Benjaminba's Sketchbook (Updated Oct 22, 2011)

[Benjaminba]

Thursday 22nd, December, 2009.

Hello everyone,

My name is Benjamin, I'm 21 and I'm from Denmark. I'm currently studying English Literature, but really, art is what I want to do. To be able to tell stories; on books, in books, in magazines, video games or whatever.

I'm very interested in hearing any comments or critique you might have! Thank you for visiting!

/Benjamin

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Updated Wednesday, 18th, May 2011
Updated Saturday, 15th, May 2011.
Updated Monday, 9th, May 2011.
Updated Saturday, 9th, April 2011.
Updated Friday, 23rd, July 2010.
Updated Monday, 12th, July 2010.
Updated Tuesday, 6th, July 2010.
Updated Sunday, 4th, July 2010.
Updated Wednesday, 30th, June 2010.
Updated Tuesday, 22nd, June 2010.

[Benjaminba]

This is going to be a bit heavy on studies to start with. Boring, I know.

Inspired by Wesley Burt, amazing pencil-ist!


Really awful legs in this one. And boring face. Oh well.


Not sure how much I really learned from these hand studies. Almost felt as if I focused more on imitating Bridgeman's lines than on actual construction.




Ai, didn't want to show these Train sketches, 15 min each. Not pretty.

[sanakris]

You have an amazing ability with line sensitivity in the pencil work and being able to show a range of values. It'll be nice to see some recent stuff since some of the stuff your showing is a year old or so. It's a great thing you are aware of your own mistakes.
And don't settle for less, if you aspire to get where you want to be.
Looking forward to your progress man.

[Benjaminba]

Thank you, Sanakris, for the kind words! Yeah, the drawing of the wizard is pretty old. The other ones are recent, at least.

I'm going to ramble for a little while. It's my sketchbook, so I can do it and it'll only embarrass myself. But please just skip ahead to the drawings. :p

In the next three months, from January to March, I'll be attending a drawing class - there's not a lot of options for tuition here in Denmark; no schools which teach fine arts or illustration, only graphic design and animation. So, that means I will have to take a break from my studies.

Making the choice was pretty terrible. Maybe it's a foolish notion. It'll delay my degree and cost me quite a lot. And in fact, I honestly haven't been taking drawing all that seriously up until now - certainly not as a possible future career. It'll be worth it if my drawings improve, if I learn, though.

Anyway, wishing you all a Merry Christmas!

Okay, small update. Don't have so much time what with Christmas and having to finish a last paper for January 4th. First one is more of an exercise in figure painting - the costume/design is pretty bland, but I like the pose well enough. And, amazingly, it's in colour!

Next one is a study from a photo by Renoux from DA, I believe.

[Benjaminba]

Hey,

I'm afraid it has been quite a while since my last update, but I haven't been sitting on my backside. That's to say, I have, but I've been drawing while doing it, so it's okay. Anyway, my first week and a day on Truemax is over and I thought I'd share some of my studies.

First, however, I'd like to say that the course so far has been great. Our teacher, Kim Hagen, is taking a classic approach to the subject; going thoroughly through some very basic shapes and moving on to observational drawing of more complex still lives. The focus has been mainly on construction, simple perspective and negative space - a lot has been from observation.

Here's a few examples of what I've done, from old to new:
Some cubes. We drew a lot of cubes, cylinders, spheres and such simple shapes. They are dreadfully boring to look at, so I'll mostly leave those out!



This one was a study in negative spaces/shapes. Very frustrating, but ultimately rewarding exercise. It's a number of jumbled chairs - can you tell how many?

About 3 hours on the skull. Not perfectly happy with it; I don't think I got it precise enough, nor captured the "life" in the skull, silly as it sounds.

[Benjaminba]

Okay, time for an update!

Past few days have been about drawing humans from life. I've only actually drawn from model once; getting to do it now is just a blast.

We started with some 15min sessions, followed by shorter sessions of 4min. It still takes me a lot of time to capture just the basic forms, so please forgive the messiness.


15min.

15min.

4min each.

