
Thanks for the advice. Yeah visual story-telling is something I really need to get used to. Unfortunately I didn't have time to apply it to this picture (I had a time limit for the homework) but yeah I'll keep that in mind for next time

cgmythology:
Thanks! Yeah it definitely looks very bare.  For the next piece I will definitely try to improve on that

So yeah I tried coloring the picture. I really haven't tried to color before (without just looking at reference). I just watched Marc Brunet's youtube tutorial and gave it a shot.
I basically hate how it turned out, and I hate myself for making it... but I ran out of time and needed to turn it in. Next time I will start by making some thumbnails of the colors/values before doing anything. I also need to limit the values to make it more dynamic. Also some lighting (rim lighting or something) would make the picture better.

[RottenPocket]

Lighting can disguise problem areas with form but it won't solve it, I think the colour here is find, maybe needs just the stronger light coming from the screen from the left.

I will say if you had time to change one thing it would be the glasses. They appear to have changed shape since the sketch, and are now like tailored goggles adhering to the contours of the face. This gives her a very round head.

[Kilillan]

Rottenpocket:

Thanks for the advice! Yeah the glasses look really flat now that you mention it.
Maybe I'll go back and try to work on this picture again.

In the meantime, here's a quick sketch.
It's supposed to be Mark Zuckerberg as a robot alien demon spider... or something