The Sketchbook of Erin Lein

[ErinLein]

Well, hello there!

I'm brand new, a sapling (just a sprout), to this site/forum. While I work on reading/viewing the overwhelming amount of talent here, I thought I'd post the start of my sketchbook.

I've been drawing for 5-6 years now, off and on, but have recently begun to expand from traditional art into digital art. Now that I've graduated University, I'm aiming to develop my skills so that I can become a professional. I plan to take this next year developing my portfolio.

Here are some recent works, more can be seen on my Deviantart. I will be posting sketches and my WIPs here from now on.

Let me know what you think~

[ErinLein]

I decided to do Assignment #0 from the Academy exercises today... Here are the results...

So, self portrait, quick still life, and still life from memory.

[FightingSeraph]

What you did with those pencil drawings are excellent, but that elf man in the first post has too many lines that don't need to be there. In addition, the main outlines could have been smoothened up.

[ErinLein]

@FightingSeraph == Thanks for the comment. I agree. I, sometimes, have difficulty choosing which lines to include (or not) in a piece. u___u'


Here is a digital painting I am currently working on... Lots of work still to do!

[ErinLein]

Sketches from yesterday, feel free to comment. Figures are from 90 second drawings, some shade work and playing around with concepts~

[ErinLein]

Not everything I did yesterday, I attempted to fix the anatomy of the prior sketch I was working on. It's still off and now the emotion feels like it is gone! Bah! Not sure where I'm going to take it next or if I'm going to move on to a different concept scene for the character. Also, worked on the eye some, trying to play around with warm/cool...

[WRappiii]

nice sketchbook you've got going i like the self portrait and the 90 sec figures. Keep that up and you'll see improvement!

i took the liberty of doing a sketch-over for your eye painting. I saw some issues with anatomy and proportion and thought I could help I know i'm not the best person for the job but I hope it helps. Also feel free to ignore my advice, its just a suggestion!

[ErinLein]

@WRappiii. Awesome! Thanks so much! I'm going to work on that eye today, so this is super helpful.

~~~~

Here are some fun sketches...

[ErinLein]

Quick upload of new sketches... second one is self-portrait, then I added the clothing from imagination.

[Tea Drinker]

You've got some really cool ideas up in here. It would be awesome to see you do some hardcore portrait studies to put strength behind your character concepts.

[ErinLein]

@TeaDrinker - Hey, I took your suggestion to heart and started a portrait of one of my characters. I hope I understood what you meant by a hardcore portrait study... I'm still working on it. :3


Some notes taken while going through an anatomy tutorial. Also, an update on the eye, I've taken to practicing different brushes on it... fixed the anatomy some, gotta sharpen it now...

[WRappiii]

very cool to see a full view of your character. also good that your getting some anatomy study in... something I need to do.

[BludHund]

Erin, Welcome to Conceptart.org!

Although the talent here is pretty impressive, its the spirit of commitment and cooperation that sets us apart
from 'showcase' sites like Deviantart, IMO.

I've been drawing seriously (that means continuously and 'every day') for 5 years now (And had to kick my own
butt out of a rut several times). 'They' say it takes 10,000 hours of work to become competent. I figure I'm at
about 5,000 hours, roughly

What was your degree in university?

Anyways looking at your art, you seem to have a pretty good intuitive grasp of faces and body language. I would
say that definitely the first area you should concentrate on improving is your line control. The key to this is
patience and concentration.

- Be aware of your posture...if you slouch or sit weird when you draw you may find that your figures tend to skew or
warp to one side.

- Try to keep your wrist locked and draw from the shoulder

- your arm will naturally best be able to follow a broad arc from one side to the other. Don't fight that. Draw on a
table (a drawing table, ideally) and keep turning your paper, rather than forcing your hand out of its natural arc.

- Reduce the number of unnecessary strokes. Instead of 'feeling out' your lines in a series of small choppy/hairy marks,
let your hand glide over the page smoothly in the path of your desired stroke, a few times, before making your mark.

- Generally, an excessive number scribbly lines means you don't have the feeling or idea of what you want to do.
Visualize what you want before you draw it. The same applies to forms and gesture...feel it, understand it, have your
goal in your mind before you act.

Once you can make the lines go and do what you want them to, you can bring them together strongly and coherently.
You're going to find it nearly impossible to make good on proportions or form studies until you get good control of your lines.
It took me years to realize this and attack my natural sloppiness. It may take a lot of boring exercises but its totally worth it.

That being said, the secondary point you should work on, building on improved lines is not to concentrate so much on
outlines and surface details. You want to 'feel' the underlying volumes. If you don't 1. Your figures will look flat 2. individual
features may look correct and lifelike but they will all be floating around with weird angles and proportions. Underlying structure
provides something to anchor all the details to so that they work together in unison.

That lst self portrait is pretty good. I especially like the way you got a sense of the planes and angles.

Instead of cross-hatching try blending smooth areas of tones using the side of the pencil lead
instead of the tip (holding the pencil like a brush).

IMO your best self portrait I've seen is this one

I'd stay away from Posemaniacs BTW, its like crack (bad for you). Buy a book of live model photographs.
One of those that has photos from all angles will help HUGELY in understanding the figure.

Sorry, I hope I didn't bury you with words I do tend to do that.

Keep at updating, you've got a good momentum!

[ErinLein]

@BludHund - Woah, thanks! This is great information and going to be super helpful! I sure have a lot of hours to get going on~. I have no idea how many I would have :I My degree is in Sociology.

Bah! Line control! Well, currently I actually don't have a desk. I've been sitting on a couch or bed. I'm working on getting a desk though (it's my goal for tomorrow!). That will help my slouching and improper form >>. I gotta practicepracticepractice those lines.

I could probably try to make it to some free figuring drawing classes since I live in the city. I've taken one figure drawing class back in the day (4 years back), I enjoyed it.

Anyways, here are some sketches I've done in the past days. I'm going to take your advice into account, BludHund, and start practicing on my line control and form. Thanks so much for the input~

(last one is anime-styled, but it's color so I decided to include it)


----

[WRappiii]

hey erin, nice update.
one thing I noticed is that the subject of this image looks a bit off balance. Her left leg looks a bit distorted as well.
This one is nicely done! It'd be cool to see it finished

[ErinLein]

@WRappiii ; Thanks. Yeah, I had trouble with her legs. I don't think I'm going to work on those two anymore however.

I've been trying to work on finishing art instead of just sketching in the past days, so that's been keeping me busy.

But, here is some messy work I did this morning. I downloaded Sai Painter and have been testing it out.

[ErinLein]

Been busy, busy, busy, but an update! Some of the anatomy is a bit extreme in these, I am aware.

[ErinLein]

More!!! Moooore!

[ErinLein]

One of my sketchbooks got water damaged so it's really hard to get good scans of it. If anyone has information of how to save water-damaged sketches, that'd be great!

Meanwhile, here's some stuff I've been up to~~~

I went to Emerald City Comic Con last weekend and attended a lot of artist panels. It was very nice and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm going to be trying to apply the digital inking skills I learned there soon, so I'll post that work here when I do~

[ErinLein]

I got even more busy, but I haven't stopped drawing. Here are some things.

[BludHund]

Hey Erin, good to see you still working!

Lots of interesting ideas here. Don't forget to keep working on improving your lines.
Especially if you are going to take the time to color something its worth it to go over
it a second time and clean up the shapes and contours.

Also, when rendering organic subjects like figures or hair or clothing, its a really good
idea to use a line that has some character to it. So you want something that will have
a variable thickness (or variable darkness) especially to try and add some 'swoop' to
your lines and give the eye a little variety and extra sense of contours.

Also: Try using some form shadows. Its very simple but very effective, once you
understand it. Even in a very flat cartoon-style rendering you can split the forms into
dark and light sides and it really makes them come alive.

If you don't mind, I did an example here, where I just put some basic black shadow
shapes on a 2nd layer, and turned the opacity down to 50%. Easy and effective.



Keep up the good work, and keep posting!

[ErinLein]

Thanks for the feedback, BludHund! Super helpful. I realized the other day or so that I didn't have the pressure sensitivity installed for my tablet. Now that it is, I think it will be a lot more helpful with getting a varied range of lines for digital work.

I don't mind the example at all, in fact it helps. I have a very hard time thinking in shadows and it takes a lot of motivation for me to push through since I become easily frustrated when it comes to light and shadow work. I'd say it's my biggest weakness next to my line control.

I'm going to write a sticky note here to practice a study of shadows and set aside some time devoted to linework in the next couple of weeks. We'll see if I update or not! I hope so.

Meanwhile, here are some sketches.

[ErinLein]

I've been working digitally a lot, trying to learn techniques for painting in photoshop and spend more time thinking about light and shadows.

[ErinLein]

Update Update Update~

[ErinLein]

Visual teeny Update~

[ErinLein]

It's been a year! I feel I've improved a bit over the last year. Though I won't be quite as aggressive with my digital art in this coming year, I'll still continue to expand and follow the direction of my art~ Year 2, here I come...

[ErinLein]