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:

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:

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 

Outdoors speedpainting

Grabbed my laptop, sat under a tree and speedpainted what I saw. This was my first excercise of this kind and I improved a lot since then.

I'm still not happy with my landscapes and similar things, but this first attempt sucks big time compared to the latest crap :D
Let's break it down:

• Although I couldn't use any form of color picking, the colors came out quite faithful
• The building looks more solid than I expected, for someting I painted with a soft brush with a lot of Transfer

• Soft brushes: they are BAD for this kind of things. In my experience, that is
• Those tiles are horrible - that soft brush didn't help
•  I'm seriously bad at stylizing foliage

Experience gained: 4 points!

- I'll avoid soft brushes for environments and speedpainting in general; solid ones help block out volumes fast and find new graphic solutions
- I need to create some good brushes with which to paint foliage effectively...
- ... AND practice on drawing and painting foliage without them!
- My environments need more contrast - something to keep in mind during next painting sessions

Mustang

This came galloping on a lonely Photoshop blank canvas in a few seconds.

It's not good, it's not accurate, it's just a few brush strokes. But it's fast and spontaneous and I think this kind of random outbursts can give out a lot about our inclinations and what we need to improve on.
Analysis!

• More dynamic and fresh than my usual stuff
• Values seem decent for a very loose sketch
• Took very little time

• Anatomy is off here and there. I wanted to keep this one as it came out, but if I were to pick up from here I should really grab some references and fix neck, legs and whatnot

Experience gained: 4 points! 

- I should start doing (very)speed sketching from reference and concentrate on communicating values with just a few quick spots of color. This should boost my skill with perspective, volumes and synthesis
- When planning an illustration I should let loose more often and produce a wide arrange of spontaneous dynamic sketches, hoping to be able to keep everythng fresh while progressing...
- ...then prepare a nice set of reference pics and fix what doesn't work
- Using a heavily texturized brush helps keeping some elements out of control and favors happy accidents

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.