Kjesta's Excellent Art & Animation Adventures

[Kjesta]

Now you mention it, yep, those chins are definitely off-center! I can't believe I didn't do a line for the center *sigh* The lips or chin curve aren't in there because I copied them from Burne Hogarth - I've got trouble with heads so I'm working with his book on portraits now, and these are the first illustrations, with the very basic shapes of the head, just the skull and brow ridge (?) and nose. I'll be moving on though

I'll keep the animals coming Drawing her yesterday made me realize that Sally is actually old and I might not have so much time left to draw her anymore, so I'll draw her a lot in future. We've also got a horse - well, soon as the weather starts getting nice again, I'll get some sketches done too.

And one day, I'll actually do something with all these sketches XD

edit: OMG I've got a secind page! Whooot! *gives out champagne*

[Kjesta]

New stuff. First three are things I did for Davi's birthday - the chicks are a reference to the girls' CA forum because Davi's our mod there Otherwise, more rabbity goodness, doodles, more Hogarth... Also a sketch I did of one of the medieval churches in my town. It's pretty wonky, but I'll do it again sometime. Also finally working on hands! And since I've got a doll and lots of dolly hands lying around, I thought I might start out drawing those. Bonus-pic: Henrietta and her eight hands! Oh, and that book thing is a WIP, it's a Hello Kitty diary. I'm trying to do some colour @-@"

[dierat]

Great update! The doll hands sound like a great idea. That way you can focus on the general forms of hands without getting caught up in details too early. Keep up the good work!

And gz on page 2!

[Irishdrunk]

Hey, cool update. Wow, those doll hands will come in handy. And your heads are looking a lot better, can't wait to see some facial features on them.

I'm loving the terror your captured in that bunny's face. As the horde of chicks charge. Keep them coming ^^

[Kjesta]

dierat, thanks very much! It think I'm slowly starting to get the hang of hands, it really does help that the hands are detailed, but not too much. I just wish I had more hands in more poses! And, see, I also did a little bit of elipse practise in my update It's only a tiny bit, but I won't forget to practise more!

Irishdrunk, I'll get some heads done for you soon! I'm kind of skipping a lot between my topics, but maybe that's not so bad. I'm back at school now, maybe I'll find an opportunity to sketch people in class. (School stress sucks though... They're giving us a pretty hard time right now because this is our second-to-last year.) And thanks for liking my bunneh I like the comic, considering that I've never really done one.

Okay, update! Having a horse phase right now and getting some colour done. I'm actually quite happy with the way the coloured pencil horse is turning out so far, better than I thought. The colour is tricky though! Mostly white with purplish-reddish brown and grey spots on it, and in blueish winter light @_@" And the camera doesn't like colour. Ah well. No use whining. Oh, and I like the horse eye and skull studies, both (and most of the other anatomy studies) are done after Gottfried Bammes.

And something unrelated but funny: girl at school said to me today, looking at the unfinished horse: "Kinda good, but weird choice of colours." Me: "It's not done yet, it's gonna be brown over there." Her: "Duh, if I want to have brown, I just USE brown!" Uh, layering much? Nevermind, it was funny

[Kjesta]

My progress at the moment is sluggish - for one, school has started and the teachers are giving us hell because we're now collecting points for graduation. Hope that gets better as the school year goes on. Then, I've had my bottom wisdom teeth pulled and drawing is really hard with my headaches. I'll try to get more done though.

I'm still excited! A friend at school asked me to design her tattoo (that's the rough fairy sketch things) and another if I could help him with his "lexicon of fantasy and legendary creatures" etc, so I'm doing a possessed doll. Must be fate, my doll's pretty busy modelling for me now.

[Irishdrunk]

Hey, great horse studies! Take some time to add more values, and they will turn out brilliant ^^

Gratz on designing your friend's tat. Would be very exciting to have a permanent walking piece of artwork. Keep 'em comin' !

[jatherip]

sick amount of sketches.....just some more studies!?
keep goin!

[dierat]

Love the horse skull and mannequin hand studies! Keep up the good work!

[Kjesta]

Alright, straight away: it's a long process to update here, especially since I still don't have a scanner and it's my last year in school now. I'll do sporadic updates from now on, but I can't promise much.

