logical homologies

[D.Labruyere]

There are months your brain gets pelted with spectacular commodity dictating
even the smallest crap you should do. Your brain freezes over and gets as
exciting as the landscape a mole looks at for the bigger part of his life. In
these dark hours you forget that you used to move around, breath and
actually do stuff. One of these things I used to do was art.
This morning I deleted all the video games, movies and series from my laptop.
I stripped my room from a lot of everyday distractions, dusted off my art
books and sharpened my pencil. While cleaning my room I even found some
paper that I somehow managed to keep immaculate.

In short, it is time to do some art. After four years of fucking around it is time
to actually do some studies, improve and all in all become the awesome
person I was destined to be. I used to have a sketchbook on this website
which worked as a great motivator. If I can keep this sketchbook updated
daily it means I'm progressing daily, if not, I suck.

To give you the viewer (and myself) a starting point I will first show some old
work in this post. After that I will only update with new work.

-Daniel

[D.Labruyere]

To really start this, here is some new work. I failed to mention in my last post
that I accidentally destroyed my Wacom so I will be posting only traditional
work for a while. Anyway, the update:

30 seconds:


2 minutes:


I have changed the colour of the 2 minute drawings. This because they were
almost invisible after the scan. I still have to figure out how to fix that.

yours,

Daniel

[WRappiii]

Great studies! I particularly like this piece from your first post. really great gesture!

[Sushy]

Great style
I really like the illustrations like this: http://attachments.conceptart.org/fo...5&d=1326209487

[D.Labruyere]

WRappiii and Sushy, thanks for the comments! I'm glad you like that illustration.

Good... I suck! But that is gonna change! My bridgman book is dust free and ready for some studying. SO here are more studies:

[D.Labruyere]

[blindshot]

Excellent work. You have very fluid lines in your shorter studies, which is great! I'd love to see what you could do in 10-30 minute pose drawings.

[D.Labruyere]

Thanks Blindshot. I was curious myself so I did a longer pose. I won't be doing a lot of them for now though. I have the feeling I first have to be able to handle the very basics before moving on to more fleshed out drawings.

[D.Labruyere]

I noticed I am afraid to post some drawings because they are so incredibly bad. Because such fears can only reflect badly on your art I will from now on post everything even if it sucks. All for the improvement and hopefully as this sketchbook advances things will get better.
I have bought a book of Gottfried Bammes and am very excited about it. It will be a nice supplement to the Bridgman book I am currently working from.

[blindshot]

Hey, thanks for stopping by my sketchbook! I'm liking your work so far here. The longer study is looking good. You tackled a pretty difficult pose in #8. Lots of foreshortening and bending going on here. I'll try and do a drawing over this in photoshop at some point to help you out when I get the time.

Anyway, my first order of business would be to ask a question. What is it you want to improve upon? What do you really struggle with in your work?

My second order of business would be to give you a bit of advice. Be less hard on yourself. You can keep a critical eye about your work, but if you beat yourself up and say it sucks, you'll only make the drawing process agonizing instead of enjoyable. In the past I was hard on myself like you are. Even if other people who were viewing my work objectively said there was improvement, I was still entirely dissatisfied. In a way this drove me, but it made drawing a very scary thing for me. You have to realize that you can develop a positive attitude about drawing, even if you're not where you want to be. Your next piece is always going to be better than the last piece. You're always going to learn more when you draw. If you draw enough consistently it's inevitable that your work will eventually start to look exceptional. Just try to bear in mind that you have a bio-electric supercomputer inside of your skull. Drawing is a task that it is entirely capable of learning well.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you develop a positive attitude toward your work, you'll make a lot more progress. Being less hard on yourself tends to have a freeing effect on your work. You'll be more prone to taking risks and experimenting. You'll create more dynamic compositions and learn faster because you believe you can so your thoughts aren't bogged down by thinking you can't.

