Peter's Sketchbook

[Peter]

Finally finished my gouache painting. Took a day or two longer than I had originally thought but oh well.



Stuck to just working on 2 values a day starting with my darkest darks. Had to go back on one or two days and insert a value or 2 that i had misjudged as being a lighter value than I had assigned it to but I suppose that is part of the learning experience.



Drawing






Value 10,9






Value 8,7






Value 6,5






Value 4,3,2,1,0



Did more values on the last day since there were only smalls areas for one or two of the values. Also did another comp where I combined my 1st and 2nd original comps (purely for the bakcground design) which I ended up going with.






Blending


Last day was blending the tiles together to get a more realistic finish. Quite a few places still look rather tiled even though I blended the edges so I think that is down to not having enough transition tiles between those areas.






Notes



Overall I'm relatively pleased with the end result. I was hoping to get a more realistic painting out of it but I guess that just means I have more practice to do.



Made some notes on where I could improve which I'll just bullet point below:



1. Could of designed some of my tiles to be more attractive

2. Should of made some corrections with my inital drawing to either make areas more easy to read (collar) or conform more to anatomy/structure (bags/fat pads below eyes) rather than copying what I see. Again leads back to making things easier to read. Or make things more visually appealing (hair).

3. Should of placed more tansitonal tiles between areas to achieve a better transition of tone and acheive a more realistic finish.

4. Should of applied more paint. Had some issues with blending where it rubbed back to the illustration board so I had to mix more paint to cover those areas.



Jeff's doing the same class next term but in colour which I have signed up for so my plan was to take a few days off and then do another black/white painting to get some more practice in before his class starts, and to also try and apply my improvements above to. Gonna work on the painting all next week following the same approach of 2 values a day and once that is done I'll start my new schedule which I'll post in my next update since this update is already getting quite wordy haha.

[Peter]

Got too caught up in just cracking on with work so neglected to post. I've been working more gouache tiling paintings while also starting my new schedule.



Gouache



As I said last time I wanted to attempt another b/w before the new class with Jeff started.



Ref






Painting



Same as last time I free hand the drawing and worked on 2 values a day and finished it off by doing some blending in the end, now that I look at it I could of definitely done more blending.......










I feel like compared to the first one I did it was a definite improvements since my tonal transitions improved somewhat and I felt my shape design was stronger. Still feel like I made a few mistakes in terms of value placement, again I feel like I could of used more transitional tiles to acheive better gradations. Even though I blended my tiles at the end some mf my tiles still have a strong edge which I feel boils down to lack of intermedaite tiles.



Jeff Gouache Class



Ref






Sketch






Same as the last 2 times In opted to free hand the drawing rather than trace like Jeff suggested since I wanted the extra drawing practice



Painting (week1/2)





Hopefully now that I'll be getting some feedback I should hopefully better understand the mistakes I'm making and how to correct.



Notes



Haven't gotten around to taking pics of my other studies so I'll do that over the weekend.

[Kaiko]

I really enjoy your studies and very methodical process a lot! It's great to see how your pieces are coming together and how they slowly gain an amazing depth in perspective.

I can't give much feedback, because I am not at that advanced level yet to see the "mistakes" at this level, but there are two things I think you can look at and potentially experiment with:

1.) Maybe experiment with adding some complimentary colored shades or underpaintings to your pieces to add (even more) life. So far you do a great job with the coloring (both monochromatic as well as multi colored), however the coloring look a little bit stiff.

2.) (About Post# 621): I think you are in the advanced stage with your skills, where you really need to look close at the small details in rendering to get even more out of the painting. Overall your proportions and colors look fine to me. However, what I would look out for now at this painting in this post is to get the small things right, like the transitions between skin and hair (add more fine details here like single defined hairs), maybe even skin pores and also throughout clean rendered highlights & clean blended light parts at the helmet and also at the ruff. There are a lot of little white spaces at the ruff soecifically, that are not clearly defined yet as lighting or missing color. I know traditional colors are hard to master and after drying they tend to leave these little white dots at times, but I am sure there solutions for this, too, right?

I know it's not much feedback and what I suggest is nitpicking on a high level, I know. However, given your amazing skills it wouldn't make sense to advice practicing another round of quick body sketches so please know, the "nitpicking" is coming from a place of admiration and respect for your skill with the hope it helps you a little to become even better! :)

Have a great day and keep up the great work!

