Jaik's Sketches & Thoughts

[Tom Seas]

A lot of hard work in here!
I feel some of your figure work is a bit lacking in structure. You seem to focus on outlines and detail bumps but not about the basic forms under them.
Especially in the figures without ref. The female is really good, but the two male chests are very flat. Especially the pecs. Try giving them more form, look at the way Hampton handles them.
Same can be said about some of the ones from life, where the shading feels a bit random and doesn't clearly describe the forms.

[Jaik]

Ursula: Ah thanks Sula for the link :) Going back in and sampling I realised that I had used a neutral yellow colour for the green in the shadow :S Pretty insane..
Rio: haha yeah thats becuase it was only a 20min pose, so I didn't have time to refine anything. I need to get my speed up :(
Lyraina: Thanks :D Yeah.. They are kind of creepy but I wasn't about to draw the bones in the feet if I didn't have to :P
I think I fixed the clavicle a bit, I hope.. maybe.. sigh.

Tom: I noticed that my males always tend to look flat, but my females are semi-okay. I don't know why this consistently happens.. But I have started doing some studies on form again.


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This week was a kind of fail week. I got really tired and felt like I was hit by a truck all week. Last couple of days have been better, which is where most of this work came from, since I did basically nothing for the first half of the week.

Mostly value and form practice this week. I realised that when I did this last time I was a little too reliant on the colour pickers value slider, so this time I did it all by eye. And this is also why I did it traditionally as well, so that I was forced to not rely on technology. I think it helped a bit.


The top one is the original:


Hampton study, I got his figure drawing book, so i will read through that this week and see what I can find, he had a couple of good exercises in there that I have been using for warm ups the past two days. There were a heap more of these but I couldnt be bothered photographing them all since it serves no purpose. This was a good selection to maybe get some crits on if I am doing anything wrong.




Mannequinization after Proko:


And my life drawing, learning to use charcoal (this will be the third week I used it at life drawing) is a surprisingly steep learning curve. I always thought it was similar to graphite, so thats how I have been using it, but recently I have found that it shows 'strokes' a lot more than graphite, so scribbling to block in shadows doesnt work.
It was a very fail week (these are the ones I feel okay to show.. the others.. not so much.






Figure studies trying to really get the forms down and applying what I learnt. The bottom right is from my head, thought I would point it out because it is so good you may have missed it.


Kimono material study for itachi piece.


Itachi update.

[Archreux]

Hey, man. You're putting a ton of great work in on those studies, really killer progress.

The volume of work your amassing is impressive, I can't wait to see how all those arm studies are paying off.

Itachi is looking good, the colors are nice, and it's good to see that you spent time to figure out the comp. One thing is just bothering me, and that is the face. I think you could go back and re-work it as the proportions are a bit off, mostly the features themselves could use some work. Consider checking the head size as well. Also, shorten the length of the neck because it's pretty long at the moment. Other than that it's shaping up really nicely! The hand and it's cast shadows were done really well.

If you can just take care of the few things that are off this definitely has the potential to be a really strong piece. :D

Keep up the great work!

[Samszym]

I was confused in my color theory class just yesterday about a situation similar to your spoon. When I asked about how shadows act in colored light, the response I got was that because there's no direct light in the shadows, it lacks the wavelength of whatever the light color is. So since the magenta isn't shining all that's there to see is the opposite of magenta, green.
It's like what happens if your turn off the R channel in photoshop, suddenly everything goes cyan since the opposite of cyan no longer exists.

Does that make sense? Still don't understand it myself tbh! From what I understand it has to do in part with how your eyes are perceiving the light rather than what's actually happening, which is beyond my understanding right now.
I'm not saying that's what's going on, or that the guys who posted before me were wrong. Just relaying information. I'm gonna go buy some colored lights myself and test this out before daring to claim it as fact. Maybe you should take some pictures of your still life setup and use the color picker to see if there's actually green in the shadow.

