Collecting dust

I have two neat Strathmore toned gray sketchbooks. They're collecting dust because...
Just because...?
Because I'm a wimp and I'm terrified of a brand new sketchbook that needs to be approached differently from what I'm used to do with my common white paper.
One day I felt especially daring and I decided to violate mr. Gray.

So a few weeks ago I found a nice reference photo in my folder (a very stereotypically handsome guy wearing make up - I was actually more interested in the lighting and the sharp cast shadows). My previous attempts at using charcoal were miserable, but here I realized what I was doing wrong.
I was holding and using the charcoal as if it were a pencil! Nice and tidy and precise.
Then I remembered something Shaddy Safadi said during one of his digital painting tutorial videos:

"Be bold!". Be bold with your strokes.
I dislike quoting people, and while the painting process was definitely interesting, I didn't agree with a bunch of things Shaddy said. But his explanation of what being bold means resonated with me.The moment I tried to hold the charcoal stick differently, the moment I said to myself "well who cares if this gets really rough and messy!" and meant it, a lot has changed.

I had fun!
I actually relaxed and enjoyed this new medium, how it can be rough and pasty, but also so soft. It allows me to shade in a way that feels so much more comfortable and natural and fast than pencil shading. I don't care if the outcome is any good. It is a big improvement since last time and I was so happy while I did it. 

So, what have we learned?
- BE. BOLD.
- I had fun dammit, this is a huge step forward!
- This took very little time. Not even one hour. No excuses: I can actually make one portrait like this every weekend almost without sacrificing time. One hour is nothing to an organized person. Which I'm trying to become.
- I AM capable of shutting my brain off. I can be bold and have fun without paranoias. It usually happens at random times, but it's a matter of time before I learn to control and re-create this state of mind.
- I can't flip the page (or use the skecthbook for that matter) until I buy a fixative because charcoal is going to smudge and get every fucking where on the back of the next page :D
- Hence the bad photo. I can't put this thing into a scanner.

Plein air

Lack of motivation hits hard, but I've got to the core of the problem.
I'm setting two new goals for myself, and boy do I need to achieve them for my own well-being.
I'll talk about it later - now have some watercolor stuff I painted on the spot.

Prunus log. My grandma's garden in the countryside is always my favorite place to be when I need a break from technology.

Still flat, but I feel I'm improving in rendering volumes and textures in watercolors.

A red house I could see from the balcony at my grandmother's house. A sudden storm drove me away sooner than I hoped. I struggle with trees A LOT. I'm so inexperienced at drawing buildings, but I'm starting to put more time and effort into the sketching phase. I really can't afford to paint directly with such an alien subject.

A sleepy old man I sketched on the train and painted later while relaxing in Verona with my boyfriend. Lovely trip if somewhat short!

This was painted on bad generic sketchbook paper so yeah, the texture sucks and the colors look so dead. Watercolor paper is so expensive

Watercolor week

An apple a day...
I've decided to start a simple training program to practice on the kind of stuff I need to improve on: one exercise from reference per day, for a week. I had a fun Watercolor Week and I plan to start a Clouds Week soon. 

Clouds are nasty. 

Speedsketching at the library

• I'm proud I was brave enough to try my hand at interiors. Though the results are debatable
• I'm getting a better handle on working with fast blotches of color and leaving white paper areas
• Gestures aren't too stiff

• Stuff looks sloppy without that black pen outline 
• Something went wrong with the perspective down there. It's weird because I was very careful when sketching the scene - I must have relaxed too much and messed it up during the painting phase

Experience gained: 4 points!

- I MUST do this again, especially with interiors. The amount of skill and confidence gained when painting from life is extremely valuable. I need to think about color and light conditions on the spot and note things down for future reference!
- When geometric perspective is involved, do NOT paint until the sketch makes sense
- I'll mix in less water and more pigment. I need to manage strong, saturated color to make my sketches really expressive and bright and, most of all, not in need of a pen outline :v
- Drawing with a friend helps so much. It's incredible: I was always scared to show my stuff to others, but having someone to work with extensively helps exorcizing, in a way. I feel brave and careless and it's so new to me

Wintertime sketching

From last October. Some of these were made at Piazza Santa Croce (Florence), some while sitting on grass at the nearest park.

I tried to combine the fat tip of a Tombo marker and my usual Staedler fineliner, hunting for a different result. So:

• It's a super fast combo - I can get shadows down quickly without actually drawing the outer lines, and the fineliner's thin tip fixes the general look. Very helpful if I need to practice on solid shading and strong contrast

• Well, I suck at sketching buildings! :D 
• So much sketching... and I can't seem to reduce the amount of linework yet

Experience gained: 3 points!

