JyonnyNovice - from Novice to Master!

[JyonnyNovice]

Richie Cheers buddy, I'll try the tape, and get back to practising that overhand technique too! looks like a good option since it's when my fingertips are close together and my fingers are moving that causes the problems! Looks like a cool video too, shame it's $40!

[JyonnyNovice]

Hand is still trashed so spending my time studying more about colour.

Experimenting with mixing two colours, wet on wet watercolour:



Next, I wanted to better understand the colours I have - my Sakura Koi set has 24 colours, using James Gurney's book, blog and a few other web pages, through a bit of grinding and a bit of trial and error I managed to map them all onto a colour wheel (the background colour wheel and the colour swatches are just a visual aid, the positions should be accurate but the actual value/hue/saturation is not):


Sakura Koi Pocket Field Sketch Box - Colour Mapping

So with this I can make a gamut mask to choose which colours to use in a painting.



Did a quick colour test. I just used any colour that fell within the triangle, I didn't use the three corner colours as my subjective primaries and mix everything from that - I wanted to get some more 'brightness' in there that I don't get when my colours are mixed). Just playing around to get more familiar with my paints - also I'm not trying to match the colours from the photo, just want to make something nice and harmonious:



I quite like the test, so will redraw and paint it a bit cleaner. The green windows look weird - I used the coolest colour in my triangle, thinking it might make the windows look more blue subjectively but it didn't work that way. When I repaint it I will just darken them more with hatching and use a darker mix of the grey used for the ground and other shadows (cadmium red + viridian mix).

Let me know how I'm doing - still very new to traditional painting and colour mixing.

[StardustLarva]

Hey there Jyonny, good stuff with your studies of colour theory. Just remember when working with watercolours to take it steady and add more water to make the colour you're working with less saturated. Keep this up and you'll be a grand artist in no time!

[JonHop]

Hey dude nice to see you working on lots of fundamentals, but seeing as your hand is still playing up I would seriously suggest stopping altogether for a week or two and let it rest and heal, if you carry on whilst it's still badly hurt you could run the risk of damaging it further and then having to stop for a longer period.

Then come back and carry on, however if your hand is better now you can disregard my advice lol or disregard it anyway, just thought It would be irresponsible for me to not at least say something :).

[JyonnyNovice]

Stardust Cheers mate, good advice too, I tend to work quickly cause that's what they all do in the videos, but they are pros and know what they are doing! Little by little I'll get there!

JonHop Cheers man, you're totally right, I thought doing painting would be ok since I'm not moving my fingers as much but the hand doesn't feel any better so I'm gonna stop altogether til it's on the mend. Thanks for the kick up the arse!


So having said that, another quick watercolour + ink from today and that'll be it from me for a while. Not so happy with the painting (ref is here: http://room42.wikispaces.com/file/view/0...0333_m.jpg ) - tried to make it with three colours, but couldn't get the purples and oranges saturated enough when mixing on the palette so ended up mixing them wet on wet with blue / red and red / yellow straight on the paper, which gave me too little control and it got a bit messy - plus I was making loads of newbie mistakes which I even knew were mistakes as I was doing them. Anyhow, just gonna rest my hand, until the 22nd September when I start a 3 month programme at Art College (hopefully it's better by then!).

[JyonnyNovice]

My hand is still bad but been doing exercises about 5 - 10 times a day. Can't use pen or pencil for more than 3 minutes but am able to use digital tablet if I keep it big and loose with the tablet raised up on a table top easel. It's good for me to practice digital anyway, just playing around with shapes and brushes and stuff (limiting myself to 15 minutes at a time so I don't overdo it), this is from the last few days:













Just scribbling really til some kind of shape comes out, kind of abstract pictures but it's pretty fun.

[Adam Lina]

Is it just a pain in your wrist or numbness as well? If its just pain then its inflamed tendons from overuse. The best way I found to get rid of this is to eat more fiber rich food. Broccoli and spinach are both very high in fiber. Fiber reduces inflammation and increases blood flow. Just taking an anti-inflam is only temporary. Also stop eating any processed grains like white bread and white rice since these increase inflammation. I also started wearing one of these when I sleep. It keeps your hand in a neutral position so your tendons heal properly and not all tightened from sleeping with your fingers curled up. They sell them at most major drug stores in the US. Dont know about where you are. Hope you get better soon!

[Adrian]

Haze gave a lot of good advice there. Not sure if it would help with anything but when I feel exhausted I usually like to sketch stuff while laying in bed with my arm sort of resting on the bed sometimes .... it's not very hand related but ... maybe it would help you with how you're holding the pen .. more specifically .. will help you loosen your grip a bit. It kinda does it for me.

[JyonnyNovice]

Thanks for the advice guys, there's no numbness, pretty certain it's an overuse injury - I get pain down my index finger and across my knuckles. I'll try to eat more fibre! I've booked an appointment with a private physio, so will see what she says. I've got one of those straps, haven't tried wearing it for sleeping so will give it a go.

Cheers Adrian, I definitely do need to develop a lighter touch. Soon as I'm better I'll start working on it, think I need to stop drawing again as I get carried away when drawing loose and end up tightening in and hurting myself!

