JUAN2.0 - 2013 Sketchbook Thread

[Juan2.0]

FOR THE LATEST ART, CHECK OUT THE LAST PAGE!

I'm on a mission this year to really buckle down and work hard every single day to learn the human form from head to toe, so expect lots of anatomy sketchbook work in this thread.

Updates to this thread (new art) will be posted every Sunday. If you send me a pm, please be patient in waiting for a response. Sunday will be the only day available to me to reply back to everyone.

But anyway, without further ado...

[Juan2.0]

For the entire month of January, I will be drawing only heads for 31 days straight.

[Juan2.0]

Update one. Sorry for the delay. CA was down for the count on Sunday.

[AdrienneRose]

You have some really great lines! Your perspectives are sometimes wonky, but they're almost spot on!

Are you using any references or books to study from?
Right now I am reading Andrew Loomis' book, Figure Drawing for all it's Worth. So far it's helping me a lot!

Keep up the good work!

[Juan2.0]

AdrienneRose - Right now I'm studying from three books: The Famous Artist's Course Book Series, Drawing the Head & Figure by Jack Hamm and Figure Drawing by Andrew Loomis

Sketch pages for the week:

[Juan2.0]

January 14th - 20th

[Juan2.0]

I had to take care of some family issues one day this week, so there is a page missing. It will be made up for in next weeks update.

[SwedishMichelangelo]

It looks okay so far. I know you just started but i would like to ask you this question. Do you believe yourself that you are learning anything from what youre doing now (except for training your eye)?

[Yemi775]

dude, you have a great start, it seems as though you know what you want to draw and how to study.

[Juan2.0]

It looks okay so far. I know you just started but i would like to ask you this question. Do you believe yourself that you are learning anything from what youre doing now (except for training your eye)?

I've actually learned quite a bit from doing these exercises. I'm not training my eye so much as I'm teaching myself construction of building the faces in different poses and the faces I've been drawing in my comic page work have improved quite a bit since I started doing these daily exercises to warm up in the mornings...so, in my opinion, it's been worth every minute I've invested into these.

[Juan2.0]

Here's the extra page for last week. I felt guilty for not getting it done so I made it my first priority this morning.

[Juan2.0]

With it now being February, I'm moving onto studying hands.

[Colour Coded]

Your practice regimen is amazing. You will definitely level up this way. I love your head studies but feel at times certain features of the face distort. It's a common problem i have too. Other than that amazing work!

[Juan2.0]

I'll be returning to faces again next month. I feel like I've only touched the tip of the iceberg when drawing them.

[Royzy]

Great to see all these studies, it's inspirational stuff! Your routine is commendable.

(Btw, love the cross-hatch lady).

[diamandis]

Nice practice. I should try this stuff out eventually. Great ink / comics work on your blog too. You seem to be really good already. (Haha @ the dude above doubting whether this practice was worth it.)

[Juan2.0]

(Haha @ the dude above doubting whether this practice was worth it.)

Don't discount what he's saying. I, too, have questioned many a time whether copying images from books as practice study is (in the end) worth the effort or not. I used to not believe so, but I think it's determined by whether you put in a focused effort to actually learn from the exercises through construction and building or are you simply looking at the image and trying to copy it exactly as you see it?

Last year, on January first, I started doing a page a day of Bridgeman studies and they honestly made me VERY frustrated. I can appreciate the way he constructs his images, but I absolutely do not like his stylization of things and after a couple of months of sketchbook pages I finally gave up and called it quits and gave up on my sketchbook page a day project. His stylization is very unrealistic and as I was "copying" what he had shown in the book I felt as if I weren't truly learning anything because I was more focused on trying to draw what he had drawn exactly in his style instead of focusing on how he built the image.

This year (with the discovery of the Famous Artist Course books) I have decided to give my sketchbook page a day another try and I am much more pleased with the results. If you make a focused conscious effort to try and understand why and how things are drawn, I think it helps out greatly. Like I stated above, I have already seen an improvement in how I draw faces just from doing the basic exercises of construction and building the form up from simplified shapes...so, for me, it has been worth it. Individual results may vary...but I believe if you truly (deeply) want to achieve anything in this life (no matter what the goal) you have to work at it each and every single day...all day...every day. The pages you are seeing posted here are done every morning as quick practice studies to get me warmed up for the day. They typically take 1-2 hours to complete and I do this before I start my regular (paid) artwork for the day. I work at this every day because I want to improve my craft so that I can give my clients a better final product in the jobs that I take on. This is my commitment to myself and my work.

