Lyraina's Sketchbook

[Lyraina]

Jaik: Thanks! Yeah, I'm really bad at drawing with the tablet, kills me every time I try to make a sketch before painting.
I tried the line connecting exercise once digitally (normally only on paper), and felt like I'm raping my tablet and pen O_O But I'll try again, maybe a bit more gentle!


Here are new hair studies, better then the last batch I think, but not nearly good enough.







And trees, because... I wanted to. Hah!



Mini Snape (or something like that) tries to cure my underbite-phobia o.O

[Lyraina]

Until I find the time to scan my pencils, here are some photo studies from terragalleria.com, didn't do them in a while!
They show me how much I still have to learn, there are so many things I just have no idea how to paint (Vegetation, mountains, rocks, ...everything!)






And a screencap study, I wanted to do a different approach as usual, this time starting directly in color and without lineart/sketch.

[Lyraina]

More faces, more boring. Also experimenting with my pencils a bit more. I'm no fan of very controlled and precise hatching, but I'm don't like the mess I created here either. I just want to paaaaint, not draw :<







20 min from photo

[n1frit]

Well done landscape! Keep it up!

[Clur]

Hey, your rendering is getting really good! That last batch of faces has a lot of impact, some of the eyes are a bit overworked, they look a bit flat, but the form of all the faces is great!

[Jaik]

Oh damn, workin hard, I see those sneaky skull studies, good job
Pretty damn jelly of those enviro studies, need to do some of them again. If you want another way to improve line quality digitally, and this is only something I've found so I have no idea whether it is just a placebo effect, but tracing over an image, maybe a figure, or a portrait, and focusing on doing every line fluently and precise helps with control, just sucks because you cant show anything at the end of it lol. I know a lot of people say tracing is bad but it makes me very concious of my line.

Keep up the good work

[Lyraina]

n1frit: Thank you!

Clur: Thanks! You're right, I think I'm still very much just drawing the "eye" symbol instead of shaping them like every other part of the face. I'll try to pay attention to that next time.

Har22tman: Yeah, posemaniacs is great for very quick gestures!

Jaik: Thanks Yeah, enviro studies always are fun! Thanks for the tracing suggestion, I'll give it at try, sounds like a good idea. I'm already doing digital warmup lines and ellipses again thanks to your reminder. You always seem to have useful exercises and advice for me, that's awesome

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Lost half of my drawing time to severe migraine today (excuses, exuses..), so I only did some relaxing things for the rest of the evening. More enviros!
Still trying to push atmosphere and colors a bit more, I want to achieve that magical feel and glow you see in many environment paintings. I'm also trying not to use any fancy layer or brush mode, just paint, to get a feel for it.
Note to self: Play and experiment more with interesting light situations!

[rupuni]

Your environment studis are pretty cool ÖöÖ But it seems, that you have lightly weaken in portraits ans anatomy. It helps me, to study this stuff with clear, long lines, as less as possible. So I won a three-dimensional understanding

[Lyraina]

yphiel: Thank you! It's interesting what you say about studying anatomy with few lines to understand it in 3d. That's actually something I struggle with a lot, no matter how I practice. I thought shading and penciling around might be better, so I did that instead of just lines. But I'll gladly give the lines another chance, the anatomy sketches in you sketchbook are really lovely!

Why is time running so terribly fast? I feel like days are over just after I did my warmup+gestures. Anyway, here are some more photo studies.

60 min


45 min each, I think I have to watch my saturation...

[Lyraina]

Trying to apply some stuff I learnt in the photo studies in imagination sketches/thumbs. Still not achieving the light situations I'd like to, and also I have problems with showing larger scale. Need to figure that out somehow.









And proving to myself that I didn't learn anything in my recent photo studies :< (Good excuse to do some more!)

[Lyraina]

More photo studies. Pencil stuff gets scanned tomorrow!
30-40 min/each, faestock.deviantart.com and lovecastle.org/draw

[Lyraina]

Anatomy again. I still don't know how to really get better at those, what kind of exercises help most (draw from books, draw from photos, paint, do only lines, pencil vs charcoal etc., unfortunately I don't have many opportunities to draw from life atm). So I just keep struggling along and hope to see some improvement eventually. I like the "free" line drawings better than the controlled, clean ones, even though they are very messy. The more I focus on getting the lines clean, the less I can concentrate on keeping the energy of the gesture, and I tend to start copying mindlessly. Maybe I will be able to to "freehand" sketches with pretty lines, but without constructing and erasing, if only I practice them enough Maybe it's just mileage at all.
I'm still at a loss how to improve my most mentioned critiques: Making my figues less flat and more liek the 3d objects they are, and also more dynamic, less stiff.

