JyonnyNovice - from Novice to Master!

[Triggerpigking]

Hey thanks for posting dude, i'll try and get hold of some nib pens and start on them soon :).

[JyonnyNovice]

Trigger Awesome, looking forward to seeing how it goes : )

Day 16 cubes; doesn't look like much but took quite a while to do these. Not really satisfied with them, I end up going too dark too quickly and then the cast shadow is similar to the darkest side of the cube and I don't manage to get the reflected light and other little details to read well. Will keep trying ^^

[JyonnyNovice]

Day 17, cylinders - happy with the result although need to work on getting the form shadow to soften gradually as it turns around the cylinder.



From painting class today, one thing of note I learned is to use the dirty paint water to get the parts of a white surface that are turning from the light.

(looks better from a distance)




*note to self: do more still life drawings, shabby and inaccurate drawing is inexcusable now*

[Eyliana]

Watercolours always look better from a distance!
I don't know what size brushes you use, but for larger surfaces or flat washes it is always easier to use a bigger brush. Should make it easier to prevent the circles.

[JyonnyNovice]

Eyli Thanks for the tips! Those were careless mistakes! I do use a big mop brush for big areas.

Pen practice with still life, took so long to do the hatching but I'm quite happy with my progress. At least the ropehatching looks better and the drawing itself seems solid enough. I'll start the final week 4 of pen training on Monday.





And a w.i.p for more pen practice tomorrow, didn't do a good job with the gesture, was too much in 'copy mode' from the still life and didn't approach it in the usual way. Probably go ahead and ink them anyway see if I can fix it a bit.

[JyonnyNovice]

working on comics this weekend (finally got back to it after having few weekends where I couldn't draw). This stuff looks pretty basic but I found it harder than a all of the stuff I've done in the last couple months.

Trying to design a character, she should look fresh and youthful, she is shy but when meeting the other character who is also shy, she manages to overcome it a little for his sake. It's not where I want it, but I think this is the limit of my skill right now so I'll go with this one and should get better by the end of the comic, after I've drawn her many times.

Just figuring out the hair / eyes and stuff, attempting to re-draw the same face multiple times and I did a turn around that I'll put in photoshop to try different clothes and accessories for her.



(animated GIF because I like how clean the inked ones look compared to the sketches)






Noticed how tiny the hands are, will fix that next time, as well as the side view.

[JyonnyNovice]

Decided to continue with this character design, cleaned up the drawing and trying out different clothes.

Her character is supposed to be generally confident but a little shy, not introverted but far from outgoing - prefers to stay home and watch a movie than get hammered in a bar. A few of those outfits get discounted already, I've asked a few women what they think based on that description and they all chose different ones, giving good reasons as to why, so I can't decide! Right now I'm feeling 2, 4, 5 and 8. Let me know which you think : )

It was pretty fun doing this, with the hard part of the drawing done it's like playing with a doll and dressing her up.

[JyonnyNovice]

Went with number 5 in the end, it seemed the most genuine, all the others seemed too much like a fashion catalogue. Just practising drawing her in different poses from quickposes.com. My inability to draw decent hands and feet is going to hold me back on this project, but will do what I can!



C&C welcome! Next is to design the boy character.

[JyonnyNovice]

Design for the boy character, I'm quite happy with how his jeans turned out in the ink version at the end.









His hair and jumper will be toned darker but I'll do that in photoshop instead of with hatching.

[Artloader]

A fellow comics creator! Thanks for stopping by my SB mate!

Awesome study habits here Jonny! I'm loving your gesture studies - really fluid and natural. I think it has strengthened your figure drawing - you seem able to achieve very fluid and natural poses.

I also had a read of your study schedule - you've made some smart improvements to it. I reckon you're right about intense focus on a single area for a decent period of time. I've recently come to the same conclusion myself and am doing something similar. You see faster gains and that serves as a great motivator to then move onto other areas and improve in those.

Keep going dude - your work is looking awesome already!

[JyonnyNovice]

Artloader Thanks dude! Gesture + form studies is really the key I feel - even totally divorcing yourself from considering it a human being you're drawing and seeing it in terms of lines of action and simple forms. Preston Blair's 'Advanced Animation' book really helped me, since he is using gesture to draw disney style animals, it's totally removed from figures. Anyway, I still have quite a way to go, but we always do : )

I made some notes on gesture drawing for Artloader, but maybe other people will find them useful too. They are not pretty drawings, but I think the focus of 30 sec - 2 min gesture drawings is on catching a good pose, the prettiness comes on its own sometimes, and sometimes not, but that's not important for this. Very little of this is stuff I figured out on my own, it all comes from Hampton, Vilppu and Alex Woo (mostly Alex Woo).