15min. This one was a fun exercise! We had to draw three of our fellow students who then drew us. Like those photos with a person taking a picture of somebody taking a picture.

We were asked to draw a few "expressions" - happiness, anger, curiosity, etc - from imagination without drawing facial expression.

And finally some of our homework. Sketches from life - these were from the train and railway stations. Kid about 1min, girl 2min, and the man about 20 min.

[sanakris]

It better to go for what you really want now (art), thatn to spend the rest of your life
of what coulda been. It's normal to doubt yourself in such a big transtion in life. And its
not that easy to draw when your stressed like that.

And your work is really improving. Next time you think your art sucks you should read this.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=135551

The gesture drawings and short poses capture the form in a short amount of time. It'll be cool
now to see a drawing with your new enhanced skills.

Just keep drawing man is my only crit. Perseverance is key.

[sanakris]

It better to go for what you really want now (art), than to spend the rest of your life
of what coulda been. It's normal to doubt yourself in such a big transition in life. And its
not that easy to draw when your stressed like that.

And your work is really improving. Next time you think your art sucks you should read this.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=135551

The gesture drawings and short poses capture the form in a short amount of time. It'll be cool
now to see a drawing with your new enhanced skills.

Just keep drawing man and add more values to the drawing when you shade is my only crit. Perseverance is key remember that.

[Benjaminba]

Thanks sanakris! You're absolutely right. And yeah, I tend to go light on the shading; probably because I'm not that good at getting it all even and tight. I'll work on it.

We went to a museum, "Glyptoteket", in Copenhagen to draw statues on Tuesday and continued today, Thursday. I got to draw a completely amazing statue - it's too big for my scanner, though. I'll try to lend the school's scanner. But for now, it's just more studies: hands and people from observation.

[pepokish]

You've got some really beautiful sketches, here. (: I especially love those hand studies! Keep up the great work!

[Benjaminba]

So, we went to the "Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek" in Copenhagen on the 19th and 21st to draw sculptures.

I chose to draw Laurent-Honoré Marqueste's Perseus Slaying Medusa (1903). At the center of the museum is a botanical garden and at the center of that, a sculpture of a woman sits above a small pond. Different sections of the museum branch out from there and you are greeted by the sculpture of Perseus and Medusa right as you mount the stairs to the hallway we were in. It's a very striking sculpture; Medusa's rage is almost tangible, as is the force of the pull and the weight from Perseus' leg on Medusa (unfortunately, from the angle I drew from, you could not see his feet on her stomach).

Anyway, I think I worked on it for 7½ hours. It was pretty intimidating for me to draw something this complex - I'd never done sculpture studies before. So, at the beginning, I spent a lot of time just measuring, despairing , redrawing, finding the line of action in the figures and getting the negative shapes right.

[Benjaminba]

Small update. I've got lots more to show, but I don't have time to scan! (nor time to get enough sleep! Urghhh...)

These are starting to get a little old already - from last month. I'm so behind.


The below is a design by Feng Zhu - our task was merely to reconstruct it in another perspective. I couldn't find the original drawing by Feng Zhu on the net, unfortunately.

Not so satisfied with the elk skull here - it looks amazing in real life. Quite the wonder of nature. I had a tough angle and messed up the perspective in places. The left and top areas seem to be in a slightly different perspective from the rest. It's a bit too short - the foreshortening was hard to capture!

[Swampdigger]

Nice looking stuff, your pencils are looking pretty nice. Keep on doing the life drawings and studies, but don't forget to apply what you're learning from the studies to your imagination stuff.

[Benjaminba]

Swampdigger - Thanks a lot for your comment! It's been a while since I've done anything from imagination, in fact. I've got an assignment for Tuesday to do a comicbook cover, so It'll be interesting to see if I can apply what I'm - hopefully - learning. It can be pretty hard to see any progress at all, just doing studies from life.

It took some time, but I finally got my act together and spent the whole evening scanning drawings from the past month. I shouldn't allow it to pile up like that.

Anyway, that was February. Since our instructor has an animation background, we've done some toon stuff this month; it's not really my thing, but you can definitely pick up some worthwhile thoughts to bring into drawings/illustrations. I haven't scanned any of the toon stuff, though; the drawings below are mainly train/public sketches with a few clothed 5 min poses thrown in.

