Violante - Art School journey

[Pattu_w]

Welcome! Looking forward to see your (digital) progress.

[ZekeDraws]

Welcome! Nice work on those!

[mitsuki-youko]

welcome to the forums!

[Violante]

I completed the first two Photoshop assignments.

Digital pen control exercises are always fun in my opinion. Nr 3, tracing the circles, was a challenge, though! This is the result after many, maany tries.
As I work in Krita, I couldn't find the exact brushes used in nr 4 - Pressure practice. Maybe it's available somewhere, but I don't know Krita that well yet.

Assigment 2 was also fun and interesting to do, but boy did I struggle with the images. I've never worked with Hue/Saturation, Levels, Curves and Color Balance before. The first two images were oke.. After that I really made my eyes bleed with the third and especially with the fourth. I mean, is that even possible? What's the secret? Haha I can't.

[Violante]

Photoshop for digital production - assignment 3 - combining images

Used photo's (all from the internet, except the cats) :

On this background:

Result:

[mitsuki-youko]

Oooh nice job!

The spot under the cats could use some more shadow and the painting some more gradient but overall it looks nice.

[Violante]

Photoshop for digital production - assignment 4

Example:

Result:

Example:

Result:

Example:

Result:

[Violante]

Hi there again! I'm focusing on the nude figure drawing assignments at the moment. I love to draw people and I've drawn a lot of bodies, but never like this. Marc's video has given me loads of new information and I can't express how excited and grateful I am about that.

The assignments are all useful and great exercises. Especially the quick gesture drawings, as 1) I'm slow and want to draw faster and 2) I tend to lose focus on the whole by going into detail too soon (hence point 1 probably )

I made a map with photo's of 30 different poses. Every day (or most days now) I'm practising:
Skeletons - I'll add a skeleton to every pose (every day 4 poses until all 30 are done)
Gesture drawing - Every day the gesture drawing exercise. After 30 days I want to review my process

Here are some pictures of the first couple of days.

I prefer to do quick and rough sketches on paper, so the gesture drawings are done manually. The first three are 30sec and the last three 1min.

I'll give another update after a few days and I may also start with the video about perspective

[mitsuki-youko]

These look great!

[pamoralesb]

Awesome artwork!
And you nailed those circles haha... Did u use wrist or shoulder to draw them?
I've been struggling with those too! I'm not sure if u need to draw them untill u feel comfy with the results or leave those to see the progress within the next weeks (or months).

[snakker]

Welcome and good work so far!

[Violante]

It's been a few days. Still practising almost every day with gesture drawing. I just did it for the 15th time, so I'm halfway there!
At this point I'm noticing some progress in the way I'm doing the gesture drawings. I can get more done in the 30 seconds or 1 minute. Sometimes I even have time left now to work a bit more on the face and hair, or on the body of course.

I also made the male/female proportions assignment. I prefer to draw more hip, more curves, on women, that's why I changed it a bit when I cleaned up the lines.

[Violante]

Thank you!
I had to draw circles in the air to check if I'm using my wrist of shoulder haha, but it's definitely my wrist.
Yeah you're right it doesn't have to be perfect, but I thought it was a fun exercise and wanted to challenge myself to make better circles than the first try

[Violante]

I finished all the skeletons I wanted to make. Here are a few.

I redrew some of the poses in order to see the progress.

Right: August 13, left: September 16.

[Violante]

Nude figure drawing assignment 7 - full figure from reference.

I was struggling a lot with the measurements I made at the beginning. Some parts are still off, but nevertheless I'm pretty happy with the result.
Marc said in the video that this is a good daily practice. Don't know about you guys, but this took me ages. This as a daily practice is not gonna happen haha, but I'll definitely practice this more often.

[Violante]

Some more gesture drawings. 1 minute sketches:

30 seconds sketches:

I also started with character lineart studies.

[snakker]

This is looking really good! Some shading inconsistenciea like the left eye too dark and some shadows too bright or missing but overall excellent imo

If you are struggling with proportions then I recommend not to shade at all, so you can focus on block ins more rapidly. I know it’s hard to avoid the urge to shade or render after you try it tho 😅 but totally worth just focusing purely on measuring and blocking in a few figures instead of doing two skills at once (block ins AND shading practice)

[Violante]

Thanks for your reply and your thoughts on it. You're right I got a bit too carried away with this piece. The shading and highlighting wasn't necessary. As the focus was mainly on the proportions, there are indeed a lot of shading inconsistencies. This takes away the attention of the real and only assignment. Next time I'll try to focus on measuring only

[Violante]

Two more character lineart studies.

These studies were really satisfying to do! With the next five characters I'll be using the grid method to make it more challenging for myself :).

[Violante]

I finished 30 days of making 30sec/1 min gesture drawings. Here some pages:

Next will be 2 and 5 minute gesture drawings! Maybe I'll try some digital ones as well.

I also made the first character study with the grid method. The small canvas size was challenging, but it went pretty well!
From left to right: sketch - first lineart - second lineart - original