Awesome quantity in your other work! Congrats on getting the bloodsport in on time! The old guy doesn't look too stylized to me, that would be an issue if he were rendered in a different way than anything else but in terms of shape design I think he totally fits. The photos of the figure drawings are a tad too large to judge clearly. Are you working on paper with a lot of tooth? your marks looks really noisy, maybe try a softer touch with your pencil and doing those hatch strokes in only one direction.


EDIT
hah dang you posted while I was writing my comment XD new stuff looks cool, remember in the value stuff that the reflected light can't get any brighter than the halftones.
Do you have any tools to use with your charcoal? a chamois cloth to smudge it around or a blending stump? Might want to look into those. Maybe try drawing a preliminary sketch in vine charcoal and smudging around some tone before going in with the charcoal

[rioriorio]

Itachi hand is very good jake. Even when you feel like hit by truck, you still show improvement jake, just keep it up and improving.

[Lyraina]

Nice form/value studies. Next step: Do those from life! I think I've seen it in Sulas sketchbook, doing a "black on black" or "white on white" (or white on black, if you want form) could be really useful. (Not that I did one yet)

Those figure studies... wow!!! Especially the stomach areas ... always struggling with those... so delicious! Bottom right one is nice, I like how you repeat the shape of the eyes in her nipples, you clearly mastered the concept of repeated design elements, ... xP

Lovely colors and silky texture in the kimono study - now apply that for Itachi! I think it could look cool if you played up the red background picking up in the cloth (as you did in the study in blue/greens), then contrasted by the cooler light from above. Will make for nice colors, and a coherent feeling of the elements in the image. Also try to recycle the blue you use in his undershirt (?) in another area, or let some red reflect upon it, so that it is not that single block of new color that doesn't come up anywhere else. Sorry if you already intended to do that and I am jumping ahead again, but I also don't want to point it out when it's too late :P

Keep it up Jaik! <3

[crackedskull]

Very nice figure drawings. Kimono study came out well and Itachi is looking sweet. Might want to consider the facial features a bit. Remember in a character, everything has to kind of fit. In your design the face does not quite fit in my opinion.
All things considered you are doing nice, keep it up.

[Warburton]

So much cool shit dude, love it all! <3 Some pretty huge improvements on your values and anatomy for sure too, all the studies are paying off so keep hammering those mate, your doing something right.

Oh and the value studies with the orbs made me laugh, you say the tops the original, yet the bottom one looks more realistic and 3D lol :p

[smrr]

Killing it Jaiiiiiiiiiiiiikkkkkk---!!! FRICK!

Bloody hell man, just look at Itachi's hand... it's glorious!
I'm not really sure about what's a little off in his face - maybe just adding a little more contrast up in there will give it that extra

Though, you're nailing the subtlety of tone shifts, so try not to tamper too much with it ^ ^

You're awesome man, keep it up, looking forward to your next update as always!

[Jaik]

EDIT: Smrr, look at you being all ninja and sneaking in while I was writing the update.. Thanks :D Yeah, I was happy with the overall skin tones, but it was just something about the features >.<

Archereux: Yeah, the face was bothering me too. A lot. There was something off but I couldnt put my finger on it so I reworked it like you advised :)

Samsym: Thank you! Changing the paper made all the difference with charcoal. As did getting a chamois, and vine charcoal.. so this week was much easier to do. The tools all require a heap of practice but until then I was using very toothy paper and only compressed charcoal pencils. Thanks heaps for pointing them out to me!

Thanks Rio :D

Haha Lyraina, yeah. Pretty much have repeating shapes and figure drawing down obviously :P
Thanks for pointing out the under shirt thing, thats a good idea, I will really need to figure out a way to use it again somewhere.

Cracked: The face D: its always the face! Yeah I totally went through and reworked the face.

Thanks War! :DD Im glad you think I am improving because it is sometimes hard to see when you are in the trenches every day.

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Thanks for the support everyone. Every comment in this sketchbook helps to motivate me and make me feel like I actually am doing good.

