Sketchness - Studies 'n' stuff...

100 Heads

2010-09-15T09:36:00.001+03:00

Here's another 100 things exercise, heads this time. Most of them really bad attempts some not so bad. The important thing learned tons of thing, thing's that I do wrong and many I need to improve or concentrate more on. Here's a list of some.

- Increase format, tiny moleskin is nice quick and comfortable, but the lack of "resolution" messes your proportions and often the sense of scale. Makes you miss things.

- Pay more attention to perspective in faces, try and exaggerate it when needed. Yes it's there especially when the viewer is very close to the subject.

- Pay more attention to subtleties and detail, something the larger format allows.

- Fill in my visual dictionary with greater variety of expressions, not only extremes, but ones expressing more subtle feelings too.

- Do more studies from life and reference. Those are never enough. And are especially useful after s loon series you've tried to pull out of your head.

- There's maybe more.

note: some heads might be missing, because done on separate sheets or SBs if I manage to track those down and scan them I'll add them here

100 faces

2010-08-11T01:24:00.002+03:00

100 Arms

2010-07-05T01:45:00.005+03:00

Here are my 100. Not the best ones I did, I've gotten a bit rusty lately in that department, nevertheless there are a few nice hits.

100 guns

2010-06-05T04:01:00.005+03:00

Ok I did the 100 gun, mostly really crap. One thing I learned is that for a sketch to be useful and to evaluate an idea it needs some quality. So next time will try to improve on that. And I picked one of the guns I liked and rendered, probably will do with another one if I have time (I am moving).

And the skecthes (please dont look at those)

City on bright light

2010-05-19T03:24:00.005+03:00

Still some elements that i could have used a straight line here and there (buldings :)). The depth is better than before but I am not quite happy yet. I guess doing it in high key helped a bit to get realism/depth. Main problem is how the sea disapears and probably the lack of effort on the right side of the picture. Oh and the bridge could be not so chunky, that would look more realistic. and maybe the sun as way too big... oh well clouds look a bit big as well ¬¬...

faces to break up the monotony ;)

2010-05-18T03:59:00.003+03:00

Just to not saturate, still planning diferent ways to achieve depth easily on the city in bright light backgrounds... thinking.. thinking... maybe next time will do with out depth and add that later with the photoshop filters this time.

another "city".. kind of

2010-05-16T00:06:00.002+03:00

City in bright light again

2010-05-14T02:08:00.005+03:00

This was nice to do. Calader sent me some interesting links about other artists works. So for this I tryed to simplify my process and making it more spontaneous. Started with the sky in lighter tone, them painted the buildings and trees in a fairly equal amout of brightness (only changing their colors). The diference in brightnes (shadows and lights) I've added litle by litle starting on the foreground and making it more transparent and not so obvious on the background. The grey things on the backgorund could have been trees but i guess I always get those things in the distance wrong!

City on...

2010-05-09T23:06:00.003+03:00

I found a really cool photo of this city on the interwebs and decided to draw. I know its not bright sunlight, but here it goes anyway :)

bright city pt .5

2010-04-30T00:42:00.003+03:00

Aw japonese veneza! This one was looking to much like the reference so I decided to add some japonese stuff!!

bright city pt. 4

2010-04-28T02:00:00.005+03:00

I've just realized my title should be city in bright light, not a bright city! well well... This was a colorful one but in the end I just got the black color and painted over, leaving just some areas with color. Still working on the depth, there is still some bugs here and there like the building that is brighter than the trees even thou its on front of it. Well I need to patch those bugs in my mind in this lifetime!

bright city pt. 3

2010-04-26T03:12:00.001+03:00

This one was totally hard to get tones and colors right for some reason. Still not 100% happy but it is way better than it was before :)

bright city pt. 2

2010-04-25T02:55:00.001+03:00

Still with some good reference left with the same theme.

bright city

2010-04-23T03:05:00.003+03:00

This one is heavly post processed and it took hours and hours to finish (yeah i missed the speed part of the process). My main problem is that the scale looks tiny... wonder what else could I have done to make it look more realistic...

2010-04-21T02:25:00.005+03:00

Hello there,

New guy here. Just sketched a City with a birght sunlight. Didn't work much on the building textures so for a better contrast. Critiques, compliments and suggestions are always welcome.

Rock on

Back on the bright city

2010-04-21T01:46:00.004+03:00

First of all, want to say welcome to rock dude (aka marcelo zanin) an old friend joining us.

