Yonderly's Sketchbook

[Yonderly]

Hi everyone! ^.^

I'm Antonija, 21-year old student from Croatia.

I was drawing here and there my whole life and a few months ago I realized I wanted to get into drawing more seriously. I got my tablet only a week ago so I decided to make a few (awful :D) color/value studies as I really know nothing about color. :x

So, here it goes:

[Yonderly]

I've made a bunch of studies and noticed I still struggle with color blending. Also, I have like a metric ton of sketches - things I would like to paint - and it can be (very) frustrating when the picture in my head doesn't match with the one I'm capable of painting.

Gotta work hard! :'D

[¤Lilly¤]

Hi!

I'm also a newbie but I want to give you some feedback anyway :) I feel your artistic spirit around here! Aren't you painting on canvas? Your drawings look like if you had some experience in that area... Very nice ideas and scenes :)
I woul like to help you with improving digital painting - don't be worried about using more intense colours :) And according to blending - start like you did previously, but in next stage try to change brushes' opacity and flow to lower and blend neighbour colors

Check some youtube tutorials, it helped me a lot (cubebrush, fzdschool, creative station, xia tapara, stephanie valentin and others)

Good luck in improving your skill :) I know well how do you feel (now, ill make someting good. Oh god, it looks so bad, new one! :D)

[Nowio]

Hey Antonija, welcome to the Daggers! ;D

Great start, maybe you could try to tighten up your forms/shapes. Maybe make a drawing/lineart first and then fit in the colors. Right now your values are a bit muddy and the images look quite rough.

[Yonderly]

Thank you Nowio and Lilly for your advice, it really helped me with my painting. ^^

Over the last few weeks I made some perspective studies and skull studies, but I really didn't manage to draw as much as I wanted. I guess college is starting to eat up my drawing time. Gotta reorganize timetable!











The first skull took like forever, and the second one (forever)x2 because I wanted to be more precise and they still aren't finished. ;-; How does one speed up the work?

[Adam Lina]

Hi, Antonija! Welcome to the forum. I like your studies so far. The key to getting faster is to just keep drawing every day. If you can stay consistently drawing everyday at least for 10 minutes you'll be set. Dont worry about doing beautiful master pieces just have fun with it and before you know it you will feel weird if you go a day without drawing. Just ask yourself what kind of things have you always liked to draw and work on that. If you're having fun you'll want to do more and it wont feel like forever x2!

[Yonderly]

Hi, Adam! Thank you very much for your insight. I thought about what bothered me and came to the conclusion I don't really like realism, so, I decided I won't push it very hard.
Currently, my focus is on making facial features studies. I hope I'll start making some portraits in the near future as I don't really feel confident enough to just start painting them from imagination now.

[Yonderly]

I haven't posted here for a long time. ._.

So, here comes... something?
I am almost done with Loomis & Norling studies (Fun With A Pencil and Perspective Made Easy), so I got more confident in my sketches. I still mostly do studies and sketches on paper, though.
Learned a bit more about anatomy and composition. Realized I now jack shit about linework, so I'm working on that now.

[BenFlores]

You mentioned you don't like realism, I know it can seem like you're slaving over it but there is alot to learn from realism when you study it. Knowing the true form of something will help you simplify it later on. I'm interested in seeing those pencil drawings as well.

Keep up the master studies , they always have a gamut of fundamentals you can learn from.

[Martin J Intarat]

Hello Yonderly

Good sketchbook you're doing here. :)

1). Think you should try to find a firm stand for your studies, I would recommend that you be able to start Studer anatomy, you do not have to could the names of the different muscles or bones, but to have an understanding of how we have built is a good idea if you want to draw people.

And do not you underestimate the ability to draw realism, as they say "Know the rules well, so you can break dem effektivt."

2). It's not a good idea to start painting before you can draw, think of your pencil as a paintbrush. and when one day you are good at drawing, you can start painting and it will be 100 times easier for you to learn how to paint. And drop colors until you have full control of light and shadow.

And for God's sake use paper and pencil!!! :)

[Yonderly]

Thank you, guys, for your feedback, it really helped me.
I got into anatomy and perspective a bit harder so I could get a little bit more control and I'm currently focusing on that. I should really make time for l/s and value studies, tho. ._.

[stonedpanda03]

Herro. :D

I came here to give you some support and feedback. We are both from Croatia but i'll still try to replay in english so that everyone can read it properly. In any case, i really really like your colour studies. That skull from 24.11.14. is insane and i think you should keep it up like that. As Adam Lina already told you you should practice every day at least 10 min (quick studies of objects around you, maybe some gesture studies or whatever you feel like drawing :3).

And i agree when someone said that ypu can learn a lot from realism, which is... true. :D It really helps you to understand how things work. ^^ And then later from what you learn it's easier to draw other things too.

I just hope you'll post more in your sketchbook 'cause i'd really like to have someone to compete with. :3 So here goes *brofist* and let's draw till our hands die! xD


(P.S. Samo da znas, svaki crtez bio digitalno ili tadicionalno iziskoje jako veliki vremenski period. nemoj se brinit ako na necemu potrosis vise od 5-20 sati tako nastaju best artworks in the world. :D Tako da trosi vremena koliko ti treba ali na kraju budi happy with what you have in there. :3)

[Yonderly]

*brofists Panda* That are exactly the words I needed reminding of! THANKS!


