donalfall's SB: 09 DEC 2012 - Sketches from mah brain

[donalfall]

*remove blah*

Go to page 13 for new stuff.

[JRStagg]

Hey welcome to CA, errr some wacky stuff goin on in here.. i like it!

Post more so we cna guage your ability! good face btw real strange but appealing.

Keep it up! moar!

[JRStagg]

Hey thanks for the comment! replyed to your message! its as best as i remberd the situation and yeah, like you said lets push each other! i sub'd to your post

[donalfall]

I have to stay on top of this SB, otherwise I'll let it slip through my fingers. Easy thing for me, as I said, I'm not great on the old deadllines and commitments. I'm so behind on my picture for CHOW#99 it's not funny. I have a college assessment on monday at 10:20, so I guess I won't finish him. I'll stick up some progress tomow.

I had to photograph these following pics on the kitchen table today, not scans. My GF was already in bed so no scanner tonight! These women and their early bedtimes!!!

Firstly, a copy of Michelangelo's drawing for the Libyan Sibyl. Someone did an amazing copy of this last year on the forums and it's stuck in my mind ever since. It's hard to get images of his prep drawings for the other Sibyls. Are they in private hands? Anyone? This is a pretty big piece for me, graphite on a toned paper. I guess it must be a bit bigger than a2. I spent about 3 or 4 hours on it. I want to do a big master copy version of it, maybe a barque drawing in the next couple of weeks.

Secondly, a study of the statue of St. Jerome by.... uh, some guy. I can't remember which Renaissance sculptor it is, but it's one of them. Or maybe a Baroque guy. Anyhow, I'll credit him later. Hopefully he won't sue for not being credited. This is around a4 sized. The sketchbook is square, so the long side of a4 per side. Maybe an hour? Graphite blocks and pencils.

And the third pic started from a pic of Scarlett Johansson but the nose went awry on me and I started moving the appearance further from her then. Same sketchbook, mechanical pencils, maybe 20 mins. I love mechanical pencils.

[JRStagg]

whey, your last pics are awesome! loving the line shading!! and that womans kinda hot lol

fantastic keep it up!

[donalfall]

JR Stagg: Thanks Man, I'll keep posting.

I'm pretty pissed that I didn't get a chance to finish this. I'm only 9 hours away from an ASSessment for college and I gotta get some sleep at some point. Also, it's no longer sunday here in Ireland, so I guess it would be wrong?

Next sketch for CHOW #99. I'll have a finished Queen for #100, you just wait and see! Pen on paper, a4 sized. 1 hour or so....

[donalfall]

More in one day! My assessment didn't go too badly, but while I was getting ready I filled my moleskine! This is a big deal because I've had the book about two years. I bought it in Florence on a trip and you just couldn't buy them here in Ireland at all. Recently, however, one of the better bookshops started stocking moleskines so my reluctance to use it dissappeared and I started banging through the pages.

To commemorate (sp?) the finishing of it I'm sticking up some of my favourite pages. I'm hitting into the next one already. More soon...

[zephyri]

Hey, thanks for the kind words on my SB. Nice to hear you're keeping up with the postings, and I envy you the moleskin notebook, wanted one of those for a while myself! You've an interesting hatching style, especially on that first face, and the life studies are probably my favs of the lot due to the softer lines you seem to have captured there. Looking forward to seeing what you do with the Queen!

[JRStagg]

whoa, awesome stuff! thanks for the visit to my SB those links are a great help! i think the reason the tone looks funny is yet again my scanner! i'll have to learn more on P.S so i stop churning out oddly shaded bits n bobs lol!. your book/progress is awesome!! fantastic work!.

MOAR!

[Pound]

Nice stuff indeed. I love that anatomty piece you posted on the 7th.

Yes Euan Uglow is crazy good. I am studying him for an art project. And he is also insanely structural, you may have seen me mention that. And he spends months to years working on the correct colours on the large scale he works on. So obviosuly his colour usage is amazing.