Right now I'm having a major Queer As Folk phase. Good thing is that I'm finally practicing faces and facial expressions - when I'm watching an episode I halt it once or twice everytime to put in 15mins for a quick sketch or something. It motivates me hugely when I get a face right because I think, "Yay! That's Justin looking at me from the page!" I want to start up again doing more horses. We have a horse and my mum says she knows a few people who would buy horse portraits or something, that'd be nifty to finance my driver's license and hobbies.

Anyway, have some QAF faces, some Naruto fanart (YES I WENT THERE AND IT'S ALSO GOT A WATERCOLOUR VERSION) and a pair of jeans.

PS: SSG buddies, do you still want me? I know I've been a lousy member of this group, so I can relate if you want to kick me out.

[Rotor]

Hello SSG buddy.
I'm a lousy member and I haven't had Liffey and Irishdrunk beat me up for it (yet).
Now that you are up and running we can start properly doing this thang!

Good studies. Try to utilize a wider selection of values I'd say. There is also nothing wrong with using stronger and bolder lines when necessary.
Nothing wrong with fanart either, I think it's great as you already have a clear concept and the rest is up to your imagination.

Keep it up.

[Ian Barker]

watch the shading on the jaw: that's a really tough angle. jeans look really nice. the kids look good too but the one kid's foot is bent way too far back. also the part where their arms are interlocking? really confusing. at least i think they're interlocking but the arms get super skinny.

and i think i'm the only one in the ssg who's been updating my sb semiregularly... though sometimes my subscriber doesn't update me for some reason so i could have missed some stuff. it'd be great if we all got back on track though.

[Kjesta]

Thanks for still wanting me It's still a hassle getting stuff up here, but I'll try to do an update for the week-end. (Been gone on a holiday and stuff.)

Rotor, I'll try to keep more values in mind and also to use stronger lines.

Liffey, that sketch of the kids was done without reference, so the anatomy is really bad... I redid those interlocking arms a thousand times because I was doodling around and too lazy to do research, bad me. Thanks for pointing it out again though

[Kjesta]

Okay, a little update. First one is some ink thingy I did without reference, just for fun. Screwed up majorly, but I like the eye. Next up two sketches of my room inventory (bed post, jewellery holder thingy) and a horse watercolour in three stages, done after a photo. I'm not completely happy with it but it's a start considering my chromophobia. (Not literally.) I have really big trouble getting colour on the paper the way I see it in front of me, have to work on that big time.

[Nartano]

Your sketchbook is a lovely garden. Makes me happy.

[Kjesta]

Thank you very much. Now that's one compliment!

[Kjesta]

I'm doing this next update in two posts, I guess. It's so much more work uploading things than simply drawing them, haha! So anyway, here goes.

I bought myself a new sketchbook on Saturday, a really nice hardcover one with 256 pages of beautiful paper. Very motivating somehow, don't really know why, but I'm feeling good about drawing at the moment.

Also, fine liners are AWESOME. I love 'em. I've heard from many people that they don't like working with them because they're so permanent, but somehow that actually loosens me up. I feel very free drawing with them.

Oh, and the goat thingy was, obviously, doodled without reference.

[Kjesta]

Alright, part two.

More horses, the one with the foal is obviously not done yet. Arabian horses (not the mother/baby one) have very sleek lines, I really like drawing them.

Furthermore, OCTOPODES! Octopodes are my favourite animals (check out Mimic Octopus on Youtube, those guys are insane!) and I'm glad I finally got the guts to draw them. I find them intimidating because everything I've learned about skeletons, muscles, joints and skulls doesn't apply to them. They're so squishy, it's unreal. It's fun though and I'll get over my phobia of drawing suckers one day. They're hard to get right!

[Kjesta]

A little update. First up are two portraits of a friend's dog - Charlie died a while ago and she asked me if I could draw him. I had the photos for over six months and now finally got around to doing the drawings. I'm not completely happy because there's bits that don't look like Charlie, but she loves it. Makes me proud. Still working on that crosshatching.

The Roman and German were for a school project (we presented our reenactment of the Varus battle). Not quite finished in the photo, but I couldn't get another picture before my classmates cut them up and glued them to our posters. Well.

Last but not least my second attempt at acrylics. Just playing around a little for now, the picture's not completely up to date. The left guy looks much more like himself now. Working after a picture of my favouritest couple ever: Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor from Queer As Folk. Yum.

