Hi Johan, taking a peek at your Sketchbook; wonderful work and most important you do a lot of it. I especially like birds of prey and gravitated to your quick eagle sketch above.
Sketchbook Thread of Johan Derycke
AztcFireFlower
#1502
Hey Johan,
You’ve been busy. Nice to see your work from school. I love this SP.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=6182683&postcount=1489
And I also love the little digital painted tree. It’s so important to find things you enjoy doing as well as hitting the academics. I also think you can progres quite far without going to any acredited school. You have the drive, you will achieve your artistic goal. Keep on posting with enthusiasm, it’s a pleasure to see this SB grow.
NR43
#1503
paintdabs
Thanks Dorothy! Still a lot of practice needed though 
Birds are awesome. The way they are formed in function of their existence is nearly perfect… and hey, they can fly!
Esmeralda
Hey! Your comments are always taken to heart.
I think I am at the start of a long process in terms of drawing and painting more expressively, rather than going for accuracy alone. The accuracy is still important though and will always be important. But it won’t be the main focus anymore in a few years from now I think.
I think this will be a process parallel to moving away from the academic approach.
That being said, I am reading a book about Pierre-Auguste Renoir. I must say that ever since I learned about the Impressionists, I’ve been really fond of some of their thoughts and their work has something magical about it. I am surely interested in learning a lot more about Renoir and his friends.
Here’s a quick sketch I did of my son 2 days ago.
He is about to loose his upper front milkteeth, so his face is gonna change soon.
The quote I wrote down:
system
#1505
portrait of your son is fabulous and few of your life study sketches are really nice-Johan 
razz
#1506
Nice stuff going on here, Johan. How long did those life drawings took? I’m not sure if I’ve seen any long poses from you. Do you only do short ones at the school? Just asking because we started long poses here at the academy after one and a half month of studying.
NR43
#1507
AmrutRaju
Thank you!
razz
Most of these life drawings are 2-5min. Some are 15-20min.
We usually do these quickies the first hour and then the model does 2 poses of 45 minutes each. Sometimes it’s twice the same pose so 90 minutes is the longest posed drawing you will see here. How long are those long poses you are talking about?
Thanks for your visit mate, always appreciated!
Some baby steps into pastel usage, 2min on black A3:
And some longer ones (max 45Min)
Love the pastels but as you can see it’s gonna take a lot of practice to get some decent results… so plz bear with me!
razz
#1508
Someone who can really do pastel work is Daniel E. Greene. There was a girl here at the academy who did an oil study after one his works, really great! The long poses here now take two weeks. 23 minutes of drawing and 7 minutes for the model break and this goes on for three hours, every work day. And all this time is not enough to get to a finish, because it should be two and a half weeks. I’ll be more ok of spending more time on an image once I get back 
Mu11
#1510
Hey Johan,
I like the blue shades in your pastel work!
One thing which made pastels feel really different and much easier for me was to sort the pastels by value instead of colour. I mean, think about it, it’s what we did for years by now: work out the values first, don’t bother with the actual hue!
The thread I stumbled this trick upon in is here (scroll down to the greyscale pics):
http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=389455
I did a self portrait which has structural issues (as always), but I basically grabbed randomly for any pastel near the value I needed and it worked wonders for the flow of the whole thing:
cya
Mu
killermachine
#1511
hey johan,
nice effort on pastels.one thing i see is that you really dont put much structure under your life drawings.is that done on purpose?
keep up the hard work 
:buttrock:
tc
Intervain
#1512
your life drawings show huge improvements in your drawing abilities! really great job
system
#1513
Hey there NR43, you got a very nice thread over here.
My only crit would be: keep practicing!
I like your traditional work a lot, keep up the great job
siiilon
#1515
Hey buddy, great figure sketching going on here! I see you’re trying it with pastel. I hope I can one day use it well, 'cause I like it very much. A good pastel painting is very impressive to me. Maybe an easier way to get there is charcoal and white chalk on toned paper, I think. Anyway, I am looking forward to see your progress with this medium. Keep up the good work my friend.
NR43
#1516
razz
Thanks.
This Mr Greene has indeed amazing technical skills. Most of his subjects I don’t like though (CEO’s in suits, yuk). However, if I would be asked by a “VIP” to paint him, I’d do it too and I would charge 30000USD for a portrait too if I could… (that’s more than I earn in a whole year)
Gord, thanks!
Mu, I ordered my pastels per value now as you suggest. The results keep waiting for them though… must be a skill issue :shrug:
TC, yes… try to limit my life drawings to pure observation… my arm is the plotter of my eyes, that’s the idea anywayz… think the plotter needs more voltage LOL
Magdalena
Funny that you mention this because I was going through my complete sb today and ok, there is some progress, but to call it huge… that’s a massive overstatement
I’m not even gonna post the latest ones becasue they are so bad I am simply ashamed to show them.
Vladion Thanks! Yes, 2010 will have less moments of slacking than 2009 I hope!
Anand Thanks man! Gonna do some more pastels soon! (Will have to if I want to improve, right?)
siiilon Yeah these soft media (pastel, charcoal,…) are somehow a lot harder to control. One would think otherwise because due to the softness of the medium, one can be more subtile. It’s all about technique I think…
Not much worth showing as I am in my annual mental crisis. Can’t get much worse than this so I’m climbing out of it…
Enough self pity!
Let’s work!
NR43
#1517
2B pencil on A4, after Antoon Van Dyck, who was Rubens’ best pupil.
I wonder if he ever had mental breakdowns…
siiilon
#1518
Great work dude! It’s really visible how are you feeling while drawing. It’s good to let yourself prepare before drawing begins. It something like a calming down, remembering what’s important and let for example music to put you in the right mood. And also it’s good to treat the first drawings as a warmup, which you really are not obliged to show, and prolly you shouldn’t. I don’t show what I feel could cause any kind of further depression.
“I wonder if he ever had mental breakdowns…”
- I am pretty sure they had. After so many years of performance only the best works survive and you might have the incorrect feeling that is what they do for a breakfest, or that they can’t draw worse than that. I personally think that in the study of anything (whether painting or science or whatever) the only obstacle are your feelings. Learning to control them, that’s what I’ve been doing some time already.
Your drawing skill is really good, work more on your feelings, don’t let them entangle you.
CU buddy
batte812
#1519
Hi Johan, good to see you posting again. I also had these periods when I thought things weren’t working. But it’s probably the time when you start noticing your mistakes. And that is a necessary (allthough painful) phase you have to go through. It’s the trick to keep studying and one day you suddenly feel that you have reached a new level. Keep going!
NR43
#1520
Your drawing skill is really good, work more on your feelings, don’t let them entangle you.
Easier said than done but that’s exactly what I should do.
Thanks for confirming that Michal.
Bart
Ups and downs… Xmas time = garantueed misery inside my head every year so yes, it will pass. Not to worry
I bought ArtRage 3 Pro a couple of weeks ago but I hadn’t seriously played with it yet.
Here’s a portrait of my mum in an attempt to handle the AR oil brush.