And now back to the speed bright cities.

forest

2010-04-19T01:29:00.000+03:00

simple landscape

2010-04-17T02:54:00.000+03:00

Clouds expriment 1

2010-04-05T06:42:00.003+03:00

This was an expriment. It was geting a randon drawing and doing a cloud from it. The only draw back is how i dosent look to have depth (the cloud). Next time I will try to start from random more 3d elaborated shapes that are more definied in space than this effort. In the end should look like a randon cloud so I don't know how much the of the first shapes gets to the end.

sky study

2010-04-02T02:09:00.004+03:00

trying some clouds. they could be softer :P. Colors were getting muddy on the sun, so I used an aditive brush instead, guess its so much easier when it comes to light on photoshop. One thing thats weird is how the sun dosent look like its on the sky, but right after the montains. And how the montains look like they are receding and coming foward in some places.

boat

2010-03-28T22:22:00.004+03:00

Ok now this one I tryed to pick an extremely small pallet of colors and simple tones. Other thing was exagerate the perspective scale and not forget the fog because getting depth is one of the things I have hard time getting right. Post process was just to bring more brightness on the highlights and get more greens and reds on the darker areas.

Brightness overload

2010-03-26T02:30:00.006+02:00

Here's my contribution from two days ago. :) Messy messy brush strokes, I have to try and be less heavy handed, and balance soft/hart brushes better. And one last important note - LEARN TO PAIN/DRAW SKIES !!!

tones

2010-03-23T00:55:00.004+02:00

This one I followed some tone advice dr calader told me, and found a low key reference I could paint. The white sky was problematic but the glow solved it (i guess :)). Here is a wip of that without the fake filters :

And a high key one

Will do some more tone studies (looking at real randon landscapes), my challenge is in keeping tones separated! I am actually rigging my chair to an electro shock device which discharges a small amount of energy every time I do a tonal mess...

Btw guys don’t let the blog die again :( plz

Sunlit city again

2010-03-22T15:11:00.001+02:00

Weell... Here's another attempt at a sunlit city. With tiny buildings. Or huge people roaming it. You decide. And the process steps. Just in case anyone is interested:)

mood 2

2010-03-19T00:35:00.005+02:00

this one was "ok lets do something weird" sort of thing :)

mood

2010-03-19T00:04:00.000+02:00

A city lit by... sun. Wooo!

2010-03-18T14:38:00.005+02:00

Ah well... I might as well post my attempt at speed painting. Might as well feel bad about myself:)

oh fuck you guys

2010-03-18T14:28:00.003+02:00

Таман бях казал, че не искам да правя спийд-ове...

Sunshine City

2010-03-18T02:29:00.004+02:00

New topic is tomming and Sketchness lives again with some speeds of sun bathed locations. Enjoy my entries for today. I tried hard to hit the 20-30 min time limit we've set and almost did it one took 30 and the other 35 mins. I expect better times on the next round.

big INDUSTRIAL VEHICLES

2009-09-20T18:18:00.003+03:00

Here they come...

Hands! Is today yesterday?

2009-09-12T21:53:00.003+03:00

Yep I got late with my studies, but I have the perfect excuse! I was moving ¬¬... Anyway hands are hard... But who doesn’t love them?

Yet another shocking announcement!

2009-09-09T09:59:00.002+03:00

It seems a lot of us are falling behind on the studies here, sooo... we'll keep the Industrial vehicles topic one more day. That means, it topic will be changed some time this evening. Till then- it's industrial vehicles.

Arms, legs and buildings studies

2009-09-08T13:23:00.009+03:00

Seems I'll be a topic behind this week. I plan on catching up though. But anyway... Here're the arms and legs studies that were supposed to be done in the weekend. They're all done from paintings by William Adolph Bouguereau. There's a lot to be learend from his works.

Next are some value buildings studies from when I was at home, sick. Also, there's a video of me painting the value studies. It has been sped up about six times. The actual time it took to make those was about an hour and ten-twenty minutes. I'm slow as hell, it would seem:)

Industrial vehicles

2009-09-07T18:03:00.003+03:00

This week will be devoted to machinery and vehicles. So today and part of tomorrow we'll be doing studies of heavy industrial vehicles - tractors, bulldozers, those huge mining trucks, and so on...

Later on in the week we can also make studies of cars and trains, and trams. Maybe planes too. Sooo yeah, go for it.

Posting is a bit rare lately, but I hope things'll pick up. Have a nice evening all:)

Weekend arms and legs studies

2009-09-05T02:01:00.003+03:00

Oookaaay... Pretend that I didn't miss a whole week of posting.
Now, that that is over with, on to the weekend studies! The topic is arms and legs. This means hands and feet included. So, make as many as you can, and don't forget about the value studies. Go have fun now!

