Andrew Sonea -14/5/2013

[Andrew Sonea]

sipher: Thanks man! I left a comment in your book




Damn, I wanted to paint all night, but it's just not happening. I'm really braindead and just zoning out and not painting. All I have to show is a sketch I did in just a few minutes for the Team Challenge.

EDIT: Oh crap it's a start of a new page and I have this thing stuck at the top...uh, go back a page and look at the stuff there.

[Andrew Sonea]

I feel like my lack of sleep is catching up to me. So I'm going to bed early tonight hence the small update.

First is a quick plein air painting I did a couple days ago (about an hour give or take?). It was very frustrating to paint as it was extremely windy, hot, and would alternate between being too sunny and very overcast.

Anyways, I tried something I've never done before and painted over it digitally tonight. I mostly just cleaned up the shapes, edges, and colour. My goal wasn't to create a new painting, but rather paint things closer to how I would have handled them were I better at oils. It is interesting painting over a traditional painting like this as it reminds me to not over render and to keep it more painterly.

[HarbingerofIllRepute]

:o
What are these "oils"?! WHAT IS THIS "TRADITIONAL PAINTING"?!

Kudos for going retro... hipster! (but seriously though, it's very nice to see a traditional piece around here every now and again -.^)

[Andrew Sonea]

HarbingerofIllRepute: Hahaha yeah oils? That's when old people mush about mud and vegetable oil with a hairy stick right? Yeah I wish I could paint with oils. One day I'll get good at them. In the meantime I'll push pixels around.




Just dropping off a little Jaime Jones study. I felt really dumb when I painted it haha! His use of shape, texture, colours and greys are completely beyond me at this point. I also found it difficult to analyze why he was making certain decisions, and found myself copying shapes at various points. It is bound to happen when studying someone who uses shape so effectively, but I need to be conscious of it. A lot of his decisions were kind of confusing to me too...like I wouldn't understand why he decided to put this colour there or that colour here and yet when you put down the stroke it works. He's just too good. It was also difficult to paint the textures like that. I'll need to do another whole bunch of studies after him since he's probably my favourite artist right now, and I feel like I'll learn a lot. [/fanboy]



Oh, and also I started a thread where I am doing paintovers for people, so if you want one just post an image in the following thread:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=246744

[kikindaface]

really nice study dude ! keep studying from other artists, it really helps ! keep it up !

[Pete Hidalgo]

Wow man! Your works are pretty sick! I really like the last paint of the girl under the tree.

[Chris Sanders]

Dude i've just had to put that centaur and the dude with antlers in a folder, sick stuff. Keep it up!

[Andrew Sonea]

kikindaface: Thanks! Here's another master study

Pete Hidalgo: Thank you, but the real credit goes to Jaime Jones there...

Chris Sanders: Really?! I'm honoured man! I never consider my designs to be very strong, so this is a nice surprise







Playing around with more textured brushes (Jaime's brushes). It's a little study of painting Mian Situ did. I liked the simplification of the face so thought I'd have a stab at it. I still have a looong way to go...but I learned a thing or two about textured brushes here. I tried out something that I've seen Jaime do--put a warm tone down underneath everything and paint on top with textured brushes while letting bits of the warm show through. I could probably have pushed that aspect of it more, but anyways it's a cool look it gives and makes it feel more traditional in approach.

[Shadow Stalker]

Yeah, I'm liking the traditional feel. Great job on these!

[I-Bomb]

I love the painterly effect you got going

[Andrew Sonea]

Shadow Stalker: Thanks!

udonhead: Yeah, I'm definitely gonna try to push my work in that direction






A rather mindless speedpaint...I started with a random blotches of colour, put a photo overlay on it, then started painting in whatever shapes I saw and continued on for a while and got this (which looks nothing like I initially started with).

[HarbingerofIllRepute]

Every time I stop by here and look at your work I think, "Man, this guy is going somewhere". Keep up the good work, I love the painterly direction of your recent work!

[Andrew Sonea]

Harbinger: Thanks dude! I really hope I'm going somewhere...right now I'm fulfilling the stereotype of working the deepfryers and wishing I was good enough to make it as an artist.




