Ardi's sketchbook

[alexson]

Hey man, great work! Awesome to see all of these studies. Love all the anatomy drawings etc. that's how you improve your drawing and that shit will make everything you make better. Drawing is the most important skill by far. Not just the human figure, but it makes you understand form in 3D which applies to everything you draw/paint.
I'd suggest, if you aren't already doing it to do paint studies from life aswell, just grab random crap around the house and put it next to your monitor and paint it. I definitely feel that was the way I learned how color and light works. Doing stuff from life vs. from photos is way different, you think differently when you paint something from life because you can actively see how light interacts with the object.
I used to buy those cheap statues that are for small children to paint on, you know? That are just solid white. Place one of those under a light and you get a excellent practice of how light bounces and illuminates etc.
Anyway, keep up the good work dude! You are def. on the right track to becoming a great artist.

[Ardian Gashi]

@alexson Thank you very much! I did a couple studies from life, but I will do them now more frequent and thanks for the helpful tips.




here a study from my mic I did just now

[Ardian Gashi]

didn't know what exactly to post, so I just share this little piece

[Ardian Gashi]

Hey what's up!
Haven't been posting in a while. Just wanted to add what has changed recently. So I completly stopt using a graphite pentcil for my traditional drawings and switched to some wierd feeling thin edding, because it seems like I don't have a working ball point pent right now, but whatever. Anyways, what I immediatly noticed, was that my lines became really skratchy, but that seems to change slowly. I have to become more confident with my lines, even if I fuck up. I also hope that I get better by using ink instead of graphite, because I can't just erease the lines and have to be more thoughtful about every step, at least that's what I was thinking by switching to ink.

[Leonard]

Sinix :DD

you are right, drawing with an edding is definitly
more difficult.

only thing i'd say is watch your line weight.
think about ambient occlusion for example where the lips meet or the
nostrils, make some lines thicker or thinner depending on light or ambient occlusion,
also depending on what's in the foreground or backround, scott robertson made a good
tutorial on that :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0zl5NnEAyU

hope this is not too confusing.

[Ardian Gashi]

@Leonard

Thanks, I watched it, was quiet helpful :)


and here something new

[Ardian Gashi]

Here some new stuff I did

[Ardian Gashi]

Here are only some of the Loomis studies I did these past couple of days, nothing too exiting just grinding on some fundamentals.

[Ardian Gashi]

a bad study I just did

[Ardian Gashi]

Here some foreshortening practice I did, half of the page is from a Loomis book, the other half, I just went to quickposes, and tried to breake down some stuff and filled a couple of other pages.

A quick question for the apple studies, I played a little bit around with adding color to a grayscale. I never did that before, I always just went stright in with color, just chose a base colour and so on. I watched Dave Rapoza's Bog Witch tutuorial while painting and tried to use the same process (more or less). I painted the grayscale with a multiply layer, then soften some edges in a normal layer and added the colors with a soft light layer. In the end it came out rather muddy and washed-out. Well the grayscale wasn't that good to beginn with, in retrospect I didn't invest too much time on it, which I should have done so and Dave did some things in his tutorial that I probably just missed, even if I didn't missed them, it's still my first attempt, so I was in one way or another prepared to fail, but I digress. 
And finally my question, how do you all add color to a grayscale? Just curious. I'm going to look up some ways on my own, and it's mostly just practice at the end of the day. Of course it looks good when Dave does it, since he has years and years of experiance, so my expectations weren't that high. But since I'm in this forum, there is no harm in asking such things.

Thanks in advance, if someone chooses to answer.

[Ardian Gashi]

beep boop! It's been a while, here some stuff, couple of studies and some pages of sketching around.

[Fedodika]

Good good! more repetition! more grinding those heads! don't jump around everywhere, if you can't fall asleep and imagine those loomis heads dancing around in every angle you haven't done enough! What is drawing the random anatomy things teaching you? You need to learn and ingrain perspective at this level and the best way to do that is by drawing those basic shapes and forms until your eyes bleed! And just the simple lay in's, you can check my SB recently and see what a drastic effect it had on my head drawings after grinding just the simple head lay ins. Omit details, big shapes, draw from every angle.. DO IT!

Also check drawabox.com if you havent aready!

[Ardian Gashi]

Hey what's up people!

@Fedodika thanks for giving me tips, I did a lot of repitition and tried to keep in mind what you said and sorry for replaying so late.

I haven't posted in a long time, but here some stuff I've been doing since the last time I posted.
I've been doing a lot of fundamental things like anatomy studies and face studies. I tried Hogarth (image included) a little bit out, since I only looked at Loomis. I also tried drawing the human figure and afterwards drawing all the muscles in it and stuff like that.

The reason I didn't post so much at least in the past couple of weeks, was that I started to do a lot of studies from other artists. In my sketchbook, I would just fill pages with Dave Rapoza, Marko Djurdjevic, Iain McCaig, Kekai Kotaki, Karl Kopinski and so on, just artists I like or think they have an interesting style, I'm trying to find everyday a new artist that I could do studies of. On the thought of posting these pages I started to feel wierd, I don't know of you guys feel the same way, things like "yeah I could post this stuff, but these aren't technically my drawings". I know i did just studies, in the same way of doing master-studies, but it still didn't feel right.

Anyways! Finally here some stuff:

Hogarth




anatomy stuff:
first picture upper left -> Bumskee
fourth picture upper left -> Brad Rigney



more faces

[Fedodika]

awesome! dude post whatever the hell you want! Love the idea of studying ppl you like, fucking go for it, get the mileage in, makes all the difference!

[darktiste]

Here what i suggest Go less dark on those eye try to add in a bit more texture for the iris

Here 3 video suggestion think you will like the first and second is on how to draw eye and the other is how to construct the head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGNr4U-55tI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9E7HxR0R9s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT9HQBWdcCQ&t=437s

[Ardian Gashi]

Hey guys, here some new stuff, a couple of anatomy studies and a grey scale study I started today, I'm probably going to finish that one in a couple of days or just start a new study.
I'm also going to post more frewuently from now on, so expect new images soon :).




these are pages I did when I was bored in class.


On the third page of this image, there are some studies from Coro Kaufman's oil paintings.

[Fedodika]

can you see how in the reference the head is tilted to the side more? Try to draw a line on the edge of the contour and compare it to the line of the contour on the left side of the head, see how different they are. See if you can break down the angles into straight lines like an envelope before you add the features. Try to draw what you see as opposed to symboles or a generic interpretation of what you are capable of.

It seems like heads in odd directions may be a weak spot so i'd focus on studying more of those and get through that frustration

[Ardian Gashi]

@Fedodika thanks I keep that in mind and try to practice that more from now on :)


Here some new stuff, I did some loomis studies today and afterwords I filled a couple of pages with James Zapata studies, still feel wierd when I think about posting them, so whatever.

I also did a new digital study today and got lazy with the hair, I have to do more of them from now on.

[Fedodika]

so this could help you visualize better, try to break down each angle into straight lines, like an envelope in the reference and see how it matches up with yours, it will help things jump out quicker. So the red one i did first as a trace, then copied and brought it down to the other. try playing around with this in reference studies, it will frustrate but itll make all the difference in the long run

[Ardian Gashi]

some things I did yesterday and today