Tom's Sketchbook - Februari 6th - SneakSneak game

[Tom van der Linden]

Here some work I made this week. It's mainly work from the life drawing class and the homework assignment for rendering, which was to make something reflective, a glass for example, with something in it. I made it with oil pastels and conte, and it's supposed to be about absinth, "The Green Fairy". But this one has obviously other plans...

With the lifedrawing class we had to focus on gesture and movement, a great exercise!

The rest was either not really interesting (very basic drawings) or I utterly screwed them up... Failure is hard to swallow sometimes, especially when you stumble with a material like pantone markers... But mistakes are good, these are the learning moments!

Cheers,

Tom

[Phade01]

Sydney damm that sounds awesome! I have to say that rendered self portrait is really well done! Really cool that you're having an academic training =) Doing this will improve your work like crazy!
Im wondering how the sydney thing works, have you graduated from the HKU? Also im no longer going to game art, they didn't want me So im gonna try to specialize in concept art with my corrunt education (if this is possible)

[Tom van der Linden]

Hey man, thanks for the comment. Appreciate it!

Dude, I don't wanna lick your ass clean, but with your dedication, you will certainly go places. Just keep believing in yourself. It's also not a bad thing knowing a lot of stuff about other game disciplines, like animators or game designers (because you are doing a different kind of education). You will always be part of a team, and a better understanding leads to better communication and to a better endproduct in general!

And dude, why didn't they want you at game art? What the hell? Sheesh... I don't get it anymore...

To answer your other question; No, I didn't finish Game Art yet, I'm on an exchange program with the University of New South Wales. I'll be here until the beginning of the new year, doing one semester abroad. It's a lot fun. I'm learning a hell of a lot more than in Holland. If you have the chance, just go man.

Dude, another thing, seriously, I just squeezed this one in just before bedtime, could you give me some pointers? I'm kinda new to this SP thing, but I like it! The likeness is there, but I screwed up the right eye...

[Tom van der Linden]

Now that I'm here in Sydney, that doesn't mean I can't draw people on the bus... on the contrary

[Phade01]

Thanks for the positive words dude! Dont really know what they're all doing at the hku, but im gonna keep on drawing whether they like it or not That exchange program sounds really awesome, how does this work with the hku?
The self portrait looks really cool man, some accurate brushwork in there! As a tip, you might want to block in the values of the background, if you do this you can get the values of your own face more correct, also try one in color! =)
Keep it up man those sketches look friggin awesome!

[Tom van der Linden]

Thanks for all your kind words, dude. I have to practice digital painting lots and lots more. Monday I'll receive my first traditional painting class, it's gonna be awesome. I think it'll make a lot of things clear to me.

Ok, if you wanna go study abroad, start thinking about it now. It's a lot of hassle and the sooner you start, the better. So, like, right now! Go to your tutor or mentor and say that you wanna study abroad. They'll give you a list of universities where you can exchange to. You can go on exchange in the beginning or the latter half of the 3rd year. It's for 5/6 months, depending on the length of the semester of the University you are going for.

I chose Sydney, not because it's so far away, although that did help, but the UNSW COFA (just Google it) (veel afkortingen, hahaha) just had the best looking website. I could find the information quickly and it gave me a good clear image of what to expect. Take it from me, wherever you go, if you have the chance, just do it! It's awesome and I already met a lot of wonderful lads and lasses!

Cheers,

Tom

[Tom van der Linden]

Today I went together with Yao-Ming to the Featherdale Wildlife Park. It's located somewhere around the border of Sydney. It's too small to be called a zoo, and too big to be a "children's farm" (that is a bit of a Dutch term).

It's of fair size, and the uniqueness of this wildlife park is that you can come really close to the animals. Most of the time they just walk around freely, giving the opportunity to give all these beautiful critters some personal attention. For example, the Kangaroos were practically laying in front of your feet and you could feed and cuddle them a bit. They were so unbelievably relaxed that I thought they were drugged or something.

Most of the animals were very easygoing. But I guess if you have people coming in everyday, you get used to it after a while. Even if they disturb your 20 hour nap, take 1000's of pictures with flash or the little kids literally pushing ice cones in your face. Annoying brats. All in days work.

Basically all the most famous Australian animals are assembled in this park: Koalas, Kangaroos, Wallabies, Dingos, Cassoways (some really mean looking giant bird, kinda dangerous!), Wombats, Tasmanian Devils and so forth. I walked around, took some of pictures and also made a couple of drawings. It was a fun trip, and next up will be Taronga Zoo, most likely!

Cheers,

Tom

[Tom van der Linden]

a kinda quick SP with red ballpoint pen, something I'm really getting into. I like the vibrancy of the red hue... dunno. Cheers!

