nat's sketchbook

[lionheartGFX]

i agree with ForScience imaginative work as an important, i love your figure studies and the amazing amoung of gestures and how briliantly they capture movement, i would love to see that same expression applied to your faces and portraits, try to work figures and faces around emotions, write 10 emotions and do figures that express that through body language and faces that express that thorugh facial movement, its alot of fun and it gets you warmed up pretty damn quickly! give me more stuffs! i want Moooore! ;D

[- nat -]

@ ForScience, thanks again for the feedback! I'm trying to gain confidence through studies to apply. And you're right, I should incorporate imagination designs and drawings more often.

@ lionheartGFX, Thank you!! I was wondering what the next step in gestures was and you gave me a wonderful suggestion. I started with some body language drawings from observation (from an Asian drama) since I don't have enough knowledge to draw them from imagination. I don't think I got the exercise quite right yet, hopefully with more practice I'll start seeing the subtleties of human gestures.



Edited that imagination pose

[kingkostas]

From studies to imagination you are going greatly!!! Awesome improvement. Now just keep up the great work

[ForScience]

I want to share a tip about lighting. When light breaks across a curved form like the human body it creates a soft line (called a core shadow). When a shadow falls onto an object, it creates a hard edge (called a cast shadow). I did a quick paint over showing how this applies to your drawing.

[- nat -]

@ kingkostas, Thank you!

@ ForScience, indeed it does! I'm starting to understand how light work with object studies and I definitely agree with what you say (still it's very very complicated). Using cast shadow and core shadow fleshes her out. Also thanks for the definitions! I didn't really know the difference. Here is one more form study (still life), this one was harder than usual because the box was black and I couldn't really tell what the result color (from lighting) was...I focused on hard and soft edges (or maybe there aren't many soft edges in this study, mmmm mostly cast shadows)...gaaaah tis all confusing.


ps: Perspective is not very good, I see it now



I took a photo after I finished the painting and here are my thoughts



1. in real life, the perspective is not that extreme. It is much more subtle, to the point that I didn't even see it.
2. The colors are off in the picture, the red cylinder thing is more saturated and red-red not orange-red.
3. the top surface is lighter in value than the other two, but it is not so bright like in the picture...it's a tad darker...or better to say, less reflective


bottom line, I need more practice




pps: I will be traveling for the next couple of days

[ForScience]

the core shadow thing is how an object reacts to a single light source, in this case you have at least 2 sources of light competing for the role of primary light source. The same rules apply, just twice.

[- nat -]

I see! I tried to recreate the experiment again with a more defined second light (spot light). Still life



Body language/tone studies


head construction form imagination after watching one of Vilppu's DVD


part imagination, part observations. Sorry for the poor quality, scanner not available. Photos taken with phone.

[Yemi775]

The gesture work is really helping your figures e-nat do them more and thanks for sharing.

[- nat -]

Thank you Yemi!


I don't like this speedy much, too amateurish.

[gabyness]

After having just gone through your whole sketchbook, I must say you have AMAZING improvement! I love your gestures and line drawings. Keep up the great work [:

[- nat -]

Thank you for the wonderful comment gabyness! I hope the improvement continues

[- nat -]

Loomis

[lionheartGFX]

wow alot of stuffs! great work with the body language, try to exxaggerate even more, i see you go exactly with the reference, remember reference its never used to exactly copy you can (and to me MUST) change it to your liking, for an example in the scared drawing, fi you would have pushed the hands furhter to the phaes raised the eyebrows and opened more the eyes it would have showned alot more emotion and action.

this doesnt mean that you did bad im just saying how you could improve those, facial expression and body language its a tricky subject for beginners and intermediates because you are struggling with both how to draw the body and face ACCURATELY plus using it EFFECTIVELY.

so for starters why dont you try to reff some disney production art, they show alot of body language and facial expression, if you decide to take my suggestion try and push YOUR drawings and exaggerate them even more than the disney originals its a tough call but im sure you will learn alot, ALSO when doing something that requires an specific emotion or pose try to do it yourself and feel it.

