Jh's Sketchbook - Study! Practice! Apply!

[idenzel]

Your studies are all very nice. It's obvious that you are building a good and diverse set of skills. Keep it up.

[alisn]

wow amazing job your studies are very helpful and have really smart notes , thank you for posting your

i'll be checking your sketchbook from time to time keep up your great work

ali-sn

[catukas]

You study a lot... I do that too.. And I'm thinking of going to Estonian Academy of Arts (Department of Animation) next year.. So I have little time to practise my skills everyday. Sometimes I come to think what new I could do.. And I got some ideas from Your sketchbook.

[LongJh]

Denzel - Thank you. I try to study as much as I can so that I can be as unrestricted as possible when doing my own works. Hopefully I don't end up just being mediocre at everything because I don't focus haha.

alisn -Thanks! I'm glad they help lol. Honestly, they're there mainly to remind myself what I need to improve on.

catukas - Thank you! Please keep working hard, and I'm sure you'll be able to join that school with no problems!

Ahhh not a productive week, I didn't get to draw as much as I wanted. I guess I'll just leave these here.

Loomis perspective stuff. Just this one this week lol. I ran into some problems understanding this one but I think I get it now.



And some head studies. Starting to get into hair. So many things to practice at one go!



More lip studies. Focusing also on line quality. I got lazy at the end though.



And some random sketchies. Ahh, I'm terrible at figures. GOTTA PRACTICEEEE

[IsaacEs]

You've made some great progress man! i like your perspective stuff pretty good understanding on your part, a quick tip i notice you curve your necks and make them smaller than the face, so next time you draw male faces the neck will almost always be the same width as the face try doing some studies of how necks connect to the heads in order to get a good understanding, btw theres a muscle called the trapeziues or traps that connects to your neck which i guess is what youre confusing for the curve, try drawing it seperately instead of one fluid line i recommend reading loomis's book on drawing heads and hands. keep all those studies coming!

[LongJh]

IsaacEs - Thank you so much! Especially on the tip for the neck, I never would have noticed if you didn't mention it! This goes to show how useful it is to have someone else take a look at your work to spot mistakes and stuff. Yeah, time to practice necks too lol. I've been neglecting the other parts of the human figure lately.

But here's more stuff for this week! I've been losing steam recently, must be because my terrible sleeping habits during the weekend.

The usual perspective from Loomis' Successful Drawing. Think I went a little overboard with the note-taking.




Back to gestures drawings! 30s poses with a calligraphy pen. Haven't done those in awhile. Mainly to get myself familiar with drawing the full figure again. I wonder how those artists out there are able to do such awesome 30s gestures with so much movement and accuracy. Mine are just messy and bad.



Next are 60s gestures done with a charcoal pencil. I dunno. I tried to get that "classical" traditional charcoal drawing look but it didn't turn out so well.




Aaaand a 10min figure drawing. Yeah... bad, I know. I noodled around and ran out of time before I could finish the important parts.



Lastly, some sketchbook stuff! Couldn't resist practicing more eyes lol. I'm just always annoyed that I might keep drawing almost the same eyes all the time. Plus random rocks, trees and grass! (Was practicing how grass would bend and stuff)

[IsaacEs]

no problem see instantly better, wow i wish i could take notes as clean as you, haha mine always come out really dirty o.o anyways i really like these pages specially the trees i like the way you rendered them

[LongJh]

Gaaaaaaah late update!

More perspective stuff from Loomis! Getting into some more interesting stuff now - the last image was a lot of fun to do, might probably do more of these kind of interior stuff for practice. Also I realise I suck at drawing furniture. And people.





30 second posemaniacs! I'm still struggling with laying down proper proportions quickly. With these quick gestures I'm always torn between doing accurate measurement and energetic strokes - I've seen people who can do both, but it just seems to slip right out of my fingers. Ugh, maybe I'm thinking too much.



Lastly, some figure stuff! First ones are studies, mainly focusing on proportion and doing proper measurement. I got lazy halfway though. Second ones from imagination - can't seem to come up with more interesting and dynamic poses. I think I may to study some anatomical landmarks and some figure construction techniques.

[Pete Hidalgo]

Wow! Lots of insane studies in here. Keep it up man. There is vast improvement from the first page.

[LongJh]

Pete Hidalgo - Thank you! Hopefully I will improve even faster lol.

Got a bit of stuff done this week. First off, some perspective practice to apply what I learned from Loomis! Ran into some perspective distortion issues. Might be because my paper is too small and I'm trying to squeeze everything too much. Or maybe I didn't construct the perspective grid properly. Hm.




