Manoela's Sketchbook (and journal?)

[ManoelaCosta]

Hello! I’m Manoela and I’m a Brazilian illustrator currently fighting for my own place in this huge wonderful marketplace. I used to have a topic with my doodles and studies on the old OA forum, so I figured it would be nice to come back. I’ve been working with illustration as a fulltime freelancer for 2 years now, which is both very inspiring and overwhelming, not to mention stressing, due to pressure that comes from clients and from myself. I’m quite a perfectionist, and when I’m let with myself to evaluate my progress, my critics get really harsh, which frequently causes me to get very upset. I’ve realized how this was affecting me during those last months I’ve been away from the community, so it’s time to give and receive feedback. Hoping to help and inspire more fellow artists!
Would be so kind to share with me how do YOU deal with selfdoubt and negative criticism from yourself? It’s a struggle I have for my entire life, not only on my art, but for myself, and I’d love to understand how you feel about it so that I can better understand what’ s going on inside this little head of mine! LOL Thank you so much!
 
Some of my current studies. (I used to do them daily and it was very inspiring, I must get back to this habit!)


I love doing quick sketches of the human body, specially dancers and athletes!

I also like to doodle my little daily moments


Composition studies

Self portrait
Some of my studies for Schoolism class: Principles of realism, with Jonathan Hardesty



My website: manoelacosta.com

[Tristan Berndt]

I can empathise with how you feel about self evaluation. I used to get very frustrated and would often have this sense of confusion or hopelessness about how I'd improve.

I think one reason a lot of people get frustrated or depressed about evaluating their own work is that they do not have an appropriate vocabulary to do so. When it is difficult to identify and describe aspects of a drawing or painting, you often end up looking at it and all that comes to mind is "bad" or some variation of it. This mountain of skill you're climbing becomes shrouded in a fog of vague descriptions and it becomes difficult to know where to climb or the path to move upwards, sometimes all you can do is to just hang on for dear life.

I think what you might want to do is to try and develop a form of clarity in your "artistic vocabulary" so you can properly describe your work and then through that, identify very specific aspects of it that could have been improved and how to do so. If you need any help with this, let me know ^^

[Anton_Fort]

I think many artists have this problem. It's very hard to struggle every day and sometimes you don't even see your progress. Especially when no one reply to your works. And there is more of that - when you are a perfectionist. I know that feeling, you just can't stop improving a painting. This is not a bad thing when you know what you're doing but when you are a beginner or you have so much to learn - that's when this begins to be a problem. I just trying to shut my internal critic up and draw stuff.

Cool stuff though. Keep it coming)

[Artloader]

Welcome aboard Crimson Daggers Manoela!

Those are some great looking studies there :).

Looking forward to more from you.

[ManoelaCosta]

Hello Tristan! I think your vision of the problem of self doubt is amazing and so is the metaphor you used! It is truly easier for us as human begins to deal with what we know, and therefore, what we can name. Thinking about that now, the moments I feel more frustrated are the ones where I tell myself: ALL of that is terrible! NONE of this is good enough! Generalisation is a dangeerous step to go on these moments, and it surely can feel like a fog preventing us from seeing what's really going on. Next time I feel like that, I'll try my best to name my problems and dificulties into simple and specific therms.

Right now, while I'm feeling more relaxed and confident, I can tell what I guess I'm doing right is: composition, specialy with landscapes, storytelling and colors. These are things I love to study and that I'm been hired for many times, so I can only assume the study IS in fact showing. Hurray! What I'm generaly working on when I start to feel those self destructive doubts ( I'll try to remember as best as I can): characters, mainly when they are big, bulky and hav huge armors (I love to paint historical armors, but the Blizzard-like style kicks me to the ground everytime) and expressive faces and gestures.
I love to dance and capture dancing movements with drawings, so basically every single characters of mine looks like it's dancing, which is nice when I'm painting magical girls and swirling magic, but when it comes to portray a huge fullplated warrior, I kinda freeze! I've taken gesture drawing classes for years and I did love it, but I guess I like drawing naked people in languid poses more than I can handle warriors with huge hammers.