[Tom van der Linden]

Some more Life Drawing class sketches. This time we had to focus on volume, lighting and shading. So little to no line work, and work from dark to light and then to dark again. A great exercise, I really loved to sculpt the two figures out of this looming dark piece of paper in front of me.

Cheers,

Tom

[Tom van der Linden]

Cheers!

[Tom van der Linden]

Here's some more work for the life drawing classes. Currently we are working from dark to light and back. I talked about this in my last post, but I still think it is an amazing technique, so different from what I normally do

The big horizontal composition is still in development, we got 2 classes for that! Gotta fix that hand, it's bugging me!

The chair belongs to my "basic" Drawing class, where we get all this different techniques to tackle problems. Last week was about negative spaces, and utilizing them to create an observational drawing. It's kind of awkward in the beginning, but in the end you'll see the result of the careful observation. It's different, but another means to an end.

Cheers!

PS= my first real painting is coming up, still finishing it up!

[Tom van der Linden]

Here are some more "negative spaces" drawings. This time with a model, so it was harder than with the chair. You want to draw a head, or a foot, but you are not allowed to. It's hard to switch off, but it works and it was kinda cool.

I screwed up the legs in the last one, but it was a valuable lesson

[Tom van der Linden]

Here are some small sketches I made today, in the burning sun of Sydney... sheesh, that ball of fire sure can be annoyingly hot here :p

[bharat]

cool art hear,,,,pls visit me n comment pls....u well come

[Tom van der Linden]

Thanks dude, appreciate it. Just checked you SB, you also got some nice stuff going on there!

[Tom van der Linden]

And some more sketches, now focusing on how to draw rocks and readability, with foreground, middleground and background layers.

Cheers!

[Tom van der Linden]

Here are some more sketches of rocks... getting that feel of three-dimensionality is tough!

Cheers!

[Tom van der Linden]

Here's my first painting ever... learned so much by doing this one I mean, there are some obvious faults with some shapes, I think the placement of the highlight on the lid is wrong, some colors may be off... but still, gotta start somewhere! Cheers!

[bharat]

thanks 4 visit...tc.

[Tom van der Linden]

Some more sketches, still trying out new stuff, sometimes failing miserably The arch building thingy I kinda screwed up, but I still like it

Cheers!

[Tom van der Linden]

Here are some gestures from life drawing and the finalized big one, the horizontal composition I showed you recently. We had two classes to work this one out and it payed off

I really like it, still some areas could use some work, but I'm really pleased with it. Especially the shadow behind the model really makes it pop out! I also like the composition of the piece. It's very still and a bit haunting... it's like she is waiting for death, so that the empty frame can be filled... wow is that dramatic or what?

Plus two small sketches. One pencil one of a classmate of mine and a fast pen one from some rooftops.

Cheers!

[Tom van der Linden]

Hey there! You're probably getting sick of these, but I had no choice (poor me ). They function as homework for my rendering course. I had to make 60 gestures. So I practically finished them already, but I'm gonna do a lot more, in different materials to see what that does to my sketching.

Cheers!

[Jonathan C]

your sketchbook pen/markers are awesome. I love post#200

[Tom van der Linden]

thanks bro!

[Tom van der Linden]

Ok, these are not my finest hour drawings, but still, I think you also sometimes need to upload the crap to see what has to be improved upon. Here I had to draw "blind" (you just look at the model and let your hand flow on top of the paper) again, which is hard and tiring . For the mind and physically...

Cheers

[Marlisa]

Hey!

The last time I visited your SB was at page two I think. The progress you've made is really....motivating? I don't know the right word for it, but I really like the different media you've used already. It kind of makes me want to fill all of the blank pages in my new sketchbook with doodles and heads and stuff

Keep up the good work !

[Tom van der Linden]

Thanks Marlisa! Yeah, being here on exchange in Australia has really forced me to pick up all these different materials and experiment with them. I'm now working mostly analogue, and that is refreshing since I mostly work digital.

Cheers,

Tom

[Crahzz]

More dutch people! Great to see - nice sketchbook as well, good to see you are keeping very busy =D
I saw in your first post that you have Floris Didden and Davit Smit as your teachers, thats pretty cool.. They were interns at W! Games a couple years before I did my internship there and heard a lot of good things about them - I think one of them is now involved or the founder of KARAKTER, is that right? I can't remember exactly. Anyway, Nice sketchbook ^^

[Tom van der Linden]

Yeah, that is correct. Joeri, David and Floris are the best. So strange that during an education the best classes were taught by 4th year students
Floris is the one who was involved setting up Karakter, he even gave another seminar this year and I was a part of it. So inspirational!

And thanks by the way, I'm doing my best! Going to check your SB as well!

[fantasyartist]

You've made some great progress dude! Good to see you drawing other stuff than people . Looking at all this stuff makes me feel lazy for not drawing as much as I should these last weeks, but I'll pick it back up soon hopefully. Keep it up!