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.

January/February sketches

I made it a New Year's resolution to get back into painting in 2014, because 2013 saw me paint very little if at all. I set a weekly schedule of evenings and weekends, a range of 10-30 hours; 45 if I really push it, forgo sleep, and do nothing else after getting back from work but sit and paint.

In theory, it's more or less reasonable, but in practice it requires 30 hour-long days and not much of a life beyond. I also realised I cannot always sit eight plus hours in front a computer screen at work and expect to spend another four or five at home. So all that didn't work out too well. :}

Still, I managed to finish a trio of commissioned portraits, a character lingering in a semi-finished state since 2011, and while I absolutely don't get to sketch daily, it's gotten more regular. I'll post the characters separately; for now, here are the sketches:

 

  

 

The rest is all digital:

For the record, I was happy to find out that eye drops really help. ;)

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.

Watercolours

I have been struggling with an art block lately. I have little motivation to sit in front of the PC and paint. I do try to force myself into doing so, but that kind of defeats the object. Pencil drawing holds little appeal, too (I used to do most of it during transit, but now I tend to read instead).

Last Friday, however, I got hold of a decent set of watercolours, and I've been genuinely itching to try my hand at using them. I think that might deal with the block!

I am still very clumsy, and I need better brushes, but I'm liking them very much.

The fluffheap tree is from a rougher pencil drawing I made this summer. I used tracing paper to transfer it on my watercolour pad (by tracing it on both sides of the paper and using one side like carbon paper). The necessary cleaning up was done on the fly. Inking was done with very diluted India ink (and a pen with an annoyingly scratchy nib).

 The landscape is a variation of a somewhat failed oil painting I started and abandoned about a month ago. Since then I got some insight on what went wrong with it, though, so maybe I should pick it up again, or redo it from scratch. Problem with oils: long drying times and the fact that turpentine, which would speed them up, disagrees very badly with me. I also feel that using a hair dryer is not exactly the next best approach. I should probably get some Liquin.

Lastly, this is the unfinished digital study (referenced from this photo) I apparently don't want to paint. I tell myself it's useful, learning to paint forests, but I don't seem to believe me. Why, self?!

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.

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!

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 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.