P.S. Also, Mortleg and Calader are also admins now. Just so you know.

feet

2009-09-05T00:44:00.003+03:00

Here are the feet I promised. They are 11 because 1-feet are hard; 2-there is less feet sketches in my anatomy books, 3-I like beer.
That said, i had a blast doing them, especially the last 3. The reference for them was Bammes's Der Nackte Mensch and it was very challenging and rewarding to try and apply what I learned from Bridgman's book about the dynamics of shapes to the solid and photorealistic Bammes reference. :)

hands - first batch

2009-09-03T15:24:00.004+03:00

some post-lunch break hands. Plan to add 10 more and do as many feet in the evening.
I am still trying to find a quick technique for those studies, because the flat line thing is really time-consuming. I think i will do all the rest with the opacity-sensitive round brush, it allows me to block in the volumes before i define the shapes. Did the last 3 this way and imo they look best and have a better structure than the others before them.

P.S.
added 6 more sketches rounding them up to 20. Now to do as much feet.

Hands and feet studies

2009-09-01T20:02:00.002+03:00

OK. I've been sick for the past few days. And still am, actually... So, sorry for the delay in posting. Anyway, on to the topic!
This week is anatomy week again and I was thinking of doing hands and feet studies again. At the very least not all of us managed to do them last time. Also, practise makes perfect. Soooo... on to the studies!
The plan is more or less to do a repetition of the first week of Sketchness. We make hands and feet studies today and tomorrow, arm studies tomorrow and the day after and finish it off with leg studies at Friday and Saturday morning. Then the weekend topic will be "more of the same". And, as always, value studies are encouraged. Too bad only Angelo makes those. But his are awesome, so no worries.
Have fun now:)

value face

2009-08-30T04:06:00.003+03:00

Actually I had another face that was a bit better, but I lost when I croped the canvas ¬¬...

And this is the time lapse, loads of trial and errors (more errors than trials XD)... I would like to see the time lapse of u guys with u have time :) .

Residential buildings studies

2009-08-30T01:11:00.003+03:00

As promised.
Most of the studies are of Asian buildings. Some are from Kowloon and some- from Gunkanjima Island. Get info on the places when you've got time.
Here are the drawings themselves.

I smell residential buildings

2009-08-29T23:46:00.004+03:00

Here is just a couple of studies, just realized its so much easier to do those things using the pencil tool instead of the brush tool... Or maybe its the same ! Who knows?!

and here is the time lapse, I made me remind that I should have stoped doing this sketch before destroying its values :)

Value studies weekend

2009-08-29T16:36:00.003+03:00

Well... Since some of us are lagging behind on the value studies, and those are important, we'll devote the rest of the weekend and the beginning of Monday to them. So, make value studies of whatever you feel like from this week's topics. Have fun:)

P.S. Gonna post my residential buildings studies tonight.

Residential buildings I guess

2009-08-29T02:47:00.003+03:00

Here's my entry for the night. I'll try to catch up with the value studies and whatever I missed from the week on the weekend. What I just notice is that I ended doing more exteriors again, doing some more interiors in the future won't hurt I think.

Shops of various kinds and purposes

2009-08-28T02:51:00.004+03:00

Here's my not so impressive attempt to catch up with the shops, done on my laptop with the tablet on my lap in WarPaint(Open Canvas 1.1) something I'm totally not used to. But enough complains, hope to come up with my value study at some point tomorrow. Or is it today already?

workshop studies

2009-08-28T00:55:00.003+03:00

workshops... I feel like upgrading my garage for some reason :)

Residential buildings studies

2009-08-27T12:16:00.002+03:00

Next topic is residential buildings studies. It'll be a two-day topic, so this means Friday included. I was thinking of doing studies on houses and the like today, and switching to big city residential buildings on Friday. So, you know- make as many as you can, and make 'em as diverse as you can. Have fun:)

Workshop studies

2009-08-27T12:14:00.004+03:00

Weell... it would seem that none of us are having much luck with the workshop studies. Here's my very late contribution.

Workshop studies

2009-08-26T01:44:00.001+03:00

New topic is workshop studies. The same as the stores- it can be any kind of workshop you like- pottery, blacksmith, tanner, etc.
Gonna try and finish my value study for the previous topic and make a new one for this one.

store studies

2009-08-26T01:13:00.006+03:00

I've enjoyed this one :)

Store studies

2009-08-25T14:41:00.002+03:00

Here's what I did today so far. If I'm lucky and have enough time, I'll make some value studies. In the meantime- here's the line drawings.

facials

2009-08-25T01:48:00.005+03:00

With a significant delay

Store studies

2009-08-24T15:54:00.002+03:00

This week is environment week again.
We'll be doing different types of buildings each day. So, to begin we'll draw stores. All kinds of stores you can think of- small ones, big ones, parts of ones, high-tech ones, clothing stores, sports stores and so on.
Sooo... you know- make as many as possible and try to include a few value studies.
Have fun:)

Facial Features

2009-08-24T12:08:00.003+03:00

Here are mine. I'm a bit disappointed in myself. Didn't do alot this weekend. Anyway, here's the pictures.

This week will be an environments week. Next topic comming in a few hours.

I smell some...facial features

2009-08-24T04:59:00.003+03:00

Mostly noses, too tired to comment. I performed poorly this weekend.

facial features/ catching up to other sutff

2009-08-22T00:11:00.007+03:00

Hey guys, Calader just invited me to join Sketchness, and well... it’s pretty cool :)

one street skecth, perhaps too many sloppy unnecessary lines

some female ones

catching up on torsoes

2009-08-20T23:06:00.002+03:00

6 from tonight. Female anatomy is hard as hell >< . At least with the male if you make it a bit rougher its not a problem.

Shocking announcement!

2009-08-20T09:17:00.001+03:00

Hello. Here's a shocking announcement.
Due to me not posting my facial features studies, Mortleg not posting his facial features studies, Calader not posting his facial features studies, and SoulSurvivor not posting... at all, I've decided to keep the facial features topic till Friday. Then, Friday till Saturday we'll be drawing faces. And then, Saturday and Sunday, we'll be drawing complete figures. With faces and fingers... and toes. The goal is to make them detailed and also practice values. Sooo... we'll be making less studies, but we'll take longer on each of them.

I was also thinking that maybe we should start making some our daily studies value studies. Sssooo... what do you guys think?

Street corners & Crossroads

2009-08-20T03:38:00.003+03:00

Here's my late late night entry for architecture. Decided to conceptrate on various street corners and crossroads. I'll try to catch up at least partialy with the old topicks and get up to speed with you guys.

torsoes

2009-08-19T11:25:00.003+03:00

Here are some torsoes, gonna do some female in the evening and then move to facials, cause I'm a bit behind :)

Facial features studies

2009-08-19T01:30:00.003+03:00

We're making studies of facial features today. That means -eyes, noses, mouths and ears. Doesn't matter if it's pure line drawings or shaded pictures. They may even be colour. Just make more of them, so you learn more in the process. Have fun now:)

Torso studies

2009-08-18T13:47:00.003+03:00

Here are my torso studies from today. Really scribbly an' stuff, but I like how they turned out. Really helps to think of the torso as a series of overlapping ovoids... with muscles on top. And skin. And then draw squiggly lines.

Anatomy week 17.08-23.08

2009-08-17T20:28:00.002+03:00

Hello:)
I fail at weekend updating... But anyway, here's the plan for the week. Today's topic is torso studies. Then we'll make facial features studies (ears included), then we'll move on to whole faces, and then we'll either make studies of people in general (concentrating on whichever parts we wish), or we'll keep the usual weekend routine and make more of the studies we did during the week.

So, today's topic- torso studies. No matter if they're male or female, chubby or skinny and so on. Soo... keep 'em simple, make as much as possible.

Weekend 15.08.2009-16.08.2009

2009-08-15T23:41:00.003+03:00

Well... It's the weekend. We're drawing whatever we feel like drawing from all of this week's topics. Which means, general hardsurface studies, architecture and buildings, vehicles and machinery, and studies of objects from life. Have fun with 'em.

Object studies

2009-08-15T01:57:00.003+03:00

Here some from me. Just before going to bed. What I've discovered is that it's really hard for me get just the right perspective, as I sometimes manage when working from photos. But, anyway... Pictures:)

Objects

2009-08-15T01:08:00.002+03:00

Well... Next topic is objects. Which means... just about anything. Watches, glasses, tables, flash drives... Drawing from life is encouraged here since we all have access to obects. Sooo... again, keep it simple, do as many as you can. And it's important they be done from life. Have fun now.

Vehicles and machinery studies

2009-08-14T14:15:00.004+03:00

Here's stuff from this morning and lunch break. It's hard to draw machinery when you have absolutely no idea wwhat their parts are doing, or even what they are doing. Sssoooo... here's machines and vehicles.

Vehicles and machinery

2009-08-14T00:08:00.002+03:00

Oookay... New topic's gonna be vehicles and machinery. Prefferably vehicles that look like machinery. Like cranes, bulldozers, trains, mining machinery.
The plan is to finish this week off as a kind of "Introduction to perspective drawing". Afterwards, we'll focus on each of the individual topics we've gone through this week, so we're probably gonna be doing a lot of building studies (different styles, different environments, etc.), then a lot of machinery studies and so on.
Any thoughts on the matter are appreciated. As you have probably figured out by now- the schedule isn't set in stone so feel free to suggest stuff, disagree with stuff and so on.

Church of Tesla

2009-08-13T12:25:00.001+03:00

Bah, I had already started doing the electrical substation last night when I saw that we are supposed to do buildings now. So I finished it anyway and did some cathedrals.

Architecture and buildings studies

2009-08-13T07:38:00.003+03:00

Here's what I came up with this morning, while watching Dexter's Lab. Damn! This cartoon is still as awesome as ever! Anyway... here's buildings. Hopefully there'll be more this afternoon.

Architecture and buildings

2009-08-13T00:17:00.002+03:00

Just so you know guys, the next topic is architecture and buildings. They can be "pin-up" style drawings of isolated buildings or they can be part of a larger composition. The important thing is that there's buildings in the studies.
Have fun!

Hard-on surface

2009-08-12T14:00:00.003+03:00

Here are mine. Seems like lunch break is the time i can get to do those studies. Its harder at home :). First three are from the lunch break, last one from yesterday. Hope to do some more before the end of the day but wouldn't bet on it.

Hardsurface studies 02

2009-08-12T13:51:00.002+03:00

Here's some more from me. I'll maybe draw some more after work, but wouldn't really bet on it. I'm happy with some parts of those. Others really bug me, but they were fun to do. Hoping that if I do a thousand of those, I'll get really awesome. Or at least learn how to draw a square. Or reveal the secret of immortality... Who knows?

Anyway... It seems we'll be announcing the topics in the evenings soooo... next topic comming in the evening. But it'll probably be architecture and buildings.

Hardsurface studies: Industrial elements

2009-08-12T02:19:00.004+03:00

And here's some from me. Decided to start small with some industrial tools and ellements. Pretty misserable first attempt, with a couple of nicer hits. Expect more soon.

More of the same

2009-08-12T00:26:00.002+03:00

Ssooo... next topic is indeed more of the same. We discussed it and decided that it'll be best if we make another session of those, that'll serve as a kind of warm-up. Then, in the following days we'll do buildings, vehicles and objects, and during the weekend- whatever we want from all that. So- more studies of scenes with prominent perspective are expected:)

Have fun now:)

Hardsurface studies

2009-08-11T14:50:00.003+03:00

That's it for this topic from me, for today. Less than I expected... I wanted to do... a hundred. Or a million. Seven'll do though.

Tomorrow's topic will be posted this evening.

Have fun now, whoever it is that may be reading this:)

Hardsurface

2009-08-10T15:56:00.003+03:00

Next topic is hardsurface studies. Like Lok Jansen's sketches. Every source of reference is fine (from life, from photos...). The goal is to make only line drawings, so keep it quick and simple. The more,the better. Also, the more complicated the perspective, the better. So, buildings, objects, rooms... anything is fine, but it is better if it's a composition of several objects so spacial relations can be explored.

Tomorrow will probably be more of the same, but we'll see.

Also, we (as in me and two other people who haven't posted anything) decided it would be best to switch between anatomy and environments each week. So this week is dedicated to environment studies and next week we'll be back to anatomy.

Arms and legs

2009-08-10T09:51:00.003+03:00

Here are the arms and legs studies. I found out I need to do alot more legs and feet studies. But it was fun non the less:)

New topic comming in an hour or so.

Hands and feet

2009-08-09T00:55:00.002+03:00

Here are the hands and feet so far. I'll upload the arms and legs later.
Have fun, whoever it is that is reading this.

Hello

2009-08-08T21:34:00.004+03:00

Hello, all you people who may be reading this. The idea of this whole thing is to keep people motivated and make 'em do daily studies on various topics.Also, giving feedback on other people's studies is encouraged.

So far there's only a few of us (two actually... maybe three... or four), but the more people join in, the less likely it is for the acitivity to die off. And so far the whole thing has been going on for about a week.

The closest thing to a plan I currently have is to maybe change the general subject of the studies each week. Which means a week of anatomy followed by a week of environments (or everything else that is not related to anatomy - vehicles, buildings, woods...). Then, during the weekend we should all either take a break from this, or try to make more studies on whichever subjects we liked during the week.

So far the topics were:
hands
arms
feet
legs

Next week will either be devoted to faces and torsos, or to something environment related (like cookie jars.)

Ssooooo... I'll be posting my studies soon. In case you want to join in the fun send me an e-mail or comment on this post and let me know. You'll need a Gmail account to be able to post here.