Phew! That was a lot of talking, sorry for that! Anton, thank you for your comment, yeah it can be quite hard to know the time to stop and call a painting donne. I'm trying to get back to community so that I can have some feedback and us this inner criticism to my advantage (this lil monster gets crazy when it's left alone!)
Thank you so much for your feedback and incredible discussion!

PS.: How do I tag ppl here? LOL

[ManoelaCosta]

Hi guys. So, I found myself I a situation where it would be great to have some differente kind of landscaps and backgrounds on my portfolio: animation backgrounds! It’s an an opportunity that just came by, and I’d love to give it a try and also experiment on some new stylizations! My main references for this first attempt are from Gravity Falls and Star vs the Forces of Evil, sinec it’s a Disney related world. I decided to represent some of the locations where my webcomic Shadowplay is centered, tugh I had to make everything more friendly and less creepy (the webcomic is a thriller about a series of murders in a small town). I just made those sketches and I’m still trying to figure out how funky and crazy I should go with the lines and the perspective, but it just feels easier to me to start from a more sober point of view. Any critics and recommendations would be appreciated!

[ManoelaCosta]

Hi there, guys. So, the briefing for those backgrounds had a sligh change, so now I’m supposed to work just the lineart, which kind of gives me more time to focus on that! (I do love color, so I’m a little sad too). So here is how the house on the hill background looks like currently:



And a new study from the Schoolism lessons. This one is the same observation drawing as the previous, but you’re supposed to switch the hue. I’ve chosen to go on the direction of blue, so every blue gets deeper and even purple-ish, yellow get green and so forth. It gets really tricky at some point.

[ManoelaCosta]

Hi guys. So, here's the result of the line backgrounds so far:

I'm going to need to portray some mor of them during this week, I'd love to have some suggestions on what to improve.

Here's a little bit of progress on my observation study (color manipulation). This is incredibly hard. D: My brain hurts everytime I work on this piece.


And here are some studies on LINES OF ACTION! This is a new tpic to me. A line of action, as far as I got it, is a single line that can define the shape and dirction of a subjects movement. It does not have to follow the subject's spine or any other anatmical reference, as long as the feeling of the movment reads trough the line. it's very challenging! My brain automatically wants to draw arms and legs and make a marking for the head, but this is not the goal of the exercise, so it takes some self discipline not to slip away from it. Here are my studies so far:

[Sublimus]

wow! really nice!!

I love this little composition studies you did! (I think I'm going to steal the idea, and do my own!)

Can't wait to see more!

[ManoelaCosta]

wow! really nice!!

I love this little composition studies you did! (I think I'm going to steal the idea, and do my own!)

Can't wait to see more!

Hi Sublimus! Thank you and please do steal those ideas for your own studies, yes! And show me! Some of those exercises I got her on this very same forum, so it's the cycle of life! LOL

I'm dedicating myself to gesture drawing and dynamic poses rcently. Here are some 30 second studies of shape. After the frist session, I got the same poses (from videos) and created the contours within another 30 seconds. I did help me a lot to have those first shapes in place.




These are some silhouette studies, and the goal here was to clearly rpresent the poses and movements, the intntion of each gesture within this little story.



And finally, some practice with those lovely characters! I do love RPGs, and I'm a sucker for the WoD Werewolf (The Apocalypse) so I just grabbed two of the female characters from our last session and decide to represent their personalities and the sister-like relationship they have between each other. Anyone else gets super excited to portray their RPG characters? I think this is one of my stronggest inspiriations, and by that I mean: I can't HELP MYSELF, I just like it so much there is a strong urge for me to create stuff around it. It just feels good and relaxing.

[Anton_Fort]

Wow nice flow on that silhouettes! Wanna see some more)

[ManoelaCosta]

Wow nice flow on that silhouettes! Wanna see some more)

Thank you Fort! i'll be posting more stuff related to that very soon! Right now I have a new thing going on and I'd LOVE to have your opinion about it. (:

So, here's the thing. I’m starting this new personal project to upgrade my portfolio. My last project on that matter was a book about exotic dragons, their habits and anatomy, all described trought the eyes of an explorer of the new world. You can check the previous result here:
So, since I’ll be finishing an extensive game project for a client soon, I want to upgrade my portfolio and have new stuff to update and keep myself busy, as well as my followers entertained, and of course get the attention of some potential clients!
With the releasing of the new MTG Kaladesh, which I’ve been expecting for a very long time while I watched every move of my favorite artists (I don’t even play the game! LOL) I realized this format inspires my greatly: there a beautiful narrative, generally composed with a complex background and characters that interact with it, vibrant colors (dependind a little bit from which color deck we’re talking about) and such a immersive magical feeling. I love it. I want to be able to do that.
 
