Peter's Sketchbook

[gregorkari]

Proko Power! 
keep up those studies, love them!

[Peter]

Proko Power! 
keep up those studies, love them!

Another Proko fan :) I love his videos. Thanks very much, I'll try my best.

[Peter]

Apologies for not posting for the last couple of days, I've been working on a piece from imagination based on the suggestion from Adzerak and finally got back to my life drawing class, just my luck that my first class back the model had to cancel last minute :( so we spent the session drawing each other in 15 minute poses. I tried Adzerak's advice of not lifting the pencil off the paper (not sure if you can tell or not). I was hoping they would light the model with an artificial light since it was an evening class but they didn't which was annoying, I'm going to look around and see if there are any other life drawing classes which use proper lighting.

For the piece I was doing from imagination, as I said last time my idea was to draw a skeleton king of some sort, went abit wild and thought about drawing it with armour on but quickly realized that I haven't had much practice drawing armour, let alone rendering it and thought I shouldn't go too crazy just attempt what I've had practice in since this is what it was all about anyway.

The pose and skull I drew from imagination, used some reference for how the cloak would sit on the body and some reference for how the skull would look lit from the angle I wanted. It turned out better than I thought actually, had a blast with it, not too happy with how I rendered the left side of the cloak, think I could of grouped the values better but oh well.

Any feedback would be much appreciated. :) 

[Peter]

Been struggling with motivation the last 2 days, trying to work through it though! Went to a portrait class last night, thought it was going to be a few quick poses first and then a longer pose but it was a single pose session so I ended up with 3 drawings.

Lastly some drawings from my eye cast since I kept on having issues drawing the eyes in the portrait class I decided to work on them today. I really need to work on my eyes more, not happy with my drawings today but I'll get there.

[Peter]

Tried working through but felt rather burnt out so I took thur-fri off just to recharge, made some masonite boards friday night which was fun since I've never done it before and I decided to have a go at painting the skeleton figure that I drew last week which has been what I've been up to today. I have a few progress shots below, I've worked on it more than I have in the last photo but when I tried taking a photo half the image was flushed with white from my lamp since the paint is still wet so I'll take a photo tomorrow and complete it tomorrow aswell. Lastly some doodles that I did the other day while in work.

[Peter]

Finished the painting tonight. I'm fairly happy with it, feel like I could of done a better job on the cloak but since I have been working on it all day yesterday and a few hours today I felt like I got to the point where I was over working it so thought it was best to leave it. I added some texture in the background with a palette knife to initially cover up the brush marks but actually liked how it turned out. 

I messed up the bottom of the painting since I didn't like how the body abruptly ended so I basically tried to vignette the bottom but with paint........ I really should of planned for that but oh well, lesson learned.   
 
Again any feedback would be great. :)    

[Adzerak]

Hail to ye!

I like that you iterated and showed your steps on the skeleton piece. I often have a problem in that my sketches and block-ins can feel a lot more dynamic than my finished piece, sometimes the flow is gone and i'm just focused on technical rendering in a stiff sort of way. Is that something you experience? 

Asking since, though the painting turned out nice, I really like the value study you did of the same piece. It has such dynamic lighting and a nice focal point on the skull, enhanced by that lost edge going on to the left on the cloak. The overall value composition is better imo, the "light shapes" much more interesting, it really pops! 

May your brush stay wet!

[Peter]

Hail to ye!

I like that you iterated and showed your steps on the skeleton piece. I often have a problem in that my sketches and block-ins can feel a lot more dynamic than my finished piece, sometimes the flow is gone and i'm just focused on technical rendering in a stiff sort of way. Is that something you experience? 

Asking since, though the painting turned out nice, I really like the value study you did of the same piece. It has such dynamic lighting and a nice focal point on the skull, enhanced by that lost edge going on to the left on the cloak. The overall value composition is better imo, the "light shapes" much more interesting, it really pops! 

May your brush stay wet!

Hi Adzerak! 

I thought I'd try and show my process as best as I could, I had quite a few other designs where I was messing around with incorporating armour but I realized that since I haven't rendered armour before I would probably be biting off more than I could chew hahaha.

Onto your next question, I get that all the time! I feel like I'm more confident in my initial sketches because I am just exploring and not committing to anything just yet, once I start rendering a piece, as you said, start focusing on the rendering side that I feel like my work looses that dynamic feel. With time we will both definitely find that balance of nicely rendered/dynamic. :)

Thank you very much :) Yh I thought my drawing turned out alot better than the painting, since I've mainly been focused on drawing for the past year or so I guess that my drawings are bound to be better than my paintings. I just need to start putting in that painting practice!

P.S. Sorry for the late reply.

[Peter]

It's been awhile since I last updated. I tried getting out of the rut I was in, decided to switch things up by taking a break from working on my portrait/figure drawing skills and work on something else so I decided to go back to studying perspective from the Erik Olsen lessons from NMA since I haven't practice it for so long.

Not too much workwise, couldn't seem to get out of the rut even though I thought changing things up would help so I took a few days off. Haven't had alot of time this week since I've been doing more hours in work this week to cover for a friend but I should be good to go starting next week and get back into the swing of things! :)

Here's a few perspective practice that I did aswell as a portrait from last nights portraiture class which I didn't get to finish in the time frame.

[cicakkia]

I like how you put the shadow on your drawing. It gives dynamic feeling

[Peter]

I like how you put the shadow on your drawing. It gives dynamic feeling

cicakkia - Thanks for the comment :) I'm trying to make my drawings more dynamic so i guess I'm doing the right thing haha.

