Clarisse's sketchbook

[Clarisse Silva]

Mouth studies and a quick landscape study, haven't do this for a while... Any advices and tips on how to paint rocks and its texture would be very much appreciated

[Clarisse Silva]

I've been really busy these days so I haven´t got much time to pratice, but here's what I've been able to do with my free time.

Some leg studies (digital still yet to come)










Some 1 minute gestures. I hope this is not just my impression, but I feel that these are getting better, I actually felt better while drawing these than before... I guess that all we need is to rest for a while sometimes










































And some particulary difficult gestures of some of my friends during today's class










Here's a painting I did for the amazing group on facebook called Virtual Plein Air. I feel so so so rusty with landscapes and environments, got to do these more often. This is in Oli Tina, Maldives.




And a watercolor attempt, from imagination. Love watercolors so much but I totally suck painting with these... for now! Got to keep pushing! Advices and tips on watercolor painting would be extremely appreciated! :)

[Cruptic]

Hi Clarisse!
Your awesome comment brought me over here, I really appreciate all those great things you wrote I'll look into it :)
Your figure and gesture drawing looks already pretty solid have you been doing these for a longer time (like a year or so?)
I love those environment studies you did as well keep doing them! They are a little loose compared to the original but I guess that's just a matter of the time you put into one drawing. And I'm terrible at them so anyways keep those up!
So again thanks and keep drawing!

[Clarisse Silva]

Hey Cruptic! I'm happy to know that you appreciated my comment! I've only been studying seriously since December 2013, when I decided to become an illustrator and concept artist. I'm glad you like my studies, altough they're still pretty crappy; I have to do them more often. Thank you for passing by! :)

[Clarisse Silva]

Finally finished my project today! My major inspiration was the amazing drawings of one of my favorite artists, Chiara Bautista.
These are 3 illustrations of feelings/states of mind in the way I feel them; everything there has a symbolic meaning to me. Were drawn in paper and then painted in Photoshop.
The first is called "Nostalgia", the second "The Dream" and the last one "The Pain of Thinking". Hope you guys like it! Advices and critics are very much welcome! :)

"Nostalgia"




"The Dream"




"The Pain of Thinking"

[Patrick Gaumond]

Nice studies, looking back at your older anatomy drawings I definitely see a lot of improvement!

I have advice for you about rocks/landscapes. I know its kind of "the thing" atm, but you should check out shaddy safadi's videos on youtube. Everyone and their mother is using the technique hes teaching, but for good reason. Its a solid technique for environments and I think if you check out his videos and give it a few serious attempts, you'll see improvement. Basically he starts off by simplifying a lot of the shapes in the image to their "essence", getting in the big forms and using a lot of hard edges to make it feel really solid.

I think part of your problem at the moment is you're using a very very soft brush, and that can really kill a landscape painting. You seem to have a good grasp on colour and shape, but you're losing a lot of the edges because of the soft brush. Shaddy's way of working might seem very harsh and slow at first, but if you follow through with it gets great results. Hope that helps!

[Clarisse Silva]

Thank you so much Beardley! I have to check Shaddys videos, they're really good and I only saw one. Actually, I don't use the soft brush that much, I use the hard round but I don't know how, specially my landscape/environment studies always look "foggy" and unclean. Have to check on edges too, I know nothing about that... Thanks for helping me and for passing by! :)

[Patrick Gaumond]

Ah, are you using opacity with pen pressure or playing with your opacity? The softness might be a result of many transparent edges overlapping each other. If thats the case try turning that off or using a brush that doesnt have transparency at all, at least in the beginning to get in big shapes

[Clarisse Silva]

Yeah, I use the opacity control, but I saw yesterday one of Shaddys videos and saw how he lays everything first, the main shapes with one single blob of colour without transparency. It's a really interesting approach and I'll try it soon, because after you said what my problem was, I realized that you were totally right, so, thanks! :)

[Clarisse Silva]

WFT IS WRONG WITH ME SERIOUSLY

I've been so frustrated these days, feels like everything I do is 100 times worse than the previous drawings, don't feel improvement, although I've been working hard

More 1 minute gestures








































And more gestures of some of my friends while they were standing still









A failed attempt to do a longer figure drawing and two reference-memory exercises








And a masterstudy after Bouguereau's painting that took me 2 days and still looks like crap. At least, I feel that I can identify most of my mistakes in this painting... I guess that's good

[Clarisse Silva]

Trying out different approaches. Didn't use any kind of linework first, started with a big blob just to get the big shapes. These are my first paintings without linework and were really fun to do. Critiques and advice are welcome! :)

[Clarisse Silva]

Seriously, I don't know what's wrong with me. I've been super frustrated because I feel that I somehow "forgot" what I thought I already "knew".

