Jana´s Art Journey

[Jana]

Art is a journey, not a destination - Thats my favorite art quote and a good start for my sketchbook.

I have always liked to do creative stuff in one way or another, but I have a feeling that I did not really make any progress with my art in the last few years. One of the biggest struggles for me is to study and at the same time keep art a fun thing to do. So I hope this Sketchbook will be a good mix of both.

Colour study of my dog

Practicing values

Some gestures (I think 2min.)

[Ash]

Your dog is really cute!

Nice studies so far - especially of your dog.
I also liked your CHOW entry a lot, nice colors and mood.

[Zorrentos]

Nice work! I think that the studies all look nice!
For the color study, you should try and analyze the colors a bit closer. The dog in your study has a lot more warm colors than the photo reference, where they are cool.
Unless that was the point of course! It's cool to experiment and try other colors as well just for the fun of it! :)

[Jana]

Hey, thanks for your comments!

For the color study, you should try and analyze the colors a bit closer. The dog in your study has a lot more warm colors than the photo reference, where they are cool.
Unless that was the point of course! It's cool to experiment and try other colors as well just for the fun of it! :)

You are right. The photo has a bit of blue in the shadows(I think), but I exagerated it and also added some warmer colours because I liked the warmer touch. On second thought, now that I look at it again the pinkish hue seem a little of, maybe I should stick to the refrence more.


I had so much fun doing the first one that I did a second. I have a feeling this sketchbook is going to be filled by paintings of my dog soon.
Now that I look at it, I did go to low on contrast though..

[gerbenpasjes]

Hey Jana awesome start! I love dogs, yours looks awesome.
"One of the biggest struggles for me is to study and at the same time keep art a fun thing to do." I feel you there! Also if you have it as a career and besides that do studies and courses, sometimes the fun is hard to find. I'm going through a similar thing, but being here already makes it better haha.

As for your latest dog piece; yes the contrast is indeed low. I recommend proofing it in black and white, using Thomas Scholes beautifully illustrated method: http://www.artofscholes.com/checkingvalues

[Jana]

Thank you gerbenpasjes, that is really helpful!

I feel you there! Also if you have it as a career and besides that do studies and courses, sometimes the fun is hard to find. I'm going through a similar thing, but being here already makes it better haha.

Yeah, I guess there is also added pressure when you do art as your job. But like you said for me being here and posting stuff is a nice way to study because I feel there is more meaning behind even the boring stuff, when I can share it with someone. Your artwork looks amazing by the way.



Still to flat, but I think I am getting there slooowly



I don´t like doing gesture at all, but I hope it will be more fun as I get better at it

[darktiste]

Careful with the format of your image it impossible to give feedback at such scale in my opinion.

[Skeffin]

great studies - I think your dogs are really good, but if you have trouble with form then drawabox.com has lessons and exercises that will help you improve it. The later ones focus on plants and animals. While the first lesson is incredibly tedious, its worth it.

[Jana]

Thank you Skeffin for that link! I was kind of lost on how to continue and structure myself and I gave it a try. I have drawn a lot of elipses and boxes over the last days, I hope my motivation will keep through all 7 lessons. Did you already complete them?


Here are some more gestures that I did (90s)


And then I thought I should do something just for fun again and did this piece. I still like the idea, but I really don´t like how it turned out. Maybe I will try to do it again later with another colour theme.



Trying to figure our how to paint snow. I know the proportions are not correct.

[Jana]

I tried to follow yuumei´s tutorial how to paint clouds (https://www.yuumeiart.com/cloud-tutorials)
She is a great artist, who makes everything look so effortless, but I found it harder than I thought to get a decent sky.
What was mind blowing to me was that you can lock the pixels on a layer, I never tried that before.



After that I tried to get into it a little bit more by painting some skies from a photo:

[Zorrentos]

Great studies! You need to work a bit on your edges tho. Right now, it's a bit too many hard edges in the clouds for them to look believable IMO.

James Gurney's book Color and Light have a few great chapters about painting sky gradients and clouds. Maybe you want to check it out:

[Skeffin]

Thank you Skeffin for that link! I was kind of lost on how to continue and structure myself and I gave it a try. I have drawn a lot of elipses and boxes over the last days, I hope my motivation will keep through all 7 lessons. Did you already complete them?

I think I got to the lesson animals, and after that just stopped. I need to go over the lessons again tbh but I've been putting it off myself. 

