Alex Danila's Sketchbook

[AngeliquevdMee]

Youre doing great with the anatomy so far :) keep it up! I feel for your digital pieces you can enhance the shadows a bit more, but i think someone else said it already. Good work!

[alexdanila]

Thanks for the feedback angelique. Started slowly to practice more values. 
Been away for a while. I'll try to come by at least once a week and post. Here's some recent stuff: 

[RickRichards]

Nice improvement Alex!

[alexdanila]

Here's some update. Studied some leg anatomy. Not enough yet. Did some more poses, need to make this a regular.






Made a creature thing for fun. 



Also tried to push myself to render a piece more and try to solve all it's issues ( the guy with beard). I spent 6-7 hours on it.






 Also did a 2h study on muscles and value.



I want to push myself to study smarter and work on a piece until i'm completely satisfied.

[walent]

Man, you're doing the same mistakes I did. You spent a huuuge amount of time on that portrait and instead of focusing on lay-in, proportions, shapes, construction, you focused on render, which is exactly zero if you miss everything else.

Yesterday I said I'm gonna sit down, take an hour or so and do a nice self portrait, have fun. So I skipped all that shape design, lay-in stuff, and quickly jumped to rendering after a very quick line sketch. From one hour I got to 3 hours, because I was constantly pushing paint around.
In the end I realized how lifeless it is, how much I had missed by not doing the simplifications, boxifying, corners, everything that helps add structure.


So if you want my advice, spend 3 hours on the lay-in, check proportions, rhythms, see how features flow one into another, find corners, even the subtle turns, and at the end, even if you have a line sketch and no paint whatsoever, you'll feel a ton more satisfied because it's an amazing, energetic line sketch.

Check out Nicolas Uribe, he's doing a lot of portrait sketches for his KS campaign and yesterday I was looking through his stuff and noticed how instead of using a straight vertical axis on a front view face, he's using an S curve, and the nose has a curve and flows into the mouth, then the chin follows the S and turns the other way. And that's super expressive, I can't believe I missed that so far, I was always focusing on doing a symmetrical face - https://www.facebook.com/nicolasuribeart...e_internal

And now about the Arnold study, you're pushing too much, try to focus on either anatomy or values, because they're both very hard. And again, lay-in, man, lay-in. You've lost a lot of angles in his pose, assuming I'm looking at the correct reference.
Notice the shapes at the scapular region, how they connect and flow, then try figuring out what's up with the muscles, origins and insertions. Deltoids are all over the place because of the multi pennate fibers and that's why they're very hard to understand, so you have to simplify the shit out of them. This reference doesn't help you, so you have to use your knowledge.


Here, had some fun with this one. This is what I would love to see in a study
I would spend even more time adjusting asymmetries, proportions, curves vs straights and stuff but I really have to work on something else now. I do hope my point is clear enough.

[alexdanila]

Man, you're doing the same mistakes I did. You spent a huuuge amount of time on that portrait and instead of focusing on lay-in, proportions, shapes, construction, you focused on render, which is exactly zero if you miss everything else.

Yesterday I said I'm gonna sit down, take an hour or so and do a nice self portrait, have fun. So I skipped all that shape design, lay-in stuff, and quickly jumped to rendering after a very quick line sketch. From one hour I got to 3 hours, because I was constantly pushing paint around.
In the end I realized how lifeless it is, how much I had missed by not doing the simplifications, boxifying, corners, everything that helps add structure.


So if you want my advice, spend 3 hours on the lay-in, check proportions, rhythms, see how features flow one into another, find corners, even the subtle turns, and at the end, even if you have a line sketch and no paint whatsoever, you'll feel a ton more satisfied because it's an amazing, energetic line sketch.