This week was kind of a shit week. It started out okay with some really good news earlier in the week, which has since turned out to be an opportunity that I cant pass up, but it will take up a lot of my time, a lot more time than I was anticipating (probably 15+ hours a week) for the foreseeable future. So the time spent arting will be reduced for at my guess 6-12 weeks, since I have to keep up my part time job as well.
Then on Thursday I had to take my dog to the vet in the middle of the night to be put down. Pretty much the shittest day ever... But she was 13 years young and in a lot of pain so it had to be done.. Oddly enough, telling myself that doesnt help...

TL;DR - Hardly any time for art :( Working out a time management schedule will probably be my goal for this week since before I treated it like a shotgun and just did the work purely by doing a large amount of hours, now it is going to have to be focused like a sniper...

Another reason for such a pathetic update is that I put 2 or 3 days worth of work into reworking Itachi's face about 3 times. Each time crashed and burned. This is really showing me how little I know about faces and how much practice I need to do. They aren't even worth showing they are that terrible lol.

Form studies, all from imagination, eggs are strange shapes..


Spoon still life, this time featuring protein:


Life drawing, these range from 5minutes for the first couple, then slowly increasing to 20min for the last few. Big thanks to Samszym for suggesting different paper, vine charcoal and a chamois, made it soo much easier. I am using newsprint now, I think next week I will also add in some white charcoal, but I have realised the problem I have with lighting is because they have one spotlight, then banks of florescent lights on either side, so essentially there is no dark and light side. This is because it is a local art gallery who is mostly full of old people that cant see in the dark -_- Does anyone have any suggestions on how to combat this?

[ImSkeptical]

Sucks to lose your dog man, i remember when mine died, sad stuff.

Good luck with this new opportunity though! If you start to get lazy/busy just remember, if you managed to draw each day even a little bit you're still making progress :D, or at least thats what I told myself :p. With the life drawing and the terrible lighting, maybe take it as an opportunity to try and design a nice single lightsource? Its a good exercise to try figure out where the core shadows and cast shadows would run along all the forms. Not ideal but you work with what you got hey. Also you didn't post your iatchi man, we wanna see where its at.

[Blewzen]

Good job on the bloodsports piece it has a great mood, the itachi piece is also looking pretty good, looking to see it finished :).
I know really little about faces too I'm trying to study faces starting with loomis, probably willing to do thousands til i feel comfortable making them by imagination, this being said I think if you are making a cool finished piece, references are really helpful sometimes (probably you are already using them but anyways).
Keep working on that face whatever it takes you will learn something.

[Jaik]

Skeptikal: Thats exactly how I looked at this week. And I even managed to get into a bit more of a routine. I also took your suggestion and made up my own lighting at life drawing, or really just completely exaggerated what was actually there.
And.. I.. Kinda didnt.. post itachi on purpose...... but its in this post #noshame

Blewzen: Thanks for stopping by. Yeah, I got more reference, then got confused, removed reference, changed reference... It was a shit fight.. But I kept going.


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So not a lot this week. But hopefully next week I should have more. Non-art life has got me a bit overwhelmed/drained at the moment. I don't want to infect my art with personal crap, but when they say bad things come in threes someone miscounted..

So, heres the anatomy update. Will start on individual muscles this week:




My bloodsports. Took a different approach and went satirical instead of serious. Going to render them in a sort of mobile game style I think. Since my values and forms are kind of whats letting me down in a lot of images I thought I would try someting different (Read: I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM DOING)


Itachi ;____; His face is better proportion but now he is kind of ugly.. and not very girly like he is meant to be. Pretty boy etc. But.. I guess its an improvement? I dont even know... His mouth is swollen, I think. But I have no idea what thin lips look like front underneath, since every one I have looked at has fairly thick mouth flaps from this angle.


