December life study

 

3 hours, charcoal on litoposter.

 

Sanguine pastel on litoposter.

Skull embrace

Life drawing. Some proportion mistakes here and there admittedly. Still a progression though.

Life study 3

Sanguine pastel pencil on litoposter. Tuesday's life drawing workshop at the university. I tried the renaissance artist approach for a change. We had one hour to draw this but I finished the hair and the cloth afterwards. A classmate complimented that this looks very realistic.

Figure drawing

 

Artist life down at the university: figure drawing.

Comic night

Another university student and I couldn't get to the 24 hour comics day event so we instead held a  late night comic drawing event listening to Vangelis and this is what I produced. Just a stream of consciousness as I could not concentrate on scriptwriting. 

Edit: The guy commented that this is rather scary. I hear that quite often, even though my works are not scary to me and I never intentionally try to make them scary, they just come naturally like that I guess. I thought the Frog comic was rather sympathetic but even that has been called a bit scary.

Study

Formulaic practise using Andrew Loomis' method, and analysis of Zsa Zsa Gabor's face.

Commissioned portrait

Oil on canvas, 46x56cm. I was commissioned to paint this portrait of the customer's father who passed away years a go. There were only two low-quality photographs of the person available so the customer wanted a painting as a memento. According to her, the man was a down-to-earth, warm-hearted person keen on nature, and that should be apparent on the portrait.

I had to study some more in-depth color theory to work on the colors and lighting as the reference pictures were flash-lit or pale, unnaturally flat-looking. I learned quite a lot from the process and gained more confidence. It was pretty laborious to get the proportions right and achieve a resemblance. Everything has to be just right, not too dark, not too light, not too sharp, not too obscure. Fine-tuning took hours.

Mech

Felt pens on laser paper.

Animals

"Choral horse" and an elephant seal - sort of. Graphite on sketchbook page.

Ink drawings

Rafael study

Study of Rafael Sanzio's drawing. Sanguine oil pastel pen on A3 sketchbook. I used a lot of sandpaper to sharpen the pen. Copying old masters gives confidence and helps to get proper understanding of draughtsmanship. Jose Parramon stated in the reference book that in order to be a good painter, you have to be an even better draughtsman. Edit: scanned version added.

3D practise

 

Above: smoothing in ZBrush. Some troublesome polygon flow causes holes in the surface. Live and learn

Well, it's a start, again. Silo 2 trial.

Hand study

Per Andrea del Sarto.  Burnt sienna and copper beech crayons.

Face emblem process (updated)

Oil on A3 illustration board.

Process:

 

Sketch from moleskine pocket.

 Trying to decide the colors. It has been said that what sets apart a graphic designer and  a graphic producer is that creative design is about making promising alternative versions and then choosing the best idea instead of working straight on the finished piece.

After settling for a satisfactory color scheme I transfer the sketch to A3 paper by grid-to-grid method. Then I insert it to lightbox and trace it to illustration board with red pastel pen (it smudges less than black charcoal, and graphite would permeate through oil). I start colouring face first, dry brushing since turpentine and linseed oil would soak through paper. 

I decided not to use much shading as someone mentioned this would look better if left like this. This is closer to drawing than painting because I used thin brushes (as opposed to contemporary concept of painting which is often defined by expressive, large brush strokes) and I wouldn't call this an illustration either since this does not have a particular purpose other than aesthetic pleasure. Almost finished...

Works in progress

Works in progress. Lots of work left to do and problems to be solved, a thought that can bring one down all too soon. One just has to remember and art is a journey; one can never reach the destination without taking the steps. Writers face this concern too, and in some writing inspiration book it said that "You can only see to the next traffic lights but not the destination. You can only write chapter by chapter until The End." One cannot truly see what the result will be, just some glimpses of it. Just enjoy the process and do your best, and accept that in the end, it's the people who will decide if your work is good or not.

Art and design is about breaking boundaries, at least your own ones. The fact that a work you were proud of yesterday seems weak today means you are progressing. At least that thought keeps me going. Kimon Nicolaïdes said in The Natural Way to Draw that the sooner you make all the mistakes the better. It's all about the amount of work you make before you can reach a master level.