Help Me Get Better

[Untouched24]

Wooooo, working hard. You seem to be doing a good balance of studies and everything, with imaginative work in there too. I think the master studies of the pin ups turned out well, makes me want to do one.
You're definitely on the right track. It's all about being consistent and putting in a lot of work and you'll get to where you want to go.

[vatteh]

Untouched24 - Thanks for the complement. Its a long journey alright.

I don't feel like writing much, its too late. But I still want to make this update. Just some more studies.

The last one is a one day study of faces from photos online. I focused on darker skin and I went back and forth doing one form memory and one from observation. You should be able to tell which from which, so I didn't even bother highlighting them.

[vatteh]

I also got some more sketches I should post. Since I'm on break, I should be able to post a lot more updates. I'll try to make daily posts until the semester starts.

[Kungfoowiz]

Fooook.. you're doing a loooot of faces.. and... they're good! =)

Rendering is coming along nicely too. =)

[Falchion]

Very nice progression of work. Keep it up!

[vatteh]

Falchion & Kungfoowiz - Thanks guys.

Faces, hands and fashion studies.

[vatteh]

Figure studies. From ref and expression from memory.

[SageTso]

Keep up the studies, that anatomy is looking good!

[aks9]

great studies, big improvements over the past few months
i cant think of any suggestions, do more of what youre already doing i think youre on the right track

[vatteh]

aks9 & SageTso - Thanks guys. Definitely need the support.
Today some film stills, a still life, portrait piece and some life sketches at the mall.

[Kungfoowiz]

Wth!! I go away for a day and come back to a stack of figures and girlies!!! =)

Super inspiring bro.. really like your life drawings.. they are full of the good stuffies! =)

[cgaddict]

The amount of studies you're doing is insane, very inspirational. Those face studies in particular are very well done, very much looking forward to seeing how you progress. Keep up the good work.

[vatteh]

Kungfoowiz & cgaddict - Thanks guys.

I forgot to post yesterday, so here's what I did. Just some head studies, gesture drawings, life drawings, and a simple piece.

[Kungfoowiz]

OMG.. you are so kicking ass in face and figure studies.. I love your expressive pencil work too, mine can be quite sterile at times.. looks like a shorter stroke really works for you.. really well done bro.

Keep going bro, I'm very inspired by your face studies. =)

[vatteh]

Kungfoowiz - Thanks for all the replies. Very encouraging.



A few days ago I bought the on-demand class on color theory. I'm making sure to go through it again, but I have already learned so much, I feel its starting to show a little in the last few posts. The little boost of encouragement got me thinking and wondering if I have been approaching my studies the wrong way. The class made me much more aware of the importance of color and value to portray form, something that should have been a conscious decision when doing my usual still life and film stills, but just wasn't.This overall reminding me of having some specific purpose in mind when doing some sort of study, whether its paying more attention to the gesture in your figures or trying to better portray form with your light source. I'm need to make more of an effort to seek out knowledge like this. Seems you actually have to learn about it for it to pop out in the real world right in front of you.


A still life of my cell phone near my window. Not too confident with this one. Values look off.



Film stills form the move Inception.



Figure studies and more practicing with gesture.

[alexson]

Great work, man. Your faces and figures look really great. Not much constructive I can say, just keep up the good work!

[Kungfoowiz]

Yeah, it's looking good bro. The lady's eyes bother me a bit, unless you were going for a manga look (which I like, but just pointing out in case you weren't). =)

Yip.. for colour, it helps to stare at things for a while, mind you, the same applies to drawing.. got to look more than you draw apparently. =)

[Pervy]

Loving our sketchbook, there's so much your working on it's quite amazing lol. Keep up the hard work and also thanks alot for little note/video on color theory, it helped me quite a bit.

[Allan-p]

I'm not sure what else to say but keep at it! You seem to have caught passion!

[vatteh]

alexson - Thanks.

Kungfoowiz - Yeah, now I see that funky eye. Thanks for the pointer.

Pervy & Allan-p - Thanks, guys.

Yesterday I did some character studies and today I did the 100 head challenge.

Skin tones on the dude look off, I know.



What I did was I tried to spend 2 minutes on each head, each from a photo ref, using a stopwatch to make it exact. It was very fast paced for me, so most of my time was spent looking at the screen, relying mostly on instincts. Also I was using 11 x 14 sized paper, so my scanner wasn't able to capture the entire page.

[vatteh]

Just some life sketches at the mall. Half of the people were sitting in the lobby area. The other half were waiting in line in the food court. Most of the time I would only have enough time to capture the overall gesture of their pose. I would then use a marker to finish up. There's some I felt were decent, but there's still practice needed.

[vatteh]

Haven't posted in a few days, but all I've done are vilppu exercises from his drawing manual. But here's a figure study and a character design I did.

[vatteh]

Today I did some more life sketches at Starbucks. Now I think I'm getting better at staging my sketches and adding more background elements. I'm also starting to spend more time afterwords rendering the sketch using markers. I can't tell if it looks better though.

[Andrew Sonea]

Wow, you draw so much. I was just feeling good about drawing lots and now seeing this I feel lazy. Your dedication is admirable.

I don't really have much to say. Maybe study how the head attaches to the body and the whole neck area in general. Your ones from imagination especially show that it is a weak area of yours.

[dsacc]

wow, gorgeous studies, I especially love the Inception stills! Keep it up.

[vatteh]

Andrew Sonea - Thanks for pointing that out. I never feel confident when drawing my necks and now I know its very apparent. Gotta do some studies.

dsacc - Thanks. Yeah, Inception was pretty awesome.

The semester started last Wednesday, so I'm back to weekly updates, hopefully no less. Here's what I did.

Usual bus sketches.




Since I have a nice mirror in my dorm room, I though It would be a great idea to start doing self portraits. Now I know why everyone does these, as these are just frustrating. Definitely more to come.


A still life I did today.


Crap I'm not confident with. I know I messed up with proportions somewhere. Feel free to comment if you see anything.

[shiNIN]

Wow... I've just looked over your whole SB...
You focus on faces just like me and do a crazy amount of studies I'm too lazy/blocked/whatever to do (but I don't give up)... (lazyness is a programmer's virtue... than this crazy urge to draw appeared)
In the beginning your faces was plastic and you didn't follow the original well enough... These are improved greatly, now you can draw lively faces instead of nicely rendered dolls. There are room for improvement of course, the quality isn't always the same...
I often thought, especially in the beginning but even after that but you render in a too clean and polished way, be messy, artistic, loose a bit Your old masters studies are more clean than the original (okay, those are photos and time has passed, traditional material but I'm sure it's not only that) - the originals are much more "free", lively, artistic... I know careful copying can act against the artistically loose painting style... But it seems you are in love with polished style, whatever you do, that's not messy. i don't say it's necessarily a problem, I just told you my thought.

[Forrest_I]

Your faces are looking great and I am definitely seeing an improvement not only in your sketches, but in your digitals aswell. Keep posting

Also, I watched that video that you posted. Very interesting stuff, I learned quite a bit

[vatteh]

shiNIN - Thanks for the response. I've just been noticing my too-polished style and have been trying different ways to give it that artistic feel.

Forrest_I - Thanks. The video helped me a lot too.

eh. boring week. just a self portrait and some sketches.

[vatteh]

Hey. It's late so I'm just gonna post.

Life drawings.




Photo study


Skin practice


Crappy self-portrait I did too quickly.