Alex's Sketcbook

[dracken]

More stuff, quick gestures

[Jaik]

Good stuff. If I were you I would render out the shadows with that shading you are doing on your gestures, instead of just creating a strong silhouette. Would be a good exercise in form :) Keep up the good work though, I do enjoy all these traditional studies. It's refreshing from a lot of the sketchbooks around here.

[Lyraina]

Starting the faces with establishing the planes is a good way to go, really helps getting the form and proportions right. I think you could be a bit more daring with your values now and then, go a bit darker in some places.
I'd also suggest some focused eye studies (starting from the sphere and building on that, from different angles), and then try to apply that in your next portraits. While many of the eyes you draw are correct, they sometimes look a bit flat or don't correctly follow the perspective of the face.

Oh and good idea to do some of those figures with pen... very good line practice.. I'm too cowardly to do that :p

[dracken]

Thank you for your comments. Thank you!

Yeah eyes are still a weak point for me. I need to work more on the features. I will probably do some close-up life studies of my old mug to really observe how eyes work.

In the meantime here are some older digital paintings/ studies after a photo and Bougereau (?) don't remember exactly.




30 min imagination piece. My anatomy is moving along, but I think I need to really study the backgrounds now/ do more compositional studies

[razvanb08]

Your portraits are getting better and so are the figures. I got to agree with the eye crit and I think you make them just a little too big. The imagination piece is looking good, maybe you should make the figure a silhouette that's a distinct value from the background and the foreground and work from there.
Keep it up!

[dracken]

Thank you for stopping by,

I am seriously struggling with something about creating imaginary pieces. Here is another piece I tried over the weekend. I think because I am used to studying one person, maybe two. I am having a really hard time thinking about composition/ how to arrange the creature/ character so it looks believable.



To help with this I decided to do some quick master studies, in the way Noah suggests in the first video of his art camp (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQfF-P70V2Q)

These are all pretty quick experiments with different opacity, but most of the focus on getting the proportions of the original piece righ-ish



Also found this on my computer from back when I first started doing these. Will have to push and do more.

[dracken]

Did this self portrait over the weekend. Tried to focus on the eyes, sadly I don't know how to use the white and kinda fucked up the glasses because of it.




Also here are some imagination pieces and the figure drawing from last night

[kidult]

Good to see you grinding away! Best way to level up.

[dracken]

Ha, Level up. yeah it's way overdue. I can see some small gains, but things are moving sooo slow. I want to get to the point where I can draw people from life at least somewhat decently, then I'll start doing digital studies of people again. In the meantime I'm also trying to push my imagination anatomy.

I also signed up for a watercolor class in February and I'm preparing with doing some washes. Not very interesting stuff, but I thought I should share one photo just to share where I'm starting from.



Another imagination piece from a while back and some stuff from over the weekend. All imagination and therefore crap. Still grinding through Hogarth, trying to apply stuff.

[dracken]

Here is the life portrait from last night.

[dracken]

Some older digital stuff

[Jaik]

Damnnn dude, that life portrait is great! Not sure if it is just the camera (probably is) but you could maybe try and go a bit darker in the darks. Also you should experiment with different toned paper, might be nice to bring in some white charcoal if you start on a grey base.

And don't worry about the leveling up dude, if it feels like you are on a plateau, that just means that if you keep pushing, you are about to break through and jump up in skill level. Just keep hitting play my friend. Day after day. It's a slow and arduous journey, but everyone is in it together.
The water colour class sounds like it will be fun. Water colours are so damn difficult >.>

[dracken]

Thank you friend. Thank you.

I'm starting to play with some tan paper. Will have to learn more about the white charcoal.

Here are a few more older digital pieces, didn't have much time for art today, had to do grocery shopping cleaning etc. Boring real life stuff :P

Based on the old masive black perspective tutorial



Life study



and a master study that failed



Random imagination dude


Life study of cloth

[Lyraina]

Very cool colors and lots of character in that imagination dude!

And I feel with you about that composition problem, especially with more than 1 character :/ Let me know if you find a way to deal tackle that (except master studies).

Keep pushing! :)

[dracken]

Thank you for the kind words. I'll have to keep trying to put together finished pieces. I think that's the only solution.

The past few days have been insanely busy with work and other chores like broken car, grocery shopping etc. So here are again some older imagination pieces or stuff from Hogarth.

[dracken]

Went to quick sketch last night. Trying to use more blocking in














And here is the portrait from last Thursday on toned paper, might try another one tonight

[dracken]

One more portrait on tone paper, I know it doesn't look very toned but it's the same paper as the one above.

[Archreux]

Hey man, there's definitely a lot of great progress I'm seeing as I flip through your sketchbook. I totally get that feeling when you can't tell if you're learning anything, or if there's any progress being made. Look at it like this, though. You're always around yourself and your artwork, if anyone is going to see a noticeable difference in what you do, it's going to be someone else looking in on whatever it is you're creating, and I for one am in agreement with everyone else when I say I'm seeing progress. :]

Your poses are looking good, and your faces have improved as well. If it's imaginative work you're struggling with as well as composition, there's just no other way to go about it than to just keep studying and applying what you know/remember in your imaginative work. If you haven't read Loomis's Creative Illustration, I suggest downloading it at some point. I have a lot of trouble with imagination/composition as well, and the book really helps.

Just don't forget to keep applying these studies. Too many people just go on studying and studying without really applying what they're studying for. Anyways, keep on keepin' on, man. This is only page 3 for you, and if you keep this up you'll be amazing in no time! :D

[dracken]

Thank you, it's my third year working on art so the three pages are just an example of me not uploading enough :P But your point stands.

Here is some more life drawing, will do some imagination work tonight.

[dracken]

Here is a portrait finished on Sunday over about 4 hours. Didn't take as many in progress photos as I ended up erasing and re-doing a lot of her features, but I took a "far away" shot to give a better idea of how big the drawing looks.

Doesn't look too much like the model, but I'm still alright with the final product. I need to do a few more weeks of these studies, and then I'll go back to doing more life digital studies with my trusty laptop.

If things go alright, by April or so I hope to really get into color studies and push hard. Then maybe over the summer I'll do some outdoors painting. By autumn I should have some strong pieces I can use to build a portfolio. That's the plan at least :P