JyonnyNovice - from Novice to Master!

[JyonnyNovice]

Hobitt Thanks, and yea I think actually I will switch it up a bit as I go, I'm starting to get not as great results with brushpen as I had before. Although a guy at life drawing told me that even when that happens, if you keep going, you will then start to get better - but also that it's good to rotate around the mediums.

Shin Thanks man! I don't think they're better than anything you did, but thanks for the compliment : ) faces are really my achilles heel (amongst a ton of other things XD ) but I feel I am slowly slowly getting there with them. I'll definitely do some in depth anatomy of that stuff soon enough ^^

Brushpen gestures, imagination figures and heads - have to put this practice on hold for a week or so while I finish up this job, but I am determined not to let this daily habit fall away like so many others I started! Seems as soon as I state my determination on here, I end up dropping out of them <_> need to change that!

Some life drawing stuff at the end, first time trying straight charcoal approach, I really enjoyed it!























all between 2 and 20 minute poses - I think I could get something really nice going with a 40 minute pose, I might ask next week if we can do one.

[smrr]

Wow, that level up though o: 


Fantastic figure work going on, Jyonny <3

all between 2 and 20 minute poses - I think I could get something really nice going with a 40 minute pose, I might ask next week if we can do one.

I would just say, after having read the above ^ - the goal shouldn't be about tryna get "something really nice", figure drawing is all about putting your studies together and really trying to understand how the skele, muscles ,skin and poses work together to create rhythm, weight/balance etc. Gesture = mega important - and you seem to be nailing it. Don't forget to apply your findings on poses.
But yeah, depending on what you study during the week with anatomy - for example, arms - it can be a good idea just to focus on arms and joint connection at figure drawing.
Anyway, just my thoughts!
Keep it up, Jyonny(NotNoviceAnymore) !
o/

[Hobitt]

The sense of form on these is getting much better keep it up!

[BenFlores]

Keep up the figure drawing, you seem to be figuring it out very quickly. As told above, remember to apply. To add to that, I think you should focus on accuracy of the drawing, get those spots in the right place and your lines precisely at their right angles then you can relax. If the foundation of the drawing is wrong, the rendering won't make it much better.I think it will be a good idea to start with good habits like that so later on you can have more freedom with your strokes. Simplify where you can and be decisive with what you're going for.

[Riprap]

Lots of progress here, you clearly work very hard. Keep up the good work!

[StardustLarva]

Great stuff once again, Jon. I will echo what others have said, attempting to get accurate proportions and alignments should be your priority in figure drawing, I guess rendering is a bonus in some circumstances. That's what I recall being taught when I've taken figure drawing classes before. Anyway, I don't have anything else to suggest working on really, I'll just concur with the others that you're doing really well.

[JyonnyNovice]

Smrr Thanks so much for the kind words : ) I do get distracted by the whole fine arts thing, and everyone at life drawing aiming to make beautiful pictures as their primary goal. You're right I should use it as a place to apply my studies! since being a fine artist isn't my goal, I should use it for my goals!

Ben Thanks Ben. I mean, I do aim for accuracy - I don't rush to rendering anything and take as long as I need to set up things as accurate as I can (that's why so many of mine only have a little bit of rendering). That said, when I was doing the ink stuff, sometimes I found my drawings got more accurate from putting in the shadow shapes earlier. Then there is the whole accuracy vs. design and pushing poses, adjusting silhouettes and adding character. So I guess proportional accuracy is the real goal, in the end right? I still got plenty of errors I'm sure, but feels like I get a little bit better each time!

Riprap Thanks for dropping by and for the encouragement! I'll swing by your sketchbook soon ^_^

Stardust Thanks man, same stuff as I said to Ben above really. Thanks for checking my stuff : )



Just a few material studies from the study group:

Study from photo then one from imagination:



Study from The Secret World of Arietty then one from imagination:


Everyone always says to apply your studies, I start to really feel the benefit after doing the ones above. From now on my determination is to ALWAYS apply my studies IMMEDIATELY after finishing them (or thereabouts).

[JyonnyNovice]

Finished this one that I've been working on for a little while. It's for some friends, a booklet cover, for a buddhist event:

(bigger version here: http://i.imgur.com/CCIagQz.jpg )


Here's my process to get to that:




c&c very welcome! It's the first time I attempted and executed something as ambitious as this with so many characters, in colour, thinking about composition and values and the text layout and all that kind of stuff. I submitted it already but anything I can learn for next time will be treasured!

[Eyliana]

To be honest, I find the cover a bit difficult. For me it is not clear what is is about, now I'm not the target group and I don't know how it is going to be used, that might influence how it's perceived.

I think it is also too busy with the flowers, the leaves and the text. I understand the link with buddhism, but not sure if all is necessary. It also depends a lot of the flyer is for a already existing group or community, or is used to invite person's that do not have a link with it. Flyers are usually meant to be simple, to conceive a clear message. What, when, where, who. And there are several things going on right now.

I think I would have left the flowers and the leaves out, and move one flower to the top/bottom near the text there.

I really like the illustration you did though :). It's a nice style and nice lighting. Or maybe you could have placed few flowers on the ground there.

I hope it's helpful. :)

[JyonnyNovice]

Eyliana Thanks for the feedback! The image is confusing because there is the date / place at the bottom but it's not a poster (that's just how they wanted it), it's the cover for an A4 size booklet of lecture notes / study materials for that course, so I could be a bit more free to try and make something that's just nice to look at. Maybe I did make it too busy but I didn't want it to look too sparse (which I've done before when going from a small thumbnail to a bigger size) - although printed on a bigger page without the bright shine of a monitor does change it. Very briefly, the idea I wanted to show, since the title was 'shining blah blah blah' was them all praying to that cupboard thing (which has a scroll inside) and then light shining out onto them 'illuminating the buddha nature of their lives'. Then the flowers / leaves have religious significance but are there for decoration and composition and to give some variety and more interest (that was the intention anyway!). Thanks so much for taking the time to give me feedback : ) the flowers on the floor would've worked nicely too. Thanks ^^


After finishing that piece it feels like my drawing ability dropped - stuff I could do effortlessly keeps coming out all wrong! Maybe it's not and maybe my eye just improved, hopefully I am due a level up but until that happens it's quite frustrating!

Some life drawing stuff:





Some sketches of my daughter from last week (in my watercolour class we will do a session in monochrome, so I want to make a nice sketch of her that I can transfer to watercolour paper and paint in greys)





I'm unable to draw in my usual place (mum's spare room) for a while so started going to the big central library in my city in the daytimes. Really awesome to go there - no distractions from computer and access to reference material on any subject imaginable. Instead of spending 30+ mins gathering reference on a subject and not knowing if it's accurate or not I can grab a book in 2 mins that's been put together by someone who knows their subject very well! Then at lunchtimes I can go outside and sketch the skateboarders in the square. Getting fresh air and sunlight is a bonus too : )

Decided to get back to perspective a bit, might try and develop these skills through March.

[KurtJeremy]

HEY bro!
Great figure drawings, as usual, I can see the improvement as your life drawings are getting pretty simplified and that reads really well!

you say you're drawing ability dropped? I say that's nonsense! to me it didn't it really depends on what subject matter you're drawing.as for the cover, I gotta agree with eyliana about it being kinda noisy, the flowers particularly, are fighting for my attention along with the focal point which Is obviously the people worshipping. maybe changing its color to a different one (cos pink psychologically is a very wild color) could make the composition a little more leveled out in terms of values and whatnot.
you could also tweak the type a little bit just so it would have a bit of depth, play around with the effects by double clicking the T on the text layer and adjusting ( inner shadows, drop shadows and strokes).

Illustration wise, though, I actually like their faces they have great character, expressions, and variety.
so I'm gonna live it up to that.

[JyonnyNovice]

Kurt Yea I do see that now after being away from it for a while, the flowers do compete for attention. I realise I didn't stick to my original value structure (although couldn't have got the pink and white if I did). Something to learn for next one to check and double check stuff as I move from one stage to the next so my carefully planned out stuff doesn't get wasted! Thanks you guys for the crits : )

Some life drawing stuff, feels really weak again. I'm kind of blaming my inexperience with charcoal, so hopefully as I get more used to it they'll improve. Fighting the urge to switch back to pencil next week - need to keep up the ink practice too since I can't do it anymore ¬_¬






(head structure is hella warped in this one >.<)


Also a kind of progress check, ended up at my city museum today and drew these two sculptures I drew in June 2014, comparing those and today's to see how much I improved since then.

(2014)


(Today)


^ I actually really like the first one, feels like there is more character to it, but the second one is obviously better technically.





Today's ones are just crappy phone camera snaps, I might scan them sometime to give a proper comparison.

[BlackDelphin]

Quite the improvement in these 26 pages! Especially with your figure studies, they are a lot better.
And if you're at that point where you feel like you're drawing worse than before, keep pushing through it, it usually happens when you're at a crosspoint and if you go on, you'll evolve and be better.

Cheers!

[JyonnyNovice]

BlackDelphin Hey! thanks for the encouragement, I'm pushing through it! I'll come check out your stuff soon too ^^


All kinds of madness going on around me for the last few weeks. No place to draw, after going to the library for 2 days it closed down for a month for building work. Just been sketching and practising stuff in my sketchbook at spare moments and going to life drawing. Got my drawing space back now though so should have more to show in the coming weeks.

Some stuff from life drawing:

Felt stuck a bit like I mentioned above so switched back to pencil and decided to approach it with a more clear goal, like Smrrr suggested I do. Focusing on construction and overlaps this time, feel much better about it since I felt like I learned a lot.







I've been reading Vilppu's Drawing Manual a lot this last week or so and also watched some Jeff Watts quicksketch - next week I'll try to approach it like I did above with more time on construction, using some Vilppu techniques (gesture with movement to the lines with spherical and boxy forms on top to clearly show pinch / stretch / twist) and try and map the shadows on top like Jeff Watts does. Seems like a pretty solid and systematic approach to studying anatomy from life. Like this one (I erased the construction lines):



Lastly a WIP watercolour portrait of my little girl for my painting class:



The head body connection is all kinds of messed up since the shoulders start in the wrong place so I'll probably extend the swirly stuff on the left and pull it around and cover up everything below the collar.

[JyonnyNovice]

Finished portrait from last time, forgot to scan it before I put it in the frame for school, the colours look pretty similar to reality from this photo though. Pretty happy with the result in general for my first watercolour portrait. Learned a lot of stuff; mainly to trust in the process - I nearly abandoned it after that last WIP shot because it felt like it was going badly but I didn't rush or panic and stuck with my plan and it improved.

Trad painting stuff I learned

Other thing I learned is that if you want to get a nice glow from the skin, you could do a first wash with something quite bright (like a pure pigment lemon yellow), but quite diluted and pale. I didn't do that and couldn't get the nice glowing look into it. Also to mix really great rich blacks you can use Alizirin Crimson + Viridian + Burnt Umber + Ultramarine, it makes it really easy to shift things towards warm and cool like that and you can use more water to get nice greys too.

I'd like to do drawings around the mounting paper inside the frame of all the things she's scared of (lions, snowmen, men with beards etc.) then do another painting brighter and happier with drawings of all the things that make her happy (kung fu panda, balloons, birthday candles etc.) and hang them next to each other somewhere, so she can see all the scary things and get used to them and get over them and feel nice seeing all the happy things. Let's see if I ever get around to that idea XD

[JyonnyNovice]

trying some timed figure drawing with watercolour, its pretty fun, and some scribbly ideas for the crimson crucible.

[StardustLarva]

Hey there Jon, your watercolour work is really getting better and better. That portrait you did in particular looks excellent.

[Eyliana]

I love the portrait :) I hope to get a bit better at it soon as well! And all the watercolour paintings always have this stage that they look horrible before they get better ;).

I found this videa on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyfyDfuI1tE
Painiting of a portrait in real time, so you actually can see what is happening. Maybe it is helpful for you as well.

[JyonnyNovice]

Stardust Thanks man! I still feel really amateur but that's to be expected I suppose : )
Eyliana Thanks for the link! I must remember it and watch it fully before the next portrait I do.

Took my watercolour paints to life drawing for the first time, was pretty fun. We also did for the first a set of 30 second poses which was really great! I am always so conscious of the cost of the paper though, so it makes me hold back from doing a lot of quick practice with paint (like 75p / $1 per page! and that's actually really reasonably priced!). Focusing mainly on gesture and also construction for the longer poses.











A few random pages from my little sketchbook, from various places over the last month or so. I keep this at home so don't post much from it but I draw in it most days, all stuff from imagination or stuff around me.

[smrr]

Damn Jonny! These last watercolour figure studies are divine
*slithers back into cave*