[Peter]

Some work from the last few days. I attended my life drawing class Thursday night and I was very rusty which was more evident in my quick sketches which weren't that great, I just need to get back into the swing of things. My last drawing was an hour long pose which I was quite pleased with, wasn't able to finish it in class so I attempted to work on it some more at home but I butchered it. Atleast I tried. 

I don't think I'll be able to attend my classes weekly until the new year, there's a bus strike in my city so it's near impossible for me to get home which is a pain.

Lastly some more perspective practice, thought I'd experiment with how a cube of the same size, position, and distance would look from different eye levels, changing the eye level by a foot so I went from 6-3 foot.

I'm also brainstorming some ideas for a band poster, spent a few hours earlier messing around with thumbnails but don't have anything substantial yet but will post when I do.

[Peter]

Some perspective practice from today and yesterday, following along with Erik Olsen's perspective series on NMA. 

First diagram is a 10x10x10 room standing 12 feet away at an eye level of 6 feet. Then I had a go myself, kept the room size and sp/el the same but positioned the room more to the right. I then had a little bit of fun and had a go at doing a drawing of a living room which I did a quick floor plan which I shaded in and with tracing paper on top, drew the room from imagination which I then messed around with in photoshop cropping it to 9x12 and playing around with the composition on the page.

I'm still working on my band poster idea, I have the idea but having abit of trouble of composing it on the page but my plan is to work on it some more tomorrow.

[Peter]

Apologies for not posting in so long, had to do extra hours at work but I have a few days off now so I have plenty of time to get work done. :)

I've been working on a poster design for the last week. I've been having alot of difficulties with the design, I had this grand idea in my head but I just couldn't seem to translate that idea onto paper. I didn't want to give up on it so I've been persevering with it although I feel like my idea doesn't really equate the amount of time that I've put in so far, but I'm guessing that process gets easier/quicker with time....I hope.

To sum up my idea it was basically a bunch of druid girls in a woodland setting either carrying or releasing lanterns into the night, that's the idea that kept popping into my head from listening to the artists songs.

I've got a bunch of sketches and an idea that i liked that I worked abit more on in Photoshop adding basic values. I feel like I'm at the point now where I've done all I can without using reference.

I'm gonna go to my local park tomorrow to take some photos of the woodland setting and my friend has agreed to pose for me, just need to find out when she is free.

My plan was to work on this the next couple of weeks alongside my regular practice and see how it goes. :)

[Matthew M]

Peter, just droppin' by to say that you're doing great. Keep it up.

[Peter]

Peter, just droppin' by to say that you're doing great. Keep it up.

Hey Matthew! thanks for dropping by :) Thanks man it means alot.

[Peter]

Sorry for the lack of updates, been quite hectic the last week so I haven't had a whole lot of time to do work, it's been killing me. Once the Christmas period is over I should hopefully be bale to go back to my old schedule.

Been working my way through the perspective series, I want to get these core concepts down as quick as possible so I can move onto playing around with perspective and create some interesting scenes and have some fun with it. I got myself another cast last month but hadn't had the time to work from it so I thought I'd do some drawings from it.

Lastly I've been working on my poster idea some more, went out to my local park last Monday and gathered some reference imagery and some of myself for the pose. Spent the day yesterday in Photoshop refining my initial sketch some more (will add more detail and work on the trees and plants and face/hands when I come to ink it) and added some value just the flesh out the scene more, I really should of gone with a less detailed idea for my first screen printed poster but I guess there would be no fun in that.

I need to work on the background abit more, not happy with it atm, I was thinking of adding thicker trees to make it look more like she is in a forest. Need to figure out how I will ink it aswell. 

I was going to do it by hand since I have no experience of inking in photoshop/illustrator but I only have an A4 scanner so I'm not sure if I should draw it smaller so i can scan it in one go and scan at a higher dpi so I can enlarge it (poster is 9x24), or to ink it at the intended size but on separate sheets of paper and scan it?

Don't know if anymore here has experience with this sort of thing and could possibly help?  

[Amit Dutta]

Heya Peter, some nice pencil life sketches there. Just saw your question about printing. It's going to be way quicker and easier to scan a single sheet, than try stitch a bunch together. Just scan at a relatively high res, like 600dpi. Should be more than enough to work further on in PS and adjust print sizes for final printing. Good luck!

[Peter]

Heya Peter, some nice pencil life sketches there. Just saw your question about printing. It's going to be way quicker and easier to scan a single sheet, than try stitch a bunch together. Just scan at a relatively high res, like 600dpi. Should be more than enough to work further on in PS and adjust print sizes for final printing. Good luck!

Hi Amit thanks for getting back to me. Yh that's what I was thinking actually, I gave it ago last week but since I only have an A4 scanner my drawing was too small to actually ink to the detail that I was after. I even printed it off at its actual size (9x24 inch) across 3 sheets of A4 but even then it was still too small. :(

[Peter]

Quick update on the poster that I'm working on. I worked some more on the last sketch that I posted since I wasn't happy with the background and originally I wanted to ink this by hand, scan it and colour it digitally. Spent a whole day last week messing around with printing it off on a single sheet of paper and across multiple sheets of A4 since that is the max size that my scanner can scan at but I found it to be too small for me to ink. 

I've decided that I'm going to ink it in Illustrator (and colour it) since I'll be able to add the amount of detail that I'm after so atm i'm taking my refined sketch (first image out of the 2 posted) and taking it to a finished piece and then exporting it to Illustrator so that I can ink it.

Having some issues atm with my graphics tablet working correctly in Illustrator. My tablet seems to be drawing when my pen is only a few milimetres above the tablet surface, but it's only in Illustrator that I have this problem. I'm hoping to fix it in the next day or 2 because I want to finish this poster by the weekend.