Jaik's Sketches & Thoughts

[Lyraina]

Man, you really are killing it with those anatomy studies. Makes me want to go back to all those muscle groups again, too. Sorry if you already wrote that somewhere - but where do you reference those from? Or do you use different sources?
It does show in your artwork, too, love those arms in the happy birthday piece for example. I'm looking forward to progress on that Itachi piece - make sure the values on the face stay brighter than the fire, though. Can't say anything about the fibonacci.. I've seen it several times but really can't tell how to put it to use :/

The oil painting turned out really cool! And I love the idea of you painting something related to her family history :) The foliage in the foreground is really cool, too... love it <3

[rioriorio]

The life studies is really impressive jake, and just 30 minutes wow...
for itachi piece, why don't you apply the arm studies? maybe make the pose where he showing his full arm.
Oil painting is very nice, i can see the influence in your digital environment from this oil painting.

Keep study and improve jake (and you are already improving).

[smrr]

Welp Jaik, you've really given my caboose a huge boot!
talk about activating beast mode O_O what an update!!!

Oustanding work man! And I'm sooooooooo looking forward to this Itachi Uchiha piece <:

Keep it up, you're so inspiring man ;D

[Tygerson]

The muscle studies look so pro! I could totally study your studies.

The thumbnails show some great brainstorming. I like those last three of naruto, and the first one of the third line. And third of the second line.

By the way, what are bloodsports? I've seen the threads, but don't really know what they are.

[Bjulvar]

Really digging that oil-painting, man! Looks like your skills transcend mediums. I think you handled the colors and composition really well, would be sweet to see more pieces done in oil!

Aand the spooons, way better than mine! I knew that you wanted to start this just to make me look bad! Seems like ou realized that the objects getting reflected are really important for color and value on the first day. So great job on that observation!
Are you putting up perspective grids and such? Found that it helped out quite a lot!
Also, challenge; try doing it in the dark, it fucks with your brain! :D

Keep it up man, would be awesome to join you in the next bloodsports!

[Jaik]

Lyraina: I get my anatomy stuff from all over the place but my favourite sources are the tutorials from Ron Lemen in the IFX anatomy vol. 2, classic anatomy for the artist by someone (sorry I will find the amazon link soon, can't find it at the moment) which is pretty dry but really detailed which is where I get most of the technical information from, and then drawing fundamentals from 3D Total, which is an amazing book with some killer illustrations in it. In my next update I will try and make a bit of a list for you with links etc.

Rio: Yeah I definitely want to show his arm more than usual, but the pose I have him in (have to do some ref shots) is one of his iconic poses so I want to keep the read from that. I feel like I keep making excuses for why the studies aren't being applied =/

Thanks Smrr :D:D

Tygerson: Bloodsports are something Dan and Dave started to help artists promote themselves and get better at the same time. While the promotion isn't really applicable for doing them now, they are still really good for getting an artistic pipeline and applying studies. My and Lyraina are going to start making the threads in the community challenges when we start them up (the first two weeks of every month, so we are starting the next one tomorrow) once we do I will link you the thread and you can see all the info.

Bjulvar: I enjoy oil painting, but clean up is a bitch, and the amount of times I tried to press ctrl+z and realised there was no keyboard is kind of scary lol.
Pfft, yours are more interesting than mine.. I basically just did the same one over again -___- I havent tried a grid, definitely going to try that this week. And I will try to do one in the dark 0.0
And yeah, like I said, bloodsports. This week. Do it :D

---

Not a lot since it was a pretty disruptive week, but I did manage to update on Sunday still :D

Went for a bit of a hike in the Hunter Valley.. Don't know if the daggers know, but theres this evil thing outside called the sun and it burnt the shit out of my skin.. safe to say I won't be leaving the house any time soon again... But I did get some nice (I think) pictures.. We also found goats, goats have gigantic testicles, ref pics soon to follow...

Arm gestures


The one spoon I managed to get done this week (Sorry Bjulvar D: )


Finished the arm anatomy, now going to do form this week:


Update on the itachi Piece - It will probably go back burner the next two weeks while I do bloodsports, which gives me a chance to take ref pics.
Not really happy with it, doing skin and faces with little or no ref is very very difficult and trying to capture the same essence a cartoon has is surprisingly challenging.. But I keep telling myself to just go slow and I will get there.

[RezaDwiputra]

hi Jaik ! Whatsup?
Thanks for visiting my sketch book
i see you having a lot of improvement since our last workshop

I really love your arm's muscle study, and i think should study from your study :p

and about the itachi's face, i think it would be better, if his jawline is smoother , cause i don't know i think itachi's character of face is a bit of bishounen's look (girlish), but yeah that is just my opinion there.

Cheer's Mate

[ramalooke]

I think I may incorporate some of your study methods to my routine. It looks like a good way of learning. Plus as far as I can see it's very efficient. You improved a lot since i last visited your sketchbook. Which is damn inspiring. Hope I'll free some extra hours in mid of february so I can follow your work more consistently. Keep it up!