[Peter]

I really enjoy your studies and very methodical process a lot! It's great to see how your pieces are coming together and how they slowly gain an amazing depth in perspective.

I can't give much feedback, because I am not at that advanced level yet to see the "mistakes" at this level, but there are two things I think you can look at and potentially experiment with:

1.) Maybe experiment with adding some complimentary colored shades or underpaintings to your pieces to add (even more) life. So far you do a great job with the coloring (both monochromatic as well as multi colored), however the coloring look a little bit stiff.

2.) (About Post# 621): I think you are in the advanced stage with your skills, where you really need to look close at the small details in rendering to get even more out of the painting. Overall your proportions and colors look fine to me. However, what I would look out for now at this painting in this post is to get the small things right, like the transitions between skin and hair (add more fine details here like single defined hairs), maybe even skin pores and also throughout clean rendered highlights & clean blended light parts at the helmet and also at the ruff. There are a lot of little white spaces at the ruff soecifically, that are not clearly defined yet as lighting or missing color. I know traditional colors are hard to master and after drying they tend to leave these little white dots at times, but I am sure there solutions for this, too, right?

I know it's not much feedback and what I suggest is nitpicking on a high level, I know. However, given your amazing skills it wouldn't make sense to advice practicing another round of quick body sketches so please know, the "nitpicking" is coming from a place of admiration and respect for your skill with the hope it helps you a little to become even better! :)

Have a great day and keep up the great work!

Hey Kaiko thanks for the feedback :) Your'e too kind, I honestly still see myself as being intermediate but maybe I'm being too hard on myself.

It's not nitpicking at all, as you said every little bit contributes to getting better so please do call me out on something minor, it's the only way I'll learn! :)

Regarding:

1. Thanks for the advice, I'll try and give it ago on my next painting. I did try and do some stains on the painting I'm wokring on now as an underpainting of sorts (if that is what you are refering to?) but maybe I didn't go dark enough with those stains. Truthly I'm not sure if I am overthinking things when it comes to painting or underthinking haha.

2. Your'e definitely right, I relaised i'd made quite a few mistakes at the end (such as the transitions and the hair) which I tried to correct but kept making more of a mess of things so I packed it in and started on another, hoping I could take my failures and address them on the next one. About the white dots, I remember trying to show some of the stain through to achieve the highlight on the helmet but I guess part of the white dots is me being sloppy and not getting my paint ratio right.

[Peter]

As I said last time I started a new practice schedule trying to address some things which I've either neglected, or haven't studied in awhile. So here's what I'm working on now:



. Perspective

. Drapery

. Hands/Feet

. Memory/Imagination

. Painting



Gonna apolgize in advance for the qaulity of my photos. i''ve been working on indivudual pieces of newsprint that I cut rather than a pad so once I'm done with a page I add it to a pile and put my drawing board on top once I'm done. Guess something got caught or pushed which caused a massive crease in my recent drawings so try and look pass the obvious crease.....



Perspective



(Not entirely sure what happened with my pics to cause this weird blue glare, hopefully it won't be present next time).



I've gone back to working through the perspective course on NMA with Erik Ollsen. I started working through the course a few years ago but never completed it for some reason. Thought I'd start from the beginning and just spend a few weeks addressing 1/2/3 point individually, making notes when needed.












Drapery



Started with a costumed figure drawing lay-in.






Some studies of drpaery from the Watts online coursebooks



Diaper Fold






Zigzag Fold






Hands/Feet



Some linear drawings of hands/feet. Top 2 on each page are a study of one of Brian Knox's drawings while the rest are me trying to understand it myself from photo ref.








Figure Lay-in



Another figure lay-in from a few weeks ago. My with proportions seem to be improving (if slowly) but my placement still seems to be hit or miss. I'm not looking to be 100% accurate to the ref but it's off enough to warrant improvement.






Memory/Imagination



Trying to be more active in drawing from memory/imagination. At the moment I;m trying to spend an hour or 2 each night trying to recall or invent what I had been studying that day.



Some hands/feet from memory






Trying to work on my figure invention, specifically how I sraw my figure Mannequin. Trying to be more simplistic since in the past I've felt like I've jumped straight to adding detail and ignoring the basic foundations/forms. Might swithc to digital for these since my sketchbook feels rather small for these exercises (a4), or maybe I just need a bigger sketchbook....






