Weekly Sketchbook Dump 4/5

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I found this a lot of fun to do. Each pose was 3-5 minutes, focusing on the gestures and proportions rather than the details.

Weekly Sketchbook Dump 3/5

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As in previous weeks, I have been doing a lot of observational drawings from Suicide Girls Photoset of the day. This is the first time I have ever tried to digi-paint from photoref. This painting took about 15 mnutes ans then I abandoned it (I had to get to work!) But I have learned that painting from photoref requires a lot of discipline, and after a while I became too dependant on the photo and my painting became even cruder than usual. Eye-dropper tool makes assessing the colours with your eyes harder too, and I will avoid it's usage in all future endeavors.

Weekly Sketchbook Dump 2/5

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Weekly Sketchbook Dump 1/5

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In an attempt to make each image clickable to enlarge it, I am going to do my weekly sketchbook dump as multiple posts containing ingle images, rather than as a single post containing many images. The reason for this is that Blogger on seems to let you upload one image as clickable to enlarge, and the rest break. If you try to upload them individually, they all break. Also, the user experience of scrolling down this weeks work wont be imparied at all by being made of mutliple posts, whereas the ability to identify which image you want to comment on (if any) would be an advantage.

It just takes me a whilte longer.... :(

Illustration Friday: Wrapped

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Wrapped up nice and warm!

I wanted to spend as long on the atmospheric effects of being in a snow storm, and initially I planned on having little more than a silhouette of the figure, but I though that the multiple layers as well as the figure's posture indicated 'wrapped' nicely as well, so I worked a little more detail into the man too.

I found determining where to put shadows to describe the figure's form a challenge, as I wanted to convey the light as being ambient and diffuse, with the figure utterly lost in a snowy void.

Weekly Sketchbook Round Up

Hello again!

I'm always dubious of artists sketchbook threads/blogs when they give you a weekly round up of 3 images, all nicely finished and rendered. For me, the point of a blogging my sketchbook is to become more objective about my work (cheers Badger for the vocab) and to invite intersting criticiscims and comments.

If I only post the best stuff then what will I improve from the feedback I receive?

So whilst this isnt everything that I have done in my sketchbook this week, I have tried not to just cherry pick the 'finished' drawings from my sketchbook. Some stuff I have chosen is not as succesful as others, but I am anxious to have feedback on all of it. Good/bad/constructive/offensive, let me have it all! ;)

***BTW***

The first person to tell me how to upload multiple images to Blogger whilst retaining the ability to click them to see an enlarged version of the image wins a signed copy of Nothing To Fear, my first self published comic book. My email is in my profile, top right of blog. Thanks!

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A sketch of Rigel, from her photoset of the day on Suicide Girls.

A female pole vaulter, chosen for her athletic posture which I thought would help inform my drawings of Firefighter Rachel Smith, who I wanted to be tough and athletic but still feminine and attractive.

Glitch, another Suicide Girls photoset of the day. This is actually the first Suicide Girl I drew, deciding that the glamour photogrpahy from Suicide Girls would be a good resource for drawing female anatomy, with the girls tattoos and alternative apparel making them more effective character design than the models on traditional life drawing sites would offer. Also, the 'photoset of the day' feature on Suicide Girls would provide fresh material everyday, as opposed to the irregularly updated life drawin sites such as characterdesigns.com.

Bridgeman studies form lunchtime at work, and some photo ref sketches of male models posing with submachine guns, studies for the police in my forthcoming comic book.

Another model from Suicide Girls.com Lavonne, in her photoset of the day. I decided to do gestural drawings of several poses, whilst taking longer rendering and studying the forms of an unusual angle. The foreshortned legs were a challenge to draw, focusing on feet is something I have overlooked for many years, usually concetrating on making hands as expressive as possible.

A male model posing with a gund prop. The purpose of these wuick gestural studies - besides getting more ref of guys holding guns - was to spend sometime looking at how people plant their feet, and trying to make it look like the character is grounded in the drawing, and not floating in a white void.

The anatomical stuff is all Bridgeman studies from my lunchhour at work, slowly working through a page at a time is really helping to change the way I look at drawing the figure. The daily dose of Suicide Girls helps to flesh out the structural anatomy I'm learning from Bridgeman.

Gesture drawings from Suicide Girls.

Two drawings of Opale, from her photoset of the day on Suicide Girls. Above, the double page spread from my sketchbook, and below is a cropped close up of her torso/pelvis. This photoset was beautifully lit, and I enjoyed focussing on the chiaoscuro forms of light and dark that desrcribed the model's shape. As ever, trying to remember lessons learned through Bridgeman to study and analyse the model, rather than just copying the photo. ;)

And after Sorrel complained at me that all I'd been doing all week is drawing girls, and that my sketchbook was looking like an adolescent fantasy, I found a male body building website and found some meat-head-hypermasculine-gaylord to draw. I think that this might prove a usual exercise everynow and again, as the inhuman exageration of anantomy that these over-inflated idiots represent would help reinforce my understanding of the wedging of the muscles from Bridgeman, and might help improve my drawings of the male form.

Illustration Friday: Impatience

When you're holed up in the downstairs bathroom it can sometimes be difficult getting a decent mobile internet signal.... which is enough to make anyone impatient!

POLICE body armour design

In my upcoming comic, Persons Reported, the police make an appearance at the climax of the story. In a typically even handed and rational manner for myself, the police in my story are violent, facist pigs. This is their body armour that they use to maintain corwd control.

Firefighter Rachel Smith

This is my first painting of Firefighter Rachel Smith, the hero of my new comic Persons Reported. I have done lots of skethcbook work designing her, and am less than satisfied with this painting. I need to vary the brushstrokes of her hair to make it look more real and natural, and her face is a little swollen and overworked. Still, if you got everything right the first time round you'd lose all the satisfaction of improving.




A sketchbook page of Smith, trying to show differnt expressions and still keeping her likeness.



Firefighter Rachel Smith on the left, some pissed floozy sketched out of the newspaper on the right.

A Bridgeman study from lunchtime at work.

Some anatomy studies from www.characterdesigns.com/ Bridgeman is good for showing you how lumps wedge together, am still trying to figure out how curves fit together.

More figures sketched out of the newspaper.

Illustration Friday: Modify

For the theme of 'Modify' I intensively researched (spent 5 minutes on Wikipedia) UK athletes who won silver medals at the Beijing Olympics. What sort of surgical modifications could they make to ensure gold medal winning performances at the London 2012 Olympics?

Germaine Mason won the silver medal for High Jump in the Beijing Olympics. After certain zoological-antipodean-surgical-marsupial-modifications he'd be certain to win the gold in London 2012.

After having webbed fingers and gills grafted onto her body, Keri-Anne Payne hopes her modifications will give her an advantage and win gold for the UK.

Whereas Phillips Idowu has taken a rather extreme attitude towards performance enhancing modifications. He hopes that by sacrificing his legs from the hips and replacing them with extendable bionic super-limbs will give him the edge it takes to win gold for the triple jump.