Another loose watercolour from today. Practising using the rigger brush for branches and stuff and trying to create the illusion of a bright sun; moderately successful, my washes are pretty weak but still practising:

[clockodile]

Hard luck about your hand, I hope that gets better for you soon. Everyone has their things to say about strain injuries, though I will agree with the lighter grip, if that is an issue for you. (A guideline that I hear from time to time is one's grip should be relaxed enough so that it is easy to slap the pencil out of your hand.) I still have to remind myself to do it when I feel my hand get tired too, it is a dreadful habit. Good luck with your physio!

Cool to see you experimenting with watercolour too. (Oddly I was given gouache recently so I'm doing the same - traditional painting is tough!) I really don't know much about paints, though I've been doing little photo studies to practise control too. I'm really liking your mixing studies though, gotta break out that Gurney book again myself.

Flicking back a couple of pages, I can see your use of perspective has improved a bit more, you're getting a much better result with the house on that last page. When your hand gets better, just remember that and keep applying the perspective cues to other stuff, even if it is just a couple of receding parallel lines. The texture is looking way better as well - the way the crosshatching gets fainter to the back is a nice effect for depth and eases up the business of the linework.

Keep up the good work, and get well soon!

[JyonnyNovice]

Clockodile Thanks for the feedback, as always. Light enough so that it can be slapped out of your hand - I definitely don't do that! I'll try to bear that in mind. When my grip is too light I feel like I don't have control, then I lose control! Perhaps it's a mind trick - because I think I'm going to draw the wrong line I end up doing it. Will have to work on confidence. Working with real paint has really opened me up to colour and it's interactions - like using just two colours to paint something and achieving lots of variety - in digital, at least for me, there is too much choice with brushes and colours and it gets messy. I'm thinking of trying Corel Painter since that's geared towards traditional painting style. Good luck with your experiments! Hope to see some of your traditional painting soon ^^

I discovered this page that let's you simulate colour mixing, if you want to try something out digitally that you will then attempt in traditional for example. It's a pretty cool tool: http://www.goldenpaints.com/mixer

Couple more watercolours from the last few days, I'm finding I can paint ok as long as I don't move my fingers.


Anime screencap, focus was on getting a nice sky.


Learning to paint trees and followed along with a youtube demonstration. Pretty pleased with how this turned out, mastered a couple new techniques like how to lift dry paint out with a damp brush to create the light side of the tree and the background tree trunks and how to add texture to the tree bark with a super sticky paint mix and the side of a rigger brush.


Thumbnail sketch of my neighbourhood, going to make a painting of this scene, want to try and represent the inner city in a bright summery line and wash style painting to show the city can be beautiful and doesn't have to be gritty and dark like a lot of urban paintings show.

[JyonnyNovice]

Alriiiiiight! I'm back in business! Went to the physio, discovered my hand problems was my palmar / dorsal muscles (they are responsible for spreading / closing the fingers) - tiny tiny little muscles that'd been strained. She taught me a few new hand stretches that I added to my stretching routine and few days later I can now draw without pain! I still need to take it easy but at least I can do something.

Thanks to everyone who gave me support and advice and stuff, wouldn't have healed as quickly without all that, so thanks a lot !


Onwards! Finally back to drawing ^_^

My plan right now is to do the Inktober event, great opportunity to improve my ink skills. After that I plan to go into Anatomy Overdrive and study nothing but Hampton until the whole book is finished - want to draw consistent figures finally.

Inktober first though, here's my drawings from yesterday and today, all done with brush and ink:





Second one felt much better after setting a frame - it ends up being really freeing to restrict the drawing area. The foreground got kinda lost, too much white it all blurs into one, not sure how to overcome that (more texturing? more shadows?)

Here's some thumbnails for tomorrows drawing, I like 3 and 4 but not sure, any thoughts?

[StardustLarva]

Welcome back, Jyonny. Good to hear your hand injury is better. I'm really liking that first Inktober piece you did, that monster design is rather intriguing.

[JyonnyNovice]

Stardust Thanks man! Glad you like that drawing too, I wasn't too happy with how it turned out - I can't take credit for the design though, it's actually a real animal! Some kind of hairless bear, although I tried to make the ears look more like horns (here's the reference: http://images.viralnova.com/000/043/088/...imals3.jpg ). It's a great looking basis for a monster!

Here's some more stuff for tomorrow's ink drawing:

Some studies:



And the pencil under drawing:



Should be fun to ink, I'll try using a crow quill pen this time as there are a lot of small texturing details on the tree, my brush is a bit too ratty to get a good tight point on it.

[JyonnyNovice]

Ink drawing for today:



Happy with the bird, the tree face is a bit too busy maybe, needed to more clearly define light and shadow areas I think. Fun drawing though.

[JonHop]

Nice inking, glad to hear your hand is better! keep em coming :), remember to keep your grip light and take breaks ;).

[JyonnyNovice]

Cheers brother! Yea I'm being super careful now.

[JyonnyNovice]

Pencil sketch for tomorrow's ink, couldn't get the feet looking right but I'll leave it like this:



Digital work, seeing how it would look with just one side inked:

[JyonnyNovice]

Ink from today, need to work on brush line confidence to get those nice smooth cursive lines - can do it fine on practice paper, even following pencil shapes but when I do it on the drawing I feel pressure which makes me hesitant and I end up with the weak lines like in this image. Happy with how the hair turned out though, next drawing I might try a 3 panel comic strip with these characters.

[JyonnyNovice]

Pencil sketch for tomorrow's ink - I'm getting a cold, not feeling too well so just did something quick, I'll work on the comic strip later in the month.