Sketchbook Thread of holdensc