Aaand some digi stuff again! First one is an attempt at painting a head from imagination. I think the drawing came out... okay (I still think I'm samefacing), but the rendering is like, I dunno I wanted to make it look like skin but it turned out like plastic or something. Too many wierd colours and highlights? I'm still not used to the forms of the head too.



So yeah next are digi portrait studies. Mainly focusing on colour and somewhat on facial proportions. I didn't really do much blending though. I apologise if the heads end up looking creepy. It's really tough!




I wanted to do a third head study but I was getting a little burnt out and tired. So I did this quick little painting of a flower to relax a little. And also to try out a different digital painting method. So far I've mostly restricted myself to using the hard round brush with no opacity to paint (then using one with opacity set to pressure to blend). Gotta find out more methods for rendering!

[Soapy]

wow, that last flower is beautiful! love the colours and focus. this thread reminds me to get started on loomis...
no crits...1) i'm not advanced enough to advise you on anything, and 2) you're great at reviewing your own work don't be too harsh on yourself though, you're coming along wonderfully.

[Pete Hidalgo]

Yeah your improving fast man. I have a suggestion for your concern about drawing the same eyes As I have that same concern. Look for reference of other nationalities/races and draw their eyes. Different age groups also. The older the eyes the more detail you have to focus on cause of all the wrinkles.

[LongJh]

Soapy - Ah, thank you for the kind words. Haha, I don't think you have to be advanced or anything to give advice, but thank you. And I hope I'm not too harsh on myself either! Though sometimes I need a reminder or two cuz I get lazy often.

Pete Hidalgo Haha, thanks! Yeah that's a great suggestion! I keep telling myself I need to do more eye studies, but I keep rolling off to do other stuff instead. So many things to study aaaahh! But yeah, that's no excuse lol.

Anyways, I had an off day today! So I drew things.

First up is a head done along with Linda Bergvist's skintones tutorial. It was a little awkward for me at the beginning cuz it wasn't my usual method of painting, but it became pretty fun in the end. Learnt a bunch about colour and colour mixing from this, though I'm still struggling with the head forms and where to put the shadow/highlight etc. Will probably revisit this in the future again.



More Loomis perspective! 50 pages of perspective studies up to this point. Yay.





30 second gestures. I think I'll make it a point to do gestures as a warmup before doing more figure studies. Also, I'm hoping that doing these gestures will help me improve the speed, movement and proportion of my figure stuff. The first two pages are a little messy cuz I just kept redrawing over the old poses a few times.



Aand finally some Bridgeman studies. Starting on his book - The Complete Guide to Drawing from Life. Used a fineliner pen for these. Normally I'd be really careful when doing studies. But recently it's been pretty tedious and tiring for me. So for now I'll probably be using the pen to do loose studies - it feels more comfortable. Impatience keeps getting the better of me.

[Tef]

Hi LongJh !
Very good study and especially studies of moving bodies !
Nice work

[LongJh]

Tef - Thank you!

Hi all, just leaving this tiny update here.

Some more 30s gestures.



Figures from imagination! Don't mind the weird hatching - it's to distract you from my crappy linework.



Aaand some Bridgman studies. Not sure if I should imitate his style/technique or just copy down exactly what I see.

[Psychobuddy]

Hey man, nice studies. That perspective stuff is killer.

Keep it up man!

[Artezianin]

Hey man great studies i think u are on the right way just may be u need some more accent on anatomy, not on poses on muscle placement anyway good work keep it up)

[LongJh]

Psychobuddy - Thank you! Haha, yeah, I'll do my best!

Artezianin - Thanks! Yeah I agree - I've been practicing how to do poses so much that I completely neglected anatomy and how to use it to draw figures. Will be working on fixing that soon!

It's reaaaally late - but have an update!

The usual Loomis perspective practice. Studying inclined planes now. Nearing the end soon. I'll probably have to do some practical application of what I've learnt so far. Just doing studies is pretty pointless if I don't make use of it.




A little digi sketch from imagination. Ran into some problems on how to go about rendering it properly sooo I pretty much gave up on it. Need to study more environments!



Here's something a little different. I've always had trouble trying to draw symmetrical things or unfamilier angles from my drawing hand (right), so I did this pen sketch thing to practice drawing symmetry. It's pretty random, yeah.



Aand some more eye studies. As usual I've got to improve my linework and shading with a pencil.



And lastly some Bridgman figure studies. I was being really sloppy with these, bleh.

[Tef]

Very good studies and post !
Yeah continue

[LongJh]

Tef - Thanks man, I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by my sketchbook!