I've been trying as well to start working on my portfolio, for which I have some ideas, but I always come out frustrated because I don't have enough knowlegde to draw/paint like I imagine.

Consequently, I decided to stop trying to draw at random and to start reading from cover to cover all the books I have and to do every exercise in them.

Although these images are mainly from last month, I think they transmit the said frustration.

I could really use some help now, if anyone have any advice, please tell.


Here's a landscape study. By the way, I can't render more than this when I do landscape studies, which really bothers me.




Gesture drawings from earlier this month (feel awful for posting this)




Something that came out of my mind and I don't really know what it is




A failed portrait of my bestfriend :c




Two more portraits






Some heads from imagination








Two attempts of a longer figure drawing





And I found a funny picture that I had to draw, and that's my name in Japanese, for some reason




Some studies for my illustrations, which are currently paused because I recognized that a lot of work and serious studying had to be done first
(Yep, those are tents suspended in trees :D )






And some china ink drawing, although the perspective is all wrong, was really fun to do. Too bad I'm not Kim Jung Gi :c

[rafa zanchetin]

Hey nice to see you are still posting. :)
And don't beat yourself too hard, we all go through the frustration part, and still do (at least I do).
It seems like you do know what you need to study, landscapes and anatomy. Anatomy you are already doing what's right, but in my opinion you shouldn't focus too much on quick gestures. I always thought that doing quick gestures on what you don't know how it works isn't very good. Learn all the muscles, apply, relearn, apply (I think I already studied muscles from books at least 3 times, and I might do more).
And start doing some landscape studies, black and white, colored ones, start small but with big strokes.
Other than that just practice, practice every day. :)

[Clarisse Silva]

Thanks! This actually made me feel better :)
I think you're right with the gesture drawing, I'll give a pause on gesture drawing and start focusing on longer drawings, after studying muscles and all that.
Thanks for the advice! :)

[Clarisse Silva]

Trying to focus on anatomy.

These drawings took me soooooo long, but I think (and hope) they're a little better than the previous.

If someone could suggest some alternative methods and approches on how to draw human figure, I would appreciate a lot.

Usually, when I'm beginning a figure drawing, I never know if I should start to draw the volumes or the structure. So, feel free to tell me your method, so I can try it myself :)







Don't know how, but this one came out really stretch :c

[Amit Dutta]

Great dedication to study in your sketchbook Clarisse, you're on a good path, so keep it up!

For figures I tend to start with gesture and proportion first, then build up volume using cross sections of the forms as I go. It's the Vilippu method that I thought has been the most informative for me personally. I think your gesture studies have a nice construction going on, so maybe just keep that going. Also hands and feet; don't procrastinate. :) We all have done that because they are hard and easy to want to ignor, but if you focus on them brutally for a bit, you'll get over that hump.

For your landscapes, as Beardley mentioned, definitely think about where your hard edges should be and where you can use softer effects. I tend to use hard brushes to generate the major silhouettes and shapes, even if I know they will be softer at the end, then once it is all in place, add the atmosphere and lighting in with the softer brushes and gradients. You can work the other way too soft atmosphere and light, then attack with hard edged shapes, depends on the painting. And yeah...Shaddy shaddy shaddy.

*EDIT: Also the feeling of frustration is so common. Often times I find that the intense feeling of frustration tends to come before a breakthrough of some sort. I believe the way to get through it is to remember that as learning artists the outcome is the focus so much of the time, because the gap between what we want to do and what we can do is so great. We tend to hurtle ourselves towards the end of the piece, the next piece, the next level-up, the next milestone, and finally the moment we have "made it" and all that thought and desire serves to do is distract us from the truth. Do it because you enjoy it. Don't focus on the next milestone, this is where the frustration gets born. Sure, remember and have your goals, but when you are in the process, try and be completely present in the process. I tend to find absorption in the process helps dissuade your brain from straying to dumb thoughts of progress and measurement!

