Clarisse's sketchbook

[Clarisse Silva]

Trying to relax a bit and having some fun sketching.

These are some sketches of my friends that I drew from memory, no photo reference was used. Really fun and challenging!



Some more random imagination sketches







A quick landscape I did after watching a Level Up session with the awesome Eytan Zana. I purposely tried to paint the exact same landscape he painted, using his method, to see if I could apply what I learnt

[Clarisse Silva]

Moooooooore sketches! I don't know why, but I only have female sketches here, have to do male sketches.







And a sketch I decided to give a little more love into it



A foot (yeah, with 4 toes) and a hand. have to do more of these D:





A landscape study in colors FINALLY! (altough it still sucks) And yeah, that thing in the middle is supposed to be a tree.



And a self-portrait using a mirror. Finally with no linework and with color. I look like a drug dealer... A male drug dealer, and not a very friendly one : /

Oh well...

[Clarisse Silva]

Trying to work on my hands and feet. This number 1 must be some sort of alien deficiency.

















Some beautifuuuuuuul hands from imagination :c



And 10 feet using reference























And some feet from imagination



Some sketches. That sure is a natural pose







And the dumbest asaro head ever.




I've decided recently to build not a schedule, but something like weekly goals. Which means that by the end of every week I must have done everything I've planned, and what I couldn't do in that week, I'll leave as an extra for the next.
So, by Sunday the 24th of August by midnight, I'll try to have:

- Imagination sketches of hands and feet (already done)

- 4 long figure drawings

- 2 portraits

- 1 asaro head

- 2 landscape studies

- 1 landscape from imagination

I'm starting to think that this may be a little too much, since today's Thursday and I pratically didn't do any of these things yet, but I'll try.

If anyone wants to suggest some type of studies or something you think it's useful to have in your studies, please tell me, I'd appreciate lot! :)

[Clarisse Silva]

Have been really busy these days and so I haven't managed to do everything I planned. Been feeling really low lately, I don't know why. However, here's some things from the end of August and this month:

This one took me ages to do, but I feel that I've learnt something with this



And tried to apply from imagination



Based on a painting by Timothy Rodriguez, tried to keep it simple



A landscape masterstudy after Benouville. Hate how it came out because I feel like I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to light, color, rendering and a general process of painting. (About this, I've tried to paint landscapes starting "alla prima", with no linework, directly with color and trying to achieve a painterly look; I've tried to find the main shapes in black and white and then coloring, although, when I try to apply color on a black and white painting I get completely lost; I've tried to do a simple sketch of the main shapes of a landscape and then applying a color layer underneath; etc... So, if someone would like to suggest some processes for painting, I would appreciate a lot).



And a photo study I did today, again, I can't render more than this, critiques very well appreciated.

[Clarisse Silva]

Trying with environments once again



A photo study. Trying to focus on the different variations of skin tone



Some random underwater thing



And a WIP of a "detailed sketch" of an illustration I'm working on and sincerely hope that AT LAST I can get through this and finish it.

[Adam Lina]

Those figures are looking a lot better from the first page. The hands look a bit small on those 2 large imagination figures. The land scapes and color look good. Better than I can do so I cant give much a crit on that. Keep on keeping on!

[Clarisse Silva]

Thank you! Feels great to know that, but yeah, agree with you on the hands D:

[Clarisse Silva]

Thumbnails for some hypotetical illustrations and some pages from my sketchbook









Self-portrait



Portrait of a friend



Trying not to be a weirdo while sketching some people in the train



I don't even know.



And some ink fun :D





A quick still life I did yesterday, trying to focus on light and color



And 2 final detailled sketches for an illustration I'm working on. I feel like I don't know what I'm doing ._.

[Clarisse Silva]

Here's some work I've done for college:

My first drawings from a live model, 30 minutes each. Was very challenging, specially when the model kept feeling dizzy and stopped posing
(sorry for the shitty quality, it's the best I can get :c )







Then tried to re-draw the poses from memory









A quick portrait of a classmate



A still life with a mattress, several drapery, boxes, a chair, etc. Made with ink.



Some copies of drawings from old masters. Although I don't agree with direct copying with the purpose of learning a specific technique, I had to do it for college

Luca Cambiaso:





Erhard Schoen:





Just passing the time...


Some quick random (and beautiful) faces that you probably never seen before (to be continued)





And as another excuse to pratice faces, I decided to sketch some of my favorite artists. Only got time for 3, but there's still more to come. (I know this sounds super fangirl, but yeah, that's what I am)

(cross-eyed) Karla Ortiz <3



The awesome Loic Zimmermann



Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme. Will probably remake this one, I was already loosing my patience D:



Some pages from my sketchbook. Focused on anatomy (again) this weekend AND IT'S STILL. NOT. GOOD. ENOUGH. ARRGH









Some figure drawing from photos



And something that at this stage I don't even know what it is. All I know is that is taking me ages to do D:

[Clarisse Silva]

More from the life drawing class:
















Tried to apply from memory/imagination, UUURGH I WANT TO BE GOOD SO BADLY JNUHIDFROLFRNMJRKE



















I'm sorry Mr. Bouguereau to desecrate your beautiful work like this T_T



Aaaand a shitty photo study. Need to work on mah faces so much D:

[Clarisse Silva]

Hello there! I've been really busy and kinda lazy to post, but here it is:

Live figure drawing class at college, has been really helpful

5 minutes each, charcoal on newsprint



Slightly over 30 minutes, also charcoal on newsprint





1 hour, graphite



5 minutes each



1 hour



30 minutes I think D:



1 hour




Tried to draw the poses from memory







Some pages from my sketchbook




























A Bouguereau study that I'll never finish T_T



Drawing stereotypes, for fun









This last one I decided to do it in digital and to push it as far as I can. I named her Shaquanda :P

[Clarisse Silva]

More stuff from the sketchbook





Ahaha Bernini would be proud (not)



Gestures in indian ink - 1 minute









Arm muscles studies and simplification



Faces from reference. Trying to focus on having a clean and simple contour line







Don't even know

















imagination


YAY MUCHA <3







Derp imagination sketches of undressing a t-shirt and faces from reference in ballpoint pen, focusing on a clean contour



The small ones are from imagination


More imagination




Trying to sketch some ideas for an hypotetical illustration






Chillin'


imagination











A crappy illustration that I think I finished, based on a dream I had a while ago




Critiques very very very much appreciated :D

[Adam Lina]

Wow thats a lot of figure work. I can see you progressing with each update. I see you have a bit of trouble with drawing faces straight on and keeping the symmetry. I check my sketches in the mirror to flip the image and see it with new eyes. Also you might want to practice the Reilly head and figure abstractions along with the basic plains of the head. I look forward to seeing more!

[Clarisse Silva]

Thank you Adam! :)
I need to pratice my faces so muuuuch, I only rememeber to flip the image when I'm working digitally, don't know why ahah
And yeah, Reilly method, I realize that almost all of my faces lacks of structure.
Thanks for the support! :)

[Clarisse Silva]

Hello there. I've been so lazy to update this, but here we go!

More pages from my sketchbook, some of these are still from the beggining of January.












































































5/10 minutes studies based on google maps screenshots












A masterstudy after Mike Malm




Some black and white studies (the last one is from imagination)











Something that I don't really know what it is; I started with a big random brushstrokes that I went on sculpting and tried to see interesting shapes. I decided to finish at this stage because when it comes to light and color, I have no idea what I'm doing D: #thatrimlightthough



Like I said, I feel like a 5 year old with some digital crayons when I try to paint from imagination. Also lacks of structure.



And a speedpainting, 30 minutes




Please tear this all apart and have no mercy with your critiques. :D

[Amit Dutta]

So much work Clarisse. Well done and keep it up. Try not to be so hard on yourself, even in thought, you will and are getting better, with the amount of work you are doing it is inevitable. Nice likeness of Bernardo. :)
If you want a crash course in digital colours, do still life. In fact I want to see more of these, and less photo study. :)

[Clarisse Silva]

Ohh Amit thank you so much! :)

You are so right about the still lifes! It's a pretty bad excuse but actually I always feel kinda lazy to re organize all the mess on my desk to be able to find a spot to put the things I want to paint. But yeah, like you said, I do a lot of photo studies and to be completely honest, I think lately it hasn't been very helpful. So yeah, I'm now going to give a break on photo studies and start doing more still lifes. And some masterstudies as well. That was just the motivation I needed, thank you again! :)

[Clarisse Silva]

Doing still lifes is so much fun, and with this one, I feel like I've learned something. This took me a whole day to do and I want to do more BUT POINTLESS COLLEGE WORK WON'T LET ME AAAAAAAARGH D:

Still life with an apple, a nail polish, my phone, my sun glasses and an antique glass container with some almonds.



Pages from my sketchbook. I cant even ;__;







If I were a witch:




















Sketching with pink ecoline and nib. Bah





Half-reference/half-imagination sketch



Gesture drawing 1 minute



















And a WIP of an illustration. I'd love some critiques on this one particularly, specially about color and light; I'm having a hard time figuring out how this kind of backlighting works and how it affects the elements placed contre-jour, for example, the head.
Also, right now I'm basically doing selections for each element but I'm afraid that in the end it will get a "plastic" or "photoshop look", because I would like it to have a traditional feel. I plan to do in the end a layer on top with a general rendering for everything, but I'm not sure if this is "the right way" or, at least, an efficient way to work. So, if you want to share with me your habitual process of painting, please do, I'd love to have different alternatives to try :)

[BenFlores]

Clarisse,
I can tell you really want to improve just looking at all this work. As I was scrolling down you were already fixing the things I had in my head to critique.
I'm finding your shadows push towards black a lot, This usually comes from not knowing what note a shadow will be, so you want to figure out things like that where you're unsure of what to do. You can usually find out from the environment surrounding the shadows, rarely will you want a full black shadow unless its an occlusion shadow, it is inside a dark scene, or you're looking to get a graphic look. You mentioned you wanted it to look traditional, the easiest way to do this is (in my opinion) is it just follow a traditional process. Look up Sargent's painting process. Start with an under painting, construction lines, and organizing your values. The best thing about having a technique is that it frees you to think about other things and you can always develop your own when you want another look.

Hope that helps some.

[Amit Dutta]

Yeah I'm with Ben, sometimes the painterly feel can be best emulated by following a traditional process. minimal layers, less selections. It does mean you have to be more rigorous about the development stages of the the painting in your workflow. ie, lots of thumbs and small colour studies beforehand, a good drawing, a good idea of where things will be before starting.
That said, check out Shaddy Safadi's youtube vids. He has a very exacting process, and he "fakes" the trad feel in with absolute deliberation, rather than slapping things about haphazardly, so it may help you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NygkJEc3yu4
Also Just a quick reminder to say that it might be an idea to reduce your file sizes for posting. It is so painful watching the entire page jerk upwards slowly every few seconds while it tries to load a 3k image.