- I need to be more effective with less detail. I guess I'll pick up my notes from Louis Gonzales' workshop on gesture drawing - it was a gold mine
- I should train my eye with buildings and perspective - it's so intimidating to me, but this must be the right way to break the ice
- Blocking in shadows with a fat marker is a process I enjoy and will probably help me improve on many levels. It's fast, rough and unforgiving

More naked people

Beach and post office - what to do when you're bored as heck. 

Summer was coming to an end :( 

This batch of sketches was done during the same day as this one, so I guess there's nothing special to report in addition to what I wrote there.
What? No I'm not lazy c:

Cutout

I found the reference for this on Pinterest by typing "prostitute". Whut.

Limitations: just one brush, no color picker (not so daunting when you have a greyscale ref :P), no preliminary skecth.

Let see here - at some point I used the cutout filter on the refence: it simplifies the image by reducing the number of colors and making more or less complex adjacent patches out of them. You have control on edge fidelty and color complexity. I looked for something that could help me envision the values in definite areas.

• I used the filter midway during the exercise and my patches of grey were quite close to what happened to the reference picture after the cutout. I wasn't expecting that!
• I don't mind a rectangular, minimal background like that - I feel I'm getting a little more used to this kind of thing

• I don't like the face. There's something wrong with the values and the patches of grey don't really deliver a good sense of  volume

Experience gained: 2 points!

- I need to practice more on painting faces and getting the volumes down in a few strokes. Speedpainting of faces from reference pics with a time limit should work - perhaps I could make 6 per day, 5 minutes each?
- The cutout filter is a valuable tool. I'll definitely use it again to get a better grasp on synthesis

I miss the beach

I decided to slow down and post three times per week. With the current post format posting WILL become more time-consuming, and with academy and all I guess I should focus on good in-depth posts instead of quantity :B

So! here's a sketchbook page full of beach people from last summer. Some of them are amusing.

• I'm glad I could use all the available space in the sheet. The year before I couldn't squeeze in as many sketches
• Poses and shading seem to work fine - the bodies are less stiff than last time

• The linework is often insecure and messy - NOT the good kind of messy
• Anatomy and proportions, as always. I seem to struggle most with legs and sitting poses

Experience gained: 3 points!

- I don't mind a cluttered page. I lovelovelove saving space and drawing tiny helps me cope with fast-moving bad people
- I definitely need to work on legs and hips structure
- The lines are more complex and messy than last year. I can't tell if it's a good thing quite yet D:

Pearboobs

Meet pearboobs.
This lady was my first practice digital speedpainting from reference.

Limitations:
- no color picking
- only use one hard brush
- no lineart, sketching and such; apply color directly

So...

• I finally found a comfortable solid brush for speedpainting - hard, flat, sliiigthly texturized. Check out the next post, "Brush test" 
• The limitations are helping a lot in learning how to get colors right and honing proportions
• I started noticing I don't like the framing and those edges being so randomly chopped off

•  The framing is bad - I stuck to the reference picture, but I need to find a better solution
• Low contrast, again
• Many traits and proportions aren't as accurate as hey should be
• I did use the picker a couple times, but I swear I've dropped it completely since this speedpainting D:

Experience gained: 3 points!

- Still need to work on smiles and expression lines 

- No more color picker. Never again! 

- Framing and composition need some planning - I could try to cut off some parts of the background and only paint patches of it in a relatively small spot behind the character, so as to contextualize it without extending the background completely

Discoveries

During summer 2012 I found out fineliners and copics are practical and fun sketching media. Here are my first attempts at portraying chubby models at the local beach.

... there's something disturbing here.

• Fineliner & Copic markers are easy to carry around and look effective
• Quick merciless sketching without the luxury of an eraser is VERY useful
• I've learned new things about cast shadows

• That little girl
• These look pretty stiff
• Perhaps a hint of context would make them better

Experience gained: ? points

This is from one year and a half ago so I don't really remember what meaningful lessons I drew out of it, except that I need to get faster and less "clean" if necessary. And

FOR GOD'S SAKE IMPROVE ON CHILDREN AND SMILES 

Cold days

First post. Let's not formalize this too much, I'm already quite tense thank you. 

These are from last winter, Florence.
Staedtler pigment fineliner and copic - my favorite for sketching outdoors. Not being able to erase makes everything harder (as well as better, faster and stronger, I promise).
It's nothing short of a trauma at first, yet it's great for training my confidence, styilization and space planning/management. This is something I'll go through more accurately in a few future posts, showing how my strokes and general sketching style changed (for the better? We'll see) from my first attempts at this techinique to the more recent ones.

Notes:
- I need to improve my stylization of foliage. I have a hard time synthetizing leaves and branches. I'd like to lean towards a slightly decorative solution - especially with tree bark. About that, I'm gonna put together a few snaps from the local park and analyze different surfaces a lil' bit.