Pen Pineapple Apple Sketches

[Neverland Ultra]

Hey everybody! I want to practice drawing and painting so that I can become an illustrator. I am starting out with some mannequin and Bargue studies that I have mostly drawn from reference and then checked by overlaying the original. My plan is to do some more mannequins from imagination, however I'm not too sure how to correct them accurately unless I draw a very specific angle for which I have a reference. In addition I did a study of Vanitas stilll life and Sailor Moon by Kelogsloops. The idea behind the Kelogsloops study was to see if I can get close to the original in digital art and then try to recreate the same image in watercolor, however I had some issues with the gradiants and need more practice. In the end I just used my watercolor version for experiments with the paint so I have no final piece to upload. I can see some deviations in my digital art from the original, my goal however is not an exact copy but rather a better understanding of the subject (hopefully). If you see something that is pretty off or have an idea for an excercise I can do to get better, please let me know.

[Neverland Ultra]

By the way: Is there a way to acess the old conceptart.org sketchbooks of Dave, Miles, Algenpfleger, ...?
And do you know where these notes about the nose and mouth come from? The image below is from Kelogsloops high school portfolio, but he has only glued them in:

[one_two]

Welcome to the forum, nice start! It might me be that they have a backup of conceptart.org on some server but i really doubt that. I would definitely love to flip through some sketchbooks of bumskee or fernstrom myself but i guess that's not possible anymore. Used to have a thread there as well back in 2011.

[darktiste]

By the way: Is there a way to acess the old conceptart.org sketchbooks of Dave, Miles, Algenpfleger, ...?
And do you know where these notes about the nose and mouth come from? The image below is from Kelogsloops high school portfolio, but he has only glued them in:

Cgcookie i think that what you are looking for.

Also i check if sketchbook where available with something called https://web.archive.org but it did not work for me maybe you would have more luck i won't spend my time looking but just in case you have more time than i do you can try...

If you want more content from Cgcookie try https://www.deviantart.com/cgcookie/gallery there also some nice exercise to be done there for example i did the gold exercise you can find the result it in my sketchbook.

The exercise description are in the as you guess description... of those picture.

[JosephCow]

Hey welcome, very nice studies!

ALso you could try waybackmachine. https://web.archive.org/web/200805011413...449&page=2

here ya go. Idk if there's any more than a couple pages backed up.

[Jephyr]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Good to see the mannequin and Bargue studies.

This is a good place to learn and grow so keep working and post when you have more

[Neverland Ultra]

Thanks for the warm welcome guys!

@one_two: Bumskee's sketchbook would be so interesting, too. I heard Dave talk about how it inspired him when he was starting out.
@darktiste: Thank you for the source!
@JosephCow: Yeah there are some pages backed up, really interesting. Not quite enough pages to copy his study approach completely, however. So I will have to come up with my own excercises.
@Jephyr: Yes definitely! I will post my progress from time to time.

For this month I have first looked at Dave's old study schedule:


Seeing that he has done Sargent color studies I thought it might be a good idea to do the same thing:


Because I got caught up in details I blurred the next Repin color study so I can save some time:


I then did a male head from a Proko tutorial. Only at the end I looked at Proko's drawing to see the modifications he made on the head to make it more aesthetic:



I also tried some nude female figure drawing from photo ref:


I think if I take the time I can get quite close to copying photos or master paintings. Because I want to create my own illustrations in the end, I think it's also important to practise that using different references. For a fun challenge I asked a friend whose name roughly translates to "sun" what her favourite animal (duck) and flower (baby's-breath) was. I then tried to combine these three elements into a painting which turned out quite slushy I guess :P I think the composition is ok, but I am having a hard time taking the picture from thumbnail to finish. Do you have any ideas on how I can achieve the final finish? I think Dave would say study the fundamentals, so should I just try to draw some girls, ducks and clouds from different angles under different lighting and then try to apply some of that?

[darktiste]

Here a quick critic on the women nude.

At the earlier stage look for negative space to help you avoid simplification and at a later stange as you build your value push your darker value more then right now or get/use a pencil that will give you darker tone.Curve and angle are still something you should take more time to observe and get right because in such an organic form they can change the pose pretty significantly if missplace.

