Andrew Sonea -22/5/2013

[Andrew Sonea]

Matty: Thanks!

Ryan: Thanks! And here you go!

Marian: Thank you!

eekolite: You are too kind! But yeah, not every life drawing works out unfortunately...I post them all just the same though. Also, if you ever want advice just ask (although I am not sure I am really qualified to give it).

lancer: Thanks man!

Turbosnail: Thank you!

Dennis: Thanks man! Yeah we need to talk again soon.

xinranliu: Hahaha, never saw it like that. Hope to see you at Sheridan!


Alrighty, so here is the mini dump as promised. I had to do way more cleaning and housework than expected, and I also had a few sessions for learning to drive which took up more time still. So I barely did anything compared to what I had planned.

Enough excuses I guess...here it is. I think this is everything.

[a la bapsi]

your last post--especially your TC illustration--is blowing me away.
you're gonna be fucking awesome in a few years, man. just watch.

[ErikHolfelder]

!!! Dude, this post literally kind of takes my breath away. It's like I got punched in the chest! I need to get my ass moving.

Thanks a million for the paintover by the way. For advice, I wanted to ask about how you use a pencil to get the nice value/texture in your figure studies. I don't really have a clue. I mean I know a lot about hatching/blending stomps/etc, but it feels like my technique is super poor. If you have any thoughts about that process that would be totally awesome. [edit - I think I just need to practice a TON of hatching, haha, but comments are still appreciated]

Comments:
-The texture on #2 is awesome, as are the textures and effects on many of the enviros, etc. You're really starting to nail naturalism.
-Both of the bust casts are exceptional. (are these just photos btw? Or do you have access to casts? I could stand to do some of those.)
-Figures are looking great, just keep going. Enviros too
-TC is great, though the arms of the jedi feel a bit awkward in the final. I think they feel more realistically tensed and dynamic in the previous step.
-The first image is nice, but make sure to keep flipping it! It definitely jumped out at me that it's a bit skewed.

KEEP GOING.

[hunchback]

ill see if i can get out to sandy hill sometime. i have a class from 6-9 so its real hard to get there. I saw you drew gustavo down there draw him all the time here at algonquin.

[Rain Walker]

Fan-Freaking-tastic!!!

[Marian Rowling]

Brilliant Andrew, your artwork, not all that cleaning you had to do! LOL Especially like your Teen challenge and the self portrait. Great update.

[mass87]

hey thx for stoping by my SB, awesome work u have here, great landscapes! keep it up

[Farvus]

Fantastic sketchbook. It made me feel guilty for not practicing enough figurative work .

I don't really have any idea right now what to suggest in terms of technique. I noticed slight tendency though when it comes to studies - you got like 95% of naked figures and maybe 5% of clothed ones. Of course anatomy is crucial part but I would do more drawings with focus on outfit which can often add a lots of personality to character, give a hint of the world that the illustration is depicting. Even when you look at your past illustrations this disproportion shows a bit - http://attachments.conceptart.org/fo...1&d=1275792561
or http://attachments.conceptart.org/fo...1&d=1300658895

Other thing would be just playing a bit with faces from imagination and trying out different personality types.

In general all these suggestions come to one thing. When you draw some illustration or design, the form is important but also you gotta do your best to capture the viewer into your world. Small details that give a slight hint of what is someone's personality, what are the conditions he lives in. Even something simple like the shape of the sword can evoke some specific mood.

Hope that helps.

Keep going .

[Andrew Sonea]

Britney: Thanks! You will be going far too I feel

eekolite: Thanks so much man! Totally missed that haha, I think that may have been the root of some of my problems. I rarely do horizontal flips...I need to way more. And thanks for the tip on the TC entry, I kept getting the feeling that I was losing elements of my initial sketches and had to keep undoing and redoing a lot of work.

To answer your questions...first, the busts are just from photos. It would be more useful from real life, but photos are good too. I really like studying sculpture because it already has many of the artistic decisions made that you can learn from, but also has perfect lighting.