[Jaik]

Hey nice updates, glad you find my advice useful and I dont come across as a rambling lunatic

In regards to your figures: I think that any clean line drawing will look stiff and flat, most of the energy of a drawing is contained in the sketch, which is why people like the sketch better than the finished drawing most of the time. Even comic books, which are just line, use line weight to distinguish between differences. So maybe experimenting a little with line weight will help, this is also why I think the drawings with the construction lines appeal to you more than the clean drawings, because they are lighter and therefore have a different weight.
When I did a life drawing class one of the things drummed into our heads was to go over the entire figure (the gesture) and get everything in place, and then keep going over the whole body in waves, slowly refining the sketch to be darker and more correct as you go along. Where I think (and if I'm wrong please ignore this) that you do the gesture, get everything in place then do a tight contour drawing over the top and erase your lines? Just a suggestion.

P.s. If you want to look at an amazing gesture artist try Michael Hampton. He is a really great person to look at for gestures, but if you notice, none of them are good figure drawings. I'm not sure myself (because I also do this) but maybe there is a blurred line between figure drawing and gestures and that they cant always be grouped in the same category. I dont know lol

[Lyraina]

Thanks Jaik
I guess you're right about the figure stuff... I'm actually doing both, sketch/erase/draw clean lines, and also rough sketch/rough lines on top. I prefer the second approach, maybe I should try to push line weight in those.
I didn't know Hampton has a website (didn't even think to look for that to be honest), thanks a lot for the link!

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Can anyone give me some advice when (meaning at which skill level) it would be best to purchase the year subscription of the Gnomon Workshop? At the moment I'm saving money for one, but most of them seem very advanced, so I guess it would be better to improve my fundamentals a bit more on my own before diving into that? Anyone has any idea about that?

Here are some caribbean color scheme enviros from mind, maybe I'll finish one next

[Jaik]

Wow, the bottom two, love them, they are great!

Im keenly awaiting peoples reply to your questions because I was thinking of buying the year sub too just the other day. My only advice in that, which is how I justified it in my mind, is that they do have some basic vids, and if you look at your improvement in the last year, would you be able to get to the level to take advantage of the advanced tutorials in the space of a year? I'm a solid believer of getting in too deep and fighting to make it possible, maybe having spent that money and not being able to take advantage of the advanced ones will motivate you to work harder? And if theres one thing you can't put a price on is motivation.. I would gladly pay that amount of money for a years worth of constant motivation.

Thanks for stopping by my SB as always too

[Lyraina]

Jaik: That's actually an interesting way to look at the subscription issue. I'll keep thinking about that and try to find a good time to buy it
Glad you like the bottom two sketches, the last one is my favourite as well


Sorry for the lack of posts, I was not lazy though Just not near my scanner.
Anatomyyy... and faces, mostly from loomis and photos and imagination and life (or a mixture).
Trying to work on my understanding of the construction of the head again... also trying to follow the form with the shading, but that's not really working out so far.

[RYAN11211]

I think a lot of your drawings are very nice. When I first looked at your sketchbook on the first page, then looked at your last page, it's a massive advancement. Just the change in shading technique is great.
I think you are doing a great job of pushing yourself. One of the philosophies of my figure drawing is the idea of balance. during class lectures, I've heard it explained as a system of "C's". personally, like to think of it as a system of short and long parallels. When you think about the figure as a whole. the cup-egg- head system its all about an accordion structure. even the contrapposto stance is meant to exacerbate the accordion. I like to extend that idea throughout the body, right down to the fingers. It helps me with a sense of structure and balance. the system of C's is nice because it keeps the figure a constant convex system. but try to keep both of those in mind. I did a really quick mockup. Hopefully this is more helpful in explaining.

[Lyraina]

RYAN11211: Thank you very much for the kind words and the explanation. There's so much to keep in mind when drawing, it's insane... I'll try to pay attention to the concept of Cs and long/short in mind next time!

More anatomy from photos, those are mostly drawn very slowly, and without construction - it's a funny way to draw, forces me to be very careful and attentive, but this also makes me more aware of subtle muscles and such. Practices different skills, I guess.













And some colors

[lanotdesign]

Really awesome anatomical studies. It seems like you still need to work on the eyes though, but everything else is just simply outstanding. Good job.

[Rustveld]

It's great to see how hard you're working! Your anatomy drawings have gotten really good, I love the loose but confident lines. I do suggest paying more attention when drawing the head, some of them look flat and skewed. In comparison you're able to make the figures look 3d with line alone. Keep it up!

[Lyraina]

lantodesign and Rustveld: Thanks to both of you! I'll pay more attention to head and eyes from now on. (Starting with next post..)


