Jesse learns to...

[Moonrage]

You have a good eye for detail and values and color also. I think the most useful thing that you could do is work on your edges. At present they are kinda rugged, you need to clear them out at least in te focus areas. There are good techniques for that on http://ctrlpaint.com, be sure to check them out. A mandatory one is masking.

To work on the smootness of your strokes, be sure to do a lot of quick sketches, so that you can train your arm and wrist to move more fluidly. That's it for now, keep it up. Very interesting sketchbook.

[n1frit]

Like ur sketch style a bit dirty but good still good)

[JesseM]

@moonrage and n1frit; ugh. you two raise a good point. >>" I've never been neat. Moonrage, I've never heard of ctrlpaint before -- I'll be sure to check it out, thanks so much!!

More stuff! A Sargent study (with steps, just because), a mermaid concept doodle warmup, and a very rough WIP for a character portrait from imagination.

And I'm still doing anatomy studies, but I'm doing them traditionally and scanning is a pain, soo. >>" I'll probably do a big dump later.

[Eightball_]

hey, i did a study from the same sargent painting too! he's amazing isn't he?

anyway, everything is looking nice! my only crit is that sometimes you go to a full black value (a 10) when in reality, it's probably a dark halftone (a 7 on the value scale). in the sargent study steps you showed, the values were most accurate in step 5, and then it got contrasty in the last one. i see this in the mermaid piece too. that's about it though. anyway, keep up the good work! i will definitely be following this book.

[Chris Sanders]

Hey - I like your female studies they have a nice charm about them (especially the thread tag and post 30) would like to se some more male studies or some different skin tone studies and some timed anatomy. keep it up!

[JesseM]

@eightball; Sargent is scary-amazing. @__@ I can't even imagine doing a study of that painting in color, much less creating it. He has such elegance, too...
Thanks for the support! ^^ ..and in my defense, while I do know I have a tendency to crank up the contrast too much--especially in my personal work-- step 6 in the Sargent study was a gag-step. >>" I had a blank space so I just threw that in. The true "final" for the study is up above, full-side, beside the original. But you're right about the mermaid thing/etc. xP

@dog; thank you! Duly noted. I'm working on a couple different paintings with dudes right now, and'll put a little more focus on variety in the future. ^^

Alright, today's update is Super-Special-Fun-Feature: Jesse's weakest areas!

I sat down to do some quick acrylic still lives on some 4x4 boards and remembered why I never do: I suck at them. So I'm gonna try to do 3 painting sessions a week at least for the next couple months and start improving in that area. Px I also discovered some materiel issues as I painted, so I ordered new stuff and hopefully that'll cause a quality increase pretty soon.
Sorry the scans are so bad (and yeah, I did just use my scanner :P), but since I didn't spend more than 15 minutes on any of these, I didn't really find digitally touching-up worth it.

There's also some composition concepts, featuring characters from the game Disgaea. I had 13 different characters I was considering putting on some poster mock-ups, and had a lot of trouble fitting them on. Then I broke down and did solo's. XD;;
I think I'll do a couple more composition quickies tomorrow, with other series' characters that I like. I need the practice. >>"

[/blahblah]

Leave a comment! ^^

[SteFlack]

Great sketchbook already, your studies are sooo good.

[JesseM]

flack - thank you!

Alright, so not much today, since it's the end of summer aka the time of last-minute homework finishing. ;-;
I've got another comp quickie - super messy, but I feel like I'm starting to understand practical composing. Characters from Natsume Yuujinchou.
There's also another quick still life, and a collage of head doodles that I did to try out the beautiful new brush pen I got form pentel. I like it more than my $40 kuretake brush pen, though the kuretake gets thinner lines easier. Considering the pentel is only $16.. XD" I also washed on some quick value in Sai to a few heads, just to see how it'd look.

ON THE TOPIC OF STILL LIVES - I recently discovered the lovely work of Emil Carlsen, and have picked up a few ideas and tricks from him. I also take a ridiculous amount of inspiration from Carol Marine. Are there any other good still life painters that you'd recommend I look at?

[JesseM]

Alright, we're back to your regularly scheduled Figures from Observation! Here's a gesture dump--most were 100 seconds, but some are shorter, and the last two were longer.

I'm also starting another figure-painting-project, sooo check back!

[JesseM]

not much today. @__@" I've been busy with school.

Going back to basics with some cube-shading from imagination (so many mistakes! such crappy edges! but I'm learning stuff)--
a doodle-portrait that I think I'm just gonna scrap--
and a WIP illustration inspired by Rachel Carson's writing on acid rain in her ages-old classic, Silent Spring.

[Fernteixeira]

great stuff in here o.o
love how u work looooosely xD .. I do everything too tight =_=
I would love to have more patience to painting more anatomy D:

w___w sorry but I dont have time to study english D: All I know is what I have learnt playing final fantasy D: haha

:B

[JesseM]

@fern; thank you!
o.o just from video games? That's pretty impressive, man.

Aughhh. School started up again and I got too busy and stopped posting. Sorry. Most of the stuff I've been doing is traditional, and none of which I've scanned, so here's just some random crap from the past week... this'll get me over the guilt-cuz-I-haven't-updated-part, and then I can start posting good stuff!

I'm also getting around to watching a ton of TAD vids I've bought - including the mask one, so you can now see me blatantly ripping off his beautiful landscape style and failing with it. I'm gonna keep doing these, though!

[ryan mcshane]

hey JesseM, your doing good
i'd recommend you grab your sketchbook and draw things out doors a lot more, that's where you'll grow more (in your sketchbook) and don't do it to 'make a pretty picture' do it to express your feelings and experiences
@ your digital work, it seems your not sure of why your applying strokes, which means they aren't going in the best possible places. there are a lot of unnecessary strokes of color in places, which can make it confusing & sloppy. just everytime you go to put down a stroke, think - is this where i want it? and is it describing the shape and form as i want it to?

[JesseM]

@Ryan; fast response!
And argh.. "being gratuitous." That is my problem.. I actually just finished watching TAD's sketchbook clinic and have been going around the house doing still lifes and thumbnail comps, so uhm, hopefully that'll help. I do need more purpose in my work.. I feel like I've been too complacent recently... thanks for the advice, Ryan.
Maybe I'll try some minimalistic ink drawings.. I've been missing the smell of India ink lately.

Hell, got more to post. >>
Some of this stuff is old, but I want to get it out of my files so I stop pretending I'm going to do something with it someday.

I start wayyy too many portraits...

[JesseM]

I'm wrapping up my first sweep of in-depth human anatomy studies--though there's a few areas I want to go back and study more--so I decided to do some studies of different builds to see how these bones and muscles work in reality and how they look in different bodies.

Starting with chicks, cuz most of my anatomy studies were based off dudes~
I love painting flesh so much. ;-; <3

[Kerah]

I really enjoyed going through you (currently) short sketchbook, some of the studies really amazed me because perhaps some of it is a style I'd like to adopt. It was already pointed out and I only seen it mostly with your pencils- you're a little messy, but that's ok
Also your characters are VERY interesting and FRESH, that's what I feel when I look at them. This is probably a good attitude to hold on to

Thanks, and good luck!
Cheerios

[JesseM]

@Kerah; thank you so much for the support. ;A;
I-I've been working on keeping neater edges lately!

Alright, so!
Some 30-second gestures--I tried doing these digitally to save myself the 30 minutes it takes to scan 'em in, and although I'm not quite used to it yet, I think I'll keep doing it this way--and then another body-study-thing. The pic's not done and I doubt it ever will be, but I was happy working on it cuz I could recognize every muscle, and knew its name, start/end/shape/size, function, etc! My anatomy studies are reallyyy paying off. @-@ <3 I have a lot more confidence now too, when approaching the figure, which is great.

