Marlisa's SB Traditionals --> April 15 :::

[Marlisa]

Tnx! When they kick me out of school again over here, I'll consider going to Zwolle

[Mag-Neo]

-nICE wORKS aRE tHERE oN yOUR sKETCHBOOK... kEEP wORKING... i lOVED aLL oF yOUR mUSICANS... gOOD lUCK!....

[Marlisa]

New update

The first painting is 60x80cm on canvas, done with acrylic.
I was inspired by this song: http://www.omnia-neocelt.com/mp3/A!_witchesbrew.mp3

A new assignment we have @ school right now is to choose one song and paint what you feel when you hear it.
The song from Omnia (which you can hear if you click on the link above) Wytches brew (from 'macbeth') inspires me so much, that I think I choose it again for that assignment.
Yesterday I bought a 115x75cm canvas, and I think that I go more abstract this time.

Both paintings are done in freetime. The second one is a selfportrait (from a picture ofcourse) on 30x40 cm canvas, done with acrylic again. I thought it could be a challenge, but in the end it was done in 4 hours

[kasblue]

your paintings are gettting really neat! keep it up!

[Marlisa]

Tnx kasblue!


New thing I'm working on: selfportrait n.2

30x40cm acrylic on canvas.
It's not finished yet

[zou]

impressive traditional work !

i like the hard lighting you painted on those musicians.

i have one question: what 's the reason of using newspaper to draw
(i see many students in ateliers using it with charcoal)

[Marlisa]

Tnx zou

I think most students use newspaper because it's cheap.
We must draw always on very large paper, and newspaper is the cheapest paper our school sells at the shop. That's why I use it (but it's horrible when using charcoal... too smooth).

[erik-jan v/d schuur]

ohhh myyy your paintings are so goood waaa

nice updates

i love that violin and guitar painting yummy

[Peetaer]

Thanks for dropping by my SB! Love that your focusing on traditional skills. It's a nice break from all the digital stuff on here. You do very good portrait work. Keep it up.

Might want do more anatomy studies, and take your time doing them...even if it takes you an hour just to do one! Look into Andrew Loomis for proportion, he's the greatest. Some of your bodily proportions are off.

Whatever you do, don't stop!

[Noë]

Hiya Marlisa!

Love these last two updates, they're really great!
I prefer the latest self portrait because it shows the different sides (planes) of the face a lot better in different tones.. I especially admire how you painted the lips eyebrows and hair.. Could you give me some acrylic paint tips some time? I'm not good with traditional paint ^^
I think that something to improve on this last portrait is maybe to make all the shadows a bit more saturated like you did on the nose shadow. What I mean is that the shadow on the left side of the nose is pinkbrownish, while the shadow left to that (near the eye) is more gray black. I think it would look better if that shadow was a bit more saturated as well.

But it's a gorgeous painting already.. Would very much like to see how this turns out.

Oh and on the Wytches Brew piece; respect! That are a lot of figures to paint and it's hard to get the lighting consistent on each of them.. I think seeing that all the light comes from the fire, a little more darkness surrounding the figures, and a little more clair obscur would look better, (Look at some George dee La Tour paintings to see what I mean: click, and click. But nice work!

How are you?

Love
Marleen.

[Marlisa]

Hey Marleen!

Tnx for the tips ! I see what you mean in the latest selfportrait. The shadow near the right eye is gray, because it's make-up. Don't know if I'll change that. My paint & brushes etc. are in my locker at school -_-', if it wasn't, I probably would've continued that painting now

I'm busy with some drawings right now, was supposed to upload it in an hour or so

School is pretty crappy right now. I think I have the 'I hate school' mood again. I hate the cranky teachers, some of my classmates and I especially hate the assignments... how are you?

Knufs,
Marlisa


Edit: I don't really see what you like in the last painting, seriously . Why do you want tips for acrylic?

[Marlisa]

New update!

First sketches are done with colour marker? Don't know what it is in english.
All done in half an hour (from ref).

The first ink thingie is supposed to be a selfportrait (from the mirror) with ink (no sketch before) and is stupid.
I think the second one (from ref.) is way better .

