Jaik Art Sketchbook - Beginnings

[Jaik]

CountBlackula: Yeah all out of my head, they mostly start off as squiggles and then I work it up from there.

Thanks Marko! Yeah, colour is still a weak point of mine, but I'll get it eventually

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Started my character creation stuffs.. First ones going to be a druid, working on a character turn around.. Its really fun to actually get into the character and work out all the small bits of design.. Enjoying it immensely.
Sorry if the brainstorming sheets arent readable or dont make sense, but I thought it would be cool to show my process from start to finish.
And some hands.. Trying to do 50 a week.. so far I have.. 8..

[Greenhouse]

Interesting stuff going on here! I’m very excited to see what will come out of this cool collage. You’re really pushing yourself and it seems you’re enjoying yourself. Keep up the creativity! You’re doing great!

[Jaik]

Greenhouse: Dont get your hopes up too much lol, really not good at characters =/

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Charrracctterrrssss >.> and a portrait i did for a friends birthday, sorry for the crappy phone pic.. cant seem to find my camera.. will repost when I do.

[eclip-se]

Cool! nice progress Jaik

[Joe777k7]

Wow great progress as usual man!!! Id say watch the figures a little. The ones on top seem to be leaning a little but its great you are doing some reaseach and attemping orginal work!! Keep it up man and cant wait to see more!!!

[liquorbleu]

Wow man that portrait looks amazing! Huge improvement!!

[Greenhouse]

Man that portrait for your friend is really great! I don’t know how the original looks, but this one is truly awesome!
You shouldn’t underestimate yourself. I think those characters turned out nicely. And it looks like a quite funny exercise to do as well.
Keep it up, you’re doing great Jaik!

[eclip-se]

Hope you'r alive and work hard! JerryActric also disappear with ya, do you both studying somewhere and silently progressing like hell?)
Cheers

[Jaik]

eclip-se: Haha, mountain retreat training ground, its super secret. We learn kung fu and how to bake cookies.. Just coincidence I guess, Christmas time makes it a pain to draw too, so many disruptions.

Thanks as always Joe Yeah anatomy is still a struggle..

Thanks Liqour and Greenhouse!

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Sorry about the lack of updates, drawing been going slow for the last couple of weeks, had some medical issues with my dad, hospitals suck the life out of you i swear. But I wont bore everyone with that, all is okay now by the looks of things..

So I've been working on characters some more, this guy took me a long time, far too long, need to work on my speed.... but he is definitely better than the last

And a better pic of the image about, better res can be found in my devART gallery.

[Greenhouse]

It’s good to see that you’re back Jaik! Sorry to hear about your dad! I really hope everything turns out well. Don’t worry, you can write in ‘private message’ if you want (or need another time). I know how stressful and how draining it is to spend time in hospital because of a relative. During such time I couldn’t manage to draw or paint anything. I think it’s very good that you have managed doing any studies at all.

For the update, I think it’s a great concept and the warrior fits the story. I like those studies that you’re doing, they’re very creative. The outfit looks cool and I like that he is inspired from the sea.
You might take a look at his left arm, it looks too short. But over all I think you got quite good proportions.

Can’t wait to see more of these guys! I think you’ve got some awesome stories to tell us! Bring them on!

[Jaik]

Damn CA being down lol..


This is my first post of 2013, so I'll only post the things I've done since the new year..
I made a little improvement thingy because the 4th of Jan marks a year since I started drawing every day, thought it was worth a shot, made a little faceboob post which I'll just C&P here lol.

"My last years new years resolution was to start taking art seriously, draw everyday and take a shot at improving my art. I guess its the first new years resolution I took seriously and today, January 4th, marks a year exactly since I started.

I'm not really a positive 'you can do anything you set your mind to' kind of guy, but I wanted to upload this comparison as proof that if you really truly set out to prove to yourself that you can do something, very little of it is talent and it is all about the hard work you put in. So if nothing else maybe this will serve as motivation to someone to keep a new years resolution, improve a skill, or make the most out of the year.. I don't know, as I said this really isn't my thing..

Out of the two on the left A is copied from a photograph and B is made up, these were the first two portraits I attempted back in January 2012. On the right is from sometime in December so its not really from 2013, most of it is made up, or little bits referenced from about 5 or 6 different photos. All three took roughly the same amount of time; about 4ish hours, maybe a little longer on the newer one (still needs a few hours more work)."

