I don't know that much movies. Star Wars (the originals) yes! I would absolutly watch them to educate me. I avoid the others. Maybe they are good from a visual point of view. But they don't correspond to my idea of a space opera.

Maybe try Dune. In my opinion, the story has been filmed too many times. But out of curiosity I watched the first part of the new series. I found it visually quite successful. I think you can learn a lot about light and shadow.

In the contamporary field I love Wedding Date, especially the women's clothes.

And: Valerian and the city of a thousand planets is optically an opulent mix. Worth seeing!

Arcane:
Actually I have not a Netflix-Abo but I may in the future as soon as my husband and I have found enough series there that we want to watch.

This week I did some more head construction. I'm really struggeling with the Loomis head approach to this task. It helps, when I shade the circle to give him a more spherical appearance. I'll probably just have to sketch a lot more heads before I get the hang of it.

My this week's watchlist shows more of Marco Bucchi's tutorials and a David Finch's head construction video. Mark Crilley sketched a male and a female head out of one picture. It was fun and informative to watch.

Kyle T. Webster is the creator of the Photoshop brushes, but he is a good illustrator and teacher too. I recommend his video "The secret to effective stylization".

Just for fun I put the one minute time-lapse video "seed to cauliflower" to the list.

Beach trip:
I draw a picture from last year again. (I was lazy with the background and reused him.)

Hello everyone!

Almost all of my artistic activities stopped a few months ago in the summer for various reasons. Occasionally I consoled myself by letting my Sim visit a beautiful in-game location where she would then paint a picture. I took a screenshot of the same motif and painted it too.

I found that comforting.

Then I came up with the crazy idea of painting every picture from the Sims 4 Artist Career. I'm currently close to finishing the third one.

The Sims 4 paintings aren't really suitable as references. I see them more as inspirations and look for my references outside of the game.

I'm curious to see how long I can last. In any case, the Sims 4 Artist Career offers a lot of pictures and I could theoretically spend years on the project.
(The Sims screenshots are one the left side each painting.)

Yes! There is an option in the game to let the Sim paint a picture of your own choosing. Unfortunately, it only allows screenshots within the game. It would be great if you could also use your own pictures. Technically it is certainly not difficult. Maybe the game company doesn't want indecent paintings being exchanged in the public gallery.

My next Sims-inspired image is a still life with a watermelon and apples. For the shading, I recreated the objects in Poser and placed the light source over the fruit.

I had a hard time reproducing the surface of the melon resemble like nature. Finally, two brushes from Marc helped me, one for the melon and one for the apples.

Using these custom made brushes feels a bit like cheating. I decided to only work with two brushes, my sketch brush and the soft brush. In the end I was just happy with the result.

Sneaking the one minute time laps video in: https://www.tiktok.com/@normabanzi/video/7306850856132021537/

Did I mention that gesture drawing and I aren't friends? And this is said diplomatically. BUT: Recently I decided to draw a book illustration with a vineyard landscape and a bunch of people, sitting in a garden and listening to a devotion. The sketch of the family was terribly bad. So I have to swallow the bitter pill of having to deal with gesture drawing on a regular basis in order to better fit the people into the planned picture.

I have two problems with gesture drawing:
1.) The models' looks distract me from drawing. It doesn't matter whether they are aesthetically pleasing or not.
2.) I find most of the poses ridiculous. I want to draw everyday situations and not superhero poses or fantasy scenes.

So I searched for more abstract models and found on Pinterest some pictures named Mangaposes. I gave it a try and enjoyed gesture drawing the first time ever. Here are the first sketches. I did not trace the models. I put them AFTER the exercise behind my sketches to check my work.

Have a nice Sunday!

Do you draw or doodle some Christmas kitsch? I did so far, some greeting cards and a christmas tree. I have no idea how to abstract these green pine needles, probably like hair. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly good at painting hair either. But I had fun drawing the tree and the Christmas spheres.

How I did it (1 minute short: https://youtube.com/shorts/D6dKA0EcaxM)

@mitsuki-youko:
To answer your question: The proportions of real people are real and not ideal in an artistic sense. Of course, that doesn't bother me at all in real life. But when doing gesture drawing I always stare at the model and wonder why her/his arms/legs are too short or too long etc. That distracts me (a lot).

I'm stuck with my landscape study. I have already completed three steps:
1.) The line-sketch,
2.) values,
3.) blocking the colors in.

The unfinished picture looks way too flat. I have an idea why that is. I should see the mountains more as objects like pyramids, cylinders, etc. I can draw these objects on a sketchpad, but as soon as I want to apply this knowledge like with this Norwegian fjord, I am faced with more question marks than solutions.

I miss more information about abstraction in Marc's course. What tutorials or materials can I use to learn more about it? Ideas?

Have a nice sunday
Norma