Jaik's Sketches & Thoughts

[Spiffy]

I would first define what you want to improve on and then that will make defining where to go next easier...

My initial reaction to your sketchbook is more portrait studies. just my $.02. But focus on what YOU want to improve on.

[Amit Dutta]

Hey Jaik, you've put in a lot of work and that's awesome, so keep that theme going.

Briefly from what I saw I'd say more anatomy studies are needed. I don't mean drawing the muscle groups and naming them (you've already done that) but more life drawing and anatomy study in general. You do quite a bit of character stuff but your general anatomy proportions still seem to be off. I'd say you'd neealso d to put a bit of work in on your gestures first in order to nail poses before you go into rendering.
In terms of rendering I'd say you still need to practice and push the idea of rendering around your forms more especially with the characters as they tend to look quite flat.
Next up would be more material studies and application.

Love the mechanika studies by the way that stuff is solid! :)
Keep it up

[Heavenwill]

Generally you'd benefit from targeted study when you're making a personal painting.
For example with those mountains, or the way the city reflects light in the meteor painting.
It would help you not going blind

[Cj_marsh]

Hey Jaik love the SB man really solid stuff, like everyone said before work on some more anatomy id say get out the old loomis and work on the proportions ( I have a bad habit of that myself :) ) but strong work id suggest some more life studies and make sure to take what your studies were and do some from your head I remember Dave Rapoza said he used to copy something 14 times then do the same thing 14 times from his head, but saw your post about thinking about starting a live stream would defiantly I would definatly tune in! I will be sure to check in here more! Keep at it man it only gets harder before it gets better but it will get better its something I am learning myself.

[Jaik]

Spiffy - Started doing more portraits, mostly some 3min gestural ones, I see wisdom in your advice, thanks :)

Monkeybread - Yay anatomy lol.. I started getting back in to ye olde loomis, really helped, thanks for the sound advice :)

Heavenwill - I'm going to try this targeted approach, work, study, apply, repeat. See if that helps.

Cj Marsh - Thanks man! :) Anatomy was the go this week as you can see.

Thanks for stopping by everyone! :3

--
After checking out ImSkepticals sketchbook I really saw the advantage in doing a single, well thought out post a week instead of updating every other day whenever I have time. So here is the first weekly post, which I will now probably try and do every Monday.. I think..

Gestures 2min-5min


Quick study


The fail, took most of a day to do too :(

This week was an anatomy focused week. I started doing gestures again as warm up since I stopped doing this quite some time ago. The serious work was started by first doing a quick study of a torso and then attempting (and failing) to draw and render a figure from my imagination. This was a surprisingly good exercise, it really showed me where my weak points laid. I then did some anatomy drawing to refresh my mind and really work on the way the muscles work and attach on the front of the torso, I will be doing similar drawings for the rest of the body as I go on.

Anatomy...


And more anatomy..


And more...

I retried to create a figure from imagination, using no reference to see if I could apply what I learnt from the anatomy study. I saw an improvement, but not a hell of a lot. The main issue I found was with my proportions, it's amazing how quick I got rusty with them as I haven't really been practising figurative work lately. A trouble spot for me is that the distance between the pelvis and the rib cage was always too large in my works, also in a fair few of the gestures I have been doing. So back to Loomis and his proportions, I wont bother uploading them as I did them traditionally and just on scraps of paper.

Attempt two, a couple of hours


Fixing it up, working out some kinks in the antomy and analysing what I did wrong.


Gesturing from imagination, always fun.


15min study (new facebook cover photo :P)


Colour/Mood study, 2.5hrs

Also a couple of requests done for friends, one is a tattoo, the other is a birthday present. So many of my friends have birthdays in January, another reason why its going to be a slow month as everyone is having 21st party's and I get raged at if I stay home and draw >.>

Tattoo


Dog - Present

In other news I really need to work out a proper schedule, do some research and plan it out well, not half arsed like I have in the past. But when I attempt to start I feel like I'm just wasting time and I should just draw instead, I feel guilty for wasting time working out when to draw when I should be drawing. If that makes sense. Anyone else get that?

Also, I think I need to make these pics a bit smaller, this week is a bit too large lol..

[URL="http://jaikart.com/blog/2013/01/weekly-update-jan1/"]The post on my blog[/URL]

[Cj_marsh]

got some great anatomy stuff in here man keep pushing!!! Makes me want to keep pushing even further! HAROOOO!!! (spartan call :P)

[Jaik]

Haha thanks Cj :D:D

--
This weeks Focus Areas:

Anatomy - Legs & Pelvis
Skin Tones
Working in Colour

Warm ups

As per usual I did figure studies, some gestural and some two tone studies which were fun to do, I'll never underestimate reflected light and its ability to show form ever again.