In adition to this, me and my husband have created a couple of D&D characters to portray us, like an alter ego if you please, and as time went by, we started creating funny and complex stories behind this idea (because we are nerdy kids with legal access to wine, so yeah). We ended up with a nice background for those characters, the world they live, the creatures that inhabit the nearby lands and a couple of enemies.
So, this is my briefing:
To create TEN illustrations that can express the best quality I am able to produce right now with my craft.
Those ten illustrations will have the proportion of 1:0,7 and should be readable from a miniature scale and beautiful from a closer view.
The visual references for those ten illustrations will be the art of MTG, especially those of the green decks.They will portray creatures, sorcery, artifact, and land.
 
These are the illustration ides I have so far, and many names and other stuff can change at this initial stage:

Manoela Costa – Creature – Half-elf druid
A female figure with a crown of tiny pink flowers sits crosslegged on the ground filled with mushrooms and moss, the walls around looks like treebark and there are paintgs of nature motifs.

Gabriel Barbejat – Creature – Human wizard
A male figure is sat among many old books in a dark place, like a study room occasionally invaded by some plants. Many candles light the place, many others have already burnt out their wax. The man has an “eureka” expression as he points to one of the book pages.

Miranda, the familiar – Creature – cat
A brown stripped cat plays rolling in the ground with a small leaf. Patched warm sunlight hits her fur.

Miranda , the animal companion – Creature – Tiger
A huge tiger-like creature lingers in a lazy way hanging from a tree branch dominated by moss. Moonlight shines from across the leafs.

Treehouse – Artifact
A fantastic and complex house structure grows around and inside an enormous tree, with a basket elevator, some chimney-like structures and other unexpected sights.

Solstice celebration – Instant
Many people gather joyfully and clap at a couple that participate on a matrimonial ceremony at the beach. It is midday and the waves touch their barefeet.

Laboratory accident  -Instant
The wizard and the druid look alarmed as they stare at many empty dropped bottles of magic potions and a cauldron that lays at the floor. Colorfull goo is spilled from it, and small prints of catpwas come from it. .Huge cat-like eyes glow in the dark right behind them.

[ManoelaCosta]

Updating about the card game project: Yup, I'm quite excited about it! I don’t have a NAME for it yet, but my husband suggested something like “Alter Ego” LOL Guess it will do as a codename for now. I’ve been doing some reasearch on the topic and creating some visual panels, it has been load of fun. In order to get really organized and NOT let the ideia die, I created some organization tables as well. It’s in portuguese and it’s kind of messy, but just to illustrate the point:



About my gesture drawings, I’m gettint really hard on those studies. I’m now at a specific point of Alex Woo’s self guided class where we are talking about exageration and creating your own little story around a quick pose. That means you can and should alter the pose and the surroundings in order to create a small narrative moment for each pose in a really restrict time. I mean, this is really hard and intense: you should analize a pose, reproduce it in a anatomically plausible way, have it changed to reinforce the expression of the gesture and tell a story in, like, one minute. Phew!! It just gets crazy hard! Here are some of my attempts:



The previous lesson was about using and expressing SPACE, as in a real ground area and distance for the model to stand on. Here are some of my studies on that matter, one minute each:

[ManoelaCosta]

Hi guys! Updating some stuff here! So, i've worked a little harder on cat anatomy for the course Gesture Drawing with Alex Woo.



Here are some other studies and considerations on Alex Woo’s amazing gesture drawing class. (I’m taking the self taught courses on Schoolism, it has been great!)
So this lesson was called extrapolation and it was basically about how to imbue a character with a pose, a gesture and a sense of motion even though the reference models had a different shape and anatomy.In this case, i have translated the poes of human models into a cat, specifically my lovely cat Miranda. <3 She’s employee of the month on my little studio.
Here are the poses provided by the class, 2 minutes each (this model is adorable and always creates a sense of story with her posing):




And here are my interpretations of those poses as I extracted what I considered to be the more important and inherent aspects of each moment, transported to the habits and movements of a cat ( 2 minutes):

 
And finally here are some 4 minute studies on that same idea, but with photographs that I’ve chosen for this goal.I can’t express how much I’ve learned with this exercise, I’ve never heard of such simple and nice idea in order to study gesture drawing. I had fun, I learned, and I feel that my drawing skills are improving, so yes, do try this one out guys, it’s loads of fun!

[ManoelaCosta]

Hello guys! So, I have some updates for the project. I hope you don’t mind me dumping a lot of text here, I asure you I’ll start posting more art about it soon enough! So, here it goes:

BRIEFING:(updated!)
To create TEN illustrations that can express the best quality I am able to produce right now with my craft.
Those ten illustrations will have the proportion of 1:0,7 and should be readable from a miniature scale and beautiful from a closer view. (CURRENT SIZE 25 x 17,5 CM)
The visual references for those ten illustrations will be the art of MTG, especially those of the green decks.They will portray creatures, sorcery, artifact, and land.
The recurrent theme of this illustrations is: GREEN DECK, RAINFOREST, AMAZONIAN FOREST.
Amazonian forest is a specific kind of rainforest in Brazil. Huge sequoia trees, moist environment, bromeliad and insane biodiversity. It is mystical by itself.
KEYWORDS: S curve, river curve, vibrant, cycle, whimsical.
KEYSHAPES: (patterns in clothing, ritualist paintings, animal stripes and so will follow those guidelines)


NAMING INITIAL IDEIAS: Hylaea, Nayades, Amazonia

CARDS(updated!)
Manoela Costa – Creature – Half-elf druid
A female figure with a crown of tiny pink flowers sits crosslegged on top of a giant Vitoria regia leaf on the water, there are paintings of nature motifs on the leaf and many mushroons, stones, runes and other druidic stuff ready for some sort of ritual.
Gabriel Barbejat – Creature – Human wizard
A male figure is sat among many old books in a dark place, like a study room occasionally invaded by some crazy tropical plants. Many candles light the place, many others have already burnt out their wax, and some of the light comes from glowing mushrooms on the ceiling. The man has an “eureka” expression as he points to one of the book pages.
Miranda, the familiar – Creature – cat
A brown stripped cat plays rolling in the ground with a small leaf. Patched warm sunlight hits her fur and green/brown moths fly around.
Miranda , the animal companion – Creature – Tiger
A huge tiger-like creature lingers in a lazy way hanging from a tree branch dominated by moss. Moonlight shines from across the leafs.
Treehouse – Artifact
A fantastic and complex house structure grows around and inside an enormous sequoia tree, with a basket elevator, some chimney-like structures and other unexpected sights. Many mushroons, bromeliad and other tropical plants invade the structure, the air is moist and sun shines through the canopies.
Solstice celebration – Sorcery
Many people gather joyfully and clap at a couple that participate on a matrimonial ceremony at the beach. It is midday and the waves touch their barefeet.
Laboratory accident -Instant
The wizard and the druid look alarmed as they stare at many empty dropped bottles of magic potions and a cauldron that lays at the floor. Colorfull goo is spilled from it, and small prints of catpwas come from it. .Huge cat-like eyes glow in the dark right behind them.
The power of decay – sorcery
An animal carcass/skeleton lays on the ground mostly covered by brown leaves and moss, many insects, worms and other creates crawl on top of it and small sprouts and tiny blossoms come out of the dead body, renewing the cycle of life.
Caetê Forest – Basic land
A deep forest with huge tall trees (up to 60 meters) and many tropical smaller plants all around. The air is moist and the sun can barely hit the forest floor.


Visual panel for MTG art related to the theme:


Visual panel from Amazonian forest:



Color scheme created from those references above:


Visual panel for Gabriel, the wizard:


Visual panel for Manoela the druid:

And finally a little bit of drawing! LOL Just a few doodles on that female character before I start with thumbnails and so:

[Piotr Jasielski]

Very interesting studies and great exploration of art and reference. That lines of action thing for figures is pretty interesting. I think Vlad would be proud.

Keep this up :)