[D.Labruyere]

Hey Blindshot! Thank you for coming back to my humble sketchbook. My main focus right now is the good old anatomy. I know the basics but I have never managed to completely nail it. The further I progress the more I notice that is a consistent issue within my work. It is not structured enough.
I am a bit hard on myself because it took me a really long time to figure that out hehe. But you are right. It shouldn't get in the way of the fun that is drawing. And I promise you, it doesn't. Even though I think my work isn't good yet I am learning tons and am very excited about that.

Anyway, I have got my old toy again, the wacom so I have been playing with it. I also have done more anatomy studies on paper but I don't have the time to scan and upload them right now. I will do that asap.

Enjoy! I know I did

[in2eternity]

Really great work here))) Keep practicing!

[D.Labruyere]

thank you in2eternity!

Just another boxer for today. I have seen other people do this on conceptart.org aswell and now I have tried two I find them to be great practice! So I will be doing more of them.

[GEB]

That's the spirit dude! Go get em! Really nice gesture studies

[D.Labruyere]

Thanks GEB!

A quick doodle just for fun.

[D.Labruyere]

Been a while again. Some stuff I am currently busy with.

[JeanFumero]

That's far from "sucking", the fast ones are superb, I envy you.

[Velocity Kendall]

damn, LOTS of cool stuff going on here, love to see the experiments youve got bubbling away in your lab



nice!

[dlincoln83]

diggin your experiments and love reading about people getting serious about their art - those boxer studies you did earlier look awesome thx for sharing

[D.Labruyere]

Thanks all!

Been on a short holiday in France but now it's time to get back in action. Some sketches from my sketchbook. All from head. I find it really refreshing to do these gestures from head. You see immediately what you still don't know well enough. Which makes for accurate studies later on

edit: sorry that the scans aren't the best. I think it will take a long time before me and my scanner become good friends. It never seems to be a problem with loose papers but with sketchbooks... ugh

[D.Labruyere]

Some more.





This one looks a bit messed up right now. I've been busy with the face but couldn't get it right. After redrawing it several times and fleshing out I finally came to the solution. The problem (as always... ) were the values. I don't know... I always seem to put them to close together which always turns into a bloody mess. Lesson learned again. I've quickly put an overlay on it and pushed it to it's extreme. I am still deciding what is less work right now, repairing the damage or start over again.

[JiR]

welcome back with sharp mind and pencil

After 4years of distraction dident got rusty thats nice... I hope to see your art updates more often ;D

I like your thinking of distractions I will delete my movies/ games to as result...

cheers!

[D.Labruyere]

Hey JiR! Distractions are sometimes welcome, but as soon as they get in the way of what you really want to do it's bad. I can honestly say that I still don't regret the decision to make my room and house more art friendly.

I went to a friend yesterday. We'd decided we would spend a day on some die-hard drawing. Instead we got drunk, very drunk, and all I've got to show is one lousy page. It was fun tho'

[polaritymechanic]

hey man,
just dropping by to say that the sketch-sheet in post #20 with the guys sitting on the shoulders is really awesome.

keep rocking!

[Gpozzo]

Nice sketchbook man, very interesting stuff in here, liking post #16 a lot, keep 'em coming!

[D.Labruyere]

polaritymechanic and Gpozzo, thank you!

Some studies of the arm and hand. The first one is copied from Bammes. The second page is my own hand and the third is from memory. I think it is better when studying hands to also study the connection points. I am under the impression that what happens between one connection point and another isn't really that important. Those shapes can vary a lot from person to person. This tends to be less at spots where different bodyparts connect. I think this has to do with more showable bone underneath the skin that is the same for everybody.

[Izene]

Awesome sketchbook!Glad I dropped by
Keep it up!

[polaritymechanic]

These hands and arms turned out very nice, you got some sweet pencil style.
Wanna see more!

[D.Labruyere]

Thank you Izene and Polaritymechanic.

I don't have the time to really draw today. I hope I can do some work tonight but for now just a tiny update. Legs from bridgman.

[knut-]

Great man, glad to have you back.
You really have a charming style and is very interesting that you actually can draw in many different ways.
I like your colors and the values of thiw first mother and child drawing.
Really interesting...