A quick little update! All digital stuffs. First up are some studies from terragalleria. I'm having trouble painting details - though I think it might be because I painted with a really small canvas.





Then trying to apply what I learned by painting a little something from imagination. Still struggling with more realistic colours. I think I tend to oversaturate things too much and that makes my paintings a bit more stylized than I intended.



And lastly, a quick study from life.

[Tef]

No pb! It is sometimes so hard to get feedback And it's always a pleasure to see the work of other artists

Me too I often I look bad because the size of my canvas too.
This is good, but remember this lack of shade. For example your pencil rendering gives fairly flat

[Ambiguity]

I'm really attracted to your nose studies on the first page for some reason *shrug*.

Anyways, I think part of the problem you're having with your skin tones is you're going overboard with the saturation of the whole face. There are certain artistic liberties you can take with saturation, but you have to know when and where.

You might take a look at this(and the whole thing if you have time:http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm#light_stuff
Also, if you look up Sinixdesign on YouTube and check out his painting faces series, he explains a bit of where you can get away with extra saturation on the face.

I'm still learning too though so take what I say with a grain of salt, hopefully those resources will help though.

[LongJh]

Tef - Yeah it's really cool to see other artists works, a lot are really inspirational. Especially their sketches and stuff. I honestly prefer looking at other people's sketches and random doodles than their polished work sometimes. It shows a lot more about the artist and the way they think. Thanks for the reminder on the shading - I'll do my best to put more effort into it!

Ambiguity - Haha, you should thank Mr Hammond, then! Those are studies off his drawings lol. And yeah, I think I am going overboard with the saturation of my colour choices. It might be because I'm doing it unconsciously because I prefer doing more saturated stuff, but yeah, it's realism I'm striving for and I do notice that I struggle to pick the correct "photoreal" colours sometimes. Thanks for the advice and the resources! I actually saw a couple of them before, but I never really got to really concentrate on them. Ahhh so many things to learn!

And also, an update!

Just the usual Loomis perspective practice. The last downslope city drawing is pretty bad. I was really impatient and just rushed it out - and it shows. Also I didn't really concentrate on drawing the cars properly (and in the right scale!). But me struggling to draw cars is also a reminder that I've still got a lot to learn about simple forms and shapes in perspective.





Bridgman studies.



Aand some figures from imagination. The anatomy and proportion is pretty off, and I was being pretty messy and reckless with my lines. But these are done pretty quick - and the reason is so that I can find out what are my bad habits and what I need to improve on when it comes to drawing figures.



I concluded that I'm really bad when it comes to drawing the lower body (among other things) and so I did some leg studies from photos.



Followed by a few from imagination to practice what I learned. Will be working on improving my rendering and shading.

[Tef]

The study of the legs is a good study. I should also put because I always struggle to precisely position the legs.
Nice work

[LongJh]

Tef - Thank you!

Hi all! Got an update here.

Some silly figure doodles. Not really thinking, just making random marks and see if I could come up with some convincing figures and poses. Have to start thinking of anatomy and rendering forms next time.




Gah, some really, really bad non-reffed head sketches. So many studies and practice and I still can't seem to draw a proper head, so frustrating. Either I need to concentrate more or rethink my learning approach. Still really struggling with the features, too. Especially the eyes. I can't seem to draw the eyes and make the irises look where I want without redrawing like a hundred times. Bleh.



The usual perspective studies after Loomis!




Some digi heads. About an hour each. Um, not really done very well. As usual, features and proportions seem... awkward.





Aaaand a new sketchbook! A really small one to bring along with me wherever I go! Gonna start sketching more from life. It's really tough! All my lines are really messy.

[FalconessN]

Wow! Great Studies!!
Jia You fellow Singaporean! ;D

[LongJh]

FalconessN - Haha, hey, thank you so much! It's great to meet people from SG here in the forums, hope you're having fun!

Looks like the forums seem to be working pretty okay now, sooo more stuff! I'm hoping next time I'll start working harder to draw more stuff and manage my time more efficiently.

First are some head drawings. Practicing head various head construction techniques (lifted from several online tutorials), mainly because I my proportions are pretty much alway off for my facial features and also to try out how to construct different head "shapes". Kind of came out a little wonky though (the second image).





And then a little digi head from imagination. Not so good. Skin tones, values and underlying head structure definitely needs more work.



More perspective studies after Loomis. Probably after 1 more page I'll be pausing on this for awhile - and start applying the perspective stuff I learnt so far. And also to brush up on my figure drawing skills because the next few pages will be dealing a lot with the human figure in perspective.




Lastly, sketchbook pages! Time really flies when you're drawing in public transport.

[LongJh]

Updating to make up for all that lost time when CA was down!

Slow week. Trying to come up with some ideas for drawing some environments that will test how much I've learnt from my perspective studies. Nothing much to show for that now, but till then, here are a few drawings!

More head studies. Second one is from imagination with a focus on constructing the head using circles and lines/curves. I think I'll have to study the skull structure more instead of solely relying on abstract construction to draw convincing heads.




Next are some studies from Bridgman. Same thing - using too much abstract construction, but no real understanding of the underlying anatomy. Need to study some bones and muscles.




And lastly some sketchbook stuff. Some from life, some from ref, some from head.

[LongJh]

Hi all, got an update here! Caught up to my latest post during CA's downtime!

Lately I've been thinking about my works so far, looking at my old stuff and reviewing them. It's been a couple of months since I started this practice regime thing, and I think I managed to improve a little - though not as fast as I would have liked. I know that improving takes time and all, I guess I'm a little impatient. Looking at other people's sketchbook, particular those artists who weren't so good in the beginning and had practiced their butt off and eventually became outstanding artists now, I'm convinced I could be drawing a little more and thinking a little more than I actually am right now. Because, truth be told I'm actually not managing my time well and lazing off more often than I should - and along with other commitments, it's not a good idea to waste so much time.

Also, since my end game is to be an awesome concept artists whose job is to create amazing, mind-blowing new designs - it's probably a good idea to flex my imagination and design muscles once in a while and not just keep doing copies and studies. Um, might have to think of some methods to approach this issue.

But anyway, I'm rambling. Just wanted to get that load off my head and get it out there. In short - more practice! More thinking! Less procrastinating!

Some digi studies in preparation for a CGHub Challenge entry.





And my entry to the New Worlds Challenge - Forgotten Plains over at CGHub. It didn't come out exactly as I would have liked, nor as fast as I would've liked (I dunno it took like 8 hours or something just to paint this lame thing), but I'm really glad I attempted this - it showed me where my level was still at. Painted using only the round brush, had a lot of trouble blending and painting grass, as well as a whole bunch of other problems (lighting, colour, etc, etc). Oh well.



Bridgman studies. Trying to fully absorb the ideas that he is trying to convey through his figures drawings. Though I'm not 100% sure I'm getting it.



Two silly little digi paintings from life I did on my Iphone using Sketchbook Pro. Not really used to it's interface and painting with my fingers, so they came out a little wonky. And I supposed they count as practice of some sort.



Sketchbook stuff.



Aaand, also started on an assignment I created for myself to apply all that I have learnt from Andrew Loomis so far.

This is the assignment!

Perspective Self-Assignment and Review

1-Pt. Perspective
> Central Horizon (Normal View) > Exterior and Interior
> High Horizon (Bird's Eye View) > Exterior and Interior
> Low Horizon (Worm's Eye View) > Exterior and Interior

2-Pt. Perspective
> Central Horizon (Normal View) >Exterior and Interior
> High Horizon (Bird's Eye View) > Exterior and Interior
> Low Horizon (Worm's Eye View) - Exterior and Interior

Inclining Perspective
> Exterior and Interior

Declining Perspective
> Exterior and Interior

(Total 16 drawings)

Guidelines

- Draw an environment/landscape scene with each perspective guideline as shown above (eg. 2-pt. perspective -> high horizon -> exterior)
- Come up with an interesting composition and use different locations and subject matter for each scene (eg. use different landscapes/architecture for each drawing, don't draw the same stuff each time)
- Focus on understanding perspective, drafting techniques and proper scaling. Avoid copying he perspective directly from reference. Referencing design details is allowed.
- Add repeating elements, repeated accurately through space. (Eg. Pillars, windows, patterns, staircases (for inclining/declining perspective), etc.)
- Introduce curved surfaces when possible.
- Human figures not required.
.

And this is the first little drawing! An exterior scene in 1-pt perspective with a centralised horizon. Worked on this 2 hours every night for about 3 nights not including preliminary doodles. A lot I could probably improve on, like more interesting details (it's all just bricks here, wtf) and paying more attention to accurate scaling (there are some scaling mistakes, particularly on the railings of the top part of the bridge compared to the railings near the bench). Still, I think I learnt a fair bit from this.



And that's it! So, so sorry for such a long post, I hope it wasn't too boring - and thank you for taking a look!

[Dinosawr]

Seeing your progression is amazing. I would like to note, all the necks connected to your head studies are a bit too skinny. Try some neck studies!