Check out Nicolas Uribe, he's doing a lot of portrait sketches for his KS campaign and yesterday I was looking through his stuff and noticed how instead of using a straight vertical axis on a front view face, he's using an S curve, and the nose has a curve and flows into the mouth, then the chin follows the S and turns the other way. And that's super expressive, I can't believe I missed that so far, I was always focusing on doing a symmetrical face - https://www.facebook.com/nicolasuribeart...e_internal

And now about the Arnold study, you're pushing too much, try to focus on either anatomy or values, because they're both very hard. And again, lay-in, man, lay-in. You've lost a lot of angles in his pose, assuming I'm looking at the correct reference.
Notice the shapes at the scapular region, how they connect and flow, then try figuring out what's up with the muscles, origins and insertions. Deltoids are all over the place because of the multi pennate fibers and that's why they're very hard to understand, so you have to simplify the shit out of them. This reference doesn't help you, so you have to use your knowledge.


Here, had some fun with this one. This is what I would love to see in a study
I would spend even more time adjusting asymmetries, proportions, curves vs straights and stuff but I really have to work on something else now. I do hope my point is clear enough.

Thanks walent. you always give the best feedback. for the portrait i tried  starting from imagination and correcting it with reference on the go. I spend a good 6 hours on it, and yeah, i was proud in the beginning, but all i can think about now is that i messed up the proportions and could have done a better job. 

For Arnold, i used a different refference but this one is very close, starndard arnorld pose i guess, and did a lay-in for the muscles, but i didn't fiddle with it enough. i passed to quickly on to rendering, and was struggling with the values near the end. 

Right now i'm kind of a spinning wheel. i set out to study anatomy in more detail, but i keep finding different resouces and information is hitting me from all directions. I started studying after Proko, after i went a little into M. Hampton and now i bought a scott eaton anatomy course and trying to finish it.

We will see.

[walent]

I think you should focus on each at a time, like Hampton -> Proko -> Eaton
Hampton breaks down complicated muscles into simple geometric forms so you can understand and draw them. I'd recommend focusing on that first. Then Proko, since he's talking a bit more about muscles and bones. Eaton is good for the final stage, when you wanna learn every detail, every muscle, but you don't need to know that much at first.
You need a lot more things like gesture, rhythm, proportions, shapes, symmetries and asymmetries, linework, curves vs straights and so on. All these build the lay-in, which you use as a base for your muscle details. It helps you stay within some boundaries when rendering, so you won't go nuts and push your figure into a blob like it happened to me so many times.

Yeah, I suggest posting everything you do because it helps getting better feedback. Also, it helps you identify the areas where you screwed up because you can constantly see the progress.
You have to find something that's fun for you in the lay-in stage. For me, it's the shape design, I just love finding those. Keeps me from getting bored and from jumping too fast into rendering.

[alexdanila]

Started revising Michael Hampton and trying to do gesture studies with less information/lines.












Also, started a charcoal live portrait

[alexdanila]

more gesture practice

[Artloader]

Nice anatomy studies here Alex :).

Sounds like you've already got a lot of resources and also some great feedback from Walent as well :).

I am studying from Hampton and Proko as well. I've found that the two work well together - but I have to go really slowly otherwise I start to feel a bit overwhelmed.

I like the way Hampton constructs the skeleton but Proko is really useful for understanding muscles and how they affect the surface anatomy.

Keep it going - and good luck :).

[alexdanila]

Thanks Artloader

[alexdanila]

Vampire sketch. 1-2 h i think

[alexdanila]

Here's some stuff i've done lately. still having problem with proportions. Should spend more on the lay-in stage.

[alexdanila]

Some sketches done around the holidays. Some from life, some imagination and some digital.

[Zorrentos]

Hey, thank you so much for visiting my sketchbook! :)

I see that you seem to be hard at work with your gesture drawing (as well as a lot of other stuff). May I suggest this tutorial: http://www.animatorisland.com/perfect-po...o-physics/

It really helped me a lot to understand gestures and weight in the figure more.

Keep up the good work!

[alexdanila]

Thanks Zorrentos, the tutorials seems very helpful. I will give it a good look.

[alexdanila]

Last weeks sketches. Started sketching people on the bus. 

[alexdanila]

16.01 - 23.01.2017 Doodles, Live sketches, Studies

Tap the spoilers to see more.

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[razvanc-r]

Where's the potato?! :P

Nice studies proko + hampton figure drawing = <3

[alexdanila]

No potato sorry. Did not get to studying plants yet :))