JyonnyNovice - from Novice to Master!

[Eyliana]

I really like the gestures you do with the brush pen, add a nice value and thickness on the lines.

The watercolours look nice as well, maybe you can try to lift the watercolours with some tissues to create a bit lighter clouds?

[JyonnyNovice]

Eyliana Thanks! Glad you like them! I did use tissue on those paintings but was too timid with it I think. My teacher said to be so gentle with the tissue but other videos online show them really pressing hard. I will have another go at them in the next few days and see what else I can do!


More brush pen stuff today:





I do the gestures from New Master's Academy youtube page since they are more like a life drawing session with straight on angles and similar lighting throughout.

[JyonnyNovice]

Some stuff from life drawing, could've made the last image nicer with cross hatching instead of single hatching but I ran out of time.







More figures from home, trying to use line less and shadow shapes more (still a lot of line in these):






Trying to memorise the figure abstractions, they must be really useful since the head ones help so much for structure. Need to keep practising this one since it's an uncomfortable way of doing figures for me:

[JyonnyNovice]

Went out for some street sketching for a change of scene, tried to put them all together in photoshop, kinda happy with it:







(I added the background after finishing the page of characters, that's why the scale is so crazy)

[KurtJeremy]

Hey Jyonny! great stuff as usual. your figure drawings from life is looking more fluid as ever and the gestures are very clear. i always wish i could find a life drawing here but the ones i know of is miles from what i live.
do you have any particular suggestions about some ref material on reilly abstraction? i kinda forgot them lol

thanks for the video you shared on my sb his great ,the dude just got another subscriber.

do you mean shading in the shadow with only one value?
yeah i try doing that sometimes and its fun indeed.


------
about the social stuff
thats why im taking my first steps into work. i need to expose myself once again with working with people and socializing more and i think this will give me the exposure that im looking for.

Please do talk about the meditation techniques, ive written my Habit Challenge using a table with X's and im on 13 day streak its a simple 6-7 min meditation a day.

[JyonnyNovice]

Kurt Hey man, yea you can use just one value for the shadow shapes or some people who work in charcoal just outline them (using hard or soft edges depending on the type of shadow), then if you push the drawing further you can work in the correct values. The point for me though, is that doing it this way I've found I've been learning a lot more about the figure by focusing as much as possible on just the shadow shapes. Like in the last gesture page below, in the top right, she is on her toes so her calf muscle is engaged (which I did know from anatomy study, but when I tried to draw one it looked forced), but after doing a few poses like that and seeing the shadow shape, it became really intuitive really quickly how to draw a calf muscle engaged that has credibility. The rest of the body is full of those shapes that you see repeated over and over with various poses - I'm learning all these shapes without even having to sit down and puzzle them out and study study like usual. Not even making notes, just mental ones that keep getting reinforced since I'm seeing them over and over.
Reilly stuff is really hard to come by, apart from the basic rhythm charts. Watts Atelier explains it in detail, I'll share some screenshots from the PDF notes you get from there (I'm sure he wouldn't mind me posting a couple of clips).

http://i.imgur.com/NUl57mC.jpg


I'll get back to you about the meditation stuff next time.



Stuff from last couple of days:

Brush pen gestures, managing to do them with less lines now but still too many outlines and contours : )





And studying some trees for watercolour class, we will do trees in class next week.

A couple of plein air sketches (so fun to paint outside):





And some digital studies about structure, in the second one I tried to use a watercolour approach and painted light to dark on one layer (above a sketch and background layer) - it came out a bit washed out.

[JyonnyNovice]

Been a while since I updated and I don't seem to have much to show, despite drawing everyday... lots of scruffy little sketches in sketchbooks dotted around the place I expect.

Here's some watercolour working on the trees / leaves still, some outdoor people sketching and some stuff from life drawing. The ink and charcoal one seemed to work out ok (last image).

[BenFlores]

Love the recent figure drawing stuff, that last one especially. You did a great job on making the shapes read and the forms turn. I really have to start going to some sessions too. Keep going man :)

If you got the time check out Frazettas ink's to help out with the cross hatching or Ivor Hele's traditional work, you might be able to take something from them.

[JyonnyNovice]

Ben Thanks man! One artist I admire a lot is Glenn Keane, and he has consistently done life drawing through his whole career (I believe). Really such an important aspect! You should definitely get back to it ^^

Studying some Frazetta as advised (I've been meaning to for ages, finally getting around to it).


Notes are cut off, but they say:
1) The anatomy doesn't have to be perfect, just interesting!
2) Light / mids / darks flow nicely together on the rough skin of the monster, limit / soften the hard transitions
3) Non-uniform hatching
4) Movement / flow in hatching on monsters back, emphasising the twist in the torso
5) V.thin / broken lines for rock surface details
6) diluted ink for background limbs and some reflected light
7) cross hatching limited to very dark places only, to give some variation in the shadows
8) patterned hatching for rocks
9) no contour line on girls leg, used the background to define it (I did it quite badly)
10) pure white patch of reflected light on girls hip, looks sexy
11) hard change of direction on spherical forms hatching
12) hatching across cylindrical forms, tilting to diagonal for dynamic (on the hero's forearm)


I've been trying to apply this stuff to my figure drawing things, but I think I need to do some longer untimed poses to really be able to apply and internalise this stuff (probably with some planning / thumbnails beforehand).