As the weather got nicer I decided to cruise around city and draw random objects to enrich my visual library, drawing from life is really fun!


I should really stop ignoring digital work. And drawing men. .-.

Today's studies:

[RenatoCaria]

Hi there! :D
I went through your sketchbook and really liked some of the stuff! Let me tell you that for someone who recently got a tablet, the first drawings you did were pretty damn neat :o

I see that you are struggling a little with light and color, so besides giving the cliché advice any dagger would give you: "get light and color by james gurney", i wanna also tell you that doing still lifes helps A TON. and while you're at it, doing studies, write little notes to yourself with everything you realise and learn during the study. That will speed up your learning process and ability to retain information!

Hope to see more stuff from you soon! Keep drawing!

Ps: can i get a brofist aswel? xD

[Yonderly]

*brofists Renato as well*
I did not know about that book, thanks a lot! :noob: I just started reading it and it's rather enjoyable. ^_^
(I keep notes in a separate layer when painting. :'D)

















I decided to do quick portraits (also, recently, hand studies) every day to practice proportions and values. I'm sorry for the horribad pic quality, I have neither scanner, nor an adequate camera. D:
I want to get into environments more, but I'm not really sure AM I ARTING PROPERLY. :'D I just do a bunch of small random env sketches and I try to focus on getting perpective/values right.

[wla91]

Hey there! I'm glad to see you're focusing on the key things to improve, way to go! What I could advice you is to integrate more grays into your color, it'll make it look more realistic and from there you can start experimenting, sometimes something looks like a warm red but it's actually a warm gray that looks like that because it's next to a cool gray, and so on. Colors can be tricky ._..

I hope it helps and I hope to see more soon!

[Yonderly]

Today's derpiness. HERP DERP
I noticed I tend to paint everything too light. :W

[smrr]

Sup Yonderly! 

Glad to see you diving into the community, commenting in peoples sketchbooks and providing feedback.

Off to a great start, especially since you only got your tablet a little while ago o: !

Hmm, so you asked a question? 
I did a thing for you:



When it comes to lighting form, first, think about the intensity of the light, what material is being affected and the direction of the light source (you had this part down). 
I chose to paint over the face in a diffuse lighting scenario. So, the cast shadows weren't too harsh and all I really needed to focus on were the values and basic shapes. I'd suggest doing a number of master studies to help understand how this works, as well as painting a number of these shapes (spheres, cylinders, cones, cubes) under different lighting scenes such as the one I mentioned above. 
Be aware of your brushstrokes, continue to paint around the forms and consider blending like I've done on the cylinder and sphere (I actually went almost a full year without realising I needed to blend colours to achieve a more finished look haha). 
In addition to this, you need to be building these shapes up. Painting is not as easy as painting a flat colour and hoping to have achieved a 3D look. The paintover of the face I did took a good 1.5-2hrs. It takes a while, don't be afraid to push yourself because if you keep working at it, you'll get faster and faster!

Also, where I mentioned, if you can draw, you can paint. I truly believe in this idea. Drawing is fundamental to painting, you will learn a tonne from a rendered drawing and it'll even speed up your painting process. I found spending time rendering drawings helped with my brushwork too.
Possibly the most important thing you can learn from drawing = values. 
Aaaaaand a painting is nothing without a solid understanding of values :D

So please, keep this in mind and make sure to continue drawing ^ ^' 
From life, from photos, from imagination.

Other things,
you can learn a lot from this post:
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com.au/201...art-1.html

And really, anything on Gurney's blog in general o_o. Seriously, he helped me out a ton when I started out. 

That and the Muddy Colours blog posts some really useful tips for painting in general. 
http://muddycolors.blogspot.com.br/?m=0

Hope at least some of that helped ya out, even if a little :3

Keep up the good work, Yonderly!

P.s. Ryuko Matoiiiiii <333 Kill La Kill is the besssst. Just finished the series a couple of days ago ^ ^"

[Jeffrey]

Hey Yonderly :)

As I see it, your ideas and color use are very good. You just need some brush/pen/pencil control and getting values in order. Both are learned through experience and watching old masters. I tend to find paintings I like, throw them into photoshop and turn them to black and white. It will become obvious that there is a pattern to how professionals place there low and high values.
For painting/drawing people, I would like to advise looking at work from John Singer Sargent! That guy was a god among men when using light to create lively portraits.
Good luck and never forget to have fun!

[Yonderly]

Thank you for your advice, Jeffrey and smrr! And the repaint, that was so kind ;___; (Kill la Kill rules! My Satsuki Figma just arrived a few days ago <3) I'll check out your sketchbooks and respond properly when I get flat rate internet again. Cheesus OTZ

So, here comes sketchmess:





I noticed I suffer from "head and shoulders" syndrome, I rarely draw whole figure or more than one person. :W
I should really challenge myself more. :WWWW