Gouache Tiling



Week 3 progress on my painting, started with applying Jeff's feedback from last week which was to widen the jaw on the left and varying the shape and size of some of my previous tiles.

[Peter]

Abit of a delay in posting, ended up tkaing last weke off to run some errands and watch some art videos and read some art books that I'd been meaning to get to.

Just a short update for today. Have some more drawings to show, both studies and some from memory/imagination which I'll post later this week along with what I've bene doing this week.


Gouache Tiling

Week 4




Week 5




Final 2 submisisons for Jeff's Gouache class. There was an error with my feedback for week 4 so didn't get the chance to apply Jeff's corrections before moving onto the final touches/blending. Might see if I can apply thme this week, might just be a case of reapplying some tiles and blending again.

Feel like I got some nice areas out of it such as the right eye and shadow side of her face and some not so good areas such as the drapery and some of the tiles on the light side of her face which could do with being closer in value, feel like atm it stands out just a tad too much.

Drapery

Thought I'd sit down and just make a bunch of notes and some diagrams regarding the 7 types of folds so I can have something handy to refer to when doing drapery studies. Still need to add a few diagrams though. Used a combination of notes from Watts handouts aswell as the famous artist course.










Invention

Some figure invention, looked at some images of armour to help with the knight but drew the female completely from imagination. Feel like the female turned out better I think mainly becuase I had a cleaer image of the pose in my head which wasn't the case with the knight. Fel like the feamel in particular is a step up to my previous attempts.




Thought I would include this shadow box that I made aswell as I wanted to get back into cast drawing/painting again. I have a roof aswell made out of cardboard that I've also painted black, need to make a a simple box though for my smaller casts so I can draw/paint them at eye level.




Going Forward

My original plan was to spend 5/6 weeks studying the things I have been working on recently and then attempt an illustration but I was thinking of changing it slightly. I thought I'd do 1 more week of continued study and then starting next week I'd spend my mornings doing some longer drawings in graphite and longer painting efforts of casts over multiple days (maybe weeks?) similar to an atelier and work on an illustration in the afternoons, mainly becuase I feel like I need more painting practice.

After that once I go back to splitting my time between studying/making finished illustrations, go back to following the progression path more closely over a Watts or maybe base my study on the atelier training of long cast/figure drawing/painting? I'm not too sure yet tbh, I'm abit conflicted on what would be the best cause of action. Maybe a mix of both?

[Who]

Nice gouache process. That study is looking good. Wrt your people drawings, specifically the faces, I have noticed you consistently make the noses too long and the gap between mouth and nose also. This is a common problem we have with faces for some reason. Also it will probably pay to focus more on matching symmetry of features across the centre line when placing them. For example, your female imagination drawing has an off centre mouth, and similar happened when using ref from post #625.  The same argument can be made for placement of eyes, so they aren't 'floating'.  Perhaps exploring ways of simplifying that initial placement can help. Some people recommend actually drawing eyeballs in the sockets before placing the eyes, or using the reilly brow/eye rhythms. I don't really do this myself, but perhaps something along the lines of using different underlying structural abstractions, than what you are used to, can help you break your default biases atm

There is also something a bit uncanny with the heads in your imaginative characters. I think perhaps you are still erring on the side of too large (or potentially to do with some mis proportion in the cranial mass, or maybe because you flatten the hair at the top of the skull quite a bit, or perhaps it is the way you handle the neck proportion and placement too). Your hands tend to be on the small side.
My figure teacher recently told me, be more generous with hands and feet, and I think having tested this, I would say you can actually get away with that more than say an off proportioned head.

