The 10000 Hour Rule - Art Edition - 7626/10,000

[BenFlores]

nice rendering on the witch doctor and the design studies seem like a really good idea , i might have to try that out . keep us updated :D

[Warburton]

Fork in the road, thats terrible lol -_-

unlike your studies, which look insane. So much note taking, and it's cool that we can see your progression. Inspiring stuff man, keep it up.

[JakeB]

BenFlores - Cheers man, shall do. Yeah, they helped a ton. Got bored of trying to bullshit armour and stuff the whole time, figured I'd just sit down and try and work it out. Was really useful :)

Warburton - Haha, yeah, my bad lol. Cheers man, the studies are fun. Somehow making notes for art is way more interesting than it ever was at school lol. Really helpful as well.

Today's stuff

Bridgman


Finished up some torso studies


MMA study, trying to apply the torso stuff, or at least keep it in mind. ~1 hour for this one. Didn't do any line drawing, so it was way faster than usual. Might have to do this more often


Applying that from memory


Going back in with reference and making some changes


Pushing the thumbnails a bit further


Working this one up




Lighting study


And application - too tired for this now lol

[JakeB]

Today's stuff.

So, for the first time in forever, I did nothing but study for a whole day.

Basically, I did my anatomy stuff first thing this morning, as normal, and at some point thought "I hate not being able to draw hands"

So, I spent the rest of the day working from Hogarth's dynamic hands book. I figured, most of the time people study anatomy a little bit every day for a long time. So why not mix it up. I'm gonna plough through this book (or the most useful bits anyway) as fast as possible. Think it's gonna pretty much be my morning's for a week or so at least, and see how it goes. Might work, I might learn nothing, who knows ;). I'll report back with the results though lol.

So yeah, anatomy




And those hands
I started with an overview, so these are studies from the first page of each of the first 6(?) chapters


And then started to work through, so these are all from the first chapter


It looks like nothing all compiled like this, but that was my whole day... Oops.

[DanBK]

Page 10 already? damn, you're powering through this sketchbook :P
those studies are looking so awesome man, good idea with the fuck loads of studying - hope it works :)
that page of hands... dayum. <3
keep it up bro!

[JakeB]

Dan - haha yeah, it really sped up when I started posting daily lol ;). Yeah, seems to be working so far at least. Haha, cheers, glad you like it lol. Gaining a whole new appreciation for hands.

Hit 1300 hours here

So, stuff from today.
Anatomy. Today, legs


The rest of chapter 1 of Hogarth's hands


And progress on this dude. Trying greyscale to colour again. Wish me luck ;)





Oh, and today was a little bit of a slow day. In part because I spent a while reorganising my desk after seeing an awesome set up on facebook. So, bonus photo lol

[JakeB]

Wahey, more legs, hands and torch dude

[JakeB]

Hey, no updates for a few days. Here's some recent stuff though.

Work on the torch guy, kinda abandoned it here, didn't really know what I was doing, need to study more I think. Basically the piece was just too big to break down, there was too much I just didn't understand, and that meant I was going round in circles working on it.


So, I decided to work on a portrait instead, figure I can break that down much more easily. Process so far








And then here's the studies I've got done.










Kinda slowing down with the hands now, it got a bit crazy, and pretty dull. But still learning a ton, Hogarth's great :)

[Jonesoda]

Man, so much hard work in here. Your studies look really good and thorough, I like all the note taking as well. I think I might try taking more notes myself. A lot of improvement going on Jake keep it up.

[JakeB]

Jonesoda - Cheers man, yeah the notes help a ton, do it! :). I'll try, thanks for the support :)

Today's stufffffff

Skull studies


Applying and stuff


I started typing up notes for digital stuff, as my handwriting sucks on a tablet, and it was stopping me from actually making any.
Not sure if these will be of any use, but I'll put them here this time, and maybe in future if there's something good, but I doubt it lol.

So, these were for the skulls:

Key landmarksCheek bones, pointy (zygomatic bone), goes out and around the side of the skull, and up past the eye socket
eye and nose sockets
Teeth in centre half
flare out for the teeth from the bones that hold them there
Jaw, comes in from behind
Eye brow.. casts a shadow into the socket
Teeth protrude out
mouth is halfway between nose cavity and bottom of chin
Nose bone pokes (curves) out a bit, just below the top of the eye socket
Zygomatic bone twists like a ribbon
Slight overbite
Zygomatic bone sticks out a long way sideways, cast a big shadow.
Nose pushes forward, think of the form.
Zygomatic bone, triangle sideways

Changes
Longer chin
Think of the form of the cheek and eye socket
Narrower, taller eye sockets. Slightly taller than a square
Zygomatic bone also goes up and past eye socket, leaving the temple behind it.
Eye sockets slant down outward at the top and bottom, steeper at the bottom - Narrower on the inside
Plane change between frontal, and temporal bone of skull. Frontal bone passes in front, creating the forehead. Almost a 90º change
Remember the plane change above the nose.
Narrower chin. Remember the loomis image where the two planks squash the chin
Top teeth block goes very narrow before it widens out again for the teeth.


Planes are very clear.Highlights 90%
Shadows 0%
High value range in the face, therefore the hair is black with only speculars
In the face, there is a lot of texture inside the brightest highlights, and where the forms turn from mid to shadow
Eyes
Bag under eye - 2 planes
Then a more upward plane, before it reaches the side of the nose

Really thin top lip
Slight specular on bottom lid

Changes
Front of cheek plane comedown lower.
More of a split between the eyes and the cheek
Highlight above lips
More nose planes, nostril.
More variation in the planes

Applying


Making changes with ref


Study, really focusing on edges with this one



Round face, mostly soft features. Slight tilt to one side

Gap in the shadow on the side side of the nose. Basically, the plane raises up out of the shadow.

Hard edges going down diagonally from the corners of the mouth

Sharp creases around eyes.

Sharp creases down from the nose, under the cheeks as well.

Sharp nostril, bounce light into the bottom of the nose.

Wrinkles across the forehead, following the form of the cheeks etc are sharp, but a small value change

Fat chin, so the edges under the chin are soft.

Lots of little hard edges in the hair

-Hair basically seems to be lots of alternating hard and soft edges, so… lots of soft brush strokes, erase for hard edges, then go again on a new layer if needed.

Really sharp highlights in the eyes, on a couple of sides of the light at least.

And some more progress on this, going to push to colour tomorrow.


Oh, and some sketching

[JakeB]

Yesterday's stuff

Studying the neck


Using it for an MMA study thing


Applying it from memory


Then tweaking with reference


Design Study - Brienne of Tarth


Memory


Eye Study


Gesture studies - Blue is reference, red is memory


Finished the portrait, gonna leave it as greyscale for now, and try and do the next one through to colour, been working on this for too long I think


And the process, dunno if this is helpful, but I think you can see where I got stuck, and kinda what I learnt while working on it



Aaaaand some sketching, this was fun :)

[JakeB]

Yesterday's stuff

Anatomy


Shoe study


Apply


Face studies and applying




And a portrait

[JakeB]

Design Studies


Faces


Studying Hannes' work a little bit, trying to figure out layers and stuff


Study - playing with hard brushes again, so much fun!!


More Face

[JakeB]

Yesterday's stuff
Noses





Nose study


And one from my head, actually pretty happy with this, learned a ton

[JakeB]

Yesterday's stuff

Eyes...


Eye study


Applying from imagination


Hair study


Been working on this dude for a little bit, just finished the lines

[JakeB]

Passed 1400 Hours here btw guys :)


yesterday's stuff

Studies
Lips


Applying from imagination


Quick faces


Hair


Trying to apply a load of studies in a portrait


Need more studies!!!

[JakeB]

Stuff from the last coupla days

Studies






Trying out a new excercise for studying/using ref. Basically, start off with a direct study, then slowly filter down the amount of reference used

1.Direct study
2.Reposed study
3.Sketching, with multiple references,
4.Look at a reference quickly, then hide it and draw from memory
5.No reference

Hope that makes sense :)





But... most of my time from the last two days has gone into this. Still a WIP. But basically, studying the planes of the face in 3D to try and get a better understanding. So far its been fun and frustrating in pretty much equal amounts.

[JakeB]

No posts for a little while, but I'm back for March, with a new focus... I want to start putting together a portfolio at some point in the near future, but I'm kinda shaky on my initial sketching skills. So, that's what I'm going to focus on. Basically, I want to get faster at the early stages of a piece so that I can create more variations, and have more time to focus on the later parts.

Get ready for lots of quick, crappy, loose work for a little bit.

To start with, I'll be doing this exercise, and we'll see how it goes.
1. Study - Direct copy of the reference
2. Angle Study - Working from a reference, but drawing the subject from a different angle. I find this helps a fair bit, really makes you think about forms
3. Sketch, With Reference - Pretty self explanatory. Make a sketch, then pull up a few different refs to help flesh it out. Try not to pull too much from any one reference
4. Memory Study - Pull up a reference. Make a load of notes, try to visualise it as best I can, pick up as much as possible. Then hide it, and try to draw it from memory. Compare to the reference afterwards. Note mistakes
5. Imagination - Draw without reference.

Aiming for ~10 mins for each one, but to allow for taking notes, and fleshing out the imagination piece a bit more, the whole set takes around an hour :)

And the categories are
1.Faces
2.Figures
3.Composition
4.Characters
5.Hands

Going to rotate through that list, and alternate between digital and pencil.

So yeah, that's what March looks like for me ;)

Stuff so far..
Portrait thing from the other day


And work from that schedule












Pencil stuff












And some other random sketchbook pages





Sweet. As always crits and stuff more than welcome. <3

[JakeB]

Hey all, last couple of days here...

Digital stuff










Traditional










Still working on the same sorta stuff. Added "materials" to the list though, hence the helmets, and I'm going to try to do one longer study/piece every day as well. :)

Any comments always welcome :)

[narcotics]

your studies just keep getting stronger and stronger. keep up the momentum, man. the difference even from the first page to now is pretty great. definitely gonna be keepin an eye on this book.