Peter's Sketchbook

[Peter]

Yo dude! I was super impressed by the amount and quality of your studies the 1st time i went through your sketchbook and I'm glad to see you doing some illustration and using those skills. Here's just a quick paintover of the poster. I really dig the composition, but i think the way your elements overlap isn't very clear in some parts because of them being similar value, so i just added some darks and whites to strengthen the silhouettes of the figures overlapping.
Also, you had an odd tangent with baby yoda's ear and the fingers, so i just moved it a bit


Hope that's useful, and keep grinding man, nice work!

Hey ognjisa thanks for taking the time do a paint over for me :) Yh I was having abit of a tough time with the value structure since I was only using 5 colours it was driving me crazy!

Haha yh I fell into the habit of going super hard on studies and not applying what I was learning to my own work since I'd always see where I needed to improve, and would then fall into the cycle of endlessly trying to fix all of my weaknesses and not actually create anything.

Trying to take a page out of your book and work on my idea generation and start cranking finished ideas out. I'm loving all the work your putting out man, it's giving me the itch to do the same :)

[Peter]

Decent work. Better adjust the oval of the gun barrell end to be correct in perspective. Don't want such a blatant rookie error to take away from the nice overall comp

Hey who....shit. Thanks for pointing out the issue with the gun barrel, can you tell my perspective skills need some work?

I thought it looked abit weird but I wasn't really sure, atleast I know it's off.

[Peter]

Busy atm with new live streaming classes over at Watts so once the classes are over or if I can squeeze some time in, I'll fix the issues on my poster that where pointed out.

Work from last week.

Wanted to shift gears and take a break from figure/portrait work and focus on other areas that I need to improve on, mainly painting.

I'm taking 3 live streaming classes:

1. Oil painting fundamentals
2. Landscape painting
3. Tonal illustration

I wanted to focus on painting for abit with the intention of doing more finished illustrations (hence the class choices). I was hoping to squeeze in some perspective practice and continue with anatomy studies but these classes and other work I'm doing is tkaing up all of my time. I'm hoping to squeeze in some anatomy pratice in this week and I'll probably go back to perspective once these classes are over in a few weeks time.

Tonal Illustration

There isn't really a set goal or criteria for this class, it's simply showing us different ways of working and different materials and how to use them and producing a finished drawing which you could ten use as reference for a finsihed painting.

Thought this class would be the perfect chance to work on my idea generation and produce pieces that I could devleop into a finished painting. 1st week I went with a medieval/fantasy theme, showing an adventurer on his mount.

Roughs




Finished Linework




Shot some reference of myself for the main figure and used reference I found online for thew rest of the image, especially the elk since I have zero experince with drawing animals.

Finished drawing




Feedback




Landscape Painting

Finished piece




Think I spent around 3 hours in total on this. I'm trying to treat it as plein air painting and not spend too many hours on it. 

Ref




Oil painting fundamentals

First week is a simple lay-in




Ref




Apart from that I've been doing some reading, mainly "Alla Prima", and "Vision" I believe (can't remember the full title). My intention was do some goauche master studies to help me work on colour but after reading some of "alla prima" I thought it would be a good idea first to do the suggested exercies and produce colour swatches based on the palette I'm using.

For starters I took James Gurney's suggested beginner plein air palette which is titanium white, yellow ochre, cad red, and ultramarine blue.




I've started doing another chart based off Jeff Watt's palette for gouache master studies but it's gonna take me awhile since there are 13 colours.

I think I might also do a colour chart based off the landscape painting class palette aswell as I was having a hard time correctly mixing colours. I find doing swatches to be a good approach for me and how I think as I find it much easier to recall these swatches and how to mix them rather than trying to recall a painting that I did and trying to remember how I mixed a certain colour

[Thomas]

Quite high quality work, as far as i see. A sight, and level, anyone can aspire to reach, who wants to be realistic/semi-realistic in their work. Glad i found your sketchbook thread. Cheers!

[Peter]

Quite high quality work, as far as i see. A sight, and level, anyone can aspire to reach, who wants to be realistic/semi-realistic in their work. Glad i found your sketchbook thread. Cheers!

Hey Thomas thanks for stopping by. Glad you like my work so much :) Your'e giving me far to much credit haha.

[Peter]

Abit of a delay in posting, just been super busy trying to get the assignements done on time whilst also getting some other work in. Just gonna dump work for the past 2 weeks starting with my feedback.

Feedback

Tonal Illustration

Week 2




Landscape Painting

Week 1




Week 2




Oil Painting Fundamentals

Week 1




Week 2




Homework

Tonal Illustration

Week 2

Erik asked us to create a were-creature of sorts, combining human/animal anatomy.

My first idea was a dragonfly/assassin type of character which I took up to a rough sketch (before taking some reference pics to help with the pose) but I just wasn't really liking the design I had (it seemed alot cooler in my head) so I decided to work on another idea instead.

Roughs








2nd idea was a pig mechanic which in my head made alot more sense to me in terms of how he would look and his pose.

Roughs




Final Drawing (with reference)




Finished piece




Not sure if I like this technique or not as I felt like I was fighting with it alot. We were using vellum with a wax pencil and isopropyl alcohol to spread the pencil and basically tone the drawing, which we would then re work with penciul again or a rubber.

Week 3

Went back to my medieval theme.

Roughs




Finished drawing (with ref) 




Value Comp




Finished piece




Had a really hard time using markers and blending them to create believeable form. Erik's way of working was using the markers on the back of the paper and then rendering on the front side which did not work for me at all (makers would barely show through when I worked on the back of the paper).

I also feel like I’m still relying on photo reference too much i.e. copying what I am seeign rather than bending the photo reference to fit my rough comp if that makes any sense? Not 100% sure how to address this, might ask Erik for this weeks crit. I feel like it is mostly a gap in my knowledge.

Landscape Painting

Still struggling alot with colour, specifically correctly mixing what I am seeing and achieveing colour harmony. I'm thinking once these classes are over I might sign up to one of the colour courses on schoolism, maybe Nathan Fowkes, and try and make sense of it all.

Week 2




Oil Painting Fundamentals

Week 2

[Peter]

Update for last week




Feedback




Tonal Illustration









Landscape Painting










Oil Fundamentals










Assingements




Tonal Illustration




My original idea was to have an explorer hiding from a troll which I liked in my intial sketch on the left but I was struggling with it when working on the rough on the right. I think it was because I was trying to draw things that I don't have much practice with like landscapes and creature design. Maybe if I shot some ref that might of helped. I still like my intial sketch and the idea behind it so I'd like to revisit it at a later date and see if I can work it out.










I abandoned that idea and decided to use an idea from last week that I liked but didn;t think fit the themeI was going for last week.




Rough









Finished drawing (using reference)









Value Comps









Finished Piece




Wasn't really happy with the finished piece, maybe if I worked smaller it might of helped (this is 11x17) as I was limited by time. I still like my finished drawing that I did so I want to have another go at this, probably do a tight sketch of it using graphite as opposed to charcoal which I used here, and then develop it into a painting.









Landscape Painting




Thought my landcape painting this week was a lot better than my previous ones, for starters I wasn't struggling as much when it came to trying to mix colours.










Ref









Oil Fundamentals



Not happy with my painting here though. We are using the zorn palette now but I was having a hard time trying to mix the colours in the light (the reds/yellows). Not sure if I was over thinking or what but it wasn't making much sense to me.









Ref









Anatomy Tracing



Forgot to upload this from the other week.

[JosephCow]

Wow, you've been busy! I like the composition of the skeleton with armour drawing, that's an interesting perspective.

The first monochrome painting of the skull (cat, i guess) looks amazing, and the solid painting of it from what is shown looks nice . The second zorn pallete one I agree didn't turn out as well, I think it's always a difficulty in an alla prima method of preserving the color and intensity of lighting because the colors can get dulled so easily. If you put the ref in black and white you can also see that everything on the skull is almost the same value with very delicate changes. That's very tricky to do.

[Peter]

Wow, you've been busy! I like the composition of the skeleton with armour drawing, that's an interesting perspective.

The first monochrome painting of the skull (cat, i guess) looks amazing, and the solid painting of it from what is shown looks nice . The second zorn pallete one I agree didn't turn out as well, I think it's always a difficulty in an alla prima method of preserving the color and intensity of lighting because the colors can get dulled so easily. If you put the ref in black and white you can also see that everything on the skull is almost the same value with very delicate changes. That's very tricky to do.

Thanks Joseph :) I've been trying to push myself more lately and really squeeze all I can out of a day. Let's see how long I can keep the momentum up.

I feel comfortable working in pick out or monochromatic since I have experience doing it, once I apply colour however it seems it all goes out of the window. With the zorn painting I think my biggest mistake was not doing a pick out first where I could resolve the value scheme and shape design etc. I did an under painting (drawing?), quickly mapped out my lights and darks and then jumped into colour where I tried to resolve colour,value and shape design all at once. Definitely got ahead of myself. Didn't help that value changes where so minimal in the ref like you said.

Btw it's a bear skull I beleive. :)

[Peter]

Been swamped with getting work done so I've fallen behind abit on updating.

Anyway here goes. :)

Tonal Illustration

For the final week I wanted to depict a female warrior. I was going for a viking/tribal vibe with this one trying to depict her as charging into battle.

Rough




Final Sketch




Didn't change too much compared to my rough, mostly just refining areas. Re drew the face as the proportions felt abit off to me and I shot some reference to help with the lighting and the folds of the clothes. Also used my own reference to help depict her right arm better since I was struggling with the proportions in my rough.

Value comp




Some value comps to help with the final piece. Left image is a comp using my rough sketch which I then refined on the right once my final sketch was completed.

Finished Piece




We were doing burnt umber pick outs for this last week. I felt confident going in since I have experinece with the technique but I'm not particulary happy with the end result. I was working at 11x16 inches which I thought would be fine for the finished painting but I really struggled with with the finer details like the face and sword, and depicting the shapes that I had maped out in my sketch.

I found my brushes to be too big (even though I was using sizes 1-3) so I'm not sure if it's my brush control that is lacking or perhaps I was simply working too small?

I plan on redoing this piece since I like my sketch and take it to a finish once I have some more practice with colour.

Landscape Painting




Final painting for Ben's class. I feel like my colour choices are improving, if slightly, like my tonal peice above I struggled with depicting the finer details using my brushes.

Ref




Oil painting fundamentals

Under Painting




I decided to spend more time on this compared to last week. Last week I did a line drawing in paint which I mapped out into my light darks and then jumped straight into colour without working out my vlaue structure first which I think is what screwed me over. It's definitely good to do that sort of practice but I think I was getting ahead of myself so this week I did a burnt umber pick out first so that when it came to applying colour I could just focus on correctly mixing my colours and edge work.

Final Painting




Think the final result turnt out better than last weeks. I tried pushing the warm/cool relationship but I think I pushed the warmth on the right hand side way too much.

Ref




Proko Challenge

Decided to take part in the proko challenge for September using the work flow that I used for Erik's reilly painting class back in Spring.

Pick out




Progress




Finish




I decided to go with a painting for the challenge. I thought about doing a drawing since I have more practice compared to painting and could of produced something better, but I thought i'd go with a painting to get the practice in.

I've watched some of the critiques, just need to compile my notes into photoshop and annotate as usual which I'll make a start on later and post tomorrow.

[Peter]

Here are all of my feedback notes for each class over the last few weeks

Week 4

Tonal Illustration




Landscape Painting




Oil Fundamentals




Week 5

Tonal Illustration




Landscape Painting




Oil Fundamentals




Going to try and figure out what to work on next until the next term starts. Thinking of going back to my colour charts that I started and doing some perspective work, either watching lectures and making notes or start working thorugh some exercises (such as the course on NMA).

For the Winter term I was thinking of taking Erik's Spectrum class since I wanted to start attempting more finished illustrations. With the tonal illustration class I liked some of my ideas and finished line drawings that I produced. Just need to take that next step and start taking my ideas to a finish. Got a bunch of questions that I'd like to ask about process and building up a painting (layers) aswell. :slight_smile:

Also planning on taking Meadow's Colour Observation class to help me work on understanding colour better, plus Tom suggested that my next step should be either a portrait/life class, or a still life class (which I assume it will be?). Might take Jeff's portrait class and/or pet portrait class as an audit option depending on how much it would all cost which I will need to figure out.

[Peter]

Can't beleive I haven't updated in a month..... Once the last term ended I decided to play catch up on my colour charts that I started  but didn't get round to finishing (think I mentioned doing it in my last post? or previous one).

Thought I'd wait till I finished it before posting them all which I finally have haha.

I was using the colour palette that Jeff recommended for his master studies class which I was auditing with the intention of getting back into master studies but didn't get around to in the end due to not having the time.

I was planning on getting back into sketchbooking (taking Jeff's class actually as an audit) so i'll epxlore some studies there.

Anywhere here are the charts based on Richard Schmid's exercise:

Here are all the colours on there own without any mixing (apart from white)




These are the mixed charts (2 colours)


























Realised I haven't drawn in charcoal in around 2 months so I decided to get some practice in with a quick portrait and a figure study.

Portrait

Thought I'd stick to class times for this one. Definitely showing the rust! messed up with the placement of the eyes and made her head abit too narrow.  I was also thinking of doing some long graphite drawings to help with accuracy/rendering aswell, not sure if that is the best practice or not?




Figure

Decided not to time myself on the figure study. Just spent the time necessary on each stage before progressing. I think in the future I'm going to do more studies untimed, focus on getting the drawing accurate and properly rendered and the more I do it "correctly" the quicker I will become mover time, rather than just sticking to shorter studies. Also getting into the habit of doing a quick anatomy tracing beforehand aswell to aid me.




Live Stream

Taking 2 critqiued classes this term. Spectrum Illustration and Observational colour. Also taking 2 audit classes. Sketchbooking and Animal Portraiture.

Spectrum

Here's my assignment for week 1. Doing rough comps for an illustration of our own design.

My idea was "Lover's embrace". Depicting one lover holding/embracing the other who is either dead or dying. Played around with the mood on these, experimenting with a more dynamic/emotional depiction (1 and 2), a more intense/foreboding depiction (2 and 4), and some subtle depictions (3 and 5).




Atm I'm liking the look of 4 and 5, more so to 5 so not really sure which one I'll go with. I'll see what feedback Erik gives me and go from there.


Plein Air

Did a small colour chart for plein air painting which I was planning on giving ago next week. DFollowing james Gurney's advice and sticking to 3 colours + plus white to start which are yellow ochre, venetian red, ultramarine blue, and titanium white.

[JosephCow]

Dang that's a lot of color swatches. Is this gouache? I remember kind of reading about doing that somewhere, do you think it's helpful to do?

Anyway, the figure drawing kind of got me thinking about approaches to drawing, and I wanted to paint on the image, hopefully you don't mind.

The weird thing about this ref is that there's definitely two distinct values in the shadows, I guess owing to two different light sources. You have to always prioritize what info you want to include, and what you're going to leave out since the medium is just not conducive to rendering everything exactly. You insist on preserving those two different values and keeping them separate, whereas it might serve the form better to just combine them, and make everything one shadow.

It would probably make your form read a lot more clearly if you tried to unify the shadows a lot more in general. The more even the tone of the shadow is, the more clearly the gradations in the light read against it, and that way you can depend less on kind of outlining the terminator line so that the shadow shape doesn't get lost.
You could do that by just taking a stump or something and just massing the whole shadow together, it would fill in all the gaps and make it more even, or just going over it with the tip of a pencil. Something I've noticed about Watts style studies is that there's often a real insistence on emphasizing that terminator line, to the point where it almost becomes a mannerism. There are some Watts atelier drawings that are absolutely beautiful, but you don't want to be manneristic either. You can keep the light and shadow separate just by unifying them.

If you just take a few pieces of forms from the drawing and look at them separately, hopefully you can see what I mean. You can render the form simply, by just having the right transition from an even toned shadow, and the line at the terminator isn't really helping anything. I also find that you have to omit most of the information in the light halftones, because there just isn't enough range to record that info without sacrificing the big read of the form. On the breast and the knee as well, do we need that shade around the highlight to make it pop out? I think you get a much broader effect by focusing on the dark halftones, where the light turns into shadow, and practically ignoring the light halftones.

That's just my thought on it, but I guess someone could argue it's just a different style of doing things.

[Who]

I just wanted to say that I agree entirely with Joseph. Watts produces cookie cutter artists in the figurative sense with drawing because of exactly the way the terminator line is always overemphasised. It tends to make even great renderings less naturalistic and often feeling a little strange. It can be very useful for learning, especially in learning to observe, but I think becomes detrimental if adhered to religiously. Ofc it is your choice as it is a stylistic choice and preference.
I would add also, don't be scared to use background tones to blend the figure into. This can be a great aesthetic choice and also you get to practice those juicy lost edges on a larger scale. 
I think at some point you need to do a hands intensive. You seem to be focusing on the contour for details but often simplify the fingers with unnatural shapes and I think you lose the sense of the overall rhythms which make up fingers. Some even have "sausage finger syndrome" to be mean. The skeletal structure of the hand dictate the complex curves of the fingers quite a lot. Each finger segment tapers from thick at base to thinner, with a concave taper in between. However the fat pads can sometimes mean the finger can get wider mid joint. It really depends on the pose and the person, but understanding these factors and studying them specifically will likely help you simplify better. Studying the arcs of the knuckles and of the finger joints across the hand as a gesture are also very useful for proportion.

Wrt to the swatches. I commend you! This is exactly the kind of work that most people would avoid and discount and produces an absolute wealth of knowledge and learning in one of the hardest subjects to master which is colour mixing. And just look at Richard Schmid's work. If he recommends it highly it is not to be taken lightly. I often reread Alla Prima for the deceptively huge amount of relevant insight held within and always come out from each reading with some newly understood nugget to work with. Good on you man!
Both you and Joseph are on a good path and I love the patient considered Intelligent approach you are both following which is nice to see here. I'm sure both of you are going to go on from strength to strength. Keep it up!

[Peter]

Dang that's a lot of color swatches. Is this gouache? I remember kind of reading about doing that somewhere, do you think it's helpful to do?

Anyway, the figure drawing kind of got me thinking about approaches to drawing, and I wanted to paint on the image, hopefully you don't mind.

The weird thing about this ref is that there's definitely two distinct values in the shadows, I guess owing to two different light sources. You have to always prioritize what info you want to include, and what you're going to leave out since the medium is just not conducive to rendering everything exactly. You insist on preserving those two different values and keeping them separate, whereas it might serve the form better to just combine them, and make everything one shadow.

It would probably make your form read a lot more clearly if you tried to unify the shadows a lot more in general. The more even the tone of the shadow is, the more clearly the gradations in the light read against it, and that way you can depend less on kind of outlining the terminator line so that the shadow shape doesn't get lost.
You could do that by just taking a stump or something and just massing the whole shadow together, it would fill in all the gaps and make it more even, or just going over it with the tip of a pencil. Something I've noticed about Watts style studies is that there's often a real insistence on emphasizing that terminator line, to the point where it almost becomes a mannerism. There are some Watts atelier drawings that are absolutely beautiful, but you don't want to be manneristic either. You can keep the light and shadow separate just by unifying them.

If you just take a few pieces of forms from the drawing and look at them separately, hopefully you can see what I mean. You can render the form simply, by just having the right transition from an even toned shadow, and the line at the terminator isn't really helping anything. I also find that you have to omit most of the information in the light halftones, because there just isn't enough range to record that info without sacrificing the big read of the form. On the breast and the knee as well, do we need that shade around the highlight to make it pop out? I think you get a much broader effect by focusing on the dark halftones, where the light turns into shadow, and practically ignoring the light halftones.

That's just my thought on it, but I guess someone could argue it's just a different style of doing things.

Yh it's all in gouache, I thought about doing them in oil but then it's finding somewhere to store threm while they dry and the cleanup since I was doing these daily which made gouache more appealing. Plus I really like gouache :)

I'd say it was helpful in the sense that it made me aware of  just how many colour combinations can be achieved through a palette and just the posibilties through just mixing 2 colours since depending on what I mix I can make a warm green, a cool green, a dull green or a light green etc etc. I think mainly it helped open my eyes and has helped me memorize (to an extent) how to mix certain shades of a particular colour. Tbh I'd like to do a few more of these for a zorn palette and a wam/cool palette although I might wait a little bit since It might be hard to fit it into my schedule.

Thanks for the paint over and the feedback.  :)   I think my main problem which I can't seem to shake is my insistence to try and replicate what I am seeing in front of me, rather than taking artistic license and altering areas that are confusing (like the shadows in this one) and altering it so that it is easier for the viwer to understand. I seem to have the mindset that if I alter or "stray" from the reference then I am no longer depicting what I see in front of me.

I completely agree with the points you made, it's those types of choices that I'd like to make for myself when I am studying but for the life of me I can't seem to alter my approach.

I've been pondering whether I should do more academic studies like yourself such as bargue plates or perhaps purchase some of Juliette Artisde's books and follow her exercises, maybe even look at Dorien Iten's light/shadow course. I'd love to hear your feedback on this, possibly suggest something that I haven't thought of?

[Peter]

I just wanted to say that I agree entirely with Joseph. Watts produces cookie cutter artists in the figurative sense with drawing because of exactly the way the terminator line is always overemphasised. It tends to make even great renderings less naturalistic and often feeling a little strange. It can be very useful for learning, especially in learning to observe, but I think becomes detrimental if adhered to religiously. Ofc it is your choice as it is a stylistic choice and preference.
I would add also, don't be scared to use background tones to blend the figure into. This can be a great aesthetic choice and also you get to practice those juicy lost edges on a larger scale. 
I think at some point you need to do a hands intensive. You seem to be focusing on the contour for details but often simplify the fingers with unnatural shapes and I think you lose the sense of the overall rhythms which make up fingers. Some even have "sausage finger syndrome" to be mean. The skeletal structure of the hand dictate the complex curves of the fingers quite a lot. Each finger segment tapers from thick at base to thinner, with a concave taper in between. However the fat pads can sometimes mean the finger can get wider mid joint. It really depends on the pose and the person, but understanding these factors and studying them specifically will likely help you simplify better. Studying the arcs of the knuckles and of the finger joints across the hand as a gesture are also very useful for proportion.

Wrt to the swatches. I commend you! This is exactly the kind of work that most people would avoid and discount and produces an absolute wealth of knowledge and learning in one of the hardest subjects to master which is colour mixing. And just look at Richard Schmid's work. If he recommends it highly it is not to be taken lightly. I often reread Alla Prima for the deceptively huge amount of relevant insight held within and always come out from each reading with some newly understood nugget to work with. Good on you man!
Both you and Joseph are on a good path and I love the patient considered Intelligent approach you are both following which is nice to see here. I'm sure both of you are going to go on from strength to strength. Keep it up!

Thanks for the feedback aswell Who :) always appeciated. I think at this point the Watts method must be ingrained into me since I didn't really second guess including the terminator line. It was just second nature to me. One one hand it's nice to know that I am memorizing what I am studying, but on the other not so good since it is holding me and my work back.

I think you are the first person to call me out on my hands and feet, I've been expecting this day haha. No I agree completely with your remarks. Hands and feet are one of those things that I keep telling myself that I need to study but I keep pushing back since I think there is something more important that I need to work on. I said to myself actually that I want/need to work on hands/feet which I'm planning on doing in my sketchbook. I was going to follow the Proko videos unless you can suggest something better?

Hahaha thanks :) you are too kind. I've been saying to myself for ages to actually do some of the exercises that he suggests, I'd always find myself when either taking a painting class or doing a paiting I'd alwys get stuck on how to mix the colour that I am seeing, and this exercise seemed like the perfect answer to my question. I ned to go back and read more of his book actually........ Cheers for the kind words :) I'm always hesitant on if my appraoch to studying is working or not, especially when I see other artists improving at incredible rates so it's good to know that what I am doing is effective.

[Peter]

Some work that I've been doing since I last updated.


Feedback

Spectrum

Not a whole lot of feedback since it is still early into developing a finished illustration. Main feedback for week 1 was to try and push the viewing angle some more to create a more interesting piece.




Observational Colour

Week 1




Week 2




Spectrum

Tried developing my comp some more after watching Erk's feedback.




From the 6 I chose the 2 I liked the look of most and again tried pushing the 2nd comp more which is the one that I ended up going with.




2nd week was obtaining photo ref. Had to get abit creative with everything going on, especially where I live which is under tighter restrictions. I was hoping I could hire one of the female models from my life class but as we aren't allowed to meet others where I live I had to settle on using myself for the poses aswell as some figures I have, which was mainly to help with the wet dress.




Also visited some of my local parks to obtain some ref of trees, plants and water.

Observational Colour

Week 1




Week 2




First 3 weeks we are using a palette knife to paint with, focusing more on observing colour and trying to correctly judge colour notes, rather than focus on achieving accuracy. First time using a palette knife to paint with but it was actually rather enjoyable, enjoyed it alot more than I thought I would.

Ref






Sketchbooking

Trying to also get back into sketchbooking so that I can explore different problem areas of mine. I mainly wanted to get back into anatomy studies and work on my hands/feet, aswell as drapery since I really need to work on them. Orignally wanted to work on improving my understanding of anatomy and work on my rendering but this first week took alot longer than I thought to just get these drawings done so I'm thinknig I might go back to studies from books like bridgeman, or master studies and stick to a limited time frame so I can get more done.






I'm also taking Jeff's animal portrait class (audit). I'm abit behind (this was week 1 where we just skctehd some comps). Hopefully I'll have some time this week to do a colour comp and work on the finished painting.




Plein Air

Trying to get back into plein air work, mainly to try and improve on my painting/colour skills. 1st week I went to some local woods and wamred up with some pen and pencil sketching and finsihed with a painting. Oonly spent about an hour on the painting as the weather had changed by that point and the lighting completely changed. Plan on making it a weekly habit (weather depending).




Atm I'm following James Gurney's advice of using 3 colours and white with my palette being Yellow Ochre, Venetian Red, Ultramarine blue, and Titainum White.

Ref

[JosephCow]

  I think my main problem which I can't seem to shake is my insistence to try and replicate what I am seeing in front of me, rather than taking artistic license and altering areas that are confusing (like the shadows in this one) and altering it so that it is easier for the viwer to understand. I seem to have the mindset that if I alter or "stray" from the reference then I am no longer depicting what I see in front of me.

...

I've been pondering whether I should do more academic studies like yourself such as bargue plates or perhaps purchase some of Juliette Artisde's books and follow her exercises, maybe even look at Dorien Iten's light/shadow course. I'd love to hear your feedback on this, possibly suggest something that I haven't thought of?

Honestly it's a little funny that you say that. From my point of view, that’s mostly what I'm doing, too, just looking at it honestly and drawing it like I see it. There's some interpretation involved always, though. Especially with a pencil drawing where you aren't reproducing the true values, or rendering it like a camera does, with no thought to what it being represented. 
There are some aspects of the reference which are objective though, like the shapes of things, and their proportions.  I don’t think my drawing is “correct”, in any case, more trying to illustrate a different point of view of the subject.

I think where academic drawing comes in is that it gives you objective measure for what is “right”. Like, you can look at your drawing, and look at nature, or whatever you are copying, and just honestly evaluate whether the one looks optically like the other or not. It takes out a lot of subjectivity and mental gymnastics which are involved with other methods of learning, which would use construction of 3d shapes, and conventional shading. Which, again, don’t get me wrong, is also good. We probably need some kind of balance.

I think it might bring you into balance to try some things along the academic, optical vein. Like Bargue plates, for example. They’re good drawings to copy because they are simplified, and show you how to consider the bigger picture of them. But it’s not necessarily a magic pill of academic drawing. I think it’s also partly just a rite of passage at this point. It’s almost as much for breaking your attitude as it is for training your eye. If you choose to do it, though. I have to say, that there’s a lot of copies of Bargue plates floating around. People hear it’s a good exercise, and give it a go, but never really spend what it takes, or don’t approach it from the mindset of making them correct, and I don’t think you can get much out of it that way.


But you’re already doing the right kinds of studies, aren't you? You do a lot of studies from reference and nature, trying to get truth of proportion and color. I think it’s just your focus on them that could be different. You could focus a lot more on having the drawing be accurate, taking your time with it.

I'm excited to see your next illustration! you took great references for it. makes me want to try something like that too

[Who]

Wrt to hands and feet. Honestly, I have come to believe that all abstractions are simply that. They are all a system of observing geometry of form expressed through a particular perspective. As such, I cannot predict what will resonate for you and what won't. The onus is on you ultimately. Proko is probably as good as any as are all the other usual contenders for abstraction systems.

My meta advice would be, that once you are done trying one system over another, attempt to look at some reference and find your own rhythms, your own geometry that makes sense to you when breaking down the forms. It never hurts to do master studies, not simply construction abstractions. This becomes more important/useful as you develop past fundamentals and study and into the realms of more authentic expression. Processing through your own filters begins to work on devoping your own aesthetic approach, which ultimately is what I think most artists want to achieve.

Basically. Learn, then experiment yourself. I am only being this vague, because I feel you have a good grasp already on how to learn and what's actually important.

[Peter]

  I think my main problem which I can't seem to shake is my insistence to try and replicate what I am seeing in front of me, rather than taking artistic license and altering areas that are confusing (like the shadows in this one) and altering it so that it is easier for the viwer to understand. I seem to have the mindset that if I alter or "stray" from the reference then I am no longer depicting what I see in front of me.

...

I've been pondering whether I should do more academic studies like yourself such as bargue plates or perhaps purchase some of Juliette Artisde's books and follow her exercises, maybe even look at Dorien Iten's light/shadow course. I'd love to hear your feedback on this, possibly suggest something that I haven't thought of?

Honestly it's a little funny that you say that. From my point of view, that’s mostly what I'm doing, too, just looking at it honestly and drawing it like I see it. There's some interpretation involved always, though. Especially with a pencil drawing where you aren't reproducing the true values, or rendering it like a camera does, with no thought to what it being represented. 
There are some aspects of the reference which are objective though, like the shapes of things, and their proportions.  I don’t think my drawing is “correct”, in any case, more trying to illustrate a different point of view of the subject.

I think where academic drawing comes in is that it gives you objective measure for what is “right”. Like, you can look at your drawing, and look at nature, or whatever you are copying, and just honestly evaluate whether the one looks optically like the other or not. It takes out a lot of subjectivity and mental gymnastics which are involved with other methods of learning, which would use construction of 3d shapes, and conventional shading. Which, again, don’t get me wrong, is also good. We probably need some kind of balance.

I think it might bring you into balance to try some things along the academic, optical vein. Like Bargue plates, for example. They’re good drawings to copy because they are simplified, and show you how to consider the bigger picture of them. But it’s not necessarily a magic pill of academic drawing. I think it’s also partly just a rite of passage at this point. It’s almost as much for breaking your attitude as it is for training your eye. If you choose to do it, though. I have to say, that there’s a lot of copies of Bargue plates floating around. People hear it’s a good exercise, and give it a go, but never really spend what it takes, or don’t approach it from the mindset of making them correct, and I don’t think you can get much out of it that way.


But you’re already doing the right kinds of studies, aren't you? You do a lot of studies from reference and nature, trying to get truth of proportion and color. I think it’s just your focus on them that could be different. You could focus a lot more on having the drawing be accurate, taking your time with it.

I'm excited to see your next illustration! you took great references for it. makes me want to try something like that too

I see where you are coming from, I just think that your intepretation of the ref is much better in my eyes compared to mine and more in line with how I want to see/interpret haha.

I've toyed with the idea of doing bargue plates in the past but I never actively made the time to study from thme. Think i did once before but never continued with it for whatever reason. Only experince i have of doing them is the one I partialy drew on the short course I took last year in Edinburgh. I do feel like my "big picture" is one of my weaker aspects of drawing as I fel like I easily fall into the pit of just focusing area by area rather than the whole so maybe it's time I actively make a conscious effort to fix it by doing some plates.

I've been thinknig for awhile now actually that I need to change my perspective on things so  I think you've hit the nail on the head. I was just didn't know to change ones mindset or actively block my habits.

Thanks but don't get your hopes up on my illustration, I've been struggling alot with it.