Kateoo's Sketchbook - I'll fight a bear if it'll help me draw better! (Up 7/9/07)

**kateoo** · June 14th, 2007, 12:16 AM

I've been lurking here for a couple of years, mostly to snag cool pictures for wallpaper, but I've recently gotten back into drawing again, and started going to figure drawing sessions every week. Meeting Ragnar X and a bunch of other cool folks helped me decide to make the shift from my current boring career in IT to hopefully doing concept art someday.

I know it's going to take a lot of hard work, and I've got my heart in it 100%. Unfortunately, I'm a little older than a lot of folks starting their art education, so I've got a lot of catching up to do, and I also have to juggle a full-time job, so I can't pursue formal education, instead mostly teaching myself as I go. (And occasionally stealing techniques from more skilled folk).

I'm attaching a bunch of my current work (from the last week or so). I'm trying to take a methodical approach to all this, and I know I have to work on the following things: anatomy, volume, values/tone, line confidence, perspective, and proportion. Hmm, I just described just about everything didn't I.

Please critique freely - I need the feedback, good and bad, if I'm going to push up to a professional level in the foreseeable future.

**Robz** · June 14th, 2007, 08:38 PM

nice, keep it up.

**ped454** · June 14th, 2007, 08:51 PM

your values are wicked but i think your linework could use some work. great studies so far. hope to see you achieve your dream someday.

**kateoo** · June 27th, 2007, 12:45 AM

It's been a while since I updated this. I blame upgrading to Vista. It's been a pain getting my hardware to work. Also, My regular lifedrawing sketchbook is too big for my scanner. Alors!

Anyway, this is a mix of figure drawing (all the pictures of naked women) random sketches (some from old DSGs) and face studies.

I'm still terrible at drawing faces out of my head for some reason. I guess I can't visualize where the eyes go and get the proportions all off. I guess I need to really get down and study the shape of the skull and the muscles. You think buying a plastic reference skull would help?

**kateoo** · June 28th, 2007, 12:19 AM

Sometimes it flows, and sometimes it doesn't. Today feels sorta like the latter

**kateoo** · June 29th, 2007, 02:17 AM

Learning how to paint, per Bumskee's awesome thread. First time painting -2 hours.

**kateoo** · July 2nd, 2007, 01:17 AM

More stuff from me.

1 hr still life of a cup

Drawings from today's still life session

New random pages from my sketchbook

I also went out and bought a bunch of art history books, a couple volumes on the sketches of Rembrandt, and a book about Titian. I've seen a lot of his work before, but never knew his name. I love the way that man painted colors - the contrast between the super saturated cloth and a luminescent skin is amazing.

**kateoo** · July 2nd, 2007, 02:38 PM

More sketches from this morning - did these while doing a lot of loads of laundry. I know the guy is a bit of a mess, but I was trying to do some interesting things with his hands and designs after being inspired by Marko's Character Ideation DVD. I'll probaby draw the rest of him in Photoshop and ink it properly so the lines aren't so cruddy. I really gotta work on that line quality

**kateoo** · July 3rd, 2007, 01:24 AM

Here's a drawing I did today of Col. Richard Moody, one of the founding fathers of BC, Canada. I heard about him in a song by the Tillers Folly and decided to find out what he looked like. He's equal parts 19th century soldier and Grizzy Adams. Photo ref from the wikipedia article about him.

Total time, an album and a half, so maybe 90-110 mins? I'm pretty crap and drawing cloth, so this was fun practice figuring out how the draping works, and how to use it to reveal the anatomy underneath.

I still don't know how to scan these properly. When I do all the grays get blown out entirely and I have to mess with the levels in photoshop to make them halfway decent, but I end up getting extreme blacks. Bleh!

**Sealegs** · July 3rd, 2007, 05:31 AM

Coming along! Nice anatomy Studies! And your life drawings are getting there, really try to see & learn the shapes, forms, and the proportions. Your anatomy studies will definitely improve your life drawings, so keep doing those! Nice sketchbook, i will be checking back for more.

**kateoo** · July 4th, 2007, 02:15 AM

Robz, ped454, Sealegs, thanks for the words of encouragement. Although I promised myself to keep up hard work regardless of hell or high water, it's awesome to hear some encouragement to know I'm not working in a vacuum.

That said, more stuff from today:

Random anatomy studies, some doodles while watching my roommate play Overlord and a reimagining of a popular superhero. I really need to learn how draping works and practice it a whole lot more.

**mofongo** · July 4th, 2007, 03:23 AM

IT boring? naww....

Im sorta in the same boat, trying to switch over and concentrate more on my art.

These are looking good. Practice is key and you cant get enough of anatomy studies. As for clothing and draping, I found a good starting point to be to create still lifes of a couple of pieces (towels and robes are great) with a strong light source. Keep it up!

**kateoo** · July 9th, 2007, 11:21 PM

Mofongo - thanks! I work in an operations center, so when there's downtime, I draw, heh. IT, man, IT.

More pics from this week:

-My first attempts with watercolors. Random girl from my head, pears from still life
-Still life and spider woman, no ref
-Hale skeletal studies, Bridgeman draping and facial features studies
-Poorly drawn guy with dodgy anatomy from my head (he looks like a downs-y version of Mark Hamill)
-Skull from life. I got my plastic skull and scaled-down skeleton in the mail today. It's gonna help me draw the head a whole lot better
-A bunch of life drawing images, and one partial page of gestures. These are too big for my scanner, and I'm too lazy to stitch, so don't complain about the missing heads or extremeties