For now, trying some diluted ink mixed with a little black watercolour paint on my figures:







Some stuff from life drawing (ink + black watercolour, then ink and charcoal for last one)


(yea! someone brought a dog with them XD )








Finally, trying to see if I can approach heads the same way I have been approaching figures by doing quick drawings with the brush pen (3 mins for these ones). Not sure if it's going to help... brush pen seems more like a test of current ability rather than something where I can keep doing and improve - since there is very little mistake correction, and the same mistakes keep cropping up (at least it feels that way for the 3/4 view heads anyway). I'm going to continue doing these for a bit though and see if I can improve:

[JyonnyNovice]

Quite a few little bits and pieces, some watercolour paintings from class and some I did at home. Then some little studies for Mariyan's material study group, and lastly trying to use markers in figure drawing to build up the values slowly, it starts to feel quite successful.

[Eyliana]

Does watercolour paintings look cool! For the clothing of the figures; Do you let it dry totally and then add another layer?

I think that on some of your gesture studies the area between the breasts and the neck is a bit too long. But I like the style with the markers and the brush pen :)

[StardustLarva]

Hey there Jon, your watercolour technqiue has improved greatly since you last you posted, in my opinion. Those pieces you posted look a lot cleaner and a lot less muddy than they did before. It's all looking very good!

[Hobitt]

Loving the watercolours! and great progress too.

[AlCo]

Oh man! I miss for a while and look at the sheer of work you've been doing! Amazing!

I love those brush pen gestures, they are just spot on, keep doing them!
Gorgeous Frazetta's studies, I think you really did a great job on them.

Plenty of compliments to spend, I won't say a word more on them watercolors (awesomeness).
Dude, you make me feel bad on my consistency, but at the same time great inspiration.

:)

[JyonnyNovice]

Elyiana Thanks! For the people I mainly followed advice from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKrpi6gh...L&index=30 it's quite long but you can easily find the bits where he focuses on single figures. But yea, I let the first wash dry completely then laid a second wash of the exact same mix (didn't make it any darker). I might've done a 3rd layer too (this is for the guys leaning on the fence). For the people bottom right, I let the base dry then glazed with a generic shadow type mix (ultramarine and burnt sienna), then for the people in top right I did the whole figures first in skin tone (alizirin crimson, lemon yellow, burnt sienna) then when it was dry just used dirty patches of dark paint on my palette to do the clothes. Thanks for the critique of the head / chest / breast area on my gestures - I'll be keeping a closer eye on my boobs now : )

Stardust & Hobit Thanks guys! Much appreciated!

AlCo Thanks man, your comment really made my day! It's really easy to doubt oneself and I do stuff that I feel looks good at the time, then I'm not so sure about it, so it's really great when people on here say some specific things that they think look good : ) About consistency; start small, and build up! even twenty minutes on something unsuccessful is still +20 mins on your milometer.


Thanks everyone too for saying nice things about my watercolours - I felt they were so amateur looking and crappy but am really happy / surprised that people are digging them. I guess when you watch a lot of pro's demonstrating painting on youtube, you get used to seeing that level of quality and then when your own work falls short it feels like utter failure. I'll keep pushing with the painting, really motivated to do better now : )


Just some more gestures today. I tried doing them on marker paper, since the printer paper I usually use soaks up so much ink from the markers. It felt pretty nice, but hard doing them on small paper (I might get some A3 marker paper but I imagine it's expensive).

[JyonnyNovice]

Tried a few in pencil today to see how doing the ink stuff has helped me.

[Hobitt]

You are doing good progress, keep it up, maybe study some structure too its always a good idea to go back to that stuff.

[JyonnyNovice]

Hobitt Thanks man and yea I should do some structure stuff too - so much stuff to draw and so little time ¬_¬ sometimes I wish I could do without sleep XD but in the next few months sometime I'll go through all the Hampton stuff again and will probably go hardcore construction for a month then.


Since I felt my figure drawing really improve since I've been doing daily sessions with the brushpen, I thought I'll try to apply that to other areas too. So my challenge for the foreseeable future (at least til the end of March) is to do: 30 mins timed figure drawing from reference, 30 mins figure drawing from imagination and 30 minutes timed head drawing from reference. I'll only use the brushpen since it removes the possibility of spending too long on one figure (especially for the imagination ones).

Here's day one:

From reference, didn't feel so hot today:



From imagination, this is a skill that needs some serious attentions


Heads from reference



It feels nice to practice like this, since I can just 'do it' and not hurt my head thinking too much about what I'm drawing and the consistent efforts and observation / visualisation practice will make me improve!


Lastly some mountains for Mariyan's material study group (my digital painting is weak, but I'll poke that bear another day)

[Hobitt]

Nice digital painting keep practicing, working in a permanent medium like brush pen can really train pre visiualization skills, but don't forget to use a more forgiving medium too you can take more risks with the drawing.

[ShinOkami]

Hey man, thanks for droping by my SB !

First of all, those inked gestures are so coooooooool, better than anything I did xD I'll have to do some of those as well !
Keep practicing with them and they'll get that final shine and become perfect : )

Other than that, keep it up with the faces, try to study deeper on how every feature is anatomically constructed and just be lost at the detals, that's where the fun is :D