Sketchbook Thread of Johan Derycke

#1541

Good job Johan! I like the face and the rendering of the clothes, especially the snow glasses.

#1542

Spring will be here it’s already pushing close. I SO, know about finances & the never ending tug on our wallets. But just as time never stands still, so this moment will pass. Hang in there.
I’ve just replaced my own computer. With a newer version of the same model!.. : \ Now, just to hope that it will poke along for a couple more years. I, so, long for a machine that won’t stall when I paint a stroke in Painter…
I agree, with the computer downtime idea. Now’s when to hone down the figure studies. Figures are not bad at all. What I do see is the need for structure to be more solidly evident.
I don’t have as extensive an experience as R. Chang. (Wow. pretty intense & great info in this class) but, I can help you in the figure arena.
If you like, I can PM you some visual notes from my class, to get your thinking processes started and a specific path to walk thru. Anyway, I can explain my own way of seeing, doing, if you’re interested. Let me know.

#1543

Francesco
Thanks mate. Need all the support I can get. :slight_smile:

Esmeralda
Wow thank you for your encouraging thoughts.
I will accept your offer with the greatest pleasure. Please PM me whenever you have the time.
I am in serious need of in depth critique because I feel I’ve been staggering and not making much progress, even though I never give up and keep drawing. The problem with the academy is that there is no structured tutoring. It’s just life drawing and we do our thing while getting an occasional comment or suggestion. I guess for 180€ per year one cannot complain about that.

Perhaps the lack of structure in my learning process is attacking my confidence when drawing from imagination, perhaps it’s the lack of consistency in practice (some days I don’t get anyhting done at all), etc. All this has made me decide that I will switch to painting class as from september, because that is the goal of my learning efforts, to be able to paint. I’ve been advised who is the best teacher to follow (I think I mentioned this already), so I will enrole in Mr Luc Oeyen’s class, who is the perfect man to teach me all about painting techniques.

Anyway, even though I’ve been sick in bed all week this week (missed class on monday and tuesday because of that too :frowning: ), not all is bad. I received a new HueyPro monitor calibrator from Pantone for free, only 2 weeks after my complaints. It’s awesome to see the correct colors on my screen again.

Ironically, here’s a portrait from imagination in greyscale.

My heads from imagination seem too stereotype for now. Lack of mileage I suppose. Well I’ve started to save my files for quick exercises like this one (this was about 1hr work) with the date as a name. I hope this will motivate me to keep practicing and not giving up when painting is a struggle.
For example, I think I walked away from my screen -thinking it totally sucks- about 7 or 8 times during this last one. Particularly in the first phase, when blocking in, when things don’t go the way I want them to go, my confidence drops immensely and I literally run away from my work.
How to get that self esteem back up?

#1544

:twisted: You will never find perfection,…but with enough practice, …perfection MIGHT find you…:smiley:
DARE to DARE, …FEAR…of inperfection.:slight_smile:
TAKE CARE Johan
Glenn

#1545

Hi Glenn!
Great to see you here :slight_smile:

I’m not looking for perfection… just for a bit of decent skills LOL.

another head from imagination, done in Painter

#1546

Good work - In esp. like the hunter/trapper - beautiful sensitive pencil work

#1547

Hey Johan, pretty good invented heads. And you’re right. Having a solid understanding definitely leads to confidence. I know all about that, too. You have the will that’s more than 1/2 the battle.
For portraits ,what I used to do is plane out everything (similar to an Asaro planar head) with straights. It will train your sense of solidity. You can soften later.
It’ll force you to really understand the front, side, back etc. and what feature on the face belongd to what plane. I highly recommend Vanderpoel’s book The Human Figure. If you find you have time, this will teach you much about this and give you confidence in understanding what you are seeing. Another book I’d recommend is

Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton - Look it up at Amazon.

it explains and diagrams a lot of what I took classes for. There is alot you can do without being in a class. Actually, drawing in a workshop is for practice, but the place you will correct your drawing issues is with home study. I’ll be PMing you soon. Keep your focus on the prize…

#1548

Hi Gord.
Thanks for the encouragement!

Hey Esmeralda,
Will look up those books on Amazon immediately.
I’m gonna focus on heads a bit for a while I think. Because portraiture is something I want to become really good at.

Here’s another one from today (without ref)… struggle struggle, especially when I am trying to avoid using lines.
I guess there is no other way huh :slight_smile:

EDIT: I can’t seem to find the Michael Hampton one on Amazon UK, but I found the Vanderpoel book. 1out of 2 aint bad eh :slight_smile:

#1549

hi Johan,

there’s an exercise I once read in Shawn Martinbrough’s book (IIRC) about drawing the shades in faces of people in the far background of crowd photos.

There’s no detail, but you can recognize individuals by the very rough distribution of shades (eye areas, under the nose, corner/mouth).

For example, draw a few faces of the background people in photos like these:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7830239@N06/4195245754/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebazzo/486698376/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/erard/3960773020/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladytiger/1527204207/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81533006@N00/388551610/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yeknom02/3712283840/

Add no detail.
This will help you tremendously to be aware of the little variations in shading the forms that will increase credibility and individuality of your faces from imagination.

And it’s fun, too…

:thumbsup:

P.S.: in Firefox, use the ctrol+mousewheel zoom to decide which face to draw and to refer to all the fuzzy absent details…:smiley:

#1550

Hey Mu that’s an excellent idea!