2 Tone figure studies

I worked on leg anatomy again, just getting a refresher, but didn't go too indepth, I think I'll do more this coming week as I don't feel I did enough.

Leg studies

On top of my usual figure studies, gestures etc, I wanted to learn how to bring more variation into my skin tones as last week I received a crit that my skin tones were too monotonous, which I agree with. I tried to resolve this by studying a figure painter (Serge Marshennikov) as I noted somewhere that studying a painting is better than studying a photograph for certain things.

Serge Master Study

I spent longer on the master study than I would have liked, all day, but I did learn a heap. I decided to use the eye dropper tool for my colours, so not much skill was involved but I was worried I would miss out on some of the subtleties otherwise. There are just so many colours in skin o.o I also did some figures from a photo afterwards, couple of hours each, not sure how long exactly.

Figure One


Figure Two

I tried working from a photoplate for the first time, starting with a photo and adding and taking away bits, was good fun and didnt turn out as badly as I thought it would. Another win for me.

From photoplate

I did some enviro speed paints which i started directly in colour, which is not unusual for me, what is unusual is that by the end of the hour or so I spent working on them they didn't look like unicorn vomit, which was promising.

The Hive

Savanna

Bit of a warm up, working on it for a small amount before getting into it every day.

I didn't put out as much work this week as I wanted to on account of a 21st weekend in the city for my best friend which I couldn't bail on (you know you don't get out enough when you are at a strip club it isn't really as interesting as you were hoping because all you see is anatomy that you've studied so intimately before) and on other days the heat in Australia was too hot to work in, especially when the computer emits more heat than the air con has cold air, so my shoebox room became unbearable really early in the morning and made for crappy nights sleep. On some days my room averaged well over 40*c.


P.s. Pictures really are too big... but they work better on my blog.. decision decisions. Is anyone annoyed by the large picture size?

[Amit Dutta]

I don't know if you noticed, but the study of the master paint and the photo are so telling. The master paint has colour variation within tones and feels more real than the photo study which is just flat. (not your rendering, but in vibrancy) I haven't done many master studies myself but this really shows how worthwhile it is! Keep going. Lol about using a strip club for anatomy study...hmmm doesn't sound so bad if they didn't move all the damn time. Keep up the good work

[Heavenwill]

I spent longer on the master study than I would have liked, all day, but I did learn a heap. I decided to use the eye dropper tool for my colours, so not much skill was involved but I was worried I would miss out on some of the subtleties otherwise. There are just so many colours in skin o.o I also did some figures from a photo afterwards, couple of hours each, not sure how long exactly.

Don't worry about not getting all those subtle tints but you should practice without the eye dropper tool, you'll discover so many colors in there if you just slow down and relax. It is always eye opening for me

[Jaik]

Monkybread: Yeah completely agree about that master study comment, its crazy how much photos leave out, and the effects that painting can achieve with seemingly out of place colours.

Heavenswill: I'm giving your advice a shot this week, it's harder and slower (obviously) and I am still learning a lot.

--

Focuses this week:

• Skin Colour
  
• Portraits
  

This week I didn't just focus on art. Some of it was focusing on other aspects of the art business, networking, marketing etc. Figure if I can get a very vague understanding of these things, then when it comes time to actually put these aspects in to practice it wont be so difficult as starting from scratch. I also did some research on to how people have organised some scheduling, I found out the importance of breaks, a fair few successful people spend roughly 90 minutes on focused work, then 15-20 minute break, so I tried this out, its not that its hard to concentrate for 90 minutes, I can do that easily, its the self discipline to stop for 20 minutes then go back to it and focus for another 90 minutes.

I found out that the human brain struggles to focus on more than 7 things at a time, whether that is numbers or names, etc. So I decided to try having only a couple of goals for the day, keep them simple and easy to achieve and come up with these things the night before. When I have some more time I think that I'll look into also adding weekly goals, monthly and so on.

I have been writing down more stuff, sort of like every time I have a thought that seems semi-relevant or important I write it down, probably wont reread anything but its good to get things down, keeps my head a little emptier and I find it easier to focus. People should try it, especially if they are feeling confused or overwhelmed.

Mind vomit after work, about 1hr

I'm also 60 heads through my 100 head challenge, I find a portrait and I have 3 minutes to draw it, and I have to do 100 of them.. Fun fun. They all look terrible, I'll upload them once I am done. I also saw a really good video by Garret AJ (who has some really good articles on his blog) of thumb-nailing heads in value, and got me thinking that after my 100 3minute heads, I'll do 100 of these heads, but that will take me a lot longer lol.. Like 6 months longer if I only do 4 a day, I'll see how it goes. Here are the first 4 anyway, each at 20-30 minutes worth.

