jpdelteso´s SKETCHBOOK - Life drawings, works, studies...

[jpdelteso]

Hi everybody,

My first post here. At the moment I´m preparing myself to become an Illustrator/Draughtsman/Concept Artist... whatever I feel likely with during the long way, so I decided to post here and receive critics that could help me in improving my skills. Hope to learn a lot from this community and if possible to give back my 2 cents.

So, no more talking. Here goes my first post:

Life Drawings. 15 minutes each.

At the moment I´m trying to find flow in the figure while being accurate rendering shapes. Not aiming for mass drawing right now.

[Helltroll]

Welcome to CA!
Good start you have here

[Wilko]

Good stuff so far! Keep it coming.

[jpdelteso]

Thanks for the warm welcome. I´ll do my best to keep expectations high.

So here goes something else. I think it would have needed some more contrast in some areas... but I had to move on!

Watercolor pencils. Used photo reference.

[jpdelteso]

...and some more Life poses. 15 minutes poses.

[rattsang]

hi jose, great to finally see you on here, there are so many brilliant people on this site with good advice.

in regards to your life drawing you have certainly improved alot, all that hard work paying off eh? one thing i did notice is you are concerned with the contour rather than 2d shapes when drawing the figure. this gives them a very round feeling. as you know (im sure i told you this b4) there are only two types of line, straight lines and curved lines. straight lines make objects look solid, in the figure it is used to show where bones come to the surface and where the body contacts a surface it is resting on. curved lines give the drawing flow and can be used to show where there is pressure from squash and stretch.

i think your over concern with contour is making you forget about flow. ive tried to represent eye flow in the image below, see how in your drawing your eye doesnt want to move down the body so much as scan across it awkwardly.

notice as well the "sausage" shapes made from the flow of the legs because the apexes of the curves are directly across from each other. in the second image can you see the improvement i made by slightly shifting the apexes of the curves?

really what you want to be doing is simplifying the body into 2d shapes that approximate the angle and direction that they travel in. this is what is matters. ive tried to show this in the overpainted photo, notice that i completly ignored the contour, using as few lines as possible to make my shapes(i used blue lines to close the shapes to make it clearer for you) really the only information that is copied from the photo into the red lines is the positions of the apexes of the curves and the general shape.

well hope you find this helpful and ill talk to you soon

rat

[jpdelteso]

Hi mate!

Glad you came here! Thanks a lot for taking the time to show me your explanations the way you´ve done. Really helpful pointers. About flow, I agree with you; I should try to look more for it instead of giving priority to contour(already working on it). It´s quite a bad habit I got. Getting into contour directly because of thinking that "I see it" is something I try to do no more. About simplification of shapes, also started to work it out. Maybe it´s not that evident in the drawings I´ve posted already, but is another "tool" I´m trying to use.

Will post more stuff during this week, soooooo... stay tuned!

[jpdelteso]

It took me some more time than I thought to be back here, but it´s been busy time.

Anyway, here´s some more work for my "color" class, still work in progress but no far from completion(or I hope so). Sepia Watercolor using photo reference. Critiques and comments are more than welcome.

Cheers.

Jose.

[rattsang]

hi jose

that forest scene seems very busy, have another look at creative illustration, loomis talks about removing clutter and patchyness, simple compositions are always the best. again i have to ask why watercolor, it is a medium of masters, because only masters can use it properly, i remember you did quite well with the pastels or how about trying oil paint.

[jpdelteso]

Hi again!

Sorry about the late reply and for the lack of updates.

About the forest scene being busy, sure, I agree with that. At that moment I was concentrating more on technique as well as in giving the branches natural and credible shapes. Creative Illustration it´s not a re-read for me, but a first time read, I fear. I´ve been mostly concerned with life figure drawing, so I left it apart with some other interesting readings.

Again the watercolor thing...
How dumb is to go that way for starting? Sure oil painting appeals me as well(maybe more indeed), but wanna be sure about going one direction or the other.

