April/May roundup

I've been sort of beating myself for not painting/drawing all that much in the last few weeks, but gathering all the sketches and such from mid-April onwards, the sum doesn't look too meagre after all. :)

First, two illustrations for Zeitgeist:

Fanart for Angeliki Salamaliki's Monsieur Charlatan webcomic:

I spend a couple days re-organised my brushes in Photoshop, with these two cropping up from the process:

Some portraits: my femshep from Mass Effect, referenced from screenshots, two more photo studies, plus one quick master study, The Valkyrie's Vigil, by Edward Robert Hughes.

And a few figure studies; the first batch are referenced, the second (probably obviously) not.

March/April sketches

Sketch compilation time! For the record, my sketchbooks over the last couple of years have been a succession of nasty, tattered things like this one:

The only thing they've got going for them is that they've got 200 12.5x17.5cm sheets and they cost me some €0.50 each (I get a pack of five), so I go through them mercilessly without ever having to fret about 'ugly' sketches. This used to be an issue before. They get much abuse from being tossed about in my bag daily, but though the result is not pretty, they curiously hold together.

 

I don't really sketch as much as I used to; in 2011-2012 I'd sketch in the tram and metro almost daily, but nowadays I catch the metro from a busier station and rarely find a place to sit, so it's not very practical. I'm more likely to sketch something very quick at work (e.g. top three sketches on the first image) or do some anatomy studies at home when I've got more time on my hands.

That said, I'm noticing how far better control I have with pencils than with my tablet. I may be really clumsy with acrylics (see below), but I draw far more comfortably on my sketchbook than I do digitally. Perhaps, even after 15 years, my hand/eye coordination between the tablet and monitor isn't really that good.

Bonus: acrylic sketches! I did those at my mom's studio in late March.

Sketches March & April

After what I now realised to be a rather long hiatus, prepare to be swamped with recent work! For now, just some sketches. I have fallen behind with both sketching and scanning (lately I am so tired in the mornings or after work that taking out pen and paper in the metro seems too daunting).

The overwhelming majority of these are from the time I spent at a hospital looking after a family member. Long hours with nothing much to do - good for drawing. When sleep deprivation kicked in, less so - but still. :)

Then I realised I had also scanned another batch from March - I just never got round to posting it.

Summer sketches

I'm back! And not quite empty-handed, even though there wasn't much time for drawing. The two weeks I was away were largely spent on the road, and in impromptu family gatherings. But I managed to get some stuff done.

I now think that I had a breakthrough of sorts, and it was right after seeing Katerina Chadoulou's work earlier this month. Katerina draws faces very deliberately, with attention to planes, building forms with bold cross hatching. I tried to work in a similar manner in last post's photo studies, and in the ones I did subsequently:

as well as in a couple studies of other artists:

(The figure on the left is from a painting by Jacec Malczewski; the others are from Dave McKean's Black Orchid).

And I think I'm slowly, very slowly, getting somewhere with all this. The more 3d-like approach is helping me a lot. I can see or visualise volume where I previously saw mostly flat light and shadow.

I still need a lot more work. It's funny how, the more I practice, my skill increases at a more or less steady rate, but at the same time my standards rise exponentially. So I'm never really very pleased with my work. (I'm pleased when I draw and when I finish stuff, but then soon afterwards I want to do better). So I hope I keep doing better, I guess!

The rest is much less focused, but here it is anyway.

Life drawing from the port of Kavala:

And all the rest is from imagination.

By the way, all the pencil sketches I post are digital assemblages: the drawings usually span a lot more pages (and even sketchbooks), but I cram them in together for convenience, chronologically or, as in this case, thematically.

Summer break (of sorts)

I've been slacking it since the second half of July. I kinda blame it on the heat, but the truth is I just haven't been motivated enough to draw much lately. I kept doing a few sketches on the metro up to a point, but I was dissatisfied with them; hardly worth the hassle of scanning them. Then I picked up some unread books that were gathering dust on the shelf (Oryx anf Crake by M.Atwood filled my transit time until the start of my summer leave last Monday), and I got hold of Civilization V (that one created a huge time sink), and well, you get the idea. :p

These are from early July:

The yard (second image) is from life, the rest is from imagination. The wrapped critter is supposed to be a tarsier. The fluffheap tree is intended for either a mural or a huge print for a friend's wall.

And these are from just this evening. Photo reference from a video by Paris Kain (upper row) and Suresh Natarayan (second row). I realised that all this time I've been drawing with a B pencil, which is great when I'm making sketches during transit as it doesn't smudge, but on the other hand it makes them a bit dull as I can't get much contrast out of it. I used a 2B for the faces, and it was almost a revelation! (I did spend a lot of time cleaning them up, though.)

I also tried a different technique for these, thinking about planes first, then use crosshatching to build up volume, instead of my usual pussyfooting around shadows.

Young Audrey

Morning photo study, original from Life  magazine.

Photoshop, about an hour and a half. Steps here:

Week 20-25 sketches

I think the reason why I haven't been scanning my sketches lately (and I'm halfway through my newest sketchbook already!) is that I had a pile of books and, as of more recently, clothes, sitting on my scanner.

So I moved the pile of books and clothes to my bed. This was a strategic move: since I couldn't go to bed before putting them back onto the scanner, I stayed up scanning some twenty+ pages from my sketchbook. :p
 
These are all from mid-May until today. I put them in two bundles. One, sketches from the metro/bus/tram. Some are finished from memory/imagination, as people have the tendency to move away or get off at stations at inconvenient (to me) times. :)

The rest are all from imagination.

And a bonus: fluffheaps!

Blue Paduflies!

 

I think he likes to torture CS undergrads, too.

From this tiny sketch I did in 2010:

Glenys - & Week 18/19

Even fewer sketches lately - in the sketchbook, at least. I've been doing some anatomy studies as well, but they're on A3 sheets, too cumbersome to scan (and the studies are ugly! :p). The rest of the time is taken by a couple commissions.

I'm quite pleased with this small sketch of my friend Glenys (who is also a wonderful person - and a very good writer!)-

And some random from my (new!) sketchbook's pages.

First three are from the metro/bus. Then two attempts of a more cartoon-like style. The woman on the bottom right is Neri Oxman (whose work I found very insteresting). The others are from imagination.

Week 17 sketches: Lagoon

More painting than sketching this week. All I have is this: it's one of the fantastic Lagoon dolls made by batchix. Make sure you check her work here and also on deviantART.

Alice

A small quick digital drawing of Alice Duke. If you haven't seen her fantastic art, go do so right away!
http://alicedraws.blogspot.com/

Week 16 sketches

It was again a slow week (I came back on Good Monday, and left again on Friday for the Easter break), but something is better than nothing, I guess!

Two character sketches; the second is from a crazy dream I had, about a girl who, after being slandered and in danger of being murdered, went off to Palestine where she came to lead her own Bedouin tribe (?!).


And one pen sketch from life:

Week 15 sketches

I was away on a (long!) roadtrip, so there wasn't very much time for sketching (and none for painting). These were mostly done on the ferry to and from Ancona.

Week 14 sketches: Stalker

I can understand why a lot of people find Tarkovsky's Stalker boring. We're perhaps too saturated in ideas of what a film should be: fast-paced, action-packed. Stalker has a very independent sort of narrative. But for a visual artist, it's a real reasure trove.

I had painted a scene from the film years back, and now that I watched it again, I sat down to sketch the characters. From top left, counter-clockwise: the Professor, Stalker, the Writer, Stalker's wife, Monkey (their daughter).

Week 13 sketches

I think I should start arranging my sketches by week to keep better track of them.

It's odd that the more of them I do, I get the feeling they're not enough!

These are actually from last Sunday; poor likenesses of some stock photography for the first face & the hands, Christina Hendricks, Ursula K. Le Guin and Ingrid Bergman.

And some very quick ones; first two scenes are from previews of upcoming HBO series Game of Thrones, the rest are from the metro/bus.

Sketches: Stephanie! & poses

This week's sketches:

The first three are from Kxhara's stock account on deviantART (very good material there; thanks for sharing!).

Random cat is trying to look lazy.

Another sketch (bottom left) from Twisted Lamb.

And last but not least, the lovely Stephanie Gutowski. Go check out her art and costume-making here!

Transit + TL sketches

More sketchbook pages. I drew the three faces on the top right corner on the bus/metro. The others were again referenced from Twisted Lamb.

Twisted Lamb sketches

I discovered Twisted Lamb by a friend's recommendation, and found some posts quite inspiring.I made some sketches off them. (The bottom sketch of the tree isn't; I just scanned it along with the rest.)

February sketches

Some portrait sketches, mostly from last weekend.

These are all from imagination, except for the little girl with the headscarf (bottom left), whom I copied from a book cover, and the woman with the short hair on her right, whom I had photographed at the metro some months ago.


(click for larger view)

Saint Basil

This should probably wait until 1st January; but I suppose it sprang from my annoyance at the Americanised figure of Santa Claus, red and fat and jolly, and all the ho-ho-ho's and rampant consumerism that goes along with it.

In Greece gifts were traditionally exchanged on New Year, which is Saint Basil's day. There's a carol for New Year's Eve that describes him as 'coming from Cesaria, holding a picture and paper and inkwell' and a young boy trying to draw his attention. So I guess it could be an illustration for this carol.

My mother (who is an iconographer) has painted St. Basil numerous times in the traditional byzantine style, which I think shows here as an influence too.

Anyhow: couple of minutes at Photoshop, no reference. I'm quite fond of this clumsy little sketch. :)