[Lux_Aeterna]

Hi Jesse,
thank you very much for your helpful crit in my SB
I browsed through yours, too and I really like your studies, some of them look very realistic
Anyhow I have noticed that you color very roughly. although it looks cool you should start to blend the colours now to achieve some more realism. i would be curious how it looks like.
Keep on studying, I'm sure you can achieve great things when you do so.

[JesseM]

@Lux; No problem - thanks for commenting me back! ;-;
Hmm.. do some more finished worked, huh? ..I must admit I'm curious too, about how it'd look. XD
As soon as I get the chance!

Alright, comics for you all today!
These are the final sketches in a short I've been messing around with these past few days. Some panels are more finished than I'd normally do cuz I wanted to practice the underwater effect.
I changed pg2 from my thumbnails for no good reason, and that messed up page 3 (but I kind of like the effect of just a blank page with words there) and there's some changes I wanna make the shampoo page... overall, this was an experiment with rhythm, and seeing how much I could push things before it got difficult to read/understand. I would love feedback on the storytelling!

I couldn't use the attachment manager cuz the file's too big. Sorry. >>"

[Ludic]

The last comic was pretty well made! I like it.

[JesseM]

@Ludic - thank you! ^^ It was surprisingly quick and fun to make. I wanna do more comics~ P:

Sorry for the lack of updates. Life got kinda bad. Like call-the-police kinda bad. But uh, art never stops, and I've got a lot to post once I get around to it.

Stuff today: more digital gestures.. I was kinda stiff, but oh well. 30 seconds. A snippet from a from-memory anatomy wrap-up study thing I started... annnd lastly a self-portrait. I heard from an artist somewhere that, when he's confused, an artist should do a self-portrait, so I did. The results actually surprised me. When I look at the picture, considering the crap-mood I was in when I made it, the expression seems to be somewhat.. encouraging. I dunno, it was an interesting exercise. The style isn't characteristic of me either. I think I'm going to try to do more self-portraits in the future.

[Malakuko]

nice work just keep doing what your doing haha.
Sorry to hear about your troubles, just dont do what I do when life gets in the way of art, I always beat myself up for not having work done even though I know I had no chance to do art. Bad habit!

[JesseM]

And now I'm coughing up blood! XD" ah... life's been a little.. distracting lately.

@Malakuko - thank you! Yeah, you've gotta be forgiving of yourself. Just shake it off and keep going!

Got a profile study from imagination--I often struggle with proportions here, so I'm trying to really nail those down. Though looking at it now, I should reverse the slant on the top of the head - the cranium is the highest point, on the back of the head, right? @__@" whoops.
Also, another quick self-portrait thing, and a photo study that was really fun~ o3o

More soon!

[Iristhevirus]

oh wow I just love your sketchbook subscribing right now. I love the way you paint, your strokes are natural and lovely, your understanding of color is great, and you experiment a lot. I feel really inspired after looking through all this. Keep it up!

[JesseM]

@Iris; ;__; thank you. I'm trying.
Let's all keep inspiring each other!

Sorry for the disappearance! I got mono. Life has been high-maintenance lately.

WIP color study/portrait (I'll post the larger, finished version and steps for it in a few days), WIP value study, and some album cover designs for a friend. I can't come up with anything I like, but these seem to be closest to representing her music that I can get. Any crits/suggestions to improve them would be greatly appreciated!

[Pigeonkill]

Post #33, #55 guy on the bottom beautiful portraits. I see you are fan of disagea I recently just played the second version on ps2. Much fun, then sold my ps2 because it got too distracting for practice.

[jorvaa]

Beautiful portaits - even at the start of your sketchbook! My only crit (and it is a personal opinion) is that you paint a few more "tight" paintings (I'm sure that isn't the technical term), like the last one. I love how finished the face looks. Other than that, I can't really crit you, since you are leagues above me.

Beautiful work!

[TFsean]

Your studies are ridiculous, some of them reach really great areas of detail, nice focal points and your values are on point, you might not be interested but maybe try some more environments and see how those go?

[Iristhevirus]

Oh wow that last color portrait is beautiful! you aced the face

[Naked Ninja]

Last study is lovely.