Enough talking for now.

Here goes some more life drawings; 15 minutes poses. I noticed some improvement in the flow of the figures, as well as in the simplifying of the shapes(Thanks for pointing that out, Mr.Rattsang!!) I´ll try to add some more through this evening, including some interesting 2 and 5 minutes poses.

Waiting for comments.

Thanks in advance!

[jpdelteso]

Some more 15 minutes life drawings. Done with col-erase and graphite pencils for improving cleanliness and line quality(just testing).

[RBeek]

you have some nice studies.. though you should look into you proportions.
But i guess you can notice that yourself to. Since i see you working hard on them.
It must be a blast to be livedrawing,, never did that
I will someday
Good luck man! keep them sketches comming!

[Brun]

great model studies, don't be afraid to show alittle bit more dynamics and expression in your lines.

Keep up the good work u are doing great

[jpdelteso]

rogerb: Thanks for visiting and for pointing that out. Yes, I´m also working on proportions, and yes, doing life drawing from models is great Thanks for your support!

Brun:: Gesture is the main thing I try to look for, but sometimes I´m clumsy in the use of the tools wich allow me render it. But right now that I manage to stay relaxed while drawing(enjoying the drawing, and not looking fordward to do it well) I think I´m improving a lot, and I´ll be improving much faster. Thanks for the encouragement!! I´ll keep posting works!

Sooo, here´s a new update with a variety of... the same, more life drawings(Happily there´s not only 15 but also 2 minute poses) Still looking for gesture as the main pillar of everything else. I think that I felt a new "click" in my head that made me advance a step further into gesture and everything wich builds on top. I`m very happy, since I managed to stay fully relaxed during last sessions, wich I think it´s the way to analyze the figure step by step, skipping the less you can.

[RBeek]

just wanted to thank you for the great advise you gave and for the kind words.
They mean alot to me so you kinda made my day
Im gonna subscribe to you sketchbook and im gonna followthe you
NOT STALKING! :o just follow how you go and how you progress..
I hope to see more drawings and hope we can maybe use eachothers eye and opinion from time to time.

Again, thanks! And very nice drawings you have there XD
I like how you form the characters when they sit on something.
I can see you are playing with weight and balance.
And i find that very hard but you seem to be holding yourself up
So keep it up !

Good luck man!

[Flashback]

Very nice sketchbook and those are some really awesome studies.

[jpdelteso]

rogerb: you´re welcome Glad to help you. Last two years it´s been a lot of thinking and taking decisions about such matters. Now I´m fully sure that at this point, that is the way to go.

Glad that you subscribed to my SB, I already did with yours I´ll do my best to post more and better works.

Finally, thanks for the comments. Essentially the first thing I go for in the figure is gesture, and I´m still struggling to do it correctly. I think I´m quite near!!

Flashback: Thanks for that. I really feel flattered. I´ve been looking through your SB, and there´s a lot of work there. Some of that, I have to catch up with very soon(Loomis, Bridgman...)

Here we´re again, with some more work(some crappy and some not so crappy). So, there´s a bit of practice relating spherical forms, one with each other(got that from Vilppu), which I think are helpful, not only for overlapping forms but for working with gesture, since you have to put it there if you want those spherical forms to seem alive. Also a few Loomis skeletons... (gotta work a lot more with those, specially from head), and some more 15 minute poses...
I expect to increase much more the amount of work in the following weeks, as well as the quality!

Thanks for dropping by!

[RBeek]

man,, your figures are getting stronger with the update.. :o
Your style differes so much from mine its weird..
But i guess your just a few steps ahead of me
The lose form study is really nice btw.. i do that sometimes to warm myself up.
Though i just wireframe them instead of shade,, i should maybe try that myself sometime..
Thnx for sharing !