I hope you can read my handwriting, and let me know if it's useful, I learned / remembered a lot while doing this and might do a more thorough / organised / less messy set of notes on the 7 gesture drawing exercises from Alex Woo's class if people are interested.







Plus a plein air set of trees - first time I painted outdoor on A3 paper, it was pretty fun (there was a blue sky in the background but it was too pale and just looks white now)

[Artloader]

Wow! Those notes on gestures and your thought process behind them look really interesting Jonny! I will definitely try this stuff out for myself - thanks for sharing!

Nice plein air painting by the way. I love the way you are developing so many facets to your art skills.

Keep going mate!

[OtherMuzz]

Hi mate. Nice sketchbook.

Thought i would just pipe up that something seem to be going really wrong with your faces, especially compared to everything else you are doing. You seem to have a mental blockage about seeing them as 3d forms.

Here is something i would suggest, stop drawing human faces, and think about designing a robotic version of the face instead, with panel lines, and bits of metal to represent the different features.


This is a page from how to draw manga: giant robots. A surprisingly amazing book.

I think this sort of thinking will help break how you are thinking about the face.

[JyonnyNovice]

Artloader No probs, hope it's useful!

Othermuzz Thanks, I'll give that a go, I think I have that book actually.

Finally getting back to my pen training after real life stuff knocked me off my path for a bit. Week 4, last week of this course, today was to experiment with different line weight / styles on the same drawing.




And anatomy study - I'm going to be spending all my extra time doing anatomy stuff for a good while, I'm tired of having gaps in my knowledge and having to blag this stuff!



Hope you're enjoying the summer!

[KurtJeremy]

I agree with muzz, seems to me you're focusing for a Disney style of drawing faces
Your figure stuff are so good already, the face are lagging behind.

I suggest going through the portrait mentorship here and do the assignments for even more mileage http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-2727.html

While watching tutorials on YouTube on the structure and planes of the faces (prokos portrait lessons for example)

Then after that try copying from the artists you like in this case Disney artists or in similar styles. Being critical in how they made decisions in SIMPLIFYING the nose , the eyes and the mouth. (Not the ears nobody cares about the ears haha jk)

[Adam Lina]

That plein air looks great! What they said ^ The heads need more structure. You could go so far as simplifying the head into a box. Like a box that fits tight to the volume of the head. Then use that to construct the skull starting with largest, simplest forms possible. Dont think of it as a head but a collection of masses.

[JyonnyNovice]

Kurt & Adam Thanks for taking the time to comment guys. Heads have always been a weakness for me. With the human body I feel more comfortable and although not incredible results, when I am drawing it I feel more confident putting it together and moving stuff around when needed, or I can see the mistakes afterwards. With heads I don't feel like that, don't feel so much in control so I create a kind of formula for constructing a cartoony head and follow that. I do do regular skull studies, asaro head studies, face rhythm studies and practice, and have whole sketchbooks filled with stylised head drawings from reference and my own trying to analyse and use their simplifications, trying out different methods and approaches, boxy, spherical, cylindrical, different methods for placing the eyes and forming the sockets (which is probably my biggest weakness on these, along with expressions). These are a few pages, at points over the last few months: (I know these are not good, just a snapshot of my sketchbook) I have tens and tens of pages of these. I felt like I was really getting somewhere with my recent characters, with Yoko above and the ones the girl with the black trousers and jumper above. I felt like they had some charm and appeal to them. The head -> body connection felt good, they didn't seem warped and the eyes seemed to sit back enough into the sockets and wrap around the head. I know they are not fantastic but I felt like I was onto something, or at least could do the heads well enough to get started on my comic. Totally lost my confidence with this stuff following the recent revelations. I will go and do the portrait mentorship, it looks like it will be good for me. Feel pretty down today but will keep drawing!

[Eyliana]

What helped me a lot of the heads it the Reilly method: http://drawingjones.com/skull-rhythms-planes/
I'm quite sure you know it, but I found it helpful to see how everything is connected together and keep things in the same orientation/perspective. Not sure how it applies to stylish heads, but maybe it can help you :)

And thanks for the gesture sheet! Lots of useful information.

[Zipfelzeus]

30 pages!!! Look who hasn't been a slob like me.

People here already gave enough suggestion with the heads so I think that's enough. It's just really cool to see people develop their own style even if it is still work in progress.


Let's see how it turns out. :D

[Adam Lina]

Well with studying so many stylized heads I think you're more building symbolism than learning the forms. Humans are wired to have a shit ton of mental blocks with heads. We have so much evolutionary conditioning associated with how we perceive faces. I think you should focus on basic building blocks and forget about the end results like charm and appeal. Those things will come after you work out the fundamental technical issues. If you're starting to get overwhelmed (which is easy with something as complex as the human head) you're trying to figure out too many things at once. Take it one step at a time.