Last two are also selfportraits; first one from the mirror (and sketchie), second one (which is not finished yet) is done from photo, because I wanted to throw the mirror out of my window.

[Marlisa]

Yay! It's finished!

It took me 2 hours.

[Giorge]

nice self portraits , study some more the proportions , and then do some more , you will notice the difference.

[Marlisa]

Tnx !
I guess I should do that. The problem is: the proportionstudies / figuredrawings are all done at 100x80 cm newspaper.
Drawing from ref. is waaaay easier, so when I sketch some figures from Bridgman (or from photo's), they always turn out right. Ofcourse that's on A4 sized paper..
In real life it's so much harder! And we have no models until april ... maybe I should do some bridgman's on 100x80cm too (but I can already say right now: my room is 300x300cm...)

[Noë]

wow great stuff ^^
The makeup greyness on the right eye wasn't bothering me at all though it was just the shadow part on the left
I wanted acrylic tips because I like the way you paint with them, I'm interested to know how you mix the paint and which colours, brushes etc you like to use.
I recently started working with water soluble oil paint which work better than acrylics to create smooth transitions, but I like how you do it with acrylics, so was interested to know how you handle the paint.

You said something about drawing from ref being much easier than drawing from life.. Maybe that could be a reason to step away from references for a while and draw more of what you see around you? Or maybe combine both?

anyways, I really like these last few drawings. Also the one from mirror. I think the marker drawings are awesome as well, especially the second ^^
Something I read a while ago that I thought was a good idea: "Never expect your work to be 100% of what you have in mind, because it will only dissapoint then, expect like 80% and dissapointments will weigh less, and when it turns out better, that's only good ^^"

So ehm anyways, I have to get started on my homework.. My assignments aren't the greatest either, so just try to get the best out of them.. There's always some room to do what you want within an assignment. For example when we have an illustration assignment I chose to paint it with my new paints to get some practice, and also I did one digitally to practice that.
Well, I hope things get better for you at school

Love
Marleen.

P.S. just one thing I noticed; you don't seem to be usins aquarel paper for the ink drawings? I did the same thing, and the ink seemed to really be absorbed by the paper too soon to get a nice transition, but when I used aquarelpaper it kinda stayed on top of the paper for a bit, and for me it's way easier to use thinned ink that way.

[Giow]

your acoustic guitar painting is really amazing

[Merlin]

Another Dutch person! I like your work. I can see that you are very good at working slow, the quality shows it. But you are having some difficulty with quicker stuff, like 2 minute figure drawing. I think it would be a good thing to keep doing that a lot, a lot of quick sketching, figures and faces.

It's good to spend some time on a drawing or painting, but I think you'r learning much faster when doing quicker stuff. Maybe you could also try to paint with a bigger brush sometime. Hope this helps.

[nOKa]

i love your portraits so much...please keep it up!

[Marlisa]

Giow & nOKa: thnx!
Noë: I don't know what kind of tips I can give you about acrylic painting, but I really like the 'marterhaar' brushes. At school we use mostly 'varkenshaar' but that's zo tough... i don't like that (but I use it anyway).
The paint I use is the cheapest one from the 'Action' so the names of the colours aren't that reliable.
Apparently i'm good at mixing colours, so it doesn't really matter to me what colours I have (no magenta or lemon yellow or something). One thing I really hate is that most of my classmates have 10 tubes of paint, like three different types of green, two different blues, ofcourse at least one turquoise-ish blue, three types of brown etc.
I only use primary colours (red, yellow, blue) and white and black.

I try to paint in layers, but I'm not really used to that, so I have to practise that a lot more. Acrylic paint dries very quick (aargh, my english is bad at this hour) so when I start with a black-ish background like in the 'firedancers' painting, I have to paint another layer (dark blue trees in the background for example) really quick if I want them to blend into the background.
Then I wait until that layer is almost dry, and then do another layer.

How thick I paint something depends on what texture I want to get. I thought it would be better to use a lot of paint for the fire, like van Gogh did in his paintings, to get a more real effect.