Also your jellyfish painting could do with the values being pushed - if you turn it to grayscale, everything is quite low contrast. Did a shoddy paintover where I upped the value contrast so things stand out more. A good thing to do when doing thumbnails is to do ones where you only use 3 -5 values spanning between black and white, so you know it looks good in grayscale. Colour is secondary to value by a long shot. 

Also the colours used were all similar levels of contrast, whereas generally you want to vary them. Areas that are focal points should be the most saturated, and greyer colours are your friend ! they help tie the whole thing together and allow your more saturated areas to really pop. With that in mind in the paintover i toned down the bluey purple of the sky, but kept the bright reds and oranges of the jellyfish and the very bottom of the sky where you still see some sun. On second thought, you may have been wanting that contrast between purple and orange in the sky but you could still do this with a less saturated purple and you'd still get that nice colour scheme. Also those trees in the background won't be heavily saturated as they are so far away. They might get a tinge of the orange from the sunset, but they wouldn't be that bright purple colour you have going on. Colours aren't exactly amazing in the paintover but its 3am here so....

I like the concept a lot, it kind of reminds me of stranger things cos of the bike, the forest in the distance with the fence, and the fantasy element

[Jana]

@Zorrentos: That is actually my favorite art book and one of the few I did buy and not just rent at the libary. I love James Gurneys work and from time to time watch him paoint on his Youtube channel. Maybe I should really look into again.

@Skeffin Thank you for taking the time to make a paintover! I think your paintover actually looks a lot better than my original. I tried to redo it, but I am still not happy. I think I need more time to get better with values:


This was the black white sketch I made:

Result:

Result in Grayscale:


Still looking to flat I fear, but at least the aurora turned out nice.




I also made it to box 100 and 250 and my lines still don´t always add up. Starting to feel like a slow learner :D But I am just glad I made it this far that I can now continue with the next lesson.

[Skeffin]

I like the redo a lot , great improvement ! The Aurora lights in the sky is a really nice touch. To improve values perhaps make the closer jellyfish a bit brighter , and the further away jellyfish slightly darker cos distance yadayada. You can also use curves , levels adjustment layers to play around with the value non destructibrly (although you may need to add colour correction layers after) . And you can erase away parts of these adjustment layers by painting in black

[Jana]

Thanks for your thoughts Skeffin. I think I will let that painitng rest for a bit and maybe pick it up later again.

This is the orange dragon I did for the last COW and its lemon brother with whom I lost patience after a while.

[Skeffin]

Those dragons are well cute . Only slight crit would be that as wings tend to be thin, more light shines through them so they would be a lighter value and brighter colour

[chubby_cat]

Hey Jana. Great sketchbook you have here. I really like the fruit dragon pieces, it's pre cute. You have a good sense of volume in the orange dragon, but it's missing in the lemon dragon. The way the bodies curl around the fruit appears very flat (it's missing form with the bodies not following the curve of the fruit). If you keep up with the drawabox exercises, I think they cover more organic forms and contour lines after the box exercise, so keep going with drawabox! :)

[Toxicpanda]

Hi Jana! First of all thank you for stopping by my sketchbook and for your supportive words. Welcome to Crimson Daggers :) I love your work so far and there is so much effort you're putting in every work. Keep it up!
Love your color studies, and your dog is just beautiful. I think you got all helpful comments regarding color studies.When you feel comfortable enough, you can maybe try making the same image but with a different light - but try to imagine it in your head. Study the image that you are referencing- where is light hitting, where is the shadow, how does the light reflect on his hair , on different materials- and try to imagine how would that look like in a different setting for example sunset. That helped me a lot when I was trying to understand shapes and light ( I still suck at it), but it's helpful a lot. It makes me think rather than trying to copy the color.

[Jana]

Thanks everyone for your encouraging comments. I always try to work on the things you point out.

I kind of had an artists block phase over the last couple weeks. I felt like everything I did was just not good enough. Maybe my expectations grew faster that my skills :D

But starting slowly I feel motivated to pick up the pen again.

Tow ice studies I did for my eldritch piece

COW Eldritch, not happy with it

CHOW:


Some potted plants I did to get drawing again

I wanted to do something with lineart for the Mytholagical Beast COW, but then I saw it was already closed :D
Will finish this nonetheless

[Skeffin]

Yeah I had a bit of a break as well
 I did come across this graph that explains why you wake up one day not happy with anything you paint

Hope to see that finished unicorn if possible !