[donalfall]

Wow, replies! Excellent.

zephyri : Thanks! Yeah, the city here is awash in moleskines now for some reason. Used to be completely unknown, now everyone and their mother knows what they are. Crazy. I'm not too sure if my lines are actually softer or if the scanner didn't pick up my scraggly lines. No, I've been trying to go lighter. I did some great anatomy work last year and when I look back on it now, it looks like I was drawing with a crayon!

JRStagg : Thanks man. Good to hear the encouragement. I'm going to wander over to your SB in a few minutes, hope you're updating! If not you'll be getting a heated PM off me. Just kidding, thanks for the comps.

Pound : Cheers. I want to put up some life drawing cos I reckon it's the anatomy isn't half bad, but I never seem to get around to it. I'll break out the camera soon. Uglow is crazy meticulous. I was looking at his stuff for a project too and it was a bit overwhelming, to tell the truth.

Today: Working on stuff for the CHOW #100. I'm going for a post-apocalyptic Medusa, tied in with a background a friend & I discussed before called CRZ. I'll get back to that when I get something more finished up. Here's version 1, but I think my Medusa Queen is actually going to be bald(!?!) so I'm just going to re-work the face/head a bit. Good thing too, because this one's face looks a bit manky. Also, I was p*ss*ng about with some colour tests for about five seconds as I came online, so there's that, too.

[JRStagg]

WAW! I hate you.. so much, you progress to fu*ing mcuch :@ lol!!

Thanks for the crit n my book it helped so much! im fixing it up and ill re up and maby not make it look as blury.

How was your Xmas/newyear? great i hope.

Crits crits crits, hmmm where to crit!.... lol AH

You digital colouring, im no proffesional as i've only just got my wacom BUT! as i see in these speed painting videos on youtube, they black n white their peice first and do the shadows in grey ect, then add the colour that way you dont have to guess the colours tone the black grey and white do it for you, but obviously get the b w n g right first and then your away, unless your looking for that qwirky look hehe.

All i can say is your styles awesome! your pics are great, i see some times you don't use the other page in your book, me ither! lol some times i press hard and dont like bumpy pictures, no one ever gets what i mean and says its a waste of papper but tbh.. why draw some thing great one side then draw somthing poor on the other because your pappers thing and you can see the bump from your pencil on the other side... hah.. random rant in your book but hey! it's all good! hope to hear back from you soon mate, hope your well.

[Siamese Goldfish]

Thanks for stopping by my SB. Here returning the favor.

Fist, i found your copy of Libyan Sibyl to be quite nice work. Definitely, definitely work on your faces. I donno, i have had a face obsession recently. It seems that they can really make an ok piece be a great piece. ... and yeah, anatomy blah blah blah.

Keep it up!

[donalfall]

Goddamn, I'm lazy. I need to hire a taskmaster or something, someone to keep flogging me any time the pen goes out of my hand or the computer gets turned to anything besides Photoshop (and CA ...

Not only did I miss the Queen deadline, but there's been what, 2 CHOW's since, and I didn't even stir. So much for New Year's resolutions. Sucky. I won't get my Evil Djinn finished for this weekend either cos I gotta cross the country for a gig at a gaming convention. I am the DJ to the Nerds.

Anyhoo, replies....

JRStagg - Pretty quiet on the New Years/Xmas, just working and (thankfully) sketching a bit, so not much there. When you're in college you gotta see every day off as an opportunity to PAY for college, so all the work you can get. You're spot on about the greyscaling in the digital colouring, I don't know why it didn't occur to me. I was just sitting there thinking "why does my colouring look so bad" like a dumbass. I'm not great with colours, but I was kinda shooting myself in the foot before the first hurdle there. Hahaha. Cheers for the kind words buddy, but I don't think I'm making much progress at all. I'm kinda stalled where I've been for about three or four years now. Hence the sketchbook - it's meant to push me into working! Thanks tho man, I'll pop by your sketchbook about ten seconds after I post this.