Your early painting career really do benefit when it consist of primitive form arrange in a composition .Doing painting that involve anatomy is just not something that help you learn painting as fast i would say. The philosophy of why primitive study are so important is that they reduce the amount of time you spent planning it also distract from the blank page syndrome some artist might face when doing personal project.I would say personal project should consist of mostly thumbnail trying to figure what your interest are.


I would not try be to creative to within those personal piece at first for a period of time since alot of personal project can also serve as way to work from imagination which mean they are more complex than regular life drawing where it all about observation and accurate representation.

According to your shedule there should be alot more of that line art anatomy work (like simple construction like in the first post) i see you still operate in term of ''full body'' study and copying master.That cool but i think you would learn more by dissecting your subject matter and assembling them at a smaller scale.For example start with a study of the form arm in primitive shape then going down in scale making study of finger,the hand,the wrist,the forearm,the upper arm.Doing study in each of the following category in term of primitive,muscle,bone.


As for how to practice observing curve and angle aswell as value here what i suggest to save time so you can work on more thing and get the best out of your time.

1.Study from life
Take simple subject matter.A common misconception is to think simply shape are to simple but actually angle and curve error are more noticeable when object easy to compare against one an other. So assembling still life with object around you and create that you can take a picture from is a great way to create ''custom study scene at will'' this way you can control the parameter of the scene and test whatever you want in term of light,composition,color,mood etc...
Make a line art version of your master study first once you are done

2.When you have a subject matter.Start with a primary lineart pass and make a copy of that line art layer and overlay it over the reference and check area of error.(Your work should be done 1/1 scale for this to work)

3.Now take a mental not of where those error where and correct them.Turn the copy layer overlay off.
---

For value study i would recommend to choose simple subject matter like primitive form they might not be the most interesting subject matter but it the interaction between the value you must focus on so it best not to have a distracting subject matter will observing such as delicate and shifting subject matter.

For the girl study i would say you will have to learn more about shadow color and getting the form of the arm to read more anatomically correct and how the arm superficial surface deform when squish against something but that more advance and can wait when you learn more about what going on inside the arm.

[Neverland Ultra]

Hey darktiste, thanks for the comment. I will do more drawing and painting from life in the future and gradually increase difficulty. I noticed how it is quite a bit more challenging and in addition the colors seem slightly different from those in photographs. I visited an atelier where a supervisor arranged two still lifes for me, he gave me a paintover on my drawing and watercolor painting and I think I learned a lot. Here are the final results:




My job has caught up with me so I have less time to study at the moment, but I will continue to practice and share some stuff down the road.

[darktiste]

Beautiful traditional stuff.The water color is lovely.

The graphite drawing look to be made on some kind of paper that as somewhat of a grain to it.If you want to practice shading you should get a paper that smoother that paper for charcoal or use a charcoal stick.

Is it the same paper you use for both work?

An other option would be to get graphite pencil from 2B to 9B, the higher the number the softer the pencil and therefore the more graphite will transfer to your paper and the darker your line will be.

This way you can push your darker in the graphite drawing and get a smoother result.Otherwise the grain of the paper poke and you get grainy shadow.You can afford this grainy quality in the light sometime depending on the texture of object it depend on the texture.Thing can get very grainy also when an object only receive bounce light.

So being aware of your tool can help you get the right set of value to read correctly.

[maruv]

Hey everybody! I want to practice drawing and painting so that I can become an illustrator. I am starting out with some mannequin and Bargue studies that I have mostly drawn from reference and then checked by overlaying the original. My plan is to do some more mannequins from imagination, however I'm not too sure how to correct them accurately unless I draw a very specific angle for which I have a reference. In addition I did a study of Vanitas stilll life and Sailor Moon by Kelogsloops. The idea behind the Kelogsloops study was to see if I can get close to the original in digital art and then try to recreate the same image in watercolor, however I had some issues with the gradiants and need more practice. In the end I just used my watercolor version for experiments with the paint so I have no final piece to upload. I can see some deviations in my digital art from the original, my goal however is not an exact copy but rather a better understanding of the subject (hopefully). If you see something that is pretty off or have an idea for an excercise I can do to get better, please let me know.  


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Im pressive works, I am still into studying of some art and design elements