[Samszym]

Thanks for the comment Jaik! Nice studies and everything, looking forward to seeing your next bloodsports piece.
Turning a cartoon into realism is definitely an interesting challenge, you'd wind up needing to add in a lot of detail the original style doesn't even mention without changing how anything feels.
He has a lot of triangular shapes in the design of his face, maybe it would look better if you gave some more pointyness to his features. I might have tried hiding some of his face with his hair or cloak, might help him feel more mysterious and less staged.

Keep killing it with all the hard work!

[Lyraina]

Ooh too bad, I only have ifx anatomy vol 1, but then again the information should not be too different in any good anatomy book (like bammes, who is insanely technical and thus scares me).

The spoon is really cool (as are the previous ones), you really should do something from imagination with a similar surface now. That might be quite interesting (and challenging I imagine, with all those reflections and curvature).

Nice anatomy, as always. This method of showing the form of muscle with lines is something I'm going to steal eventually.

Nice progress on the Itachi piece, I like what you are doing with the subtle skin color variations there. So cool to see how much you improve in comparison to earlier works <3 As for critique. So far, the eyes are not really embedded in the eyesocked, but look rather flat and painted on the face. Do you really want to do those without ref? While you don't have to copy a photo or anything, especially things like implementing the eyes into the face (which is basically just sculpting the form in the right way) could really profit from a good reference.
I also suggest darkening the shadow on the root/bridge of the nose (not sure if this is the term... I mean between the eyes) a bit more, basically pushing the nose inward a bit more, right now it is quite flat (especially for a man). That is optional though, really only depends on the way you want him to look.
Other than that, keep pushing <3

[Nika]

Beautiful stuff as always Jaik!! I was looking at your studies and I really like the underlying detail and texture. Thanks for sharing and delighting as usual!!!

[Tom Seas]

Nice take on the Bloodsport. Interesting to see how you try and handle different styles

Anatomy is killer, nice to see studies about muscle and then non muscle ones. I tried that and found it helped tons.

It's interesting to see how you went about with the thumbs, and using the same but trying out different moods. On the latest WIP my crit would be on the nose, where it feels too blocky and delineated. It's too planar, and you can even see the line separating the side and top place. Maybe soften that up?
Hope to see it finished!

[Jaik]

Reza: You are definitely correct. He is much girlier than I painted him. I will definitely try and find reference for that. (Bishounen is a great search term for reference! Thank you so much!)

Rama: Thanks man! Yeah, targeted focus is the best way to improve, or at least that's what works for me. It also saves me time because I don't have to think about what to do next, it pretty much sets me up for months at a time.

Samszym: Yeah I found that to definitely be the case. Things like his cloak and stuff look okay in the anime, because when animating you simplify everything down to the shadow shapes, but for a finished realistic piece this just doesnt work. So I think I will add a heap of detailing in select spots and how it works =/ I may take your advice of hiding some of the face with hair after I have gotten a bit further along, because you raise a good point.

Lyraina: Right as always, I really need to find ref. Now that I have that bishounen search term it will be heaps easier :D The nose has been bothering me too, I think I will probably redo that at some stage.

Thanks Nika :)

Tom: The nose is definitely getting reworked. Thanks for the crit :)

---

Alright, first things first. I promised Lyraina I would get some links together for my reference when it comes to anatomy so here they are:

- Classic Human Anatomy
- Art Fundamentals
- IFX anatomy, vol. 2 (Mostly Ron Lemen's tutorials which are fantastic, also going to use his gnomon tutorials for when I move onto portraits. Highly recommend people consider buying these.) As of this writing however it is out of stock =/
- Zygote Body for understanding exactly where the muscles come from and insert in 3D space.
- This book on google books for some of the more obscure parts. It is really in depth but it takes me 3-4 times to read a page and understand it.

This brings me to an important point. If we take anatomy specifically, but you can apply this to all 'subjects' in art. If you drop say $100-150 into a topic before you start (for example the classic human anatomy and the 3d Total book) you have the ground work which can be added to by online sources to pretty much completely learn a given topic. After going through each of the books, you should have enough of a fundamental groundwork to hopefully go to a more advanced online course, like CGMA and not feel like you are struggling to keep your head above water because of lack of knowledge.
If the funds are available (both for the initial material and for the classes) I think this will quick track any improvement. This is not a short cut insofar as it will take less hours, but you will waste less hours 'mindlessly' practicing if you get what I mean.
Of course, full disclaimer, this is just my opinion and the way I think I am going to follow. It is not cheap but if it gets me to where I want to go even 6 months earlier than I otherwise would have, I could probably make up the cost difference with the work I get in.

I would like to hear other peoples opinions on this. As it is something I am definitely interested in.


After all that, this weeks work. The last two days have been pretty low on the motivation side. So most of this was from Mon-Thurs.