[Peter]

Nice gouache process. That study is looking good. Wrt your people drawings, specifically the faces, I have noticed you consistently make the noses too long and the gap between mouth and nose also. This is a common problem we have with faces for some reason. Also it will probably pay to focus more on matching symmetry of features across the centre line when placing them. For example, your female imagination drawing has an off centre mouth, and similar happened when using ref from post #625.  The same argument can be made for placement of eyes, so they aren't 'floating'.  Perhaps exploring ways of simplifying that initial placement can help. Some people recommend actually drawing eyeballs in the sockets before placing the eyes, or using the reilly brow/eye rhythms. I don't really do this myself, but perhaps something along the lines of using different underlying structural abstractions, than what you are used to, can help you break your default biases atm

There is also something a bit uncanny with the heads in your imaginative characters. I think perhaps you are still erring on the side of too large (or potentially to do with some mis proportion in the cranial mass, or maybe because you flatten the hair at the top of the skull quite a bit, or perhaps it is the way you handle the neck proportion and placement too). Your hands tend to be on the small side.
My figure teacher recently told me, be more generous with hands and feet, and I think having tested this, I would say you can actually get away with that more than say an off proportioned head.

Thanks for such a detailed response Who! made me aware of some issues I didn't know I was having such as my necks so thanks for pointing them out to me.

It's funny you mention the abstractions ans reilly rythms, I used to use all the time before studying the skull and facial muscles some more and ever since then I just tend to use a few of the rythms such as the muzzle and the cheek/laugh line rythm. Past few months I've been lightly laying in the skull to find things such as socket placement etc, I do actually lay in eyeballs and then draw the lids on top so clearly I'm doing something wrong with that if I'm still having issues. I'll try using more of the rythms aswell as drawing in the skull going forward, see if that can help me. With the cranial mass I think it is mostly an issue of me flattening the hair out, not too sure why I do that....must do subconsciously.

Tried applying some of your fixes to my imaginative figure from last week, hopefully that is looking better now?




Regarding my necks, is it just an issue of them being a tad too long. Not entirely sure what you mean by placement, do you mean where it attaches to my heads?

[Peter]

Update for last week

Perspective

Still wokring through the perspective series on NMA. Started adding notes to some of my more complicated diagrams so to speak, just a little step by step to remind me of the process and why I'm doing it.












Hands/Feet

Some more ugly hands and feet drawings from ref.




Master Study

Started doing some master studies again, trying to make it a habit to constantly do these to help my design sense. I'm gonna attempt these again in my sketchbook as I felt I wasn't in the right mindset when doing these. Felt like I was just mindlessly copying rather than breaking down the subject manner (hands in this case) and trying to understand how/why he drew.




Drapery

Spent a day working on a full body drapery lay-in. Trying to not rush things and spend as much as time as I think needed to get a accurate drawing. Felt like I had some placement issues (specifically his arms) so I did a draw over in red to show me my mistakes. Surprisingly it's a width issue, normally I draw things to wide so it's odd that I am in fact drawing things too narrow. I'm going to correct this and work on rendering.




Invention

Some invention work of some heads and a little bit of drapery. Felt like the body on the girl was too narrow so I winded it up and increased the hands size aswell. Feel like she might be abit too bulky now? I need to revist some basic body proprtions.....

[Peter]

Some work that I started last week. Decided not to post last week since I wasn't very long afar in my studies and didn't want to bore people by posting updates where only slight changes/improvements had been made.

Made a change to my schedule so I've reduced the amount of things I'm currently studying/wokring on and making an effort to work on some longer efforts to help tackle my proportion issues.

Cast Painting

Wanted to get back into oil painting and start making it a regular part of my schedule going forward. Started with one of my casts as 1. I wanted to work on longer efforts and a cast is perfect for that, and 2. I wanted to practice painting the same thing trying different methods which again a cast is perfect for since it won't move.

Lay-In

Here's my lay-in that I did on some a4 paper, spent just under 7 hours on it as I wanted to get the proportions accurate.




Lay-In on board

Transferred my drawing to a masonite panel and filled in the shadow shapes in pencil. Noticed that while I had drew the eyes and nose accurately their placement was off so I cheated abit and reposiitoned them in photoshop before transfering the drawing.






Going to make a start on the painting tomorrow by doing some direct painting and will prob paint the same angle a few times.

Ref




Graphite Drawing

Also working on a long pose graphite drawing aswell. Roughly 5.5 hours on the lay in. Not sure if it is just the ref or my draiwng but the pose feels abit stiff. Not sure if I should have pushed it some more or perhaps insert some more anatomy to improve the shapes?

Rough Comps




Lay-In




Ref




Figure Invention

Just taking 1 streaming class this term at Watts since I couldn't fit more inot my schedule. Taking a figure invention class with Erik so here's the homework for week 1.