Before I get back to work, I wanted to share something I read often:

Chinese Proverb - I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.

I found that proverb on the wall outside of my eight year olds classroom and it really spoke to me. I don't know about you, but I learn from doing. Give me a task to do and I'll learn much more from it than if you simply told me how to do something without me ever actually trying it for myself. A person who sits around and thinks about doing art is not an artist. He (or she) who gets up every single day and works from morning to night on their art is an artist. They learn and grow in their endeavors by doing. That's what I'm doing and that's what I'll continue to do. Will it pay off in the end...only time will tell.

[Juan2.0]

"Persistence is a sure path to success with quality activities. Never, ever, ever give up." - Kekrich credo number 75

Here are the pages from this week:

[Cyberman]

Wow congrats on sticking to your goals! a whole month of heads that's hard work by itself, now your ten days into hands, your work ethic is great dude. your my
new role model haha, Cheers keep at it!

[RaphaelLuebke]

great (and especially great amount of - ) sketches man! defenitely looking forward to your upcoming posts!

[Colour Coded]

I totally agree with you on the subject of copying from a book. I use to focus on copying a few of bridgeman's studies exactly. I found out I was on autopilot while doing this in result learning nothing in the process. I then went back and drew some of his images with MY style and started to understand better. I believe it's crucial to use your mind when drawing studies. Understand how what your drawing works and break it down in simple forms. Keep up the amazing work bro.

[Pete Hidalgo]

Awesome book man. I may have to pick up this Famous Artist Course books.

[Juan2.0]

Thanks everyone! I encourage all of you to do some hand studies as well. I love the challenge of drawing hands. They offer so much expression and pose ability that the possibilities for ideas are endless.

This week I took one day to draw feet for a small break from hands and I must admit, feet are TOUGH to draw. They are so alien/foreign to me and it's hard for me to draw their lumpy mass and be happy with the results. It could also be because feet creep me out a bit. For those of you with foot fetishes, I seriously don't understand you...feet are just...icky.

[element1988]

Are you doing all these studies from reference? BTW this sketchbook is very inspiring.

[Juan2.0]

Are you doing all these studies from reference? BTW this sketchbook is very inspiring.

Howdy. If you look in the top right hand corner of the pages, you'll see my notes on which books were referenced for the studies.

[diamandis]

Don't discount what he's saying. I, too, have questioned many a time whether copying images from books as practice study is (in the end) worth the effort or not. I used to not believe so, but I think it's determined by whether you put in a focused effort to actually learn from the exercises through construction and building or are you simply looking at the image and trying to copy it exactly as you see it?

[...]

This year (with the discovery of the Famous Artist Course books) I have decided to give my sketchbook page a day another try and I am much more pleased with the results. If you make a focused conscious effort to try and understand why and how things are drawn, I think it helps out greatly. Like I stated above, I have already seen an improvement in how I draw faces just from doing the basic exercises of construction and building the form up from simplified shapes...so, for me, it has been worth it.

Good advice. From what I've gathered from others around here, though, neither one is better than the other ... it all depends on what your goals are. Supposedly drawing from observation is good for hand-eye coordination and for building up your ability to see, remember, and transfer the angles, relationships, and proportions of the thing you're looking at over to your paper. Drawing from construction is obviously great for when you don't have the exact reference you need. The two modes inform each other, supposedly.

I don't do nearly enough of either.

[Yemi775]

Really Great updates and Dedication man keep up the wonderful work.

[Juan2.0]

There are only 6 pages for this week. I would've had the usual 7 done, but I had to take my father to the hospital this morning and didn't get home until late this evening. My apologies for the delay. I'll get the last page posted up tomorrow morning.

[Juan2.0]

Here are the pages from this week. I'm now three pages behind. I actually did the 3 pages that are due, but I'm not going to post them because I'm very unhappy with the quality of them...so I'll have to make them up sometime later this week if I can.

[Juan2.0]

Alright, here's the rest of the pages plus two extras as part of this week's work...so now I'm all caught up and back on track. I was going to go back into faces and work on expressions for the month of March, but after reconsidering, I'm going to delve deeper into the body and do torso and back studies for this month.