The rest are pretty much speed paints trying to get back into things after such a long unproductive period.

And now for the big question. I NEED HELP. I'm sort of stuck as to where to go next, I haven't had many critiques recently, more so to do with me being a recluse than anything else, I dont know where to focus my study and where to go from here. Does anyone have any suggestions? Please help

[Joe777k7]

holy crap those are some creative and awesome spee paints man! I really like the flying mech you did. Man you are coming along really awesome man. IM jealous of your creativity. I really need to start pushing my mind to this kind of stuff

[marko markovic]

Hello there nice drawings man , and progrress is obvious so continiue to work and try in your another image...to or paint to imagine more try to get the point what do you really want to show ! i hope you understand me... some paintings are just there to bring us atmosphere .other are show us materials..or textures...some are great just for colours or
scenes..as they are.
in your case... u are talented artist to show all that...but you must chose what do you want us to show first yourself and than the audience...just think a little before you start to draw...and sometimes it is good to start wihout thinkink and canvas will show you what is good what u did ( that kind of work is a little experimetal ) u can do it also
but it is always good to find out there in history of art what do you like!!!!\
best

[Lyraina]

Jaik,
it's good to see you posting again. Sorry to hear you had a tough time last month, I hope it's all going better by now.
I love your process of gathering inspiration and reference, and see it all come toghether in your final conepts.
It's a pretty professional way to work, I think.

It's nice to see your process from 2012. I'm always amazed at your drawing skills,
one day I will need to eat your brain to see how you're doing this without getting confused and lost amongst construction lines
Your rendering is pretty neat as well, clean and nice edges. Your colors are lagging behind a bit though.
Values look fine on that last portrait, but skin and hair look quite monochromatic (I hope you know what I mean, I'm struggling a bit with expressing myself here..).
Try to get some color variations in there, blues, yellows, greens, reds for skin, reflected colors when two surfaces are near to each other.
Sorry to be so picky!
I do like your color schemes you use in your more loose work though, like the environments, nice contrasts and color choices.

Keep up the great work, you're on the right track. Wish you a successful and productive 2013

[Elias Leonard]

great stuff
you can really see the porgress you've made.
try not to take other concept art as a reference for your art too much (at least that's what my teacher tells me :p )
if you go back to basic and take "real world references", you might come up with way more creative stuff and it's gonna look way more realistic too

[Jaik]

Joe - Haha thanks man, I'm glad someone thinks I'm creative because I sure as hell don't feel too creative >.>

Marko - I understand what you are saying completely. You are right, I sort of just barge in to the art and hope it turns out, patience and planning is something I really need to practice..

Lyraina - Good to hear from you again You can eat my brain any day but you are right about colour, its lagging really far behind, so much so that I can feel an imbalance on my day to day drawing. I'm struggling with finding a way to improve too.

Elias - True words, I see true wisdom in not using other peoples concept art. I think I will be more mindful of that in the future.

Thanks for stopping by everyone :3

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I've decided to reduce my posts to a single post a week and do a well thought out/big post since it saves me time and really allows me to get things sorted out. So heres the first big weekly one

Gestures 2min-5min


Quick study


The fail, took most of a day to do too

This week was an anatomy focused week. I started doing gestures again as warm up since I stopped doing this quite some time ago. The serious work was started by first doing a quick study of a torso and then attempting (and failing) to draw and render a figure from my imagination. This was a surprisingly good exercise, it really showed me where my weak points laid. I then did some anatomy drawing to refresh my mind and really work on the way the muscles work and attach on the front of the torso, I will be doing similar drawings for the rest of the body as I go on.

Anatomy...


And more anatomy..


And more...

I retried to create a figure from imagination, using no reference to see if I could apply what I learnt from the anatomy study. I saw an improvement, but not a hell of a lot. The main issue I found was with my proportions, it's amazing how quick I got rusty with them as I haven't really been practising figurative work lately. A trouble spot for me is that the distance between the pelvis and the rib cage was always too large in my works, also in a fair few of the gestures I have been doing. So back to Loomis and his proportions, I wont bother uploading them as I did them traditionally and just on scraps of paper.

Attempt two, a couple of hours


Fixing it up, working out some kinks in the antomy and analysing what I did wrong.


Gesturing from imagination, always fun.


15min study (new facebook cover photo )


Colour/Mood study, 2.5hrs

Also a couple of requests done for friends, one is a tattoo, the other is a birthday present. So many of my friends have birthdays in January, another reason why its going to be a slow month as everyone is having 21st party's and I get raged at if I stay home and draw >.>

Tattoo


Dog - Present

In other news I really need to work out a proper schedule, do some research and plan it out well, not half arsed like I have in the past. But when I attempt to start I feel like I'm just wasting time and I should just draw instead, I feel guilty for wasting time working out when to draw when I should be drawing. If that makes sense. Anyone else get that?

Also, I think I need to make these pics a bit smaller, this week is a bit too large lol..

The post on my blog

[Lyraina]

Yeah, anatomy!
The facebook header is sexy and beautiful (full score for chosing a attention catching image )
Mind your lines when drawing - the gestures look mostly fine, but the figures from imagination are pretty scratchy.
Might be be a digital-only problem, I find drawing lines with a wacom much harder than a pencil.

For color practice, still lifes should help, although I can't honestly say that it did for me (I'm doing them more for the fun of rendering).
I do however think that photo studies help, because you can choose those you think look good/realistic and while copying it,
you'll realize that you have to use some colors you wouldn't even have thought before. But take this advice with a grain of salt,
because many professionals seem to think that's a bad idea! Instead of photos, master copies might help as well.
Also try to understand the "why" of colors, and search for it in other people's artwork, and try to recreate the effect in you own work.
In this one for example (http://fav.me/d2letit), I see red in the cheeks and nose, blue below the eyes, green at the bottom parts of the face,
and yellow all over the place (forehead). And of course, skin tones as a basis. (I'm sorry if this is not a good example -
I feel a bit like a pretender here, because I'm struggling a lot with colors myself.. so, just sharing my thoughts!)

I can understand what you say about making a schedule. I think it really depends on your situation.
Do you think you put the time you have to good use? Or do you waste time by surfing the net, figuring out what to do today?
In this case, a schedule might help. Maybe you can use some time where you can't draw properly anyway for preparing your schedule,
on your way to work, at work, or somethink like that? I sometimes used to spend time in university to make a drawing schedule
for the next days (pretending to take notes), so I would not have to think about it when I finally was at home, but could start drawing immediately.
At the moment, I don't even know when I'll be able to draw beforehand, so I only have a vague idea in my mind as to what exercises
I need to do daily, and improvise the rest of the time.
I suggest you just try out what works for you. Not much lost if you just make a schedule,
or maybe develop a routine that covers the most important things. If it doesn't feel effective, then stop, but it was worth trying I think.
Oh, and if you make a schedule, make sure to show me, I love getting inspired by looking at other people's work schedules

[Jaik]

Lyraina: Yeah my lines are scratchy when I am unsure, and its not just a digital problem either... Really need to work on that. And your thoughts are all that I ask for I took your advice and focused on some skin tone studies, I think they really helped, thanks a lot!

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This weeks Focus Areas:

Anatomy - Legs & Pelvis
Skin Tones
Working in Colour

Warm ups

As per usual I did figure studies, some gestural and some two tone studies which were fun to do, I'll never underestimate reflected light and its ability to show form ever again.

2 Tone figure studies

I worked on leg anatomy again, just getting a refresher, but didn't go too indepth, I think I'll do more this coming week as I don't feel I did enough.

Leg studies

On top of my usual figure studies, gestures etc, I wanted to learn how to bring more variation into my skin tones as last week I received a crit that my skin tones were too monotonous, which I agree with. I tried to resolve this by studying a figure painter (Serge Marshennikov) as I noted somewhere that studying a painting is better than studying a photograph for certain things.

Serge Master Study

I spent longer on the master study than I would have liked, all day, but I did learn a heap. I decided to use the eye dropper tool for my colours, so not much skill was involved but I was worried I would miss out on some of the subtleties otherwise. There are just so many colours in skin o.o I also did some figures from a photo afterwards, couple of hours each, not sure how long exactly.

Figure One


Figure Two

I tried working from a photoplate for the first time, starting with a photo and adding and taking away bits, was good fun and didnt turn out as badly as I thought it would. Another win for me.

From photoplate

I did some enviro speed paints which i started directly in colour, which is not unusual for me, what is unusual is that by the end of the hour or so I spent working on them they didn't look like unicorn vomit, which was promising.