Illustration

Also working on a new illustration. My intial jumping off point was "A Hero Rises" so i started with a spider diagram just to get my intial thoughts onto paper such as setting and characters and then worked on some small rough comps trying to figure the scene out.




Once I had 20 or so I chose a few that jumped out to me the most, took them into phosohop, enlarged them and defined the value strcuture better to give me a better idea.




From that I took the one I liked best and played around with the value scheme, see if a different arrangement worked better which it did as I settled on the 3rd one ( Morning/Dawn).




Next step is to rough out the figures better and then start shooting some ref. Trying to improve on my reference so I've been reading up on sewing and I'm gonna try and make a tunic and a cloak myself as I was going for a medieval setting. Already bought a cheap (ish) larp sword and a belt so hopefully it won't be too diffiulct to make the rest (I hope).

[Peter]

Been a few weeks since I posted so thought I'd give an update.

Not awhole lot to show, prety much been occupied with what I was doing in my last post which was painting, a long graphite drawing and making a costume for some illustration reference.

Anyway here is what I have so far.

Figure Invention

Here is my homework for the last 2 weeks of my figure invention calss with Erik

Week 2

Building upon the first week, taking our gestural drawings and starting to add structure to it to properly ground the figures.





Week 3

Same here but this time adding anatomy on top of the structure. Still having some proportional issues, think it boils down to mostly trying to draw views of figures that I don't have much practice with. Started off with some basic forms on the left which I had originally planned on adding anatomy to but ran out of time unfortunately.




Graphite Drawing

Progress on my graphite drawing. Just taking it slow and spending my time trying to properly render the forms and trying to design my shapes in an attractive manner.




Close up




Spent 16 hrs so far on the drawing. Proberly would of been further along but I've done a fair amount of erasing and reshading as I was having difficulties with my values as they are so close together. I'm going to try and not go over 50 hrs if I can help it as I feel that any longer would be detrimental.

Cast Painting

Spent the day doing a direct painting of my cast so not including lunch and breaks I spent around 6-7 hrs on the painting. I was hoping to spend abit longer on it, possibly do some finishing touches on the hair the following day but after 6-7 hrs (even before actually) my paint started to get rather tacky (mainly in the shadows) as I was using my paints straight from the tube without using any medium or turps (apart from the inital stain).

I was following the process in Harold Speed's book so I started with my darkest darks and backgrounds, laid in the general tone of my halftones and lights and once the big forms where in I started to model in the highlights and any smaller halftones etc.

Going to atempt this same painting again but this time I'll try some medium to see if I can slow the drying time, and have ago at working in the tiling method instead.

Progress Shots






Finish




Apart from that I've been working on my sewing for my costume for my illustration ref. Got the cloak made and have the tunic pieces cut out, just need to make some alterations to it and sew it so I'm hopnig to have that done this week so that I can start shooting some ref next week and make a start on the drawing.

[Peter]

Been awhile since my last update. Started attending my life drawing classes again after work which is when I normally either edit photos or post here so I've struggled abit to make up the time eslewhere.

Some things I've been working on, mostly drawing since I haven't had the time to fit in any painting recently (mainly trying to finish some things off that are works in progress like my graphite drawing).

Figure Invention

Week 4






Week 5




Last 2 submisisons for this class. Feel like I have a handle of the block in stage but my anatomy and rendering stages need some work (mainly anatomy though I'd say).

Life Drawing

As I mentioned I started attending my weekly classes again. I could definitely feel some improvements over the year break, mainly in timing and line confindence/measuring by eye (mainly on my quicksketches.) Still seem to be struggling with my portrait class for some reason, not sure if it comes down to the soewhat poor lighting of the model or if I am expecting too much of myself in the time alotted. I feel like my heads are better on my life drawings rather than my portrait drawings so maybe I'm struggling with drawing large heads still? Maybe I simply need to work on my construction more?

Tried rendering the last one but completely ruined it so rendering in charcoal is another area I need to start working on again.....

Portrait








Figure








Master Studies

Started making master studies a regular part of my schedule lately. Started with some Norman Rockwell male heads and trying to further my understanding behind his choices by making some notes. Wokring on some female head studies so will post them once they are done.




Graphite Drawing

Some (slow) progress on my drawing. Roughly off the top of my head at around the 20 hour makr (maybe just under). Definitely sruggling a little since the reference is rather washed out.