Portraits 20min each

So I have also been doing gestures as warm ups, looking at Michael Hamptons work (I am saving up for his book) who is an amazing gesture artist really understand motion and anatomy, I have been trying to imitate his sort of style, its not really working but I am getting closer to it over time. See what happens. A good effect I have seen so far is that my 1min gestures are looking like my 2min gestures a couple of weeks ago, I think..

Gestures 1


Gestures 2


Gestures 3

I tried another imaginative portrait. I'm uploading the linework so you can see how it SHOULD look.. and then how colour vomited all over it and made it look like I'm on shrooms.

Linework


Coloured version, only really an hour of work, I guess if I dont push I won't get there.

Skin colour studies, the usual. Didnt use the colour picker on this one, so its not as good, but I also started a master study with no colour picker but its no where near done so I'll upload it next week.

Skin Colour Study

Didn't do as much as I wanted, but I think everyone who is going down a long hard path is going to say that.

[Jaik]

Focuses this week

• Character
  
• Emotions
  
• Animation
  

Not a lot going on the last week art wise, I've had computer troubles, or rather my family has, which means that it's all my fault and completely my responsibility to fix.. Un-installing and reinstalling motherboards, processors, graphics cards and power supplies gets tedious after the 5th or 6th time you do it.

Other than that the usual problems with friends turning 21, but I am happy to say that I have no more friends that would insist on me being at parties, at least not for a few months.

However there has been good news, I guess. Through a friend I landed a meeting with a small animation study about 30min from where I live, down the road from where I currently work. If the meeting goes well I could get an internship and from that the possibility of a paying job as a number of their projects are (hopefully) going to take off within the year and they will be looking for animators, concept artists, etc etc.

So this week I have been working on an animation internship-style portfolio, which is kind of different from my usual stuff. The meeting is on the 14th of Feb, so I have little under two weeks to pump something out, so a little rushed lol.

So this week I did my usual warm ups, the beginnings of a character design and some emotion sheets, which I have never done before. These will be coloured. I hope. And I'll add an ortho.. Maybe.. sigh.

Gestures 2min. A bit messy but trying to be more dynamic



Silhouettes. Terribad.



Character: Misery



Misery Emotions.

I also did some Avatar, last Air Bender studies, just gesturing in some of the poses in there as they are really well done and fluid. Don't know whether it helps.. Will be doing a story board this week, as well as colouring the above images.

[Craig Paton]

Really like the dedication evident in your sketchbook. Don't worry about social commitments, creating a social life once you're a master artist, will, I'm sure, be easy. :)

Keep up the anatomy stuff, great studies.

[Jaik]

Haha thanks Craig, hope so because I have the feeling my friendships will fall in to disrepair pretty soon :P

--

Things focused on this week:

Failing horribly
Character
Mood
So, this week started off great! God the colour put on to my character in one day, got a new monitor, which is AMAZING, will upload pics soon :D Christmas present that took a while getting to me >.> Then the week took a turn. My meeting is on this Thursday so I was trying to get a few things together and I wanted to do a 'mood' image for it, like one image, but using different colours and values change the mood. So I went with a cottage, I was going to do welcoming cottage (kinda like what I did), then a evil cottage, make it look like a witches cottage etc. Well.. That failed.. I struggled with getting the values right for the first one 3 days.. so that cottage is three days worth of work.. Unbelievable. I need to do more enviro studies this week. Maybe that will help? I dont know. All in all, the week ended badly, so I guess it kind of averages out.

Warmups for the week, 1 min gestures and a drawling.



45min speedie


1hr Speedie



Material Study. Yay bronze.


Applying the study. Yay caramel mudball. Fail.


Definitely a boot. Not a shoe.



Misery. Colour.


Misery loves company, so I gave her a friend, who looks just like her, except looking the other way.


And my damned cottage in the forest.. Damn you values.. dam you to the deepest realm of hell.

[Jaik]

Focuses this week:

Relaxing


Hello all, been a while, I haven't done much work over the last 2 weeks, in fact I took this last week off completely (it took me 3 days to consciously stop myself drawing every chance I got) so there isn't much art in this update.

I did however, get the internship I mentioned in previous posts, so I have been working at that after my day job a few days a week (its only 5min away from my work which makes things so much easier). See how it all plays out.

This week I plan on getting back in to rigorous study though, since I have no need to continue working on my portfolio for the foreseeable future. I will probably start with anatomy as that has, as always been a common crit.

While on the topic of rigorous study, I made note while I was taking some time to recharge of something someone said and that is that people talk a lot about how many hours you need to put in to become good at something, it is a lot... A LOT. But these hours have to be deliberate hours, they are meant to be uncomfortable, that is how you know you are learning. If, after a study session, your brain doesn't feel like pudding chances are you are doing it wrong and sticking too far in to your comfort zone. I feel as though I have been doing that far too much lately and if I try and find that area where my stomach feels like lead and every move I make has equal chances of success and failure. That is where, I believe, the biggest gains in improvement to be found. Doodling mindlessly on a piece of paper isn't going to improve your art. Let's see how it goes. See you in a week.

