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:

Hello watercolors

Why hello - here's a watercolor sketch I made roughly two years ago. Finally introducing some colored traditional stuff! Now for the sad part: I haven't touched watercolors since this flamingo.

Let's see here:

• My beloved fineliner seems to cooperate with watercolors too. I'd like to try different media and/or ink colors for the line drawing part
• It doesn't look too dull for a watercolor sketch

• The face part looks confusing - too many details when a few wide blothes of color would have worked fine
• Colors need to look more lively. I want to see more contrast (duh) and clash 
• I probably worked with dirty water and slightly murky colors

Experience gained: 4 points!

- I want to practice more with mixing various media and watercolor. I like the outcome! I'll experiment with different ink colors, too
- I need to work with wide areas of base color before jumping into details (its face D: )
- Some consistent speedpainting from reference should help me manage tones and values better
- Be clean, Dev. No murky water! You want your watercolor paintings to be bright

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:

I definitely need a hand

Part two of my brief but intense hands session.

Some improvement here, I think.

• Anatomical accuracy and technique improved since the last batch 
• Midtones look better 
• The inking style is a little on the decorative side - I'd like to keep like those "patches" of parallel lines

• Those hands would look overdetailed on a full illustration in this style - the illustration itself would look stupidly overdetailed in this style
• I'm still far from a decent decorative solution 

Experience gained: 2 points!

- I'm going to try with some better thought-out hatching. I'd like the strokes' direction to be actually based on the surface of the object and how its "facets" tilt
- I realized I need some background color to make the "lineless-with-shadows" idea work - or, as "background", what should be part of a full illustration besides hands :v

Need a hand?

 Hands are evil and since my last exam I realized more than ever I lack some real knowledge of their structure. So in July I gathered some reference pics and produced some quick practice sketches.

Staedtler fineliner and Copic markers - I was coming from a week or more without grabbing a pencil (or pen tablet) and my strokes were ugly and unconfident and hairy ugh.

I used my trusty fineliner and the fat brush tip of a black Tombo marker on this one.
Let's see:

• Fat black marker and fineliner are great for quick sketching
• I improved a lot by making more and more of these - the next batch looks a lot better!

• Fingers often look off
• Not drawing for a while is bad. It shows
•  This first batch of marker & fineliner sketches look horrible. The black areas are unrefined and uneffective
• Those parallel fine lines as midtones look awful  

 

Experience gained: 4 points!

- I've been having issues on this. I need to draw hands more often and study muscles and bones properly

- Tombo and fineliner are great mediums I'll definitely use again to get more confident on large shadow areas

- I'd like my inked stuff to look good without those outlines that are exposed to light. In other words, I'd like to find a solution to make subjects look believable by just inking shadows and a little hint of midtones, without the need for outlines

- I need a solution for midtones. I can't figure out how to reproduce them properly when using inks yet

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.