Vay's sketchbook

[Vay]

Hi, welcome to my sketchbook post. Any advice pertaining my work is greatly appreciated.

Newer pictures are posted on later posts as usual, but not necessarily when the works are created, because I tend to post some stuff from the past. The work creation date is after the description of the number in respect to the image. So head on to later pages to see later works.

The pictures that were originally in this post have been moved to page 2 as of 4/28/2011.

pictures:

( moved to page 2)

[ayoub66]

amazing stuff , love sketch number 4 ... keep it up

[rocko]

Hi mate.
I think you're pretty good with proportions already. i think you're pencil shading can't keep upt with that. try to follow the form a bit more instead of using your fingers to smudge (and hide) "mistakes".
hope this doesn't come along to harsh. just wanna give u some input
cheers

[Vay]

Hi mate.
I think you're pretty good with proportions already. i think you're pencil shading can't keep upt with that. try to follow the form a bit more instead of using your fingers to smudge (and hide) "mistakes".
hope this doesn't come along to harsh. just wanna give u some input
cheers

Yea, I learned to not smudge after I drew those last year. I used a blending stump to smudge two of the pictures, the rest got smudged over time because of weather. I make myself draw on newsprint, and smudging would be really bad on newsprint. Thanks for the advice, it is true that my shading can't keep up. My foundation teacher keeps criticizing me for bad shading. All I studied mostly books on perspective and anatomy, so I think I should get some books on shading now.

Also, I uploaded two more:

8.I. Inspired by music and my novel-in-progress. As you can see, some of the type design got left out because my scanner is not big enough. 4/8/11
9.I. Inspired by my novel-in-progress. circa 8/23/10

[aronjs]

Your pencil work is looking pretty good! I especially like the guy with the horned helmet! Do you take time to do some gesture sketches or light sketching from life/observation?

[Vay]

Your pencil work is looking pretty good! I especially like the guy with the horned helmet! Do you take time to do some gesture sketches or light sketching from life/observation?

I rarely do drawing from life, in fact, I have never drawn a person in real life other than a self portrait I did in high school. I do, however, seldomly go to characterdesigns.com and do quick sketches of the 2D figure from their database, but I owe most of my works to inspiration, that is why I noted them in my posts. My imagination goes crazy when I listen to epic music. I get all these battle scenes of knights from the novel I am working on. I am also working on a sci fi novel, and that robot spider is drawn from that novel I am working on. It would be a good idea to get inspiration for your drawing, such as reading a novel or trying to write your own story or novel, because it helps establish a strong scenery to draw from. Music also works as inspiration, and if you like orchestral music or trailer music (these music are my favorite because of their dramatic elements and suspense), I think they still sell "Invincible" a public album by Two Steps From Hell, the musics they make are primarily used as trailer music for movies such as Star Trek, Inception, Avatar, and video games like Mass Effect you name it! There is also Audiomachine, they also make trailer music.

Feng Zhu from FZDschool talks about inspiration, but inspiration is not limited to just the things he says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDuayEzH8c4

Something he says that I totally agree on is that novels or stories can be great sources of inspiration. When you read novels, you have to create the scenery and the people yourself, since there are no pictures to guide you through.

This is a sample music by audio machine (very good and inspirational music):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXNBii70Xw

These are by Two Steps From Hell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBuz9ul88bs

This one inspired my very first picture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaQKnpdxFpE

You can search for more of these music on youtube.

The inspirations are for coming up with a gesture, and the rest is the anatomy you know. When I draw figure, I break down the figures to the bones; I draw sticks to represent bones, then I draw ambiguous geometric shapes around the stick until they look like a body part. The fact that I am not experienced at rendering and shading probably lies in the fact I don't draw a lot from real life.

[Lumari]

You've got some pretty cool sketches here, Vay! I agree with the previous comment on shading - I think your sketches would look better with a wider range of tonal values. Other than that, great work =]

[Vay]

You've got some pretty cool sketches here, Vay! I agree with the previous comment on shading - I think your sketches would look better with a wider range of tonal values. Other than that, great work =]

I tried to put in more value for this sketch: (The right knee and face wasn't worked that much)

10.I. Inspired by music. 4/10/2011
13.I. Inspired by music. 4/10/2011

Is my shading better, am I heading in the right direction?

These observation sketches are 4x6, it is from a small sketchbook I travel with. I will sketch things around my neighborhood or a bit further beyond of it into this sketchbook. I live in New York, New York city on the Lower East Side of Manhattan Island:

11.O. From observation. Barbed wire, barbed wire post. 4x6 4/9/2011
12.O. From observation. Car, pigeon, plant. 4x6 4/9/2011

[Vay]

Two things I did in high school.

13.O. Shoes I drew for fun in high school. Circa 12/1/2009
14.O/I. A glass cup from observation with imaginary ash tray and cigarette with fume. I drew this around the same time for required art course in high school as the shoes above. Circa 12/1/2009

P.S. I decided it is not wise to put up all my sketches on one reply, as my own post will drown in the oceans of sketchbooks here if I don't impose on myself a limit on the sketches per reply.

[Stuart DeViva]

Thanks for stopping by. You've got some very nice drawings here. I can tell you've been drawing for some time.

Keep it up. I really like the last one, nice rendering.

[Vay]

Thanks for stopping by. You've got some very nice drawings here. I can tell you've been drawing for some time.

Keep it up. I really like the last one, nice rendering.

Thanks for stopping by as well.

15.O. Here is my first experiment on white charcoal. It is of a carved elephant I bought from a chinatown giftshop. Couldn't put in much detail since it was a small image on very rough pastel paper. 4/11/2011

[Vay]

16. I. Concept sketch of knights, which is inspired by the same story I am writing that has inspired my other sketches. 4/13/2011
17.O. Another glass drawing I did in High school. circa 12/1/2009

[Vay]

18. I. Learning to use charcoal. On rough paper. 4/13/2011
19. I. Inspired by music and knights. Attempting to improve rendering. 4/14/2011
20. Inspired by music. Quick sketch in 5.5" by 8.5" sketchbook. 4/14/2011

If any are wondering what music I listen to, I listen to Two steps From Hell and Audio Machine. You can listen for free on youtube.

[Momus]

Your observational studies are surprisingly great, especially that glass holy shit.

[Vay]

Your observational studies are surprisingly great, especially that glass holy shit.

Thanks for the reply. Here are some "5-minute burn" I did for Bert Dodson's book:

The graphite pictures are not detailed because the pencils were very blunt, but they look a lot better in real life. Good thing I brought my Pilotpen Hi-Tec-C Cavalier on my walk.

21-25. O. I went around Chinatown and did random sketches in a 4x6 sketchbook. 4/14/2011

26. O. This "5-minute burn" is of my messy room, this is on newsprint and it is harder to achieve darker values with my hard pencil. However, it looks darker on the paper in real life. 4/13/2011

Plus, look forward to a drawing of another knight :p

[FootstepsBeckon]

moar more more \o/

[Vay]

moar more more \o/

Here you go

27. I. Inspired by music. 4/14/2011

Sorry for the yellowish images here. My sister's camera's white balance is broken and I cannot use a scanner because the pictures are too big.

28. O. Life drawing of fake skeleton. 2/1/2011
29. O. Life drawing of statue head. 4/12/2011
30. I. Logo design for school (before coloring). 4/13/2011

[Vay]

31. I/O. Horse study. The muscles I drew are imaginary, I used Ellenberger's book to describe where the horse's muscles will be from a photo reference. 4/15/2011

32. I. Inspired by music. c. 2/15/2011

33. O. Horse study. Drew this skeleton from Ellenberger's animal anatomy book. 4/14/2011

[Vay]

I have been doing private work, so I missed uploading for 2 days or so. Plus, I scanning so many pictures and editing the size in paint takes so long :p.

34. Oriental lion statute I sketched near a Chinese monastery. 4/17/2011

35. Facade of a police headquarter near Little Italy (New York City). 4/17/2011

36. Lion statute at the front of the police headquarter near Little Italy. 4/17/2011

37. Couldn't scan this big paper. Experimenting with cheap paint. The paint really sucks, the brand is Reeves. Every time the paint dries, the colors condense on the edges forming hard edges. It required a lot of reworking. Lesson learned: buy better paint. 4/17/2011

[Vay]

Please critique or something or else there will be too much pictures on one page ;_;

38-43. O. The first picture contains a horse from google. The others are photo studies I did from characterdesigns.com. 4/18-19/2011

43. I. This is a mech design that I randomly started sketching it without any thought. 4/19/2011

[Grzessnik]

I like pen drawings a lot. Pencil drawings are not in my style. I think there is big improvement between pencil and pen. IMHO you should work fast to gain confidence. Don't bother with details.
Keep working!

[Feil Magnus]

Pen drawings are nice, i guess pencill ones should be as well but you need to put more values into them. work on anatomy with reference there are some mistakes here and there, anatomy can't be guessed it has to be worked and analysed. A good thing is to practice what you've learnt with a study on a drawing from imagination to check if you've learned what you intended to improve.
Keep up the good work and progress will come.

[RBeek]

you doing great man kep this up!

[Ricardo Robles]

Nice inks dude. There are some anatomy issues but a bit more study will fix it for sure, you got skills.
keep doing good!

[Vay]

Thanks everyone for the critiques. I will do more value and anatomy studies. Here is another of my poor attempt at value hatching:



44. I. Randomly started sketching without much thought on form. This is mainly to experiment with value. 4/19/2011

[Vay]

45. I. This is from imagination. A random character design. (Forgot to draw the insigna on her right chest). 4/20/2011

46. O.This is another photo study from characterdesigns.com. I drew this very very lightly to allow for more slight value changes. 4/19/2011

[Freeminds]

you're not that bad, I like your studies with a pen(?). I miss some contrast in first drawings, though. Don't be afraid to fail 'cause you're learning now and failing is good

[Vay]

Thanks for the reply. It is really hard for me to know when am I failing.

47. I. Practicing figures in perspective. 4/20/2011
48. I. Random submarines in perspective. 4/21/2011

[wooden mango]

When I saw you comment about about difficulty shading I was actually going to suggest maybe switching to something like pen but now I see you are using pen more.

Personally, I always find myself timid in laying down pencil very thickly because I am afraid of smudging it (I tend to work all over the place) As long as I give it a couple of minutes to dry, not so much a problem with inks. I also just love the look of hatching.

In any case, very nice stuff. You do a really great job with armor.

Nice pencils. Seem to know what your doing. Give us more.