The Hive


Savanna


Bit of a warm up, working on it for a small amount before getting into it every day.

I didn't put out as much work this week as I wanted to on account of a 21st weekend in the city for my best friend which I couldn't bail on (you know you don't get out enough when you are at a strip club it isn't really as interesting as you were hoping because all you see is anatomy that you've studied so intimately before) and on other days the heat in Australia was too hot to work in, especially when the computer emits more heat than the air con has cold air, so my shoebox room became unbearable really early in the morning and made for crappy nights sleep. On some days my room averaged well over 40*c.


P.s. Pictures really are too big... but they work better on my blog.. decision decisions. Is anyone annoyed by the large picture size?

[Lyraina]

Yes yes yes, that's the kind of skin colour/practice I want to see! Looks so much better now!
I like the girl with the violet top, she looks quite 3d (meaning not flat), especially the legs.

It's nice to see you work so hard

On my screen, the pictures look perfectly fine, they are not too tall. I'm not sure about smaller screens though,
I sometimes wonder about that myself, no idea what screen size most people are using those days.

[Papu]

Wow you're working pretty hard and it shows Lot of improvement on skin colors in the last few posts so that's pretty great. Great SB.

[Joe777k7]

wow man! Awesome to see you pushing out studies man!! Man i need to catch up to you I been slacking all this week soon hopefully ill get some work done

[Jaik]

Thanks Lyraina, I love the support

Thankyou Papu!

Just keep pushing Joe! Just gotta keep going.
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Focuses this week:

• Skin Colour
• Portraits

This week I didn't just focus on art. Some of it was focusing on other aspects of the art business, networking, marketing etc. Figure if I can get a very vague understanding of these things, then when it comes time to actually put these aspects in to practice it wont be so difficult as starting from scratch. I also did some research on to how people have organised some scheduling, I found out the importance of breaks, a fair few successful people spend roughly 90 minutes on focused work, then 15-20 minute break, so I tried this out, its not that its hard to concentrate for 90 minutes, I can do that easily, its the self discipline to stop for 20 minutes then go back to it and focus for another 90 minutes.

I found out that the human brain struggles to focus on more than 7 things at a time, whether that is numbers or names, etc. So I decided to try having only a couple of goals for the day, keep them simple and easy to achieve and come up with these things the night before. When I have some more time I think that I'll look into also adding weekly goals, monthly and so on.

I have been writing down more stuff, sort of like every time I have a thought that seems semi-relevant or important I write it down, probably wont reread anything but its good to get things down, keeps my head a little emptier and I find it easier to focus. People should try it, especially if they are feeling confused or overwhelmed.

Mind vomit after work, about 1hr

I'm also 60 heads through my 100 head challenge, I find a portrait and I have 3 minutes to draw it, and I have to do 100 of them.. Fun fun. They all look terrible, I'll upload them once I am done. I also saw a really good video by Garret AJ (who has some really good articles on his blog) of thumb-nailing heads in value, and got me thinking that after my 100 3minute heads, I'll do 100 of these heads, but that will take me a lot longer lol.. Like 6 months longer if I only do 4 a day, I'll see how it goes. Here are the first 4 anyway, each at 20-30 minutes worth.

Portraits 20min each

So I have also been doing gestures as warm ups, looking at Michael Hamptons work (I am saving up for his book) who is an amazing gesture artist really understand motion and anatomy, I have been trying to imitate his sort of style, its not really working but I am getting closer to it over time. See what happens. A good effect I have seen so far is that my 1min gestures are looking like my 2min gestures a couple of weeks ago, I think..

Gestures 1


Gestures 2


Gestures 3

I tried another imaginative portrait. I'm uploading the linework so you can see how it SHOULD look.. and then how colour vomited all over it and made it look like I'm on shrooms.

Linework


Coloured version, only really an hour of work, I guess if I dont push I won't get there.

Skin colour studies, the usual. Didnt use the colour picker on this one, so its not as good, but I also started a master study with no colour picker but its no where near done so I'll upload it next week.

Skin Colour Study

Didn't do as much as I wanted, but I think everyone who is going down a long hard path is going to say that.

[Yemi775]

dude great stuff and effort man!

[Jaik]

Thanks Yemi!