Edit: Invalid attachments!?!? Ai, I have to redo them. They better work now!

Old to new.















Finally, a few thumbnails for an assignment for Tuesday, but they're messy and tiny and probably not worth posting. We're supposed to draw a comic book cover (no colours). I'm having a lot of fun with it so far. I think I prefer the thumb to the middle left, although the bottom left isn't too bad either. We've only got a title to go from: Dexter - The Girl With The Broken Sword

[tehmeh]

Your figures are excellent, I think the people observed from life are really good and I think the weakest part is the skull from life - you mention negative space was frustrating, so maybe it is your weak point!

I think sketching a bit more of the environment around the figures will help fix this

and forget all this 'probably not worth posting' they are definitely worth posting! it is your sketchbook and whether they look good or not remember by page 10 you will be looking back and using them to see improvement. Worrying about whether a sketch is worth showing only helps to create that 'white page' fear at the start of drawing I find

[Benjaminba]

teh.meh - thank you for the comment! I think you might be right; I had a life drawing session a while ago and I believe I could use my knowledge of negative space to get more precise drawings. Because they didn't turn out all that precise. Anyway, I really like the digital figure study you did - lovely skin tones.

So here's a few of the drawings I did during two life drawing session back in March. It turned out to be much more challenging than I thought it'd be, but quite excellent practice.




The drawing course I took at Truemax ended last week. Overall, it was a very good and educational experience - it was just a little short and though we got through the fundamentals, it was a little cursory. I'd recommend it, although the price tag was more than a little steep, in my opinion. It was good for me, at least, because I found self study to be quite cumbersome; I simply didn't know where to begin and often-times ended up not beginning at all.

Anyway, here is the last little sketch I did. It's from the fairy tale called The Brave Little Tailor, when the tailor meets the first giant.


And finally some Alchemy sketches for this weeks CHOW.

I'm going for a gunslinger with Indian roots, whose mystical powers have imbued him with the spirit of an eagle, giving him its keen eyesight. His eyesight, at least four times as sharp as that of a human with perfect vision, has made him the most dangerous sharpshooter in the west. I think I'll try to take the lower left sketch a little further.

[Chr. Steam]

I like you line. It is lively.

[Benjaminba]

Chr. Steam - Thanks for the comment! I'm not so sure about lively; but it's certainly sketch-y

Did my first chow this week. The topic was "Mystic Gunslinger", and this was the description:
This wild west character, not satisfied with the power of their 6-shooter, has combined the use of pistols with magic. It’s up to you how the combination works and what effect it has.

And my entry:

[Hellfire]

Awesome sketchbook mate.
Your Gunslinger image was great. I loved the colors and the pose of the figure.

You have some solid drawing skills. I like that you always try to give movement to your figures. Its very common to see people drawing incredibly rendered figures but in a very static pose. They are beautiful, but boring at the same time.
So keep drawing dynamic figures and your work will always stand out.
Cheers!

[0blivionisathand]

I found your CHOW piece and I was hooked from go. Keep that fluidity going!

[Benjaminba]

Hellfire - My teacher drilled the importance of dynamic figures into my head. I'm still trying to get rid of that stiffness in my work. Thanks!

0blivionisathand - Woo! Comments like yours do keep me going! Thank you for dropping by!

After trying my hand at the chow piece I realized just how little I know about sculpturing and colour - saturation as it relates to tone, hue, value all that stuff. I tried doing a little still life of an apple following the fantastic Bumskee's example (here). Damn, that was tough! I have a lot of trouble recognizing the right hue and "brightness".

I think I have to go back to the foundations, so I did the exercises outlined in The Peer Project. If you haven't checked it out, I suggest you do! Idiot Apathy knows a lot about this and he and other clever folks have been generously sharing their knowledge. Not going to post those exercises here as they are boring to look at; just wanted to mention the thread.

Finally, did a greyscale painting on Bumskee's drawing of, I think, Baba Yaga. He has such great solidity to his paintings - something I hope to achieve myself.