Just dropping off a quickish still life I did on my laptop. The screen on my laptop is only so big, so I actually painted most of the painting even more zoomed out than this. I was testing to see what it's like painting on my laptop and to see how long the battery lasts (thinking of buying and external battery) so that I might try some plein air digital. This painting took a little less than 1.5 hours and drained almost all my battery...which is not good. If I closed more programs, wasn't blaring music, and disconnected from the internet it might have lasted a bit longer though. It's a little rough looking partly due to the time constraint and partly due to my not being used to Jaime's brushes yet.

[Jessibelle]

I love how your "a little rough" would be my "oh god I can't believe I just painted this, this is amazing".

[Marian Rowling]

Hey Andrew nice job on this last one. I like the overall composition and the colours. You've also captured a nice warm feeling of light with the reflection of the liquid on the banana.

[Andrew Sonea]

Jessibelle: Thanks! Just keep practicing, it shouldn't take long at all to reach my level.

Marian: Thank you! I tried to focus on getting accurate colours on that one






So I tried painting at 100% opacity...a couple studies and a crappy samurai from imagination.

Also Dile_ told me the glass in the previous still life could have been better and more "glasslike" so I did another still life in which I took more time and paid more careful attention to it really trying to get the material.

[skMOP]

Wow dude that still life is kickass.

is getting a crit from Dile_ all it takes to become insane at glass rendering?? if so I want one too.

Haha

[I-Bomb]

F**king badass still life also if you want to do a few paintovers for fun stop by my Sb I might have something you'll like

[JustinBeckett]

Hey Andrew! Really nice work, the new still life definitely looks a lot more like glass, totally upgraded there man!! Btw, thank you so much for doing that paint over in my sketchbook, I totally appreciate it!! It helped me so much!! I reworked it and posted it in my sketchbook now, anymore help would be amazing!

Keep up the awesome work you are doing!

[Psychobuddy]

That still life is awesome man, totally inspired to go render my own glass.

[xinranliu]

nice studies! one of the things Jaime Jones really nails is the play of temperatures/saturation... you should definitely do more of them!

[ryan mcshane]

andrew- how have you been man? i've been back posting here lately.
keep doing still lifes- they will help you more than anything. but it seems like your jumping into painting too early, especially when dealing with cylindrical forms- you should really make sure the drawing is 100% solid and constructed. if it feels like a cylinder in the drawing, it'll definitely feel like one in the painting. in this last still life i think that's the only bit holding it back, the forms just seem a little ill constructed.
color and lighting is awesome though man, and you know you can nail that- just get your drawing down!

keep it up man, i'll be checking here more often!

[Andrew Sonea]

skMOP: Thanks dude! Haha Dile_ is really helpful actually...

udonhead: Thansk! If you want paintovers just post the painting in my paintover thread.

JustinBeckett: Thank you I'm glad it helped

Psychobuddy: Do it! It's a lot harder than it looks though...

xinranliu: Oh I know--he's a god! I love how much he plays with temperature, it's one of my favourite things about him.

Ryan: No way you're back! I left a comment in your book We should start talking again. I've transitioned over to skype now instead of msn though.





Okay so I tried something very different. Instead of using a huge brush and painting values like I always do I focused on line and crosshatching. I painted it a fair bit smaller than it's posted here actually. It was really dumb to do digitally, but kinda fun. Not the best result but something new eh?

I've been kinda into hands the past few days:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=247545

[Andrew Sonea]

I know it seems like I am doing too many studies and not enough original art, and it's true...but I am starting a new piece. I don't want to show it until it's done, but expect to see some studies of colour and plants and trees and stuff that I will be doing to help out with the personal piece.

To start off here is a Bill Cone study. I really really really like his work--it has all the things that I think makes a strong image from amazing control of temperature to beautiful design of composition, a knowledge of when to simplify etc etc etc

I recorded some steps of this to show my process. It's fairly straight forward and a very fast method of painting (this took me about an hour flat to paint) since you use mostly opaque brushes and don't waste time on linework which gets covered anyhow. It works best though I find when you have a very clear idea of what you will be painting such as if you have reference in front of you, although it can also be used for works from imagination (you need to be fairly advanced to pull it off well though).