As for shading/hatching, yes practice helps . I find that for me the easiest thing is to use a mechanical pencil and use careful layering of hatching. Tony Ryder describes it in his book as layering washes of pencil, and that really stuck with me, to think of it more in terms of a wash of tone rather than a bunch of lines. Part of it comes from just practice though, like I used to practice hatching in my notes during class rather than listen to what I was supposed to be learning. Try getting flat even values with hatching, try getting smooth gradations of value through only pressure, try getting gradations through layering of light pressure, see how fast you can hatch with control, see what length of line is best for your hatching comfortably etc. Other things to note are the direction of strokes can also help to describe the form. Oh, one thing I have recently been using is to do hatching where at the end of each stroke I quickly lift the pencil off the page so that the reduced pressure makes the end of each line smoothly get lighter and thinner. This is great for helping to reinforce the core shadows and you do it towards the light so that it automatically puts in a smooth transition to halftones. It may be hard to see in the crappy photos here, but hopefully you get what I mean. Also, do some copies of artists you like--choose a picture where it is not super blended and you can't see the strokes, choose something with the hatching evident, then analyse why they drew it like they did, why they chose a certain direction or why the layered in one area and didn't in another etc.

Hope that helps!

Hunchback: Don't skip class for me haha, but yeah it would be nice to do some drawing together.

Rainwalker: Thanks!

Marian: Thanks for your continued support!

mass87: Thanks!

Farvus: WOW! Thank you so much for that. A really great critique and a big wakeup call for me. I have been ignoring my weaknesses too long, and will start studying some drapery more now so that I can actually get some good characters going on in here. And your comment about faces from imagination is very true, but applies to all stuff from imagination, so I am starting off with more of my memory studies now and will be moving on to more things without reference to work on this. Thanks again so much!





Did mostly pencils this week, with a focus on legs. Any where you see double of the same thing was my memory study, in which I cover up the reference and my first drawing then draw it again from memory. A great exercise to try out, I feel like I learn so much more from it than normal studies. Also, the first study of drapery in what will be a number of them (thanks to Farvus' suggestion!). It was really tough and I don't think I learnt that much from it though...any suggestions on studying drapery?

Oh, and it is a big mish mash of stuff from life, photos, copies of Kevin Chen and imagination/memory. Sorry that a couple photographed blurry, but I really don't feel like rephotographing them.

[ryan mcshane]

whats your process with the memory studies in pencil? do you cover up half the page with your arm or something?
great anatomy studies man, and do more like that clothing study!

[Farvus]

WOW! Thank you so much for that. A really great critique and a big wakeup call for me. I have been ignoring my weaknesses too long, and will start studying some drapery more now so that I can actually get some good characters going on in here. And your comment about faces from imagination is very true, but applies to all stuff from imagination, so I am starting off with more of my memory studies now and will be moving on to more things without reference to work on this. Thanks again so much!

That's not a big thing really. Yeah. Drapery studies are fine but what I mean is not just mechanics of how folds react. I also mean creating some visual library in head for different types of cloting. Trying different shapes, patterns, materials, levels of specularity. It's matter of finding how for example different types of clothing affect the silhouette of the character. How different types of garment can be put together to create harmonious consistent design. Same with faces and poses. Maybe faces even more than clothing.
Photoshop allows for repainting things million times so you can quickly find some new directions. Make use of that advantage. Just for experiment take some your old figure sketch and do some variations. This is where really fun begins. Try old, young, fat, skinny. Play with hair/skin color, different facial hair, face expressions. Try the most ridiculous ideas you could ever imagine. Make your character either extremely handsome or extremely ugly. Change his boots, give him different types of armors, from super rich to poor and damaged. Also play a lot with silhouette, break some shapes into smaller parts, pay attention to what happens with negative space. Delete layer if you don't like it, or duplicate it and doodle on top.
All this craziness is just so you can have much wider view of what's possible and have more choice. More knobs at your disposal that can be turn on and off when doing piece. And once you'll get extremely huge board of knobs, you can start finding some subtle combinations that can really strike the viewer with some interesting/powerful emotions or just make him believe that he's looking at real person.

Hope you don't mind. I doodled a bit on your knight piece just to show you some examples of alterations.

Have fun, man .

[adamsimons]

nice studies dude!

[Andrew Sonea]

Ryan: Thanks! Yeah just cover it with a scrap piece of paper.

Farvus: Thanks so much yet again. I left a thank you in your sb, but may as well thank you again here since you are so helpful...I did some little silhouettes and thumbnail characters to try and warm up to the idea of designing interesting characters. I'll have to do some CHOWs soon.

adamsimons: Thanks!

First is an OC session I had with Dile_ the other day, took a screeny just to show how it is all set up. Got MSN on the right and paint on the left--I do the same thing with Photoshop. I did everything there except for the head in the bottom left (I did the body above it for the head, but Dile_ decapitated him).

A self portrait for Zombies Guns n Swords that I hate.

Next are some silhouettes, just took the lasso and scribbled randomly while trying keep it vaguely humanoid. Then take the paintbucket and click randomly once within the scribbles. Interesting result, and it is cool to see how I immediately see things in them (the first one there was magically a bikini that appeared, and on the second there is a face I see very clearly etc).