About drawing from ref.: you are absolutely right. A lot of the CA's over here do so much anatomy studies, that I feel forced to do a lot of nudes too. Ofcourse, I don't have models to practise on, so I have to do nudes from ref.
I don't think my anatomy skills are good enough to practise on people in my environment... First reason is because I never have the time to sketch them, second reason is because no one wants me to do that.
It's hard to explain it in english, especially now I'm really tired.

About the ink drawings: actually I did use acrylic paper, but maybe it was cheapass acrylic paper

Merlin: Ah nice, you are dutch too . It's really tempting to write this in english, but I don't let myself..
You are right about the quick sketching, figures etc. I don't do that a lot... but it's not really true that I'm very slow with the more developed drawings/paintings. Well, not compared to a year ago.
I think I improved that, especially in paintings.

At school the teachers learn us to 'paint large surfaces with a small brush and small surfaces with a large brush'. It that like you mean?
I really appreciate your tips though .

[Merlin]

I'm sorry I didn't mean to say that you are very slow, I just had to give it a name . No, I mean painting on a big surface with a big brush, to paint less precise, try putting confident brush strokes on the canvas. Just to experiment. It helped me a lot. But better not listen to me if it goes agains what your teachers teach you .

[kinjura]

Marlisa, I really love your work. You have a mountain of talent. I'd reinforce crits here, but it's been said and you've rresponded. Thanks for making my day a little better.

[JailHouseRock2]

Hay Marlisa, some nice improvment lately.

The acrylics have come along way, But I can see a big difference between the one's with reference and with out, so try to find reff even if it's just for a light source.

pencils are looking really good to, nice values and linework, but just watch those edges

And lovin the self portraits too, you seem to have very beautiful eye's

Keep up the good work
cheers,
matt.

[Marlisa]

Merlin: it's ok. What do you mean with confident brushstrokes?

kinjura: aah that's so sweet!

JailHouseRock2: Tnx for the tip . I almost always use some ref for light or anatomy ore something. This time I intended to shoot some photo's myself instead of searching for ref. that comes close to it.
But nobody wanted to help me with it, so thats why I did the 'firedancers' painting from mind.
I see what you mean with "I can see a big difference between the one's with reference and with out, so try to find reff even if it's just for a light source".

I'm at school right now and I think I'm going to do some sketches of people in my environment.

[Noë]

Ooh! Next time with ref pictures I'll help!
We'll make a reference picture day out of it ^^ always fun hihi.. It's the absolute excuse to play dress up

Thanks for your painting info, it gives me much insight in your way of painting ^^

Love
Marleen.

[Marlisa]

Ahh that sounds like fun! we should do that.
Now I'm curious in your way of painting

[Marlisa]

New update:

-The first abstract thing is a component of more abstract paintings, for the 'music' assignment ('choose a song what produces strong emotions').
My song is (again) this one: http://www.worldofomnia.com/mp3/A!_witchesbrew.mp3

- The 'double double trouble' thing is the second component in the making. I think I'm going to paint three faces (with light from a fire on their faces) transparent over the words... It's not finished yet, that's for sure

- Photo of the classroom

- Process of still life painting in 2D-class (which must be in some way kind of abstract).

- Photo's from 2D-class

- The only two sketches I could find the time for last week... -_-'


- crappy light study sketch

- almost finished selfportrait (The left eye, the shadow on the left cheak, and the hair are bothering me. At the picture, my hair cuts some part of my face away, so that's why the left side looks so weird.)

- Homestudy still life with coloured pencils (1 hour)

Pfew, this upload took me 1,5 hours

[Hamorhage]

especially that last portrait is VERY nice. I like the pictures from the studio, seems very easy going

[Marlisa]

Tnx !
It is very easy going, but also one big chaos .
We have two classrooms next to eachother (a part of the wall has been demolished so it looks like it's one room) but somehow we always end up with 50% of the students in the small room and the other 50 % in the big room...
Kinda claustrofobic actually haha.

[Marlisa]

I tried to sketch some figures, but I should have known that I can't sketch with pencils... I guess they aren't really sketches anymore. When I start drawing something with graphite/pencils, I just can't stop, haha .