[jskotte]

Really nice work, love the pencil sketches and the entry to the Chow is awesome.
Do you attend life drawing around Copenhagen? I'm looking for a good place.

Hold humøret højt

[Benjaminba]

jskotte - Thank you! Unfortunately, no - I only know that there's a place in Valby, check it out here: http://www.croquis-tegning.dk/croside2.htm. I can't tell you what it's like though, I haven't been there myself since I live on Fyn... Only got to do that little bit of life drawing while I was at Truemax. Ærgeligt du ikke bor på fyn! Det kunne være fedt at lave en sketchgroup og gå ud og tegne i naturen/byen etc.

Two portrait sketches, slightly over an hour each. The woman is from imagination and the man is General William Tecumseh Sherman - this is the photo ref I used: http://students.umf.maine.edu/~rossk.../wtsherman.jpg Getting a likeness is pretty damn difficult; I unfortunately didn't get that close. Need more practice!

[Benjaminba]

Hey, an environment study for today! Have to say, finding good photo reference takes ages, because apparently photographers love blowing up the contrast and saturation, changing the hue of the sky and who knows what else. I also wanted to find an interesting subject matter so I chose the Elian Donan castle in Scotland. Ref here.

First time I painted a landscape from reference. Took like 3 hours D: The proportions are a little off compared to the original photo, but meh...

[Emil_J.]

Hey - you have really improved a lot in a very short time span- especially your values.
The CHOW from post #18 looks good - nice use of light and details around the face to direct attention. Keep it up!

[mustang_sally]

I really like your hand studies! sketchbook looks great

[Benjaminba]

Fumble - Hey, thanks! I've seen so many people on CA improve tremendously in a matter of months; yourself included - I'm feeling pretty inspired at the moment to try doing the same!

mustang_sally - Thank you! I've been meaning to do more hand studies and anatomy studies in general. I'm still far from being able to draw good hands from imagination.

I'll get around to commenting on your sketchbooks soon. For now, a still life and a study of a still frame from the film Excalibur (1981) - a silly film, can't really recommend it, aside from the great armours! There's some nice shots once in a while.

There was light from the sky hitting this owl, but I wasn't able to nail just the right colour for it... The figure is made of wood and then painted in different colours. One purpose of the study was to figure out how those different colours would relate in terms of hue, tone and saturation (does that make sense?) - theoretically, I guess only the hue should change if the plane is lit evenly by just one light.. But since the skylight isn't pure white, would saturation be affected as well? I don't know. Help!

The colour aren't spot on in this one, but I kind of like it anyway D: It was fun to do and I think the armour and the horse turned out okay. Took like 4 hours though. Ref here: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v8...libur_refl.jpg

[Benjaminba]

Been doing some posemaniacs gesture sketches lately. I was all hyped up to do 200; split between 30 and 60 sec poses. But OH MY GAWD scanning them sucks and then having to edit them into one document. Still, they're pretty fun to do and being able to draw reasonably convincing characters in various poses is a top-priority goal right now - hope this helps somehow.

60 sec poses, then 30 sec poses. This is just the first batch, rest coming tomorrow. There's a few decent ones in there, but mostly they're awful. Sorry about the huge size!

[Benjaminba]

Next batch of gestures. They didn't turn out better than the first, unfortunately. First 20 is 60 sec, next 20 is 30 sec.

[Benjaminba]

Some landscape drawings from life I did today - there's a very beautiful area only 15-20 minutes on foot from where I live. Idyllic, even and only five or so people passed me as I was drawing; oh and the spring weather was fantastic today... Sunny, quiet and mild, for the first time this year.

By the way, any tips on how best to study a book like Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy? I've been reading and copying some pages - I'm not sure if this is the most effective way of learning its contents, however. Is that okay for a first pass? I mean, I'm not going to learn the human anatomy any time soon. It's a long process.

This one was by far the best, I think. There's flow in how the land rises and falls.

Now this one gave me a lot of trouble. Actually ended up cropping a lot of the tree; it was in fact an amazing tree - full of twists and odds and ends, lots of character - but... not so much in my drawing.

Last one is a bit hard to read.