Leysan's sketchbook

[Leysan]

iLegacy, thanks for your comment.

Here are some more studies, first two from imagination the other two from life. (I need a proper scanner here...)
In the first one I was looking for ideas for the current EOW - treehouse. It's inspired by the climbing forests we have plenty around here.

[Leysan]

I'm trying to do more stuff from imagination again. Here is a Bara no Soretsu inspired sketch. The idea was to have the character lying on the glass floor of a TV tower or something like that.

[iLegacy]

nice! i would turn down the contrast around the figure to make her more prominent.

[Leysan]

Yeah, the tower kinda looks more like a cape here.

Here's another one from memory. It's a scene from Bara no Soretsu I had to think of while watching Germany's next Topmodel with my neighbours (That show is like some gory accident: horrible, but you can't stop looking at it).
I think I messed up the proportions of the head, she doesn't seem to have enough space under that hair for any normal sized brain to fit in. Face looks flat too.



Two more from life:

[iLegacy]

nice! which pencil hardness do you use? i think you could push the contrast with an 8B. brought my pics to a new contrast level. and the tree picture is very cool too but it looks like the midground would immediately stop where the gras stops. maybe some foreground elements would be nice. maybe a dark silhouette from a bush or something like that.

I'll will attend a karate weekend and think about grabbing my sketchbook will see if the are too fast to sketch!

[Leysan]

Cool, I'd love to see your karate sketches

Yeah, that grass looks shitty, there was like short grass in front and longer grass closer to the tree.
I use a 0.5 HB and then 2B and 6B. I also have that big 9B, but it doesn't feel as soft as I expected. Maybe it's better to use black color pencil instead of graphite.

Here, our common room from memory. I messed up the perspective a bit though.

[Leysan]

Some draperies from life. I tried to persuade xsane not to cut off the brighter values, but it didn't quite work. Maybe I should use my windows-pc for scanning cause this sucks.

[GHudston]

There's some real improvement here already. The draperies in your last post are especially nice.

I'd love to see some more stuff in colour!

[Leysan]

GHudston Thank you.
I will practice color too. I'm just not confident enough about my structure and values yet. And also with sketchbook and pencil you can draw everywhere, that's perfect if you have little time, but I'd love to do another more finished digital picture again.

iLegacy You know, I think I'm gonna switch to softer pencil completely, it does make a big difference.

Here's a quick digital sketch. It's half from memory, half from imagination. The lightsource turned out brighter then I intended.
I noticed that I have difficulties placing figures at correct perspective into environments. I'm gonna work on that.


More stuff from life. Draperies on figures seem more difficult than draperies on objects.

[Leysan]

Random figure study from imagination plus mirror. I want to try more different emotions and light, the light still looks too white yet.

[Leysan]

A drapery study from life plus two sketches from imagination.

[Leysan]

"What am I doing here? Does this experiment make sence? Does life have a purpose? ...*click*... Ok, next energy."

[Syle]

Leysan, thanks for visiting my sketchbook!

You have a wonderful SB going yourself. Lots of improvement from the start to where you are at now. Those drapery studies are looking really good. Kudos to you for starting to tackle such a difficult subject.

Keep it up.

[Leysan]

Thanks, Syle

I am doing some facial expression/skintone studies. These are from imagination but I also did some from photos in between. Hope to get out of the uncanny valley soon...

Jeah, and in the time I was painting I should have been studying for university... damn.

[Leysan]

More skintone/head studies. First one is a fanart to Mononoke.

[Leysan]

Monochrome landscapes for Animexx.

[SmallPoly]

Hi Leysan, thanks for responding to my sketchbook.

Your observational pencil work seems to be pretty strong. At the moment my favorites studies here are the drapery study from June 12, the life studies from June 5, and that interior from July 24.

Some of your color portraits have value issues. If you're doing these in Photoshop, you might find it useful to check the values by temporarily showing the image in grayscale.

If you don't already know, a couple ways to do this are to stick a black layer up top set to saturation that you can toggle on and off, or use "proof colors" (eg. set to gray dot gain 20%) which would let you check them with Ctrl+Y.

[Leysan]

SmallPoly, thanks a lot for your compliment and valuable advice. I totally forgot about the values.
I read here often that the value is the most important color dimension, but I ignored this advice until now. I think I'll be a good idea to practice values by painting in grayscale and then coloring, as I saw many people do it. Or do you think that painting in color from the start and checking the values from time to time is the better choice?

Here's a portrait where I did the grayscale version first and then added a color layer:

[Leysan]

Damn, I have abandoned my sketchbook again. Here are some random sketches I did in the last months, but failed to upload. I also did more value studies, but didn't scan them yet.

[iLegacy]

sehr geil! i like the "kuli"-hair and the first metal thingies (dont remember the english words)

[Leysan]

Thanks Simon
Lectures are really good for practicing hair I used to sketch a lot of people's backs when I still had more lectures.

Here are some skies from imagination, all together about 1 hour. Looks a bit blurry, I guess I have to do some from refs.

[iLegacy]

nice skies is the course next week too? did stephi said something about when the course stopp until 2012?

[Leysan]

Oh, sorry, I've set up email notification too now.

More skies and folds studies I did lately.

[CarstenJ]

Hi,

das Mädel sieht super aus, nur der Stab ist perspektivisch irgendwie schräg, oder? Ist natürlich auch eine sehr krasse Perspektive. Aber sehr schön.

[Leysan]

Danke Carsten,
ja ist der. Der Plan war es so dynamischer wirken zu lassen. Das Lineart vom Stab ist auch etwas schlampig, hab's erst hinterher gemerkt.

Sketchbook stuff:

[Leysan]

learning how to paint water/waterfalls (from photos)

[iLegacy]

very cool! what i miss is a set focus point. the water paintings are cool but i don't know what was most important for YOU when you painted it. maybe it would be cool if you detail out the water fall more to focus the viewer attention to this area or dont paint too much "noisy" detail into the surrounding areas. when does the course start again?

[Leysan]

Hi Simon,
for now it was just dumb photo copying trying to get the colors right, but I'll try to pay more attention to composition.
The lectures start on 2.4. so I suppose the cource will start on 4th or 11nth.

[iven]

I really like your pencil studies, amazing, I am so far away from that.
Your digital portaits they are so crips, love it. I like that you draw from
imagination. I can see MR. BEANs having a bath, is that right ?!

[Leysan]

Thank you iven Yeah, his face is from a poster just pasted in for fun.

Some facial expressions from photos: