Jared's Sketchbook

[Jared D]

Well here's another guy trying to get good at that drawing thing. I'm getting into it late being 24 now but I can't work as a welder anymore due to my bad knee. I just want a job where I can create for a living as that's what I enjoy so I've jumped into art with a helpful push from my sister who is already a working artist in animation.

So far I haven't taken the studying seriously due to bad, lazy, "excuses", so I've been maning the fuck up at the start of the year. I enrolled in Vilppu's online essentials class and am trying to pound my head in with art now.

Going to end each post with a promise of what I will upload the next day as I've yet to break my word to anyone so I'll feel forced to do it. I'll do more and more as time goes on.

Tomorrow: 100 thirty second gestures and 50 two minute gestures

[Cabbage Caterpillar]

Hey Jared, welcome to conceptart! You have some really nice stuff here, especially the figure drawings! Hope to see more coming... 100 and 50 gesture drawings is A LOT... hope that you will still post no matter how many you've got. One gesture drawing is one more drawing you have under your belt.

[Jared D]

@Cabbage Caterpillar: Thanks, 100/50 is a bit right now but I want to get it up to 6 hour daily studies so need to start with a little kick

Next I'll be doing Vilppu or Bammes studies on the hip and more gestures.

Here's some of the 150. Red is 30 seconds with china marker and black is 2 minutes with polychromos black pencil.

[iMigraine]

Jared D I would love to hear what you think of Vilppu's Basic online course once your done. I'm struggling with the fundamentals myself.

[Jared D]

@iMigraine, Sure thing. After the classes are done I'll make a post here with all my studies form the class and sum up the class in some kind of mini review of my work and the course.

Ending up doing some quick hip studies today too. Not much besides a few messy loose copies of Vilppu's art:

[Jared D]

Some 1 minute gesture pages and copies. Not as much today or tomorrow due to the homework for vilppu's class has me hitting a wall a bit.

Tomorrow: A most likely badly set up still life drawing I'll doing for class and 100 more one minute gestures with pen.

[Jared D]

Did 50 1 minute female gestures based on rhythm when I got up and I'll do 50 male when I'm about to hit the hay. Going to make that the start to my daily no excuses study time. Going to try and cut down the number of times I go over the same line :/

Also working on that still life homework today, got the hard part done (design) moving onto the render.

[Jared D]

Homework for class went pretty bad. Had to take a painting and copy the overall plan of the painting as a still life. Didn't even get the H x W right, think my old welding co-workers would laugh their asses off at that. (got cocky and thought I could eye ball it) Also wish I had more time as now that it's done I want to add a cloth to show the robe shape better. Well I can see the mistakes so it's made me better at least.

Anyways, going to keep going with the 100 one minute gestures a day but going to only post them once a day now. Most likely one page of male and one page of female as I'm flooding my SB with the spam at this point. Only one page can show how much better I've gotten. With that said I think I'm getting a little better at it.

Tomorrow: 100 gestures, perspective study, and some copies of comic book poses for fun.

[Cabbage Caterpillar]

Wow, you're really doing it!!! The gesture looks great, love the flowy lines. It's really motivational to see you posting so many drawings. Keep them coming!

[Aqualeot]

I really like your dedication! You have a lot of potential with all the work you are putting in

[Doot Dee Doo]

I agree with the above poster, your dedication is inspiring.

The success in the composition exercise in post #8 seems like it would come more strongly from mimicking the value pattern. I'm not sure if that's against the assignment guidelines though. I did a quick still life from imagination to show what I'm talking about (sorry for the terribly boring set up):

[Jared D]

@Cabbage Caterpillar, thanks man. I'll keep them coming as long as my arms still work.

@Doot Dee Doo, Ya, it was about getting as much of the painting into the still life. There's a lot of things I wanted to redo like the values using a darker curtain and a cloth for the robe shape.

The comic stuff today turned out bad as I did it in photoshop and I'm not use to using my tablet on my lap due to not be able to draw from the elbow (no where to put it on the table with the new set up) should just start doing gestures in there to get use to it. To make up for it I did some Bridgeman torsos, did the two of the back loose and the side and front slower.

Also should start my perspective study in photoshop, the T-square on a drawing board sitting on my lap is awkward as it never looks level. I think I just need to get use to the new area.

Going to start using a darker lead for the later studies as my scanner lightens things.

Tomorrow: 100 one minute gestures, more perspective study, and whatever Vilppu tosses at me in tomorrow's class.

[Jared D]

Did more perspective study, going to restudy 3 point and then get to work on a few pages of thumbnail perspective studies every day and whenever I find I can't put something in I'll study into it more. (they'll get more complex and more free hand as I go) I'll get into drawing humans to perspective in detail once I move into doing box form gestures and more wrapping lines. Vilppu class upload isn't till tomorrow now. (have to email them about it) With the free time I did 100 30 sec gestures on top of the 100 1 minute gestures.

[Jared D]

Started doing half my gestures from imagination to help beat the knowledge in and help with idea making with poses, did the ones from imagination in photoshop so I could play around with the poses more. Once I'm able to do the ones from imagination at a good speed I'll move on to the next step in gestures (Spherical Forms). As for now I'm moving into 2 minute gestures to start using wrapping line and not trying to show the forms with triangles, don't know why that habit came from. Didn't do too much for perspective besides some free hand messy stuff. Also started using posemaniac as I keep getting the same poses on lovecastle and pixelovely.
perspective.

Torrmorow: The start to Vilppu class homework, two drawings from observation (not sure if I'll post them WIP or not) 50 2 minute gestures, 50 gestures from imagination.

[Cabbage Caterpillar]

Hey Jared. It's so inspiring to see you putting in so much work. The Perspective looks great. What resource do you use for studying perspective?
Your gesture drawings are already improving a lot!! Please keep going!!
How is the Vilppu's class: Do you get to have personal critiques from him or how does the class work...?

[Jared D]

@Cabbage Caterpillar, Ya, I'm getting happier with my gestures as time goes on.

I have a subscription to thegnomonworkshop (cut the cost by going 50/50 with my sister) I watch the perspective videos from Gary Meyer to remind me about the rules of perspective as I studied perspective a long time ago, then discarded it like a idiot thinking "I can freehand now and don't even need to think about it derp derp". The first study I did was from Loomis books and from "perspective made easy" The thumbnail idea came from seeing some of Feng Zhu's stuff. I just draw some thumbnails and set a horizon line and just start to draw in the box and see if there's anything messed up and try and find out why, then fix it. Once I stop finding things to fix so often I'll start putting down some designs with thought and not just random boxes.

The Vilppu essentials class:

Monday we watch a pre-recorded video of the week's class and get homework, we can post under the video with pics to show our work so far and ask questions.

Wednesday we have a meeting where Vilppu streams and answers questions and does drawing demos. These are posted to the site so if you can't make it you can still watch.

Saturday we hand in homework.

Monday we get a video where Glenn draws over our work and gives a critique of everyone's work and a new lesson to watch for that week. (this was pushed back to tuesday for us for a number of reasons)

I'm going to do a review of the class at the end of it with a post with all my homework in it for iMigraine, but so far it's worth the money. I plan on going on to his Figure Drawing 1 afterward unless I feel I need to dig more into the essentials (most likely).

[Jared D]

More gestures, having a hard time with the ones from my head when it comes to foreshortening and trying to discard the idea of drawing the forms and just focus on story and movement, ended up spending 3-4 hours getting the 50 done and many that I just erased as it was a mess of line and I couldn't even tell what it was :/. I'll be happy to get into spherical study as it should help with foreshortening but the movement part has to come from here. Started the vilppu homework but not much to show for it. Going to start over and get one of the drawings done tomorrow.

Tomorrow: 50 more 2 minute gestures, homework for Vilppu, and as many gestures from my head as I can after getting part one of the homework done.

[Cabbage Caterpillar]

Hey Jared thanks for the detailed explanation. I haven't heard of Gary Meyer but I'll look him up. yeah Gnomon workshops are pretty expensive... Our school library used to have them and I rented them out, but never actually watched the whole thing. Loomis is pretty hard for me, usually I need like half a day just to read one page of his book. lol He always makes it look so easy, but it never is! lol
Yeah Feng Zhu's stuff is cool. It's nice to hear how you are doing things cuz everyone does things differently.
Sounds like Vilppu's class is pretty organized. It'd be cool to see your homework later on. Hey! Do you use pixellovely? Those poses look very familiar... XD Your gesture drawings are getting better by the day. Great work!! (And I am secretly jealous)

[Jared D]

@Cabbage Caterpillar I use pixellovely, Lovecastle, posemaniacs, and poses from movies/shows if I watch any. I'm secretly jealous of you area drawings of the cafe and the building you posted.

---

Well got frustrated at the still life today. Ended up making 3 bad drawings instead of one good one, going to go outside tomorrow and find something to draw for the homework out there as this is awful. Didn't even set up perspective for it :/ I'm posting the last one as I said I would but ya the frustration shows. I'll just laugh at it and try again. The spinning/flying couch makes me laugh a little.

Posting one of my sketchbook pages today just to show what I draw when I'm not doing homework or planed study. Want to post one a day to try and get myself to draw them better. Most the time I end up just drawing on one page and just going over the same drawings over and over till it's just a mess.

As for gesture, I think I'm giving myself too much time at this point, going to do 30 sec again and see how it goes.

Going to do gesture from my head till I go to sleep, so some of them will be posted tomorrow.

Toomorrow: Homework, everything besides will be based on when I get homework done but still want to get my gestures done, with me doing 30 secs again I'll need to do 200.

[Aqualeot]

Great start! The couch and table look kinda funky though. Maybe spending some time learning about and drawing perspective would help

Good for you to be serious about your study and spending so much time drawing. This will pay off so keep it up!

[Jared D]

@Aqualeot Ya I failed hard with that set up, have a odd habit to tilt everything as if I was looking down at it much more then I am.

----

My computer Bios got messed so I'm on a old laptop from back in college, I need to use the on-screen keyboard for this.

Didn't go out to draw like I said but there was a white out due to a big snow storm so I couldn't do much about it. Ended up drawing my living room again freehand with pen and it's pretty messy. Just got done 100 gestures and am going to just do some from my head till I sleep as this computer's display driver keeps going down (went down two times typing this) :/ Hopefully I can get outside tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Fix computer, still life, 100 1 min gestures

[Jared D]

Computer's up and running again, it was just a loose wire on the HD. Tried something new with gestures and turned out messy, going to move onto spherical forms next.

Tomorrow: Spherical form gestures and getting back to perspective study now that the homework's done.

[Jared D]

Spherical form studies take about 3-5 min each (sometime more if there's a lot of foreshortening) Main aim is to do 25 a day but I want to push it to 50 going forward. I'll keep doing spherical forms till I can do them from life well and from my head and have it look ok. As you can see below I'm no where near that, so a week to a month then it'll be more of a maybe. After that it'll be box forms. Having a head time with the arms so add that to tomorrow's studies.

Mainly doing women with these because they are more round, will mainly do men with boxes when I move into that.

Worked on my free hand ellipses with the minor axis to help with cylinders to lay the spherical forms on and again to help with getting more use to the tablet.

Tomorrow: 25-50 Spherical forms, arm study, and more freehand basic shapes in perspective.

[Jared D]

Sorry for the low Q on these, going to start doing non-spherical forms studies on paper that fits in the scanner. Did more perspective but it's just more ellipses and squares. Need to start getting back into random out of my head non study based stuff more. Slowing down on the Spherical forms as some poses took me 10+ minutes due to dumb errors. The first few are pretty bad and my arms still need the most work.

Tomorrow: More Spherical forms, a first go at the homework Vilppu has for me tomorrow, more freehand perspective, and more arms.

[Jared D]

Ran out of paper for the drawing board so did everything in my travel book today. Did some more boxes and ellipses and random sketching but nothing worth posting. Vilppu homework is to draw something with basic forms with modeling tone so I did some of the ball and boxes as shown in his drawing manual.

tomorrow: More basic forms and a try at drawing a toy or something using it, more spherical forms, and bones as that's where the trouble is for me right now.

[mathias92]

Wow, man, you're really going at it!
It's great to see how intense and hard working you are as many have stated; inspirational.
Keep at it

[Jared D]

Well haven't updated in a bit due to getting sick as sin on the 13th. Head cold with non stop coughing and sneezing made for a hell of a week. Only thing I got done that week was homework for week 5 and it didn't turn out good, after that I just put off updating over and over. Still been drawing everyday after getting over the cold, just been too lazy to put the drawings aside to scan/photo.

Good news is I got a new job (or so I'm told) so I'll be able to keep up with more classes and not run out of fun art stuff due to lack of funds. (just ran out of ink too) Also just got the last week of classes done for the 6 week class, getting the last critique from Vilppu tomorrow so I'l have that mini-review of the class wed or thurs.

Anyways here's some stuff from this week.

[Cabbage Caterpillar]

Good to see you back Jared, Hope you are feeling better. Congrats on your new job too!
nice job on the portrait drawing!! Your gestures are looking better too

[MadGrav]

Nice studies here. That shading on the figure looks nice. Keep on posting.

[Jared D]

@Cabbage Caterpillar, thanks great to be back

@MadGrav, Thanks and I will

As requested I'm going to post a overview of how Vilppu class went for essentials 6 week online class: (To sum of up: it's good, 10/10 would do again etc etc)


Week 1:


Basic Values, didn't do too well as the jumps from one value to another aren't consistent and needed to go darker on some.

Week 2:
http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...4&d=1359617682

Still life

Week 3:
http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...2&d=1359865148

Still life based on a painting from a master. "Doot Dee Doo" is right about me needing to get the values better.

Week 4:
http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...9&d=1360383165
http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...3&d=1360465537

A drawing starting at one point and working out from it using the first mark to find how things relate to it and a drawing using sight size

Week 5:
http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...5&d=1361848664

A drawing using the modeling tone (darker tones as things turn away from you) Turned out awful with me being sick as sin while trying to do it

Week 6:
http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...3&d=1361848662

Self portrait


Pros:

-The homework is pretty straight forward and the demos from Vilppu are shown and explained clearly.

-The crits are great as you get to see everyone's work and a review for each one with Vilppu drawing over/beside them and Vilppu is great for pointing out what your messing up. (unlike pass teachers I've had that just look at it and say "do it again you aren't getting it")

-Questions are shown in video chats so vilppu can draw things out and are recorded and uploaded for reviewing and if you can't make it you can still watch.

-Got emails from Vilppu with drawings of anatomy and life drawings to study from, more for the Figure class but was sent to everyone in all classes.

Cons:

-The video chats are on google+ so only 10 people can be in it at once so if you want to watch it live you need to be on google+ and need to be online when the chat starts. As long as you are online when the chat is listed to start you can get in easy as it does always starts on the same day and time so just don't be late. He goes though questions that are posted beforehand so the only thing you miss by not being there is asking question live as he draws and some stuff that isn't recorded (mainly stories and chitchat as he sets up for drawing)

-There were a few hic-ups with the site and updates at the start but it seems to be a issue with me and not everyone and was fixed after some emailing.

That pretty much sums it up

I plan on taking more classes from Vilppu's academy once I have a reliable job.

----

As for updates I'm going to set up a schedule tomorrow to work with as I think I want to get my studying into a job like set up doing 5 hours a day, half from life and half from my head and need to get the habit of scanning things before it goes in the can.

Tomorrow: 50 90 second drawings based on spherical forms, some basic form drawing, and a drawing from my head