I tried to take my laptop to life drawing this week to do some digital paintings and stupidly relied on technology and didnt bring any of my traditional equipment. Which resulted in my laptop not working.. and me needing to use my pocket sketchbook and pencil (they were literally in my pocket)

[Adzerak]

Hey man, some sweet lighting going on in those traditional pieces, especially like how you conveyed the form in the one with the model.
Also nice too see that you continued working on the Itachi character, I think the forms of the face come together nicely, got a more 3d-ish chunky look to it now, so to speak xD
Maybe it's supposed to be more stylized (or maybe you haven't gotten to that stage yet) but I think that some color variation i could make it more interesting. Like reflected light from the ground and maybe some blue and/or greenish tones in the pale face.

[Lyraina]

I'm a bit late with this reply but looks like I've only liked your post in zombi mode without commenting :P Love the foreshortening that is going on in your life drawings! Also nice curves. About the issue with no shadows - why not use some of the poses (those with the most unfavorable light conditions) for just doing a very neat and carefully measured drawing? Focusing on bones, muscles and whatever is visible on the surface, ignoring the shadows for the time of being.

Itachi's mouth: From that angle the upper lip should be bigger than the lower lip I think, although that depends on his physique of course. As for making him prettier, a dirty trick I use for that is the liquify tool... just pushing around features (chin, nose, the outer line of the face etc) until I find something that looks better than before. Has saved me numerous times. As for making him more pretty and girlish (hopefully not stepping on anyones toes here - that's entirely a matter of opinion of course). I would start with pushing the bridge of the nose down a bit (so that it is straight or even slightly curves the other way), but leave the tip/lower part of the nose which looks perfect and really beautiful to me. The I would lift the jawline and/or chin up a bit. Eyebrows are also good to play with as they have a great effect on the character (which looks more sorrowful now - fits him, I think).

[Jaik]

Adzerak: Thanks man! Yeah I am thinking I will have some flame based lights from the bottom of the canvas to give a little more of that interest. Which means cooling down the main light a fair bit more. Glad the forms look a bit better.. Such a pain lol.

Lyraina: Haha np xP Thats a really good idea too. Ignore form and just go for contour. I tried that with a couple this time round. But because one week the model was a heavier model, I couldnt see many of the muscles.
Liquify is definitely my friend in this, I think I just have to spend more time on it. I really need to fix his noes at the top, because you are right, as it stands it looks a little too mannish for him.


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Okay, sorry I didn't update last week guys. Went and had artist fun times meeting up with ImSkeptical and Smrr. Strangely awesome meeting people from the internet and they know exactly what everyone goes through learning this art thing xP Can't wait to do it again.

Other than that though I really dropped the ball this last few weeks, probably the last month if I am honest. I really need to get back onto the workhorse and keep going. I am almost done the anatomy of the upper leg and then after that I will do the lower leg, then move on to portraits which should be a little more fun.

Also, I got a sneak peak at Darren Yeows Nomad Kickstarter Campaign. Looks baller and the Nomad is going to be soooooo good. Cant wait.

Warmups:



My finished bloodsports. Kind of disappointed how it turned out because I wish I would have put more time into it. But completely lost interest towards the end.


Anatomy




Life Drawing for the past two weeks:












And an enviro I want to still finish because I got so sick of figurative work lol

[Ursula Dorada]

rocking it man :)

[crackedskull]

Yo, nice in depth anatomy studies. Enviro is looking pretty cool.
Try to think of frustration as a good thing, it means your eyes are getting better at seeing whats wrong. Also dont get bogged down if you fuck something up and its completely below your level. These things happen to everyone, just keep on drawing.

[CoreyH]

Great figure stuff. Admire your work ethic. Really like the enviro at the end too, would be awesome to see that finished!

[Lyraina]

Haha, now that's a shiny new Gauntlet lettering :D

The life drawings are coming along nicely. How long are the longest poses you do in your sessions?

Wow, where does that enviro come from? O_O I smell improvement. Composition wise, I feel like the left mountain (the dark one) would profit from being a bit less steep. Depends on how you want it to feel, of course. But right now it feels really dominating/towering, killing a bit of the otherwise friendly atmosphere.