Growing pixels: the perseverance sketchbook

[Minksy]

I've forget to say also that the eggs with highest contrast look epic mate, keep it up! ;)

Thanks a lot for the comments nymph0! :) Basically everything you mentioned in your first comment, is what I'm aware of I still lack. Perspective and form are the two things that I strive to get better at, understand and use, in order to communicate my own ideas eventually. Like someone said on of my replies to the subject of drawing from the imagination, it's all solid advice that artists tend to give, but it's just a matter for that to become more and more relevant in time, with improvement and dedicated study.

Cross-contour and rotating objects in perspective are the two things I know I need to master. I love all the amazing work that some of Peter Han's students of his Dynamic Sketching class on CGMA have posted on their blogs, and just looking at those makes me realize how much mileage I need to accumulate. So, definitely - I am a work in progress. :) Thanks a lot for sharing your studies, too! They look really cool and a great way to learn these things! I also like that you use a pen rather than a pencil for most of these - lately I've come to appreciate a lot more these sweet constraints you can set for yourself. :)


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Okay back to updating then. Not much time again since the juggling-too-many-things-at-the-same-time routine kicked in again. Summer, where art thou? o_0

I struggled a bit to define what I should be doing for the last 10 days' challenge, so probably 1/3 of it went to just coming up with ideas and figuring it out. In the end I decided to dive into something that I will be working based on a more unified theme for a little longer than these 10-day periods, but still preserving the time-frame mostly for practical reasons - and because my schedule is quite tight and I can't afford to leave any unused windows of opportunity. Lots of words. Back on track then:

So since we're already in the second quarter of the year already, I thought I'd see how much I've learned during the past three months, and apply some mindful studying, extract knowledge and apply it to something of my own. For now these are the preliminary steps which I went through and will go through until this project is completed:

• Define subject (done)
  
• Establish the major focus areas (done)
  
• Find reference for each (probably done)
  
• Do lots of studies (on-going)
  
• Ideation sketches (some uneducated guesses on pre-study phase = NOT done)
  
• Final sketch selection
  
• Work on it until complete
  

I have to work on my annotations a bit more, since at the moment I don't do any of that, but it might be quite helpful to do on-screen, too. Or just in my own sketchbook at least.

I focused on some paintings by Franz (or Frantisek) Dvorak, and also one photo-reference, where my color evaluation was quite off and just had to note it down for comparison. In general I have noticed I like the approach of first sketching something down and then going over it with color a lot more than going straight in with color blobs. I know Marta Dahlig approaches her portraits with that latter technique, as well as many other artists, but I think that the lack of structure-mileage on my part doesn't go well with that at the moment. This is also something I thought about regarding the master studies I did last year, and the tons of mis-measurements and overall mistakes that they have. Those are still present even in these sketches, but, at least it's a start I can live with and keep pushing towards an improvement.

I don't know if I should keep pushing with this the way I've planned out to, but it definitely feels I should since I've started something, and seeing it through will definitely give all sorts of boosts of improvement, be it big or small. Also, with every study I do for this little project, I kind of combine a lot of the other themes I have worked on, so it feels like it's a good way to summarize and push myself - and finally do something from my own imagination.

Rant over. Here's preliminary studies part uno: