getting started with digital drawing!

**R&F** · July 1st, 2009, 10:33 AM

Hey thanks for visiting my sketchbook, I can definitely see progress in your work, but I think that from the beginning you try to jump over few steps, it would be nice to see more of good old construction drawing (Loomis, Hogarth etc.) that would bring a bit more clarity into your style, which btw. is quite interesting, anyways keep it up

**ajvenema** · July 1st, 2009, 11:44 AM

R&F: thanks for the feedback, maybe its time for me to finally jump into one of those books

i'm totally bored cuz it feels like i can't do anything useful, everything i do doesnt seem to add anything to my previous work. bad working vibe!
then finally i decided maybe it was time to bring back the fun and i stopped the pretentious painting, and started to produce things that were a bit smaller, faster and without the feeling being afraid to mess up.
sounds logically right now, but back then it was kind of an eye opener. i have one of those every once in a while

anyway, started working with pen, pencil and oils. i really start to love the way oils paint! lots to discover... already noticed that wiping the whole thing with terpentine gives a nice blurry effect. probably something everybody discovers when washing off his brushes from oils the first time

i had a lot of fun and i i'll just go on with this!

**jatherip** · July 2nd, 2009, 02:10 PM

you have a very nice style...like it! keep going

btw thanks for visiting my sketchbook

**ajvenema** · July 2nd, 2009, 05:22 PM

jatherip: good to hear!

i went to the park today, good weather. read a book and sketched a little.
i also studied brdigeman but won't post it i think...
was the first time i studied bridgeman, and i think he has some good points! dont think i really used it when sketching in the park though... probably it will help me when i study a bit more

here are the park drawings

**ajvenema** · July 3rd, 2009, 09:33 AM

more lifedrawing and a sucky oil portrait

**ajvenema** · July 3rd, 2009, 09:44 AM

forgot this!
oil sketch, crappy still-life, and a portrait i kinda like. its not really good looking, but i learned a lot about oil, and how to use them to create smooth transmissions between the different values, so im a happy holiday boy at the moment

**ajvenema** · July 4th, 2009, 12:10 PM

new oil stuff. i like the medium

**ajvenema** · July 5th, 2009, 11:34 AM

quick update:
portrait
sketch
and a painting thats really going the wrong way im afraid...

**•Lindsay•** · July 5th, 2009, 08:50 PM

Hey, thanks for posting in my sketchbook. I like these portraits.

Maybe this is my personal taste, but I don't think you should paint so thickly. I think the paint is easier to control if you paint it thinner, and it takes a more advanced artist to use thick paint.

You aren't paying attention to the borders of your paintings. With portraits especially, this makes a big difference, even when you're just doing quick studies.

Look closely at caucasian skin. If you're white, get a mirror. It's different colors all over the face.

Actually, it's not so much the colors, but the values. Values are more important than colors. If you make these paintings greyscale, you'll see what I mean. To be totally honest, there there is a lot of stuff you need to work on in order to make these paintings work. Keep going.

**YihyoungLi** · July 6th, 2009, 08:37 AM

I'm definitely not an oil painting guru--or much of an oil painter at all--but I think that painting opaquely/thickly is what most beginners should start out with. However, you may want to handle the colors more carefully. In a lot of your paintings, there seem to be strokes upon strokes upon strokes: which can muddy the colors. Try placing your brush more deliberately, moving in and out of shapes, etc. to establish what you see in the first mark. That will most likely make your paintings clearer and more beautiful.

**Yngling** · July 6th, 2009, 01:23 PM

I guess you're using the oils as they come out of the tube, right? Might be good to experiment with adding oil/mediums/turpentine to it. Mediums can smooth things out a bit, so that the strokes flow more easily. By adding turpentine you get more diluted surfaces.
Personally I'm used to working in layers. I begin with a rough sketch with turpentine/medium added, really thin and dries very quickly. Then I gradually build up the painting with increasingly 'fat' paint, with less turps added and more oil. This is, I believe, one of the rules of oil: 'fat over lean', as I see it called mostly. Of course, the amount of layers is up to you.
If you're working wet in wet, only a few layers, the long drying time means that colours mix easily, and become grey and dull. It's something to watch out for.
That concludes this lecture

I must say I'm by no means an expert, but this is what I know about it.

Sketches from life are looking great as ever, I like how you've incorporated shading into them. The lying people are a great example of this.

**ajvenema** · July 7th, 2009, 02:41 PM

hmm, 3 highly useful reactions, i couldnt be happier

linzoy: thanks for your words, your right. only im not sure about the thick paint, plus i just like too much to play around with it

what do you mean with the borders? outer borders of the painting, or inside the painting?

yihyoungli: thanks for the advice, i appreciate it!

yngling: thanks for that lecture

i knew about turpentine, but didnt really use it yet in combination with the thick paint. what about oils, u actually add more oil to the paint?

i havent been too productive, but here's a wip. i like where its going.

**Yngling** · July 8th, 2009, 06:08 PM

Yeah, by adding oil the paint gets more oily

The exact advantage of that, I couldn't tell you. BTW, what are you painting on? Paper? Paper tends to soak up the oil, thus losing a bit of the colour depth. Maybe you should consider buying some Gesso. It's a kind of white (acrylic) paint that seals almost any surface and provides an excellent surface to paint on. That way, you can paint on almost anything! I'm always collecting scraps of wood to turn into paintings

**erik-jan v/d schuur** · July 8th, 2009, 06:32 PM

yeh try to work with turpentine you can make verry nice strokes then!!
and mix colors before you put it on the paper.

you might wanna try sometime to start with a light beige/brown
surface then sketch the drawing what you want with darker paint
on top of it.. then light up the highlights with white then add skin colours
or whatever colors you want to use and add shadow.. its important
i guess that you got strong lightting and shadows so that you got more
depth in it and that the forms stand out more..

i think its verry good that you mess around with it.. so its just
something you could try sometime... maybe you like to work like
that... maybe you dont, maybe you find new ideas or improve things..

**ajvenema** · July 10th, 2009, 08:42 AM

yngling: hmm, i think we discussed this kind of stuff yesterday

ej: thanks for the input

ill keep it in mind!

ok, i decided my portraits are kinda crappy. not in the last place because i simply don't really get the planes of the face and stuff. my basics lack. so i decided to start studying bridgmans head section. i wont tire you with my studies, but i will with the results of when i started to implement what i learned into pencil sketches. there are 2 or 3 among them i copied from mischeviouslittleelf( or something like that) to learn from the nice directions he chooses.

they're all from pictures, and i think some of them particulary look like that, so i guess i should do a self portrait again, or find some live models...

**•Lindsay•** · July 11th, 2009, 01:45 AM

Your heads are looking better. By the boarders I meant the space around the head, it looks weird if you leave huge patches white without thinking about it.

**ajvenema** · July 11th, 2009, 05:23 PM

lindsay: thanks for explaining, and im glad youj see progress in those faces!

here's a really quick update, going on holidaysss!!
see you all in a week or 2!~hope to bring back a lot of good art stuff

**JeanShade** · July 18th, 2009, 01:33 PM

Heya.

Solid amount of work you have going on here. Love the oil portrait man, its a good attempt, can't wait to see more.

Cheers!

**Brendan N** · July 30th, 2009, 03:13 AM

hey, thanks for dropping by my book. you got some cool looking things in here, like there experimental type of approach you have: think you should develop it even further. don't analyze things in terms of how you think they should look, but in terms of how they look right now. judge each of the elements in your composition on how they contribute to the image, how they understand the other elements in the image. Don't get caught up with how a single part looks.

For instance, in this image:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/att...1&d=1246723763

The interesting linework and flat colours are liking each other, they know what to do with each other if I can put it that way. The intensity and delicacy of the line complements the broadness of the flat background colour. The blue line acts as a complementary colour to the beige (I think you can introduce more ocher here). But the colours you worked into the shirt and shorts of the figure are overstating this relationship, so rather introduce a fourth colour in a way that will help the other two. This way your image won't just be pretty, but interesting too.

Also just a small comment on your pencil shading - less hairiness, more uniformity, and your shaodws will read better an be less distracting. Don't allow the constituents of an element vie for attention, leave that to the juxtaposition of elements themselves.

cool stuff here overall, like where you're going

>>

**ajvenema** · August 20th, 2009, 05:08 PM

jeanshade: thanks, ill make some new soon!

brendan: thanks for the really useful reply, i get real happy when people give me such depthful crits

ok, im back from holidays, did quite a bit of sketching, but i dont feel like scanning them because it isnt really any different from whats on here already... now that im back home ive started making more interesting stuff again, ill get some pictures tomorrow! i also bought a nice computer so i thought it might be nice to start exploring illustrator a little. so heres my first meeting with illustrator, used some holiday sketches for it. advice is really apprciated!

**Yngling** · August 20th, 2009, 05:29 PM

Glad to see you're posting again

. I think the first one you posted works very well! It compliments the linework, I think. The lines in your sketches are always pretty loose and don't always describe the form very accurately. Not meant as a real crit, it's one of the things that make your sketches come alive! It works so well because the addition of these simple, concrete blocks of colour helps to define things more, and adds colour as a bonus!

I like the first much better than the second, could have to do with the composition on nr. 1 being nicer. Or perhaps you filled it too much. I really liked how the bag in nr.1 was just blank paper. You could really use the addition of colour to stress the focal point, not just to fill everything, it takes away form the strength nr. 1 has. Also, I am not sure the colours work so well together, the red and light blue scream for attention, while they are minor elements, really.

Good experimentin'!

**ajvenema** · August 21st, 2009, 09:24 AM

yo yngwie! thanks for letting your light shine over it! i guess you're right. im getting too enthausiastic just filling everything plus it feels like cheating, too just block in some stuff for the best results seems too easy! but then again i think there should be a better way than just color everything as much as possible...i'll keep it in mind for the next one!

here are some new things. I wanna improve my portraitdrawing, as well as environments and buildings, so thats what i want to focus on in my sketching from now.
also some experimental painting/drawing. its just so much fun making good pictures didnt really seem to work well though...

**ajvenema** · August 28th, 2009, 03:55 AM

im sorry, it has been a busy week again so far. i cant find the time to make good pictures, so theres only another digi now. hope ill be back with more soon!

**bouroune** · August 28th, 2009, 07:39 AM

hey ajvenema,
long time no see your sketchbook, your faces sketches are improving nicely, continue in that way! and i really like those buildings sketches too, great life in them!
keep on working!

**ajvenema** · September 5th, 2009, 01:24 PM

thanks bouroune!

small update:

**Philipp Scherer** · September 20th, 2009, 07:33 AM

wohoooooo *winkywinky*

long time since my last visit.
good improvement as i can see, last portrait is nice. nice nice nice! you keep at you style, i like that. the girl of post #321 is great. i like the colours. well done. you also do some environment studies, i´d like to see more of them, i think you style fits to/with environments.
cheers

and, hey, please one update

want to see more

**jatherip** · October 5th, 2009, 08:53 AM

your lines are even better now!

well, long time since ive been here

id recommend some less stylized studies though....although i like you "sketchy" oils

keep goin!

**ajvenema** · October 9th, 2009, 11:25 AM

jatherip: thanks and i will do that if i find the time somewhere

herrleerzeichens: welcome back, thanks for the input

maybe i should do more enviros, but i never REALLY do it

still i should start with it...

yoyo!
its been a while again

have been quite busy, made a lot of stuff what i might upload later. in the mean time some pictures of a sculpture me and a classmate are copying from Folkert de Jong. amazing artist!
plus a sketch and a cover proposal for school
hope ill be updating more frequently again!
enjoy!

**ajvenema** · January 11th, 2010, 02:10 PM

wow, its been a loooong while!
finally got the chance for osme good photographing, and scanned some stuff as well.

sketches, most very fast from life:
hope to be back soon!

**LostFayth** · January 11th, 2010, 03:06 PM

Hey, you have a nice amount of sketches going on here

Funny how you seemed to figure out I live in the Netherlands just by going trough my sketchbook. Um...looking at the pictures (of the sculpture) and seeing you mention Folkert de Jong makes me thing your Dutch as well

Yeah, I go to the WDKA. I do the fine art and design teacher training (Docent beeldende kunst en vormgeving in Dutch).