im gonna stop rambling you can go to living lines library to see some disney production art, i recommend tarzan and tangled http://livlily.blogspot.mx/2010/11/m...-drawings.html

[- nat -]

Thank you for the awesome critique!! You're right, I recently started to break away from copying the ref but I often fall back into old habits. I tried different versions of that scared pose again, no breakthroughs yet but it feels less stiff.





and more goodies, that link is amazing! Thank you. I started with Tarzan, there are also construction sketches and expression break-downs. Really awesome stuff. (as for trying to push the expression more than Disney, that's gonna need more practice but I'm up for it)

[- nat -]

More Tarzan/ body language/ expression studies

[M.Calza]

Really inspiring improvement, your drawings are great but way ahead of your rendering, maybe you could try some material studies, skin, metal...

[Bowandbrush]

wow, you´re really working hard, great studies. Do some more still life paintings!

[- nat -]

@ Bowandbrush, Thank you!

@ M.Calza, thanks for stopping by! I did a combine of still life painting + material study.



Loomis



Light was coming from the window behind the saucer. The sky is gray and cloudy, so I was able to get some neutral diffused light. Values are still rough, even though I spent around 1.5 hours on it

[- nat -]

[- nat -]

[- nat -]

I'm feeling burned out for some reason..


anyway, gestures from memory/imagination

[kingkostas]

Really great studies!!! Glad to see you focused, you are doing great training. In the life study you used a lot of black and that made it fake and muddy.Well if not that much black then you didnt manage to keep the relativity of the tones. Just something to keep in mind, i have 2 objects one is white and the other is grey. If i make the whites shadow black then the grey's shadow will be even blacker [well pure black anyway]. Everything will have to keep the same ratio of change. Also as craig mullins said, decide whats in light and whats in shadow and dont mix them up. These regions will need to be visible, so be carefull with putting reflected light that has the same value as the light areas, it confuses the eye. Keep up the good work and if you are into values read lots of times the loomis creative illustration [tones] for now.

if you feel burn out, relax take a break or do something thats second nature to you, or just scribling circles, empty or with tones etc

[iven]

I missed a lot of updates, nice sketchy work and very lose.
I really like the MartialArt gestures and the muscle studies for
school, was it for school?! Didn't really read yet,........

[Colour Coded]

Awesome studies! I like the body gesture chart you worked on. Very interesting stuff.

[- nat -]

@ kingkostas, Thank you for the great post! I read your comment three times to understand the explanation and then I face palmed at my still-life. You're dead right, I kept darkening the shadows without really taking the light source into consideration. The egg had one shadow tone difference, the lemon another and the platter yet a different one. I started reading Creative Illustration like you recommended. Next time I do a still life study, I will know what to look for. (Hopefully very soon)

@ iven, thank you! it was a study for the spartan camp of last week. it's in community activities

@ Colour Coded, thank you!

Vilppu warmups



some quick gestures to get out the art burn out (90sec)

[- nat -]

Last one is ref'd

[smrrfette]

Each and every one of your figure studies are fantastic! Cool skb to look at, keep up the good work!

[- nat -]

Thank you smrrfette!

source: http://www.styleclicker.net/

[- nat -]

I'm reading Loomis' Creative Illustration, the section about tones is still confusing...But I got that shadows should be consistent with each other. if one object has a 2 value shift, then everything else has to have that difference. or if it's 3 values jump, same thing. Unless there is a different light source.

Still it's a tad too theoretical for me at this point.





The lemon's cast show is 30 points darker than the sketchbook's cover (The HSB slider). Same as sketchbook's cast shadow = darker ~30 points the table's material. (I still didn't get to the cool light/warm shadow and vice versa thing)



part imagination, part from observation (Teen wolf ep 11)


All imagination

[- nat -]

Chow concepts...Mother nature's child