Illustration

Finally made some progress on my illustration. Finished making the costume and shot my ref, have the line drawing done and now I'm working on a revised value comp so once that is done I'll post what I have so far. :)

Once the new Watts term starts I'm going to start taking 2 critiqued classes, 1 drawing and 1 painting so that I'm consistently working on my painting skills since that is the next step I need to take.

[Peter]

Illustration Update

Finished working on my value comp aswell as my colour comps.

Line Work




Value Comp




Colour Comps




Did these before I made some changes to my value comp so there are some slight differences, mainly just the clouds and the foreground shadow which I refined.

Manly stuck to a warm/cool gamut leaning more towards the warm side as I was trying to capture early dawn. Felt like having a warmer colour scheme aslo reinforced my inital idea aswell since it makes it feel more "heroic".

Final Selection




Little process page, ended up going with my 4th comp as out of the 4 it felt like the strongest. Going to do another colour comp but in oil just to give me an idea for colour mixing.

Not sure if I should refine my value comp more or not as I have left it loose in some places such as the face and ground, or would just be some mindless busy work which isn't needed?

Won't be making a start on this until next week as aside from doing a traditional colour comp I need to prep my board for painting so if there are any glaring issues or fixes I could make don't hesitate to let me know. :)

[Peter]

Been awhile since I last posted an update. I started attending my life drawing classes after work which is when I would normally take photos and update my sketchbook hence the lack of updates haha.

Not awhole lot to show as I've taken abit of  a break during the last month due to being sick and having a heatwave which forced me to take  a break. Anyway ere is some of the stuff I'v been working on.

Live Streaming Classes

Signed up more more live streaming classes over at Watts, taking 2 classes that focus in portraiture with oen being a drawing class and the other a painting class. My intention now was to take atleast 2 classes per term alternating between figure drawing and portraiture with one clss being  a painting class so that I can start working on my painting skills. I might audit a third class if it is something that I think wiould be really usefull or if it's a class that doesn't appear often. Would like to take more critiqued classes but 2 seems like the most I'll be able to fit into my schedule.

Painterly Head Drawing

Abit different compared to a normal drawing class as there is more of a focus on drawing with tone, so using alot of charcoal powder with a brush and using a pastel brush for the finer shapes.

Week 1




Week 2

Thought I would try a looser block in here just focusing on the big shapes but seeing as how my proportions are all over the place I don't think I'm quite ready for that approach.




Week 3




Portrait Painting

Week 1




Week 2




Week 3




As you can see my painting skills are rather lacking.....

Life Drawing

I've put these in order so the top ones will be my ealriest and bottom my latest.

Portrait

These should be around 1hr - 1hr 20 mins each.






The model didn't show up for this session so we ended up drawing each other. Top 2 are 30 mins each and the bottom right was 15 mins.




Figure

Q/S are a mix of 5/10 mins with the larger figure drawings on the right being 40 mins - 1hr










Illustration

Unfortunately I don't have alot to show here, was hoping to have this done by now but things kept getting in the way. Attempted an underpainting a few weeks ago during a heatwave which went aswell as you could imagine...... Didn't even matter in the end as I ended up going back and reworking my drawing.

Fix




Ended up reworking the horizon line thanks to some feedback from Joseph here on the forums. Going to see if I can remove my drawing off my primed board but since I used some spray fixative I'm not too confident so I might have to prime a 2nd board. Probably going to wait now until this term is over in 2 weeks and then just spend a week completeing the painting.

[Peter]

Long time no post........

Fell out of updating my sketchbooks the past few months, no real excuse really, took  a break one week which became 2 weeks and so on and by the time I realised I hadn't posted in awhile I had far to much stuff that I needed to go back and photograph!

Since I last updated I've pretty much been working as usual, taking online classes at Watts and outside of classes attending life drawing classes and studying so not awhole lot has changed.

Rather than post every little thing I did I thought I'd just post a collection from the last 3 months.

Illustration




Painted the illustration I was working on last time in oil, actually took a week off work to get it done. Not the best photo I'm afraid. keep having issues with glare showing the brush strokes and in general getting the colours accurate which is odd as I don't seem to have this issue on my smaller painting studies. Definitely looking into it though and trying to fix it so Im ight post this one again once I've figured things out.