More anatomy










Since my pencil hand studies from my own hand I used to some months ago did absolutely nothing for my ability to draw hands, I thought I might give it another try, this time from photos, going for quantity instead of quality. If feels stupid to draw something from photo that I could draw from life, but maybe it will still be more successful. If not, I will at least get some practice sketching with my wacom.


Screencap study

[Lyraina]

More screencap studies (run out of time with the Eva Green one, had only 1 hour/each), and trying to understand how to paint mountains by copying modern masters. Still not there...























My thoughts so far:
- Consider carefully which shape to give the mountain/rock
- Hard edges for stones and snow filled cracks
- Soft edges for snow drifts, bottom of mountain
- Choose colors and values wisely: snow in shadow vs. light etc.
- Play with fog

[Sushy]

Wow these mountains are actually really good. I would say they are the best on this whole sketchbook page. The study from V for Vendetta came out very nice too

[JiR]

Sehr schöne Berggipfel Umsetzungen, was mich grade noch interessiert ist das 3te Screenplay bild, welcher Film ist das?

*auf Handstudy schau* Du bist Linkshänderin?

[Lyraina]

Sushy: I'm surprised you think the mountain studies are good, because I was really not meeting my expectations! So thank you

JiR: Danke dir! Ich bin Rechtshänderin, die Studien sind diesmal von Fotos (link). Paar Seiten weiter vorne gibts meine linke Hand zu sehen, aber ich hatte nicht das Gefühl dass es mir irgendwas gebracht hat, die zu zeichnen...
Der dritte Screenshot ist von Kingdom of Heaven (klick), ich hab den Film allerdings nicht gesehen...

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I really wonder why sometimes it's going so well with anatomy, and then I spend two entire days producing only crap. I also managed to confuse myself so much while drawing Loomis heads and my skull that at some point, I didn't even know which lines were declining or rising anymore. I hope I'll get through this soon!






And now for something very embarassing, but I'll never learn it if I only draw naked people

[tankwareuropa]

Hey,

Just went through your whole sketchbook and your progress is amazing. I mean it.

I'm having a lot of trouble getting started myself (thinking of not giving a shit and starting a sketchbook here) so I can definitely relate on being your own worst critic. I'm looking at those last figs with clothes saying to myself "what is she talking about I think those look great" heh... keep it up you're constantly climbing, nothing is a setback! I'm looking forward to checking your upcoming posts.

[JiR]

JiR: Danke dir! Ich bin Rechtshänderin, die Studien sind diesmal von Fotos (link). Paar Seiten weiter vorne gibts meine linke Hand zu sehen, aber ich hatte nicht das Gefühl dass es mir irgendwas gebracht hat, die zu zeichnen...
Der dritte Screenshot ist von Kingdom of Heaven (klick), ich hab den Film allerdings nicht gesehen...

Ah die 50 Handstudy's kenne ich auch, würde für mich persönlich nicht gehen, da ich lieber echte 3D Objekte im Kopf vorstelle und sie auf "2D Fläche zusammenstauche" Ich denke deswegen wollen alle Leute mich überzeugen soviel wie möglich RL abzuzeichnen... schade das es mich meistens zu sehr enttäuscht wenn ich es doch mal tu, Lernkurve hin oder her.

btw link zu kingdom of heaven is broken extracted the image link

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV...640_SY426_.jpg

[Istmin52]

You've definitely showed improvement in your sketchbook. I do find your figures to be stiff though and you still seem to have proportional problems with heads. You should watch Stan Prokopenko's video's on how to draw them. He does a great job at explaining how to draw them.

[Lyraina]

tankwareuropa: Thank you very much for the kind words and the encouragement Yeah, I guess one should not always be so hard on oneself, but it is hard not to!

JiR: Jo, prinzipiell ist 3D-->2D wohl besser, zumindest sagen das alle Für Stillleben und co mach ich das auch sehr gern, aber bei den Händen hat es mir irgendwie überhaupt nichts genützt. Nicht dass die Fotostudien mehr bringen würden, aber einen Versuch war es wert ^^
Neuer Versuch für den Link: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2949352448/ch0006618

Istmin52: Thank you. True words, I struggle a lot with anatomy and heads. I know Proko's videos, Loomis etc - just seems to take a lot of time until it shows in my work... don't know why :<


I tried out some new things... like character silhouettes! Wanted to do some forever, but somehow never dared to give it a try. It was a lot of fun though and I guess I'll try to develop this technique further, I can see why many professionals do those
Went better than expected; I did struggle with defining the costumes further though, I'll have to learn that.



The usual stuff, still don't know why my skill seems to vary so much from day to day. And some silhouettes from hel-looks.com, made me realize how different people stand (legs)!

[Lyraina]

Sketches and a very boring photo study