Lastly a couple drapery studies (yet again I feel like I am learning not much about actual drapery with these).

[ryan mcshane]

cool lassos brother, but try making them just solid black? the white kinda distracts it from seeing a silhoutte
iono if you saw the lassos i did in mine but yeah, thats what i mean
keep it up dude!

[Aksel Ludvigsen]

Damn, girl.

[Not_Deadman]

Sick stuff! Im diggin the designs

[ErikHolfelder]

Man! Two great updates already. Thanks for stopping by my sb again man, I really appreciate it.

Those lasso thumbnail characters are awesome. I love working like that. I tend to just use a big fat brush (scratchboard tool or thick n thin pen in painter and a custom one imitating those in ps) to work in and out. I kind of took the method from sinix, here's an example. There's lots of applications for this, but getting ideas from the blotchy random shapes is one of them.

Have you read bridgman's section on drapery? It won't help with the painting exactly, but I've found it really helpful in its simple descriptions of the rhythm and flow of folds and the different kinds of folds that exist.

Sorry man, not too helpful today. Just more more more! Oh, and if you ever want another OC partner, I'm down. No pressure though.
Keep it up!

[edits - Thanks a million for answering my questions by the way. It's given me some things to think about and practice. I think I know what I gotta do! Also, for horizontal flips I suggest creating a photoshop action that does it and then setting it to a function key. I have it set to F2, so I can just hit that and flip back and forth really easily. Just a thought. ]

[Andrew Sonea]

Ryan: Thanks! I never tried all black, may work out. I kind of like the white in there though, helps me see things on the interior too.

Aksel: Hahaha!

Not_Deadman: Thanks!

eekolite: Thanks for the advice man! I have looked at Bridgman for it, but aaaaaaages ago. Will try to revisit it. And I really hate OC haha, can't control shit in it. If you want we can do like a collab on something though .

Alright guys, I present you...the laziest man ever (me!). I did like nothing this week. Barely drew at all. In fact, most days this week I didn't draw. Sigh, life/girlfriend/laziness/school/laziness can eat into time for art. So mostly just the lifedrawings from this week, as usual ranging from 90 seconds to 30 minutes. Yeah, I also made a process thingy for my girlfriend who wants to learn how to paint (didn't use any textured brushes for it to keep it simple for now and show that basic round brush can do a lot).

In other news though I did get accepted into Sheridan for Illustration. I got a shitty score, but made it in at least. I posted my portfolio here for those interested:
http://conceptart.org/forums/showpos...&postcount=282

[Marlee.]

Whoah, crazy stuff going on here Love the jedi painting, you really got the dynamic sense down. Post 339 is really impressive too - your memory studies are so close to the original! The planar anatomy studies look helpful as well, I'd love to see you do a longer, more polished figure study soon to solidify them. And those process shots of the eviro are super helpful, thanks for posting! Can't wait for more

[ErikHolfelder]

It's so easy to have bad art weeks. Love the process on the enviro. And yeah, some kinda collab would be awesome. I haven't uced OC in a long ass time so I'm totally unfamiliar with it. It'll be cool tho. I notice you use msn. I usually use aim, but I could hop on my msn and maybe catch you sometimes - [email protected].

Just curious, how big are you working for your figure drawings? They're looking really ace.

Just keep it up man. Try to get back to hitting it hard!

[Aragah]

nice improvement man, dont stop!

[Mark Tarrisse]

Man great sketchbook, just keep up working, you're doing great !

[adamsimons]

I really like those silhouettes on the previous update.
And congratulations on your acceptance!

[Just Call Me Bruce!]

I'm really liking the pencils in here and I like the idea of doing a study and then redoing it from imagination.
Do you find it helps you retain the knowledge better, or is it more of a test to see how much you learnt from it?

[Jasper_]

Awesome studies and life drawings man, you're making some serious improvement. Congrats on getting into Sheridan as well!

[Alex Eh]

Some really nice stuff going on in this book, keep it going!

[skMOP]

Congrats on Sheridan! Any news on scholarships?
I really like the 30min figures.

[carakhan]

I love your life studies! Your figure drawings are so soft and the lines are so well placed, unless you have a very light hand underneath all of that it looks like it just flows out of you. Really inspired to catch the next figure class at work, thank you!
And that last bust is just fantastic. Colors are spot on, just translucent enough that it made me think it was real for a second.

[carakhan]

eck, sorry for the double post!

[lancer_idenoure]

youre making good improvements. 'specially those yummy life drawinz

ps: you look rather half asian...;P