Siamese Goldfish - kind words man, thank you. I LOVE the original sketch for the Libyan Sibyl. It was one of those life-changing moments when I first saw it, so it's a bit of an obsession. So it's time to copy it again, only better. Yeah, a good face can completely transform a piece, and they stand on their own better than say, an arm or whatever. I guess we're just hard-wired to like seeing faces, biologically speaking. Gotta do some Rembrandt studies as well, must make a note in the "to do" list. Have you seen the faces Ted draws? Holy Crap!. Not wanting to be ringing his bell constantly, but wow.

Nooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww..... updates. The top 2 are from the new Moleskine. It opens on its short end, so I feel like a journalist when I'm using it. Loving that feeling. Just quick doodles, I think they're both from photos in a magazine. I'm trying to capture moods/expressions quickly, pare them down to a few llines on paper. Don't know how long for each one, but they were done at work, so less than 15 minutes each. Most likely a lot less.

The next one was some doodle I started while not really paying attention to anything. And then it became a Science Fiction-ey sniper of some kind. Not that I'm complaining. The sharp eyed among you will see where I painted over my friends email address on the page. Spent about an hour doing this, but that was on-and-off. I was watching telly as well or something.

And no. 4 is some nudity! Shocking. My life drawing are too big to scan at home, so this is just a study from some photographers website. Her shoulder is too far out from her body, but it's not too bad. Probably only spent about 5 minutes on it.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaannd... crit!

[donalfall]

Honestly, if I could, I'ld give myself the hiding of my life. Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy. Here's some stuff, but that hardly explains where I've been the last 26-odd days, does it?

Sigh. More from the new moleskine. More coming soon, if the lethargy doesn't set in to rot...

[DeJakhalz]

good start bro! As for crits: try to differ from line thickness for more depth and a lot more solid looking drawing. Anatomy studies would harm you either. Keep it up!

[donalfall]

DeJakhalz - Thanks man. I'm a bit lazy when it comes to doing comprehensive anatomy studies, but i'm working on them. I did about 20 pages on the skull there recently, now to move to the torso. It's just that I'm really slow at achieving goals. Nearly everything in the scans I have up are either a 0.05 felt tip microliner or black Bic ballpoint, so the line is looking a little samey all right. I'll photograph some of my charcoal stuff. I just like using convenient media in my small SB.

This is some stuff for college. I'll be sticking it into illustrator shortly to finish it off. I'm going for a Lichtenstein meets Shrigley kind of theme. It'll become more apparent when the speech balloons are in. My own computer is four years old and is crapping out everytime Illustrator starts, so they're not finished yet. I'm feeling positive about them tho. Might have to make a "Finally Finished" thread. That would be weird. Expect more updates over the weekend.

They're designed to be, like a0, so I had to shrink these samples for the attachment manager, with consequent pixelation. Although, I'm a big fan of pixels, so we'll see...

[donalfall]

Okay, they look a bit weird at that size. I'm sure you smart folks at CA will get the jist of it tho. I destroyed my pencil sketch making the marker version for scanning. Forgot to use the NONBLEED paper. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[clayman101]

Hah! You remind me of me, which makes me want to smack you (masochistic tendancies? me?). Master procrastinator? That's me. Deadend worker bee, gone back to art school? That's me, too (first fine art, then when I asked myself "how the **** do I make a living with this degree, I got into a game school). And life drawing has been the highlight of my school experience.

One comment on the last post. Hairlines usually start from near where the ear seperates from the side of the head. The way you've got it now, it kind of looks like she shaved that side of her head.

Good luck with posting, look forward to seeing more.

P.S. What's an SSG? PM, I'm assuming, is a private message.

[donalfall]

More and more and more...

I was in London recently and wandered about the National Gallery with an extra tiny moleskine and some finetip markers. I want to set up somewhere called the notional gallery, but I'm sure someone's thought of it already....

Anyways, some stuff from then.







They weren't very serious attempts, just doodles and scribbles. It was a quick visit to the gallery, so it was just note-taking really, reminding myself of where I had been and what I had seen. Filled a whole tiny notebook....