Bloodsports 2: Swamp Elders
Ideation and inital thumbs. I tried the block shapes again and it just plain didn't work.


Exploring the different options, decided on the top one.


Thumbnailing different heads.


Character sheet


Exploring final compositions. Decided on 5, but also liked 10



Progress as it stands today.


Studies




Moodboard for final painting.


End of bloodsports update.

Anatomy:

Since I finished the muscle studies, this is now form studies.


Gestures from pics:


Gestures from imagination. This is a exercise Alex Negrea showed us at the workshop. Really cool idea. Draw the torso (ref or from head) and add arms in different poses.



Gestures from ref, using action lines.


Applying what I learnt from memory


End of anatomy.

Spoooooooooonnnsss.
Only got three this week :( /failure

[ImSkeptical]

Sick spoons :p. Seriously though, when you get that niceness of rendering in stuff like those swamp elder head sketches, it will look pro. It's gonna be sick.

[Tygerson]

Your bloodsport is coming along well. The creature already has a huge, ancient feel to it. Sorry I can't make this one--so much going on this week!

Nice anatomy and spoon practice. I could almost reach in the monitor and pull one of those spoons right out, they look so believable.

[Lyraina]

Thank you very much for taking the time to present your anatomy references! Quite interesting that those are almost completely different from those I own. No wonder that your studies look quite different from what I know (style wise, the content should hopefully be the same :P)
But I agree on the importance of getting the fundamentals down with the help of some books or similar, the hard part here is finding a ressource that fits the person, as not everybody learns equally good from each teacher. After getting some understanding of the basics I think the most important part is just investing the hours. And some more hours. Then repeating the basics, as at that point one can grasp more and finer details. Then more hours. This is actually quite important for me, the approach of going through the circle several times.
And then I think one can profit from more advanced courses like CGMA. You are right about the danger of "mindless practice" though, that is something I always struggle with. I think mixing up different kinds of exercises and trying out new approaches can help avoid that pitfall.

You and your spoon, I like those :P What is your approach for those? trying ot different techniques each time?

[Jaik]

Thanks Cam :P

Thanks Tygerson, I'm glad because that was the exact feeling I was going for. And I'm glad the spoons came out well.

Lyraina: Yeah I think that everyone should find the material that works best for them (which is kind of the most expensive route lol). Variety and always challenging yourself is a good way to avoid the mindless practice problem.
I am just trying to see colours better, work on my values, form and reflectivity as well as try and figure out relationships between things. I changed it up this week though xP

---

Okay so this week, there wasn't a lot going on. But I did manage to finish bloodsports #2 in time. Which was an improvement over the first one (where I went a couple of days over)
I also launched my website in its most basic form. Its kind of broken in a couple of areas (for example I tried to do a sketchbook post and none of the images are showing up...... and I don't know why -____- ) but those sort of things will be fixed over time. Ship then iterate.

Gestures


Figures without ref.


Pelvis Study (not completed, there are still some different view I want to do)


Leg Study (Same as pelvis)


My spoon still lifes (only did two again :( ) and I tried a magenta globe out for my light source. The top one still had the florescent over head light on, and the bottom was purely the globe. This created some interesting colour effect.


Mushroom study for the swamp elder piece.


Swamp elder final piece. Kind of happy with it, I like seeing the improvement between this one and the last one. There are still some things I don't know whether I hit. Like is the old man in a style that matches with the rest of the image or does it stick out that he is stylised? I tried to do a low key value painting, is this how it is done or was I way off.


An Update to the itachi piece, I tried to get him looking a bit more feminine and the eyes to sit better in the head. Still not quite there yet but closer than before.


Life drawing from 2 weeks ago, because I forgot to upload it last week. There are more, but these are just the ones that look semi-decent or that you can even work out what I was doing lol.




This weeks life drawing. Same deal.

[Ursula Dorada]

ooooh such sexy spoons.

The green in the shadow probably isn't green at all - it's just a neutral your brain is messing with you and making you read it as green. You can probably try a very gray color in there and it will settle more into the painting. Here is the explanation of what is happening: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com.br/201...tancy.html

[rioriorio]

I agree with ursula dorada about the green color in the spoon cast shadow, try neutral color in there jake. The figure life drawing, you need to invest more time in refining it, it's looks like sketch. Try pick up book by henry yan " figure drawing technique and tips".
Keep pushing it Jake.

[Lyraina]

Great job on the bloodsports. And even ahead of time! :)

I've got a feeling that your digital lines/sketches are getting a lot better lately. Seems like your anatomy work has a nice side effect on that part as well! Those feet attached to bone-legs look a bit creepy...

Also... not sure about this... in the Itachi piece, shouldn't the clavicle follow the same (similar) direction than the eyes? Like this it looks like there's some quite pronounced perspective going on and I'm not sure if that would really be the case like this...

Yay for life drawing. How long is one session usually where you are?