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Focuses this week

• Character
• Emotions
• Animation

Not a lot going on the last week art wise, I've had computer troubles, or rather my family has, which means that it's all my fault and completely my responsibility to fix.. Un-installing and reinstalling motherboards, processors, graphics cards and power supplies gets tedious after the 5th or 6th time you do it.

Other than that the usual problems with friends turning 21, but I am happy to say that I have no more friends that would insist on me being at parties, at least not for a few months.

However there has been good news, I guess. Through a friend I landed a meeting with a small animation study about 30min from where I live, down the road from where I currently work. If the meeting goes well I could get an internship and from that the possibility of a paying job as a number of their projects are (hopefully) going to take off within the year and they will be looking for animators, concept artists, etc etc.

So this week I have been working on an animation internship-style portfolio, which is kind of different from my usual stuff. The meeting is on the 14th of Feb, so I have little under two weeks to pump something out, so a little rushed lol.

So this week I did my usual warm ups, the beginnings of a character design and some emotion sheets, which I have never done before. These will be coloured. I hope. And I'll add an ortho.. Maybe.. sigh.

Gestures 2min. A bit messy but trying to be more dynamic



Silhouettes. Terribad.



Character: Misery



Misery Emotions.

I also did some Avatar, last Air Bender studies, just gesturing in some of the poses in there as they are really well done and fluid. Don't know whether it helps.. Will be doing a story board this week, as well as colouring the above images.

[Yemi775]

You are absolutely right Jaik, i am working fast i just feel like if i work slow i won't be able to get help and progress...Thanks for reminding me to slow down. Great silhouettes, keep up the good work.

[ezekrialase]

You've got some really good stuff here man! I'm especially liking your figure/ skin studies, which is something I also need to be doing a lot. The only thing I'd have to say is keep working on your anatomy and facial construction, your rendering is fine but the tiny errors you're making with the alignment of the facial features/ figure proportions brings your work down. Didn't mean to sound harsh or anything, just pointing out something I noticed Keep up the hard work!

[Lyraina]

#352
I always enjoy reading your thoughts on learning, studying etc! I don't think my brain can even focus on 7 things at a time... restricting the goal and focus to a few things at once, until they become second nature, does feel like the right approach, I agree
The portrait from imagination is lovely, although she looks a bit angry in the colored version - due to the very pronounced shadows around her nose I guess. Color scheme is nice though And your skin colors are coming along.

#354
Great to hear about the opportunity of an internship! Sounds awesome, I really hope you get in Go go Jaik! Silhouettes.. reminds me that I wanted to do some as well. C, D and S are my favourites
Hope you have a great (and productive!) week.

[kikindaface]

really nice designs and researches dude !! keep up your stuff man, and keep studying your drawing skills !!!

[Joe777k7]

Awesome work as usual man!! Its looking good! Keep imporving and trying new things!! Your doing great!!! Thanks again for stopping by my sketchbook and your support!!

[Jaik]

ezerialase: Yeah there are subtleties I am just not hitting with my faces.. Really need to head back to Loomis... >___> Thanks for the comment though, appreciate it

Lyraina: Yeah I was going for darker shadows because of the sunset sort of feel going on behind her.. Dont think it worked lol.. I should look at going back to that one.. Thanks for stopping by as always

Thanks Kikindaface and Joe

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Things focused on this week:

Failing horribly
Character
Mood
So, this week started off great! God the colour put on to my character in one day, got a new monitor, which is AMAZING, will upload pics soon Christmas present that took a while getting to me >.> Then the week took a turn. My meeting is on this Thursday so I was trying to get a few things together and I wanted to do a 'mood' image for it, like one image, but using different colours and values change the mood. So I went with a cottage, I was going to do welcoming cottage (kinda like what I did), then a evil cottage, make it look like a witches cottage etc. Well.. That failed.. I struggled with getting the values right for the first one 3 days.. so that cottage is three days worth of work.. Unbelievable. I need to do more enviro studies this week. Maybe that will help? I dont know. All in all, the week ended badly, so I guess it kind of averages out.

Warmups for the week, 1 min gestures and a drawling.



45min speedie


1hr Speedie



Material Study. Yay bronze.


Applying the study. Yay caramel mudball. Fail.


Definitely a boot. Not a shoe.



Misery. Colour.


Misery loves company, so I gave her a friend, who looks just like her, except looking the other way.


And my damned cottage in the forest.. Damn you values.. dam you to the deepest realm of hell.