stroan's sketchbook

[stroan]

Hi all. I've been reading CA and doodling for a good while. I've taken to drawing / painting more seriously of late and finally felt not too embarrassed to start a sketchbook. Criticism is more than welcome.

[stroan]

Sorry for the bump, moving the contents of the first post into a second post because I just realized that the attachment on the first post is used for the sketchbook icon.



My first painted piece that I spent a few hours on and was happy at the far end. It's taken me a long time to realize that progression in art isn't something based on just keeping on doing quick sketches until your quick sketches look like finished pieces. I'm learning now to grow a balance in my practice, doing some longer painted pieces in Sketchbook Pro and drawing practice and studies with pencil and paper. Also I really enjoyed using colour, which is something I've found very difficult so far.



Whenever I'd painted previously I'd always relied on my line art to give the piece definition. After the success of the previous piece I wanted to see if I could paint a portrait, and not rely on lines. I was quite happy with this too. I didn't give it as much time as the previous one.

I'm looking forward to posting more here soon, and finally being able to reply to other sketchbooks!

[stroan]

Managed to get some time to get in a study this evening. I used a B pencil throughout this. I should really have switched to a softer pencil towards the end.

[stroan]

Starting my Loomis practice Think it was coming together towards the last page.

[twilightmoon777]

Nice job so far. And your right..that last Loomis head looks the best. Just keep on working, you will be awesome in no time. Good luck!

[stroan]

More Loomis heads. Going to be doing these plates for a few more days I think before I move onto the next ones. Proportions are still quite off.

[stroan]

I got a good bit of time today to draw. I started the day off with some painting. I've come to the realization that I have no idea how to paint, at all. I don't know how to lay down colours or how what order to lay them down in. I tried a few landscapes and then a really unsuccessful portrait from imagination.





After how poorly the portrait went I spent a while working through more Loomis heads. I think I'm getting a better grasp of the structure and proportions. Features are still definitely a problem, but they're in the next chapter of the book.





I think I'm going to try to hunt down some very basic painting videos and try to follow them tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to set myself on a better course for painting studies.

[Mignon]

very cool studies. And also, a very good choice of study, Loomis is great, indeed. keep it up!

[LePush]

hey man, good start, i definitely encourage you to keep on doing these studies, it'll help you tons later down the road!

[stroan]

Didn't get much practice in today. I spent too long looking for tutorials and then for reference images. I only got a bit of actual practice in today. One was an eye from observation that I think turned out well enough, and the other was trying to follow a tutorial in a digital painting book I have. That one didn't go so well at all.



When I look at the other sketchbooks on here, I see how much can be done with a few confident strokes of solid colours. I scratch with the pen, which gives things an even more sloppy feeling when painting than when I do it with a pencil it seems.

I'm conscious of wanting to do concept art, from imagination, while also needing to work on drawing real things to build the tools that will allow imagination work. Following the tutorial for that building today showed me the value of working on composition and design. I was copying from a book, and yet I still managed to lose the feel and structure of the building.

I'm loving all this really. It's an absolutely thrilling feeling to have a growing set of things to work on and improve upon. Everything I get better at is accompanied by insight into other areas I'll need to work on.

[stroan]

Had a busy few days, but was able to spend this evening studying fortunately. Another batch of Loomis heads

I've been reading the forums and the advice seems to be don't focus too much on painting and digital media until you're able to render shape and value well enough with a pencil. So I think I'm going to spend more time doing long pencil studies which I've only really done once recently, in doing the skull above.

[Pete Hidalgo]

Loving the head studies! Loomis I presume? Ha ha. I am going though that book atm. Fantastic information.

[stroan]

Had another good day of drawing No studies, but I went through the weekly CA contests and tried my hand at some stuff from imagination. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Faerie masquerade ball:



Museum exhibit about the robot uprising:



Front line assault creature:

[kevin_]

nice stuff but a lot of it is looking a bit flat so work on form a bit and just keep up the practices!

[stroan]

The family was going away for a short holiday, renting a boat for a week, so I took some time off work and went with them. I wanted to try to do quick sketches instead of taking holiday snaps. I'm very glad I did it. They were all quick sketches and one or two studies from imagination when there was some down time.

[catukas]

Good job..

[stroan]

I spent a good while today doing very quick sketches from life, and I really need much more practice at it. I was browsing artsyposes.com today to find pictures to practice on and came across this tutorial on the reilly method of shading. I then tried to draw a few pictures on artsyposes and was pretty happy with the result. I will now be spending the rest of my evening doing some really basic studies, to try and address the depth issues mentioned by kevin_





Reference: Photographs by Marcus J. Ranum on artsyposes.com (can't figure out how to direct link to specific photos.

[stroan]

I've been struggling trying to decide what the correct thing to study is at the moment. I'm not going to keep on posting my pages and pages of quick studies, but I will post my longer studies. Below is a Matt Smith portrait and a drawing of a beer I had sitting in front of me.

Proportions of the face are way off, but a lot better than I would have been able to produce only weeks ago. Also rendering value has gotten better I feel. I've also been working a lot on not having such scratchy lines, and I think it's yielding results.

[stroan]

I've been using this figure drawing tool for the last few days to do gesture drawing. It's wonderful! I know it's not drawing from life, so I'm planning on going to a life drawing class once or twice a week after work once I find one that fits my schedule. Below are the gesture drawings done in longer than a minute. There are many pages of scribbles that are really useful practice but less than nothing to look at.