Portrait Painting






Last few protrait paintings from a class I took around Sept time. On the suggestion of the teacher I got some nylon brushes which I feel like have been a game changer for me.

Portrait Drawing

Some recent head drawings.




Graphite Drawing




Took a graphite class with Jeff which was alot of fun, didn't get the chance to finish it during the 5 week term, think I spent around 25-30 hours on it so far. Haven't decided if I should go back and finish it off or take what I learnt and move on.

Master Studies

My most recent paintings, working on some master studies, trying to break the images down shape and value wise and trying to understand their approach.

Edgar Payne

Prep Work




Step by step ish




Finish




Jules Lepage

Prep work




Current stage





Took a break over Christmas to relax and to sort out my plan for this year. Still have a lot that I need to work on (mainly my foundations/construction). Definitely not at the level where I can start trying to get illustration jobs and make it a career yet but I feel like I am on the right track.

My overall plan is to work on my weaknesses and make them my strengths starting with what I percieve to be my biggest weakness which is construction. Trying to line it up so that I can take classes that align with my weaknesses and tackle them during the 5 weeks so that I can get feedback and ask any questions, and then during the break between terms get a finished illustration done so that I can start building a body of work and simply repeat throughout the year.

For the last few months I've felt like I've been plateauing and abit lost with my studies, so I feel like making a plan of action will help put me on the right track.


Going to start getting into the habit of posting again starting this week, probably on the weekends due to my schedule, and start being more active again. :)

[darktiste]

I gotta suggest something that could improve people leaving feed back aswell as react to the work.Try to make shorter post. Avoid posting multiple piece in one post if the post is already long you can always make 2 post and it organize thing for the viewer because every post is numbered.You can try to post more regularly to engage an audience.

Even those i realize the last post is a recap.I just wanna say If you post in long format remember that it also make it harder for you to post regularly.

By the way i don't advise a class on construction in your case unless you intend to do portrait or illustration but first i suggest simplifying your construction approach and do more gesture drawing you use some exercise to free yourself of the fear of not commiting which to me is often rooted in slow construction. To much construction and thing will start to feel ridge and lifeless .Try not to be a slave to the way you think.What is before construction it proportion what before proportion observation.Make the two late fundamental a solid fundamental and your construction shall follow.

I hope you find this some what useful

[whitebbwolf]

hot dang you take your studies serious. Very inspiring

[Peter]

Darktiste - Thanks for the imput! Yh you definitely are right about reducing the amount i post in one go, generally find it rather hard to do so since the only time I have to post normally is on the weekend so I always end up with a weeks worth of stuff to post. I'll try and see if I cna post mid week aswell, or as you suggested simply split my posts into 2 or 3.

Thanks for reminding me about gesture btw, it was definitely one of my goals to work on it this year. I've got some time before I was going to start studying construction again, trying to match my schedule with the Watts terms which are 5 weeks and I recently saw that one of the former tutors has started his own online classes so I was going to take construction classes with him whenever they are available. For the first term I'll definitely work on my gesture though.

whitebbwolf - Thanks alot :) glad my sketchbook can give you some inspiration

[Peter]

Been wokring on my Lepage master study the past week, I was hoping to get it done but I underestimated how long it would take me. I was hoping to do another painting this week, trying to take what I've learnt from this study and apply it but I guess that will have to wait whilst I get this study done.

Here is where I was at last time




Here are some in-progress shots from the course of the week.








Going to go back and work on the drapery some more once it's dried as I was working wet into wet my colours startd to get abit muddy so I couldn't get those light areas to pop right. Hoping to get this done this week as I've singed up for the new term which starts next week.

Studies

Forgot to post these last week, I normally have abit of free time before my life classes start, normally 30-40 mins if I'm lucky, so the past few months I've srated to do apply that time and do some master studies which I then try and apply to my life work. Past few weeks I've been studying the Vanderpoel book again.




I have some life drawing that I'll post next week, accidently broke one of my photography bulbs over the weekend so I'm waiting on a replacement to come so can't shoot any photos atm like I normally do.

[darktiste]

Oh and for precision i don't suggest long session in gesture study in your case i recommend loosing up which would be gesture between 30sec to 15min.This will help get better a getting down the essense aswell as getting mileage in simple construction since that seem to be yOUR secondary goal.