twan learns to draw

**Naidy** · August 28th, 2010, 01:15 PM

Hello again!
You're working so hard and you're studies are looking brilliant!
Keep up the good work mate, you're an inspiration

**hücumkedi** · December 23rd, 2010, 03:14 PM

nice sb

**Twan** · January 2nd, 2011, 05:31 PM

a sort of portrait i did, after finishing it i look at it with a better light and i realize there's were too much contrast between the black and the grey, bwah

a digital painting with strange colors

i tried to have a real clean line here and to make each line only once, about 10 minutes each drawing

imagine fx anatomy issue study! this issue rocks!

some of my vilppu's studies

**Twan** · August 15th, 2011, 06:36 PM

It has been a while since I posted here so it's time to make this topic come back to life!
I just finished high school. I'm stunned to see that I gonna miss it in spite of having been bored as hell for 3 years. Actually I will attend an art school in Paris in September and I'm a little bit scared of it. I've been learning on my own for all my life so I'm afraid of losing my freedom.
Anyway, I've drawn a lot since the begining of holidays, a lot from mind actually. From now on I'm much more creative, I have tones of ideas but my drawings looked too cartoonish. I want them to be more realistic.
I have 3 weeks left before school' starting. Henceforth I will strive to draw and improve everyday
It gonna be fun!

To begin with, here are some studies ( It took me barely more than one hour for each ONE):

here I tried to draw in a more realistic way. I'm happy with the eye but the rest is just crap. I used reference

Since I struggle with perspective even though I understand how it works, I did some drawings from life of my house! It was really instructive, I'll do this again tomorow:

Cheers!

**Andrew Sonea** · August 16th, 2011, 03:55 AM

Hey man, thanks for stopping by my sketchbook. Thought I'd leave a few of my thoughts on your stuff here

.

First off, you are doing quite well. You digitals especially show an understanding of how to represent form and good colour. Your pencils however don't have the same confidence and understanding showing in them. For example, in the last few perspective studies the lines are all very timid and uniform. It isn't very interesting to look at. I would recommend loosening up a bit--play with thin lines and thick lines, light lines and dark lines, and see where you can leave out lines completely. And don't be afraid to draw THROUGH things right to the vanishing point, or draw the horizon line through the buildings. If you have a few extra construction lines showing through it is okay, and in fact better. It forces you to really understand it and learn more, and the drawing will appear more three dimensional and less hesitant.

Another thing I noticed is that your observational skills are pretty good. You can copy a portrait with a good result. But when you try to do a portrait from imagination it is much weaker. This is the case with most artists, but with you it is rather obvious. This shows that you don't fully understand the forms and planes of the head. If you do a bunch of studies of skulls, and then move on to the planes of the face (Loomis, Bridgman, Asaro Head etc), then you will do much better in both observational and imaginary portraits.

Anyhow, you are doing fine right now so just keep up the hard work and you will improve

**Twan** · August 17th, 2011, 03:23 AM

Thanks Andrew for your comment ! I'm not good with rendering and clean lines indeed. The paper quality is poor as well
so I tried to do something that looks better but I'm pretty disapointed with it:

A bunch of study I did, I'm too lazy to scan everything

A watercolor I painted lately. Watercolor is hard to handle, I wanted to add more details but it was impossible to do so. Besides colors are hard to make, and are way to pale according to me.

**Twan** · August 17th, 2011, 04:58 PM

A quick color study:

And a WIP from mind. Before painting it, do you think there's something weird with it? Crits are welcomed

**dandylion** · August 17th, 2011, 06:12 PM

Hey there! I just went through your sketchbook, and wow, you are talented with portraits. I'd love to see more drawings of people in doing things, though, instead of just head portraits. I bet you'd do really well with that!

**kitfox** · August 18th, 2011, 02:54 PM

Hello!

Thanks for the visit in my sketchbook! Some things that I notice in your last WIP, the construction of the head is a little weird. The line of the jaw in relation to the neck is off. The head might also be a little too big, especially the back of the head. The feet aren't properly grounded, they're a little out of perspective regarding the ground plane. Not too much to fix. Keep working at it!

**Twan** · August 18th, 2011, 05:35 PM

Thanks for the crit. Indeed the neck was wrong. I'll try to improve the feet's perspective.

I think I'm better for finding correct colors. I used to struggle with that so much and it prevented me from enjoying painting. Henceforth it's more natural, and I'm so glad!
Anyway, these are 3 studies, 1 hour each:

And I did this after, from mind. well the guy's gun is really lame...

**Twan** · August 19th, 2011, 05:36 PM

I can't help myself from drawing! here a painting I did this morning:

I did a bunch of studies as well, including some pelvis bones (it's freaking hard but it's worth it) but I'm to lazy to scan it right now
See you guys!

**Twan** · August 20th, 2011, 06:47 PM

Today was a great day!
Firstly, a color study:

I did a lot of skull studies. Then when I thoroughly understant the skull volume, I did this painting to study the skull more in delph and get its details:

Then I tested the knowledge I got from it by creating a whole painting from mind! it was great and I loved to add some details. I might make it better and more clean later:

Anyway, tomorrow is my "rest day", so I won't draw that much

**thisby** · August 20th, 2011, 07:47 PM

thanks for stopping by my sb! your watercolors and digitals are grrreat - I enjoyed looking through them. those skulls have a nice solid form too, nothing looks off to me. loving your portraits

keep up the studies!

**kitfox** · August 20th, 2011, 08:49 PM

Hello again!

Thanks for the paintover in my sketchbook. Really appreciate it!

Impressive skull studies. You've really got the color picking down. Can I ask you what kind of exercises did you do to get good a picking colors? Did you start by color picking from reference photos or just go by trial and error until you got the hang of it?

**Twan** · August 22nd, 2011, 04:29 PM

Thanks for your comments!
kitfox> Well, at first I sucked at color picking. So this is what I did:I tried to get the color the best as possible and then paint over the photo reference. If it changes nothing, then it means I got the color right. Otherwise I just compare with the right color to figure out if my color need to be warmer, lighter, darker, more red, ... Now thanks to this technique I'm way better at it, it don't take me so much tries to get the right color. It might sound like cheating but it's the only way I found.

I'm still studying the skeleton. I almost finished it! ( I need to learn the legs and the arms bones)
I'm too lazy to scan my studies but I can show you this exercice I did! I took this photo and paint over it how its skull should look like!

and then I painted it! this one was hard though, and I struggled a lot with it

**Not_Deadman** · August 25th, 2011, 02:49 PM

Lovely progress! That last painting looks like it really paid off to do that underlay and spend the time on it! Also, eminem is awesome, I especially love his earlier work! One crit I have that has been said already is about your pencils. Try loosening up and maybe try some blind contour studies.

**towy** · August 25th, 2011, 03:05 PM

NICE tWan , keep it up

**SableStorm** · August 25th, 2011, 03:11 PM

Very nice progress, Twan. Good luck in Paris!

**Twan** · August 26th, 2011, 04:12 AM

woah, thanks for your comments, it really cheers me up!

Not_Deadman> Well, I'm not a big fan of rap music but eminem is one of the only rappers I find awesome
Towy&SableStorm> Thanks a lot!

I was kinda frustrated these days, so I did only a couple of drawings.
This one is special since I tried to paint it 2 weeks ago but really messed up with it. So I'm really glad I manage to overcome this failure!

this one was really quick, less than one hour:

And I finished to study the skeleton. It's not perfect, but I know all the majors bones. So, this was a try to invent some skeletons from mind. ( Well the arms suck since I didn't had study the arms' bones at the time)

**iven** · September 14th, 2011, 12:27 AM

Your stuff looks very good, you really know how to catch the spirit of you model.

**iven** · August 21st, 2012, 09:46 AM

I must have posted, almost a year ago, where are you hope you still sketch.
If you do pop in my sketchbook and let me know. Great stuff in here.
I didn't see the skeleton date, very funny and useful to do the same time.