Mayenla's Sketchbook, The Long Hard Road to Mediocrity.

[Bookend]

And the knight is coloured! So, what's next? Do you think you'll give him an environment of some kind, or.. ? :D

Draw on, my friend!

[Mayenla]

@Bookend - Thanks! I'm so not ready for environments yet :P I tweaked it a little bit more, added a colored background and I'm leaving it at that :) It's a concept piece for a game I'm working on, so I'll be doing more hero types soon!

Here's the edited/final:



Also getting back into some studies. Still working through Sir Loomis:




I'll be away for a few days so Merry Christmas to everyone!

[Mayenla]

Still studying the muscles of the arm. I'll be doing some ones from imagination and then studies to see how they directly affect the form of the arm.







Having a hard time remembering some of the muscle names, but repetition should drill it in. I've found looking at my own arm and imagining the muscles there helps a lot in remembering what goes where.

[Mayenla]

Setting a couple goals for myself:
Immediate Goal: Draw every day, minimum 5minutes. This is to help build a drawing habit.
Long Term: Fill my Sketchbook up! I don't think I've ever had a filled sketchbook before so better start now!

Here's a few things I've done lately:

This one was to get me drawing, I had to just draw something because I kept putting it off:




And of course, Loomis studies:

[Bookend]

Looking great! Remember to apply what you've learned by drawing without looking. (I've just started doing that-- It was hard at first, but once you start, just let yourself get into it.)

Keep up the great work! You're gonna be an art rock star, haha.

[Mayenla]

Thanks Bookend! That's exactly what I've been doing! :D and I have to say It's really REALLY helping it all sink in!
Here were some more studies, when I do my memory drawings I cover up what's on the page so I can't cheat :)

[Mayenla]

Still going at it, albeit slowly.

So my current process has been to draw the Loomis mannequins, then expand on top of that the basic forms of mass. I got a few reference sheets for muscles that I refer to while drawing and plotting the lines, but as this is all rather new I don't know where lines should go or how the muscles should affect the contour of the body... which is exactly what I was expecting!

My next step is to do a page of reference drawing of the arms, chest and legs, as well as from memory, so now when I'm researching those sets of muscles I have a basis of understanding (my mannequin muscle drawings) rather than just going in blind trying to guess where they should be going on the body, and hoping it sticks.

Here's my latest page:







I can see lots of things wrong with these, which is good :)

[Bookend]

Hey, it's Loomis! So cool. I'm studying him right now too. Yours are looking a lot more fluid than mine though, haha. Grab that next climbing hold and keep on rising!

[Mayenla]

Thanks Bookend :)


Okay so I've started studying the anatomy of the arm. I now know all the placements of the upper arm muscles, their origin, insertion and function, all from memory, yay! I've begun on the lower arm muscles now, which is proving to be more complex, but I'm getting there.

I also threw in some basic line work and perspective exercises I did when time was short and just to break up the anatomy studies a bit.

[Vicianus]

Hey dude!! Awesome anatomy studies in here, I'm really jealous of how well you know arm anatomy now!! I love it, great, basic studies.

Go do some life drawing! I'd like to see you apply this stuff. :O

[Mayenla]

Thanks Vicianus, I totally need to do more life drawing, there's no classes nearby unfortunately, so I'll have to do some online.

I spent the last couple days doing a few drawings for fun, I don't want to burn out with all anatomy studies. I did however try to apply my knowledge where I could in my drawings. Having the Loomis mannequins to work off really really helped, it was a bit of a *click* moment :) woo!

I deviant art searched for larp photos and there's some awesome results. The Orc was my own design, I simply took a guys pose and changed the rest. The others were referenced from photos, I was experimenting with ink pens, ballpoints, and brush pens and pencils. Was loads of fun!

[Vicianus]

Sweet stuff. I really dig the black/white tonal breakup on the guy at the very very bottom. Some of the other guys get kinda unitone -- I'd totally love to see you push the tone separation more like in the necromancer!

Watch out about your vertical proportions. I know you've been pushing the anatomy studies a lot with the head measurements - perhaps when drawing from photos, just do a quick check for how tall the model is in numbers of heads before you put your pen down so you know what kind of verticality you're looking for.

[Mayenla]

Thanks Vic, The guy at the top I definitely messed up the vertical proportions. I actually measured the original to be about 6 heads, but I wanted to try and apply my loomis studies and put into 8 heads... he came out too lanky, and not wide enough at the top :) Lessons learned!

In the last page I worked from top to bottom, so I feel like they got better as I went :) The first two used ballpoint pens for shading, I didn't really like the messiness of it. After I shaded with the ballpoint pen (I probably over shaded those two) I used a grey brush marker to ink them, then I used a white gel pen to do the highlights. The third guy I didn't do any ballpoint so he looks a lot cleaner, but sits a bit flat. The last guy I used a black pencil for the shading, and was my favorite of the lot, I'll be doing more with the black pencil :)

[Mayenla]

So I finally got around to doing some watercolours! I had loads of fun with it, and I'm definitely going to do more... I don't know if I picked the best subject matter as shiny multi-coloured bugs was quite hard to try and depict. I bought myself a proper watercolour sketchpad (300gsm A5) so I'll be doing some more in there! I'm just waiting on a cheap colour pallet I bought off ebay to arrive so I can setup all my paints.

Also my partner found a life drawing class that is held each week and its only like 10minutes away, I was pretty stoked as we live a bit out in the bush and didn't expect there to be any. It's pretty expensive however so I won't go every week. It was so awesome to go to though.. it really made me realise how much I have to learn still!

I'm moving on from arm anatomy now, I think I'll do the torso next. I know all the muscles in the arm and their relative placements in the arm, oh which reminds me, my partner let me draw out the muscles over her arm which was a huge help in understanding them... Still, I find if quite hard to apply the knowledge in a drawing, I think this will now just come down to lots of practice, with that said, compared to before studying the arms I feel loads more confident, woo!

Now time for some pictures!
 
Watercolour drawings:



Life Drawing.. I was so stiff and not warmed up when I started (I missed the start so I didn't get to do the 30second gestures)










Anatomy & some more referenced figures:



This last page I did all from memory, just worked with my knowledge and tried to create some interesting poses...