- Jaik

Serge Master study, undetermined mount of hours, I just finished it off to this level because it was sitting in my WIP folder for too long.



Decided to do a valentines day drawing for facebook. As you can guess, I prefer to spend it alone lol.



Finishing touches on this.. Not a lot changed.

[Jaik]

Focuses this week:

Anatomy


I definitely struggled to get back in to everything, it is amazing how much your skills degrade over a period even as short as a week. Again I struggled with proportions but during my struggles something a life drawing instructor told me, which was a quote from a famous French figure drawer (who I have gone ahead and forgotten the name of) is that when asked how does he get his proportions right replied with "I am never certain of my proportions". It only occurred to me this week that all this practice just helps to see when the proportions are wrong, not so that you instantly get proportions right. I'm also updating kind of late, and there isn't much, mostly because I've been busy and spent most of my time working on one piece that I would rather finish before posting. I'm trying to increase my patience with pieces of art as I never put more than about 3hrs in to a piece.

As an interesting (for me atleast) note, I signed my first NDA this past week, proud moment for me... I know it's stupid, but it's the little things.

Warmups lol

I decided to scan a bunch of pages from my sketchbook, as I couldnt be bothered finding all my traditional stuff, so most of this stuff is rather old.



And this is my workspace :3 I needed to take a picture for a diff reason and I thought I'de include it because I enjoy seeing other peoples workspaces :D


[Joe777k7]

Yes your over here on this site as well!!!!!! I finally joined myself!!!!! As i said in your other sketchbook! Loving the three monitor setup and the progress man!!! Keep going!!! :)

[Jaik]

Haha thanks Joe xP Welcome to the forum!

--

Focuses this week:

Environments



I have decided to put up the WIP of the environment I was working on for the last two weeks, it's taking longer than I thought it would but I am rather happy with it as it stands, still needs another few hours of polish. I would love to get your opinions on it. It may look like there is not a lot this week, but there's some traditional stuff I just don't have the time to scan (getting back in to the Scott Robertson style vehicles for a bit).

I once again spent a while trying to work out how to continue improving. I have come to a couple of conclusions, first and foremost that I spend way too much time thinking about these sorts of things, and that I need to have tangible goals. 'Being good at art (or mechs, or characters, environments etc.)', or 'Becoming a Concept artist' are not tangible goals. So I have searched for artists, who's style I like on certain subject matters and printed them out and hung them up. Now when I wonder whether I should do something, all I have to ask is what do I do to get closer to that. A by product of this is that I think I will invest in the Gnomon subscription, since I only have one DVD of theirs I feel as though it is a worthwhile expenditure.

Sketcheroo



Enviro thats taking ages.



Character WIP



Late night mind vomit, working on form.



Enviro Quickies, about 15min each

[anzhou]

heya :)

great sketchbook, im very inspired by your diligence!

i noticed you don't address some points on the perspective of volumes in space, im sure itll im prove your work if you do :)

i did a paintover on your monk character about this. keep the momentum!

[Jaik]

Anzhou: Thanks for the paint over! You're right, i really need to keep a cap on my perspective stuff!

--

This weeks focus:

Life drawing
Visual Library building
Value


Bit late because of internet issues..

Hello all, work as usual this week. Put a gaping hole right through the heart of my bank account by purchasing a years subscription to Gnomon. Which I now know was 312 vids all ranging between 2-4 hours long, and I intend to get through a large portion of these, and learn 3D, whether that be zbrush or maya or what ever I am unsure, but definitely going to give it a shot for this next year. I started watching the Scott Roberston Matte painting DVD's and I have to say, I cannot recommend these enough, they are great for value and form recognition.

Went to a Life drawing session this week too, after being out of it for almost 6 months it was really fun to get back in to it. I will try and attend these weekly from now on.

I am also now doing a 'Visual Library Building' topic each week, choosing a topic and doing a few studies and sketches. It is important to build as wide a range of subject matter in your own visual library as possible, it allows for quick sketching since you don't have to look up reference for all but the most advanced and polished drawings, and I also find it helpful when trying to come up with things from imagination, since piecing together two or more concepts can make way for really quick iterations of the same idea, and variety is the spice of life.

Legs from photo ref


Visual Library Building - Asian tower things


Value Boxes


More VL building, had another page but it didnt come out well on the scan.


Life drawing, getting back in to it


[anzhou]

You're going to learn so much from that subscription man. Make it count!

Great plan for the studies, ahh Vvisual library i have been neglecting, i need to do some :)

thanks for the inspiration!

Keep it coming!