I’m gonna do this more often:
These are faces painted from reference, I think they were around 10min each. I’m forcing myself not to get into detail too much (which is really really hard for a detail freak like me :wink: ) and to think in terms of planes and shapes. Some are a bit wonky, but for a first, I think I did alright, no? It sure is a lot of fun doing this type of exercise.
Perhaps if I do a lot of sheets like this, I’ll be able to construct my heads when painting from imagination as well. That is where my very problem is… as soon as I work from imagination, all I learned about constructing heads, figures and so on, seems to be forgotten…
More mileage needed!
Thanks Mu! you made my day :wink:

Critique needed!

#1551

Hey Johan the first of the 3 grayscale portraits it’s fantastic! I love the expression, also the old man is good (maybe there’s something strange with the shoulders), but in the structure of the last one there’s something wrong. I like the studies and I have a question: how do you proceed drawing\painting heads?

#1552

Wow! Love these little head studies! I’m gonna do some too! :slight_smile:

#1553

Francesco
Yes, lots of issues… need more mileage, a lot more :wink:

Anand
Always nice to see you here mate!

Well I’m calling it quits for today…
Will have a hectic day at work tomorrow yay

#1554

Man, the little head studies came out great! Very much expression!

If you want to discipline yourself about the details there’s an easy way out: use two values only… black and white. I have seen your wonderful longer studies and we both know (this includes you, too… admit it to yourself) that you got a solid grip on handling values. So take it easy and eliminate them for the sake of identifying the main shade areas of a face which form a character/personality.

Here’s a good starting point for this exercise:
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2008/02/two-values.html

#1555

great studies there, Johan! that page of heads is really fun, well done too.

Have you decided about the R. Chang course? I am looking at it too, and undecided… money and time are the big factors, as always.

#1556

Hey Johan, I really like the latest sketches!

I am reading part two of Creative Illustrations by Loomis on tone now, and I would like to suggest that you read it if you haven’t and reread if you already have. The beginning of the section talks about planning your image with simple tonal arrangements using white, black, and light and dark greys. It’s so simple a concept yet it was a big eyeopener for me. Now I am seeing these patterns everywhere, not just in art. Looking at my desk now, I see that it is dominated by a light grey of the desk surface, my tablet is dark grey, keyboard is black with white accent strip at the bottom.

Now I see your last few images and they are mostly greys. I think you could spice up your values with some white and black. If they are not appropriate on your figures, then maybe incorporate them into the background as design elements. That’s another thing I am trying to get inside my head, that I am the designer, not a mindless copying machine. I will quote Loomis for the lack of better words (first paragraph on page 106 of the pdf or 112 of the book):

“There is really design, either good or bad, whenever we put areas of variable tones together. It dawns on us as painters that the effect of the arrangement of such tones is really more important pictorially than the subject or the things we are painting.”

Be mindful that you are designing with value and patterns even when you do a simple sketch, and suddenly everything you do has a purpose! I think it was through this purposeful design that Loomis was able to paint a better picture than his reference photos.

I really hope that you will be able to find some time for the Robert Chang workshop. It took me a while to make up my mind, but I enrolled because it sounded just too good to pass up in the end. I know that you don’t have a lot of spare time, so maybe you won’t be able to complete all the assignments. But since you will have access to all the course material after it is over, you should be able to go through it again on your own, spending as much time as you need to on any given topic.

#1557

nice studies bro…liked the heads…

#1558

Mu
Thank you. Great idea about the 2 Value studies. Will do some asap!
That post on Gurney’s blog was quite interesting btw!

Del
Chances are I’m gonna wait for Robert’s 2nd time. I really don’t have time to do half the drawing and painting I’d like to do as it is already. (Same reason why I’ve stopped joining the cg challenges etc).
Don’t want to spend so much money if I’m not going to be able to make the efforts required. (which is kinda tight right now as we have some huge costs on our house, car and what not).

Wes
Thanks for the help mate. I actually downloaded all Loomis’ books again yesterday after I read your post in Robert Chang’s thread so I’m defenitely going to read them. (I only read drawing the head and hands). You’re right, I need to widen my value range… that’s the trap I am falling in time after time… we all have the tendency to stick within the middle tones (as explained in that post on Gurney’s blog).

dscavenger
Thanks mate!

It’s so great to get such valuable feedback. Thanks guys, you ROCK!
I have so much work to do! On with it!

Some newspaper sketches done at work today.

#1559

Had a really calm day at work today (technical problems so we were forced NOT to work ^^ ), so I started reading Loomis’ Creative Illustration book. Man, I really can’t believe these books aren’t published worldwide today. It’s such a shame… would be so nice to hold a nicely bound copy of these books in my hands. I just read the first 85 pages of “Creative Illustration” while writing down the essential stuff. Still gotta do all the exercises though… that’s gonna be a LOT of work but it’s so needed.

Here’s a quote I like from the book:
“Draw continually. When you do it, you gain momentum. If you cheat at it, you lose.”

Anyway,
I’ve not posted any life drawings in a long time. I’m working more on larger size at school so I leave a lot of my work there in my sketch drawer, and I’ve also been too lazy to take pictures, resize and put them on my server :stuck_out_tongue:

But anyway, here’s a couple from this week:



#1560

Nice Johan nice! Have you ever tried charcoal? I think it could be cool using it for your studies