And more recently, got some decent brown paper and have been messing about with white, which is something I never got to play with much before.




What fun! And I'm working on that POW as we speak. I'll hopefully have it up for the weekend....

[Yuki_slider]

More and more and more...

I was in London recently and wandered about the National Gallery with an extra tiny moleskine and some finetip markers. I want to set up somewhere called the notional gallery, but I'm sure someone's thought of it already....




What fun! And I'm working on that POW as we speak. I'll hopefully have it up for the weekend....

I love your comix things, gote some funky Style'
##


>>In jerusalem we got a coffe plase that doez so with Demmo dubstep music and rock electronics,
>>

[donalfall]

Working on the CHOW. My favourite shapeshifter (traditional) has always been the Selkie, so here goes. My scanner is awful though - it's only a4 sized and has a kind of a lip so it bends anything bigger. Here's a wacky slightly bent scan of my pencils.

I'm heading to a friend's place of work to scan in the full pencils - they have an a1 scanner there, so the problem evaporates. Not sure whether to proceed digitally or with inks...



(but this proves I'm doing something...)

[clanlord]

WOW man pretty good scetches! I like them a lot! KEEP GOING! Looking forward to see more human body studyes!

[donalfall]

clanlord - Thanks mate, always nice to hear a kind word. Went down to my friends placce of work and their super scanner is bust. My chances of finishing this CHOW are slimming. However, being a photocopy/scanning minded place, they managed to squeeze my drawing - still flat and unbent - onto a smaller scanner and get some kind of JPG for me. Thanks Mo!

Here's a better scan of the pencils.

[donalfall]

More more more. I had to photograph these ones cos my scanner is definately proving difficult. So, these are only photographs, etc etc...

Was drawing some random stuff from mgazines etc, so I started doing hands. 4 years ago I could do a passable hand, now after Art school, not so much. So I gotta practise back up again. The faces are okay though.




I was trying to traditionally colour the Selkie picture, but it didn't work out the way I wanted. I'll try to digitally colour the scan tomorrow instead..... but I do work on sundays, so we'll see how likely that is.

[donalfall]

Just doing something for the DSG.... have to go sort out hosting for pics, I guess - didn't realise you couldn't attach pictures in the DSG area... and some miscellaneous faces.

[donalfall]

Drawing at work today. I was going to do the CHOW for this week, but it's not really my style. I suppose I should just pull up my socks and do them anyways, but re-inventing the Beast wasn't giving me any ideas...

Still, I have a good start done for POW#10, so I must start inking and scanning those.

No further a ding dang do, ...

[CatConvention]

Thanks for the comment!
Right now i think you should work on anatomy like most people.
And maybe study facial features more closely.
But your getting there ^_^

[donalfall]

xxzxczx_me - Thanks. It's always good to get comments. I reckon everyone but the pros only get one comment for every two or three updates, but still, it can be a bit.... quiet in the old SB's occasionally. Yeah, facial expressions are high on the list right now. The Rembrandt and Morris books are open all the time. Facial structure is a toughie, particularly from photos.

I also reckon I use the word "particularly" way too much...

Life takes some strange turns. I'm mostly sitting around the house at the moment, waiting for my academic career to clear up. I'm kind of hoping for the solution to come to me, which is definately the wrong approach. Anyhoo, I was sitting around today on conceptart mIRC and sketching. Same tomorrow, unless the gem of determination is awoken in me...

Scanned the first few pages of what I was doing today, more tomow...

[InFlame]

hey, donalfall, thanks for your kind words in my sb. so I wanted to take a look on your works!

I have to tell you, I admire people who remain loyal to their style. And you are one of those. Your pencil sketches are loose, very beautyfull hatched. I like the continuous style, it remembers me a bit of Heinrich Kley.
Mh, do you know the portrait drawings of David Hockney? They are worth, to take a look at. Maybe you can combine some techniques with your own style!? even if the continuous style is good, you should always expand your skills. just my opinion.

keep posting, I look forward to your next drawings!