1) I lay down a bit of a textured flat tone to start covering some of the white of the canvas. I use a warm and fairly saturated midtone...this is a technique somewhat akin to what traditional painters do. The reasoning for the colour is that if it shows through the above layers of paint, the bits of warmth will add interest (some painters intentionally leave a fair bit of this undertone showing through in the final work). If a cool tone is used it will make the image more "dead" if it shows through.



2) Working back to front I begin laying in the basic colours and values.



3) Working on top of this I start painting what is closer to us. Note how large a brush I am using--this is to just block in the main areas and colours. The colour isn't 100% the final colour, and I don't worry about that too much since I know I can refine the colour later. I just try to get some colour down that is close to what I want.



4) Here I am adding a bit more texture, correcting colour, and softening the transitions between various areas of the painting. I'm CONSTANTLY changing brushes as I work to avoid it feeling the same throughout.



5) Blocking in the trees...



6) Painting in more colour variation on the trees (as they are influenced by other light sources such as bounce light from the ground and some light from the sky). I also hint a bit at some foreground foliage. I only add it in this late in the game since I am trying to work as much back-to-front as I can.



7) For the first time I'm pulling out a small brush and start detailing things.



8) I paint in the foreground foliage (the closest thing to us) and it is done

[gas]

Hey. I found you a while ago when - I think - looking for Sheridan information and I just want to say that I think you're fucking amazing. I can't believe that you are only a year older than me, holy, holy shit. I really need to practice and get serious about my art. I have no idea how long it would take for me to get to your level. I don't even draw every day, which is quite problematic. I really should follow the advice you gave on the About page of your blog.

I'm in my first year at Sheridan Illustration. Probably not intense enough for you (it really is filled with a lot of bullshit) but for me, it seems all right so far. Just wondering, what specifically didn't you like about the program, and what are you doing now?

Didn't intend to make this post about me, just didn't think there was anything constructive I could offer. Just... yeah, you're both inspirational and demoralizing. Awesome.

[Andrew Sonea]

gas: Thanks man! You really know how to flatter someone haha! Don't worry about where your art is now, give it a couple years of hard work and I'm sure you can surpass me. Art is really just a numbers game, how many hours grinding of studies you do etc. And right now I'm not finding the time to put into that I should. I'm working a lot (at a non-art job) and being lazy a lot. As for why I left Sheridan...a bunch of reasons really. But it all boiled down to it not being an education I was willing to pay for. The classes I found to either not be applicable to where I want to go, or they were not being taught at a level I felt was necessary. I guess you can also say that I was disappointed by the general attitude of the student body--very few people were serious, and it was kind of demotivating sometimes when you are surrounded by a bunch of people who don't want to spend their spare time doing art. Anyways, that's just my experience in the Illustration program at Sheridan. The Animation program seemed to be a fair bit better, but I did not personally go through that program, so can't say much about it. As for what I'm doing now, I work as a line cook at a restaurant full time and try to fit in art at night. I'm gonna try to save up to attend Watts Atelier in California.





Oookay, so I know I haven't posted in ages and in theory should have a lot to show....but I don't. I have just a tiny bit. In fact, a week's worth. And that's it. I've got a few things in the works now but I don't wanna post them until they're done...so without further ado here is a post about possibly the best week of my life--I went to an 8-day workshop at Watts Atelier. It was totally awesome. Also the batch uploader thingy is pretty cool, but it sucks I can only upload 20 images per post!

Paintings (gesture portraits, master copy, still life, 2 hour pose):







20-minute Head Lay-ins and a head drawing of mine + overlay by Lucas Graciano:









20-minute Figure Lay-ins:





Leyendecker Mastercopy:

[Andrew Sonea]

Part of the previous post (because of the 20 image per post limit)


2 to 2.5 hour poses:








Quicksketch (< 5 minutes):






Head drawing:




Figure drawing + an overlay by Jeff Watts:

[a la bapsi]

hi thanks for posting man

[Forrest_I]

Really awesome stuff Andrew Love the figures, makes me jealous. I don't do enough stuff in pencil D:

[I-Bomb]

pencil and paint sketches I like so far cant wait for you to do more of them