[Mr.Thorne]

Fantastic work

Though the horse eyes are freaking me out man.

[Kjesta]

Finally some time off from studying for my finals.

These are small watercolours I did for my student profile in the graduation book, which we were allowed to design as we like. Nothing exciting, but it was fun making them and I finally worked with colours again. (And yeah, I love Darkwing Duck. Best comic duck ever.)

[Ghast]

very nice range of work. the studies especially the animals are great. I'd avoid the little scribbles with the shading on those portraits in place of straighter lines, but thats up to you really. You might want to check out paul cadmus' drawings if you are looking for some good pencil portraits that use a similar line shadow

[Marian Rowling]

Hey Kjesta thanks for commenting in my sketchbook. I've really enjoyed looking through yours. You've got a lot of great drawings and I can really see how much you are progressing. I especially like your pen and ink skills. Very much looking forward to your future posts.

[Kjesta]

Ghast, thanks for pointing that out! Sometimes in my attempt to "let it flow" I descend into scribbling which doesn't always turn out pretty... Something to watch out for now!

Marian Rowling, thank you for visiting me I really need to do more pen and ink things, but my favourite pens have all run dry... Time to get some more!

So, here's a little update. The cover for my NaNoWriMo novel (Stolen/Steel/Heart), the progress thread can be found here. It was a lot of hard work because I've never designed anything like this and have pretty much zero experience in dealing with GIMP, so I'm very proud of it even though it's far from perfect.

Then some stuff I did for our graduation motto, "Safabi" (a mash-up of abitur, the German graduation, and safari). It was a royal pain in the ass to do the colouring because I had to work fast and comply with some people's wishes that I didn't agree with (time to get used to it if I want to work as an artist) and had to do watercolours on thick printer paper. Nasty stuff! Still, I tried my best.

[Kjesta]

Quick update with a painting I did for my oriental dance teacher. It's acrylics on stretched canvas - and, yeah, it's a bit sucky. Didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to it and the photo isn't very good, but I'm still proud of it. (She loved it )

Still, stretched canvas hates me. It's neigh impossible doing any fine detail on it.

[Kjesta]

I sketch quite a lot but I rarely do anything that reaches the "finished" stage so I thought something that I'll work on over a longer while might do me some good.

Well... It's a giraffe mask and a bunch of fabric on my desk. 'Nuff said. Unlikely that I'll manage to update every day but I'll chip away at this until it's done or I manage to accidentally knock the set-up over, whichever comes first. Want to get it done in acrylics.

Today here's a picture of the set-up and a first very rough sketch - I stopped drawing yesterday when I had tears running down my face because my eyes are so tired, it's been a long day... Let's hope I'll get further today.

The shape of the head isn't really right yet, though.

edit: Now sized down to something that doesn't require hours of scrolling!

[dierat]

I just love your animal drawings; even your unreffed doodles look so realistic to me. And I just love still lifes, so I think your current project sounds great. The drawing looks good so far, but it's a little hard to tell at this scale. You might wanna reduce the image size so we don't need to scroll to see the whole thing. And keep up the good work!

[Kjesta]

Thanks! I love drawing animals and soon I'll start working at an environmental protection station so I can draw all the animals during my lunchbreak. I hope to get lots of sketches done then!

I'm tackling three things I really need to work on: fabric, lighting and colour, so I'm kind of nervous, but I'm sure I'll learn lots, however it turns out. Resized the picture too, I didn't even notice that last night!

Just got back from work, I'll upload an update on the still life later.

[jcc]

Lovely sketchbook, Kjesta. Your still-life picture and the cougars on post #5 are really great, and the figure studies on post #14 look very beneficial. You have a nice personal style as well, it is good to see you balancing studies of realism as well as keeping your own style alive.

[Kjesta]

jcc, thanks for that! I tend to get carried away either sketching from life/photos or doing my own thing, but I need to merge the two more... It's nice to hear that at least to the outside it looks balanced :p

Here's an update on the still life. The turquoise of the wall is still too high in chroma and the giraffe head... Ah well. I'd actually started out with colour but it was all over the place without any structure, so I'm redoing it in grey scales first. Still quite messy. Maybe working on it when it's darker outside and I have stronger lighting contrast will help.