Saelyra's Art Clippings

**Saelyra** · August 26th, 2009, 11:31 PM

Cleaned up as of Nov 27th.

Well, at least it is good that the older stuff has aged that fast!

**Saelyra** · October 27th, 2009, 12:47 PM

Man it has been a while since I've posted here. I guess I better catch up?

**Saelyra** · December 2nd, 2009, 10:38 PM

Some recent (and semi-recent) thumbnail scribble stuff. Trying to do some looser work.

**Cryslara** · December 3rd, 2009, 05:34 PM

Hey Sae. I thought I'd drop by here and offer some opinions since I'm slowly taking the jump into CA.

I love seeing that you're branching out your world more and pushing yourself. I often think though that the poses of your people are very static. The tend to lack a flow of motion through their forms. This is more obvious in your thumbnails; the sketches you've posted above feel more relaxed in terms of pose and anatomy.
As much as it is a common chunk of advice, I think figure drawing would help immensely. Drawing people is still a very new area to me but going back to basics and just drawing a whole lot of people from observation could really help. If drawing from life isn't an options, photos can be a substitue, if a little more limited.

Thumbnailing with some larger brushes might be helpful for forms as well.

Otherwise, you often use very muted colours in your paintings, I'd love to see a more high key image from you one day. The birds in the hats are really cool because of this, and they're such a great little illustration on their own anyway - I love the idea.

**Saelyra** · December 3rd, 2009, 07:04 PM

Hey, thanks so much for the comment! I really appreciate it

Common advice or not, it's good to hear specific things like that. I'll have to keep the static thing in mind... I've always tried to communicate things more through subtleties as far as pose and expression goes, but I'm never sure if it works or not. So maybe I do need to amp it up a bit. If it would not be too much of a problem, do you think you could give me an example of the more active/organic/motion poses you are suggesting?

I took a life drawing class this past quarter, but I think mentally I was more worried about proportion than pose. My school has free open model sessions every Friday during the semester, though, so I will make an effort to start attending that regularly and focusing on what you mentioned. I'm also painfully aware that I don't draw women often enough and I don't really know how

So maybe I can work on that as well there.

The brush thing is a good idea. I've been trying to break into more traditional brushes but I'm so detail obsessed. I'll try the larger ones for thumbnails though.

And lastly on color. I'll have to find an image to do like that... sadly all the ones I have in mind at the moment are still kind of muted haha

Again with the subtleties I guess. I have some questions about your own use of color but I'll go put that over in your own thread

Thank you again! This has given me a lot to think about and try out.

**Cryslara** · December 4th, 2009, 07:30 AM

You're lucky with the free open model sessions! Take advantage of it as much as you can. I don't get many chances for drawing from life with models but I've loved the times that I have, it's really helped my art.

I tried to do some redlines of what I was getting at with the comment about poses but I find my own inexperience with drawing people is limiting here. This image though with the point comparing 'swooshy' lines illustrates a bit of what I was trying to say: http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm#line_art . I think things will become more natural as you pick up more and more knowledge on anatomy (for me as well) because it opens up the possibilities of the body.
I find that gesture sketching to capture the movement of poses during life drawing helps in freeing things up too. I draw my cats a lot for this reason which comes in useful when scribbling four-legged beasties.

I'm glad I could be a little helpful! I'll chat about my stuff over in my thread but I'll certainly be back here in the future.

**Saelyra** · December 4th, 2009, 12:35 PM

Ahh, yes. I think I've seen this one once before but definitely good to look over these again. Maybe I'm more ready/able to absorb the information now

I think I was impatient before, heh.

Thank you so much!

**Saelyra** · December 5th, 2009, 12:17 AM

It usually takes me some time to break out of old habits, so I imagine this is not quite what was meant... but I was having a hard time coming up with something so it'll have to do for the moment XD Hopefully the pose flows slightly better though?

He's supposed to come off as awkward though so maybe that defeats the point, heh.

**Saelyra** · December 6th, 2009, 02:46 AM

Augh more of the saaaame. I think I'm having trouble coming up with stuff. Maybe tomorrow I'll just do some studies instead and try to build from that, instead of trying to impose things on pre-existing characters. Hmm.

**Saelyra** · December 6th, 2009, 08:26 PM

The first is actually a sketch from a few weeks ago, I had totally forgotten about it until now. I don't know that I'll do anymore with it, I was having trouble getting colors sorted out for the clothing. Costume design is a big weakness of mine.

The second is a figures page. Still trying to loosen up somewhat- the grey figures were just made up without ref, and the black ones were eyeballed from stills I took from a movie I was watching. Not sure if I'm getting with it anywhere yet, but practice is still practice... If any of these figures are particularly in the wrong direction or particularly in the right direction, please let me know! I'm not quite sure myself, yet.

**Rhoades** · December 6th, 2009, 08:41 PM

Hey there, I love your idea of sketching from a film! Kudos for that one, and i really like the female golfer. Your last post of the gestures are also really good. Your work seems very promising! Keep up the sketching.