So this applies to your portfolio too. If you make "building the portfolio" a job or project, as in, something that you must do in order to get hired eventually, then while that focus is good, if you are not careful it basically becomes a job like any other. I would maybe think about doing exciting pieces that you are passionate about for no other reason than that, whether it makes the "cut" or not. What happens if you keep that up quite consistently, is that you will eventually have folio worthy stuff. Building a portfolio is like a star being born: there is a disk of dust matter that is being pulled in by gravity, and through this constant process, of matter being added to the core, the core gets hotter and hotter. Once the matter reaches a critical mass, the star ignites by fusion in a brilliant outpouring of light. This is your work. All you need to do is keep adding more and more work and your folio will eventually ignite. :)

Also while it is useful to know where your weaknesses lie and apply study to them, never tell yourself you can't do something even in the slightest way. Instead say to yourself it is only a matter of time and application before you will be able to do.

Good luck and keep it up!

[Clarisse Silva]

Amit, I can't thank you enough for this post. I love your work so much, so it means a lot coming from you. Thank you for the mighty advice, I will for sure follow it, and of course, thanks for the awesome motivation and inspiration you gave me! Thank you thank you thank you ^_^

[Patrick Gaumond]

Couldnt agree more with monkeybread about the portfolio.

Also about anatomy. I'm looking at your figure studies and some of your other work done in line for the most part, and I'm wondering if you're more comfortable working in volumes (ie paint, broadside of the pencil etc) rather than in contour. I say this because even on the first page, the quality difference between, say, the first portrait and the study of the helmet is quite large. Jump forward to this page and I see the same sort of difference in these last figure studies done or at least started in line for the most part. And its not even a question of quality necessarily, but it feels like youre more confident going straight in with paint.

If thats the case, there is absolutely no reason not to work in volumes if you are more confident that way. You do not have to be a good draftsman to be a good artist. You yourself even seem more satisfied with the result! I speak from experience when I say this. I got real fed up of going through the tiresome process of linework, only to cover it up with paint or have to live with just an "ok" line drawing. I discovered quite quickly that going straight in with paint, for me, was not only more fun, but it was also faster, the results were consistently better, and it also lets you learn a LOT about rendering form, like gradations, shape, colour, depth. All of which you will one day have to learn to do in paint of some sort or another for bigger illustrations.

So the question remains: are you learning draftsmanship for the sake of draftsmanship, or are you really just holding back that inner painter? I'll say it straight it up: give me a line tool and ask me to draw a person, I'll do it but it wont be great or I'll struggle . But ask me to do it in volume, and its much, much easier. Whether or not the anatomy is good, well thats a different story. But the PROCESS is what matters. ENJOY IT, other wise you'll take 20 times as long to learn the anatomy!

By the way your anatomy is looking pretty good. And when I say to work in volumes, don't misconstrue that as saying to ignore structure. I mean volume in the sense of the medium and the workflow. Structure is paramount, but if the medium is holding you back, use a different medium.

Hope that helps :D Either way there is greatness in your future! Just keep at it

[Amit Dutta]

awww shucks, that's very kind of you ^^ and it's my pleasure to have helped!

[Clarisse Silva]

@Beardley, I can't really tell with what I'm most comfortable with, because I think it varies from day to day (is that normal?).
Actually, that helmet study has linework beneath; only very recently I did my first paintings without using any kind of linework first, and I acctually enjoyed making them.
About this, what scared me the other day was the fact that, suddenly, I forgot how to paint without linework, and it was something that I already have "accomplished" (still very crappy though), but from one moment to another I couldn't do what I already have done before. But I'm not quitting, I'll try again after some time apart, to see if it goes better.

In order to answer you question, I study because I want become a good illustrator and concept artist, and, as you can see, I'm not good enough yet to build a portfolio; of course that worries me, because that's what you need to get hired.

Although it may not always seem, because I say very often that I'm frustrated (even my friends joke with me for saying this quite a lot), I acctually enjoy making studies and learning all these things, and I don't do them like if they were some kind of"obligation". What bothers me many times is not being able to notice if I'm improving or not, or not being able to find my mistakes as well as proper solutions for them.

But I definitely have to admit that working straight with paint was more fun, although I've only done it for about 5 times.

Anyway, you guys are way too kind, for taking all this time to write this. Thank you so much for your advice, and thank you for ~believing~ in me, all this was very motivational, just what I needed :D