[jpdelteso]

rogerb: Thanks for telling! It´s great to be told about improvement About style, I suppose that we concentrate on different things at the moment. I still don´t go for anatomy as you do, but for gesture instead. If you like how it goes, then go for Vilppu...did I say Vilppu again?! xDD
About shading the spherical forms, It´s something that I thought that could be good practice, but the main thing I gor for is relating those volumes in space. Again, thanks a lot for the comments!



So, new stuff again!

Here´s some foundational practice on 1 point perspective. I tried to render a variety of objects, from simple boxes to more complex volumes. At the moment I´m following PERSPECTIVE 101 from ConceptArt. I´m very thankful to Seedling for building up such a good thread.

Apart of that, I´ve included some 2 minutes gesture drawings, some 5 minutes drawings, and 15 minutes poses as well.

Waiting for your comments!

Cheers.

Jose.

[RBeek]

Hey here i am again, :/
^^ the perspective ones look nice and clean.
Its also good to see you dont just handle simple blocks but use your creativity to create some weird shapes.. thats very nice
a nice excersice is to make a circle go round.. i dont rly know how to explain.
Ill put in a youtube link here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpV7LUfH6jI

About the figures.. yeah awsome.. its all i can say i guess
I should go for gesture aswell :/ or ill just do it all at once !

Ohwell, we'll see,, for now good luck and keep drawing!!

[jpdelteso]

It´s been 2 months with no posting. Not that I´ve stopped drawing, but wantend to keep focused on drawing and post less but with better and improved results.

Anyway first things first.

rogerb: Thanks for the nice comments, and thanks for posting that link. That was something I had in my list "to do", so, I´ve been working on it


And now, ladies and gentlemen, some life drawing of different types.
Hope you like them. As usual, looking fordward to read your comments.

Cheers.

Jose.

[RBeek]

Hey man! Long time no seeinganyupdates! :X

This new stuff looks interesting!
On the first ones.. how many minute poses are that? Some of them look really great :o
On the others... the watercolor *i think* looks interesting.. please explain.. if thats able to?
The figure sketches on those look rly strong!

And the last one rocks!
It really do look like rock
Its a charcoal painting right? If that is the case i think its very well done..
When i do charcoal it ends up wayyyy more messy than urs
Keep them updates comming dont slack on us!

Good luck!

[jpdelteso]

Hi there, Roger!

Those first ones were 15 minute poses. It took me a bit to do something decent in thoset time lapses after some weeks practising just 30 secs poses(perhaps it´s just my imagination). Nevertheless, it was worthy to spend time just doing those. It´s helping me a lot to have a much better understanding of movement an flow.

The color ones, yes, those are watercolor The proccess is quite fun. First you gotta fix a blank piece of paper to some kind of board, or even to your table. You do that with masking tape. Be sure that the paper is completely stretched. Then you must dampen your whole paper with a big brush( for me, it worked with a shaving brush ). Now that the paper is wet, you must spill a few drops of some liquid watercolor tone onto the paper, then do the same with another tone (the total of drops I used varies from 3 to 8, depending on the effect you wanna get). With those drops over the paper, you´re gonna mix´em moving a piece of acetate film (any smooth transparent plastic should work) over the areas you wanna mix color or create effect; the size of the acetate, I prefered to use something I could handle easily(about 1/3 of the paper size worked for me, but that´s completely your choice). That´s all for the watercolor part. Just let it dry and do the next one. For the figure drawing I used a black ink pen (Pilot 0.5.). So, yes, you have to prepare your paper some time before your drawing session (I did it the day before). I really liked how some of those tuned out(specially the green one).


And, for the last one, yes, it´s charcoal, and thanks a lot! I´m starting to enjoy classical drawing, taking measures, checking horizontals, verticals and diagonals. I wouldn´t have guessed!!
It took me more hours than I would like to admit, but was also worthy to do, I learnt a lot!

P.S: I´ll try to update more often. Again, thanks for the encouragement!