Peter's Sketchbook

[Peter]

Hi my name is Peter, I've been browsing for awhile now but I thought it was finally time to start a sketchbook here to better track my progress and hopefully get some much needed feedback.

The type of illustration that I'm interested in, and would like to get into is book illustration and poster design.

I'm just gonna start off my doing a big dump of work that I've done recently, not sure what the best size is for the images so apologies if I've messed it up. At the moment I've been working on improving my painting skills and my figure drawing skills as I feel like I need alot of improvement in those areas.

I've mainly just been doing still lifes using a shadow box, 1 from natural day light (2 pots) and basic figure construction using the Loomis and Hampton books. My main goal atm is to improve my figure drawing skills and try and get it to a consistent level before attempting fully finished illustrations. I'm aiming to post a few times a week since I need to scan or take photos.  

[Artloader]

Hey welcome to Crimson Daggers Peter, nice start here :). I'm loving the paintings of the Asaro head nicely done. Good work with your figure studies as well.

Just one thing a noticed with a few of your female figures, you've drawn some of the hips too narrow in comparison to the shoulders (especially on the Hampton studies). Women tend to have proportionately wider hips than men.

Keep it going though - looking forward to more :).

[Peter]

Hey welcome to Crimson Daggers Peter, nice start here :).  I'm loving the paintings of the Asaro head  nicely done.  Good work with your figure studies as well.

Just one thing a noticed with a few of your female figures, you've drawn some of the hips too narrow in comparison to the shoulders (especially on the Hampton studies).  Women tend to have proportionately wider hips than men.

Keep it going though - looking forward to more :).

Thank you for the warm welcome Artloader :) Thanks for the feedback, I didn't even notice I was drawing them so small. I think I will spend some time tomorrow working on my basic construction.

[Peter]

Some new stuff from the last few days. I had to take care of some stuff Monday so I only had time for a quick still life study (about 3 hours) of two plastic cups which I could of done better on. Spent Tuesday working on a photo study from Black Sails which I butchered the more I worked on it. I was only going to spend a couple of hours on it but it ended up taking me the entire day since I had difficulties mixing the correct colours and ended up not finishing it since I had spent too much time on it.

Today I did some gesture drawings in the morning which still need alot of work, I'm not sure if it will be better for me to spend more time on my gesture drawings rather than continuously doing multiple 1-2 min poses since I feel like I'm not seeing an improvement in them.

I then moved onto some anatomy drawing of the pectoralis major again using reference and some from imagination, and ended the day by doing some notan studies (please excuse the first 2, I wasn't sure what I was doing at first) of my room using a viewfinder.




 

[VoodooMama]

Hi Peter, welcome to the forums!
I really like your painting studies, specially the first ones, the head. what medium is it?
I like your gestures, they show nice 3dmensionality
Since you say you dont feel like they're helping you much, maybe you could supplement it with some longer figure studies?

Keep up the good work!

[Peter]

Hi Peter, welcome to the forums!
I really like your painting studies, specially the first ones, the head. what medium is it?
I like your gestures, they show nice 3dmensionality
Since you say you dont feel like they're helping you much, maybe you could supplement it with some longer figure studies?

Keep up the good work!

Hi Voodoo thanks for the welcome! :) Thanks very much, they turned out much better than I had imagined although I got some of the values slightly wrong on the 3/4 view. It's gouache btw.

When it comes to my gesture drawings I feel like I keep making the same mistakes over and over again due to the time limit so I was thinking it would perhaps be better to focus on 5 minute poses or untimed so that I can take my time and perhaps that might help.

Good suggestion btw, it's been awhile since I've done long poses so I'll give it a shot!

[Peter]

Just a quick update The work is from Thursday/Friday, mostly Thursday as I went to go visit my cousin Friday and had a meal out in the evening with friends so I was only able to squeeze in an hour in the morning.

Worked abit on my basic construction, working from Hampton's book, and focused more on anatomy, again working from Hampton (just doing more of the front torso muscles) which I'll apply using reference when I get back to work tomorrow. Also started doing the drawabox lessons which I quite like doing so I'm going to start working through them during my warm up routine.

[NoodleInBox]

I love how neat and clean your stuff looks *.* total contrast to the chaos that I produce

[Peter]

NoodleInBox - Haha thank you very much :) I've been loving your skeletal drawings lately, what book is that from?


Another dump of work from Monday till today. Been working on my anatomy knowledge more using Eliot Goldfinger's book as reference and applying it (along with the stuff I did last week from Hampton's book) to some figure drawings I've been doing and some from imagination aswell. I messed up one of the reference drawings I did from Goldfinger so I will need to attempt it again.

I'm having difficulties with the ab muscles on the females, in Hampton's book he shows them as a different shape to the males but when I'm doing studies using reference I can't seem to see that shape at all, perhaps someone could explain it to me?

I also feel like I'm drawing my bodies way too long but it could be the length of the abs throwing me off haha. I will post again in a few days time so any feedback would be much appreciated. :)   

[NoodleInBox]

Awesome studies as always peter :D Maybe show some more stuff from imagination. And thanks for looking at my sketchbook *.* they are from imagination so i cant give you any book sadly. But look up krenz cusharts anatomy studies they are a big inspiration for me and when you look at them everything suddenly makes sense.

[Peter]

NoodleInBox - Hi thanks for the feedback :) Yeah your right I need to do more imaginary stuff, I think I just get too caught up in doing studies and trying to learn more before I feel comfortable doing things from imagination. I've actually seen that persons work awhile ago but I forgot his name so thanks for reminding me !

I was meant to upload yesterday but I feel asleep at around 7pm and didn't wake up until the next day haha. Anyway here is some stuff from Thursday/Friday. I felt rather burnt out so I didn't get as much done as I would of liked, hopefully next week I'll feel better and get back into it. Just did some anatomy studies from Hampton's book focusing on the deltoid and doing some drawings using reference. Decided to spend the majority of my time doing some drawings from imagination, mostly the head since it had been a few months since I last did some from imagination so I'm quite rusty. I also tried messing around with the proportions which kinda went bad but oh well.

To finish it off I started doing some figures from imagination but didn't get time to finish them off which I was going to do first thing next week. As you can see my knowledge of the arms/hands and legs/feet is basically non existent so I will be tackling them next.

[Peter]

Another update. A few things from Monday through to today. Did a few more figures form imagination as a continuation from last week, still got along way to go haha. I've been focusing on the anatomy of the arm this week so far, mainly the upper arm and then I'm going to work my way down to the forearm. I find the anatomy of the arm rather difficult, especially remembering all the muscles shapes and how they overlap so I want to spend my time atm working on getting better at it. I copied the drawings from Goldfinger's anatomy book and then attempted to apply it to a reference drawing but only got the one done since I didn't have enough time to do more. I have a few lectures to watch on the subject so I'm going to try and find time to squeeze them in somewhere.

[Artloader]

Oh man - great anatomy studies here Peter - you're kickin' ass!

Keep it going mate!

[Peter]

Artloader - Thanks man :) I kinda wore myself out after doing all those studies so didn't get alot done Thurs/Friday but it just means I will have to push myself harder next week.


Just a quick update for Thurs/Friday. Think I wore myself out after Wednesday because I just felt mentally tired (if that's a thing) afterwards and was in no mood to do alot of work (sigh), so I decided to watch some of the lecture videos that I have stockpiled away on my pc. Started with Charles Hu's anatomy workshop on the upper arm which I did a few drawings for and attempted some upper arm drawings from ref which went horribly wrong and never finished. I'm still having difficulties with seeing the muscles and unsure of there shapes from different angles so I'm gonna have to do some more reading on the subject and try and get my head around it. 

[Peter]

Another update. I was meant to post during the middle of the week which I forgot to do so I decided to just wait until the weekend and just post everything from Monday-Friday.

 Started the week off by doing some figure drawing, I was originally only going to do the gesture of the figure but decided to add anatomy on top for one drawing and then felt like doing the same for the rest of the figures.   On the second page the figure on the left I thought I'd do abit of character design since I have never really done it before. I used reference for the pose but changed the face abit and added some imaginary clothes. Not really sure what she is meant to be, I was going for like an elf hunter vibe. I also decided to try and render a figure drawing since it has been so long since i'd last done it but not really pleased with how it turned out. Think I spent around 2-3 hours on it.

Continued with studying arm anatomy, focusing on the forearm (continued watching Charles Hu's videos) and then doing some studies of the arm as a whole. I feel like the upper arm is starting to make sense to me now, just need to work on the forearm more. I'm not really sure if the anatomy is right or not if someone who has better knowledge of arm anatomy could point out any mistakes it would be much appreciated.

I also did some figures from imagination. My first page is definitely stronger than the second,I tried some dynamic poses on the second page but they didn't turn out too good so that's something that I need to focus on. I was wondering were people get their reference from for dynamic poses? Are there any websites for them? 

Lastly I spent Thursday/Friday working on a painting study of a figure since it had been awhile. I struggled quite abit with it since I don't have much practice with painting flesh tones but I've got to start somewhere. 

[Peter]

Apologies for not posting last week, had one of those weeks were nothing I was doing seemed right and guess i just needed a break but here is some of the stuff I did get done. I wanted to work on dynamic poses since I'm not very good at doing them so I found a bunch of photos online and worked on doing gesture drawings of them and the last page I did were some imaginary ones. I also decided to do some master studies so I looked at Mead Schaeffer since I like his paintings. I feel like I go the colours fairly accurate but had difficulties achieving those subtle colour changes in the faces and struggled with the blending which is most noticeable in the bottom right piece but overall had a blast doing them.

[Peter]

Here are the things I've been doing from Monday to Wednesday this week. Decided to focus on leg and hip anatomy since I'm not very good at drawing legs so I've just been focusing on learning the anatomy with the help of Goldfinger's anatomy book. It's taking me alot longer than I originally thought, I was hoping to I could do all the drawings by Wednesday so I could move on to applying the knowledge using reference imagery and then completing some imaginary drawings but hopefully I'll finish the knowledge side today and move on tomorrow.

[Pinshivic]

Damn dude, keep it going, you're going to improve in no time at this pace, making me feel lazy!

[alexdanila]

You are killing it with these studies! and shaming all of us! Keep going!

[Peter]

@Pinshivic, @alexdanila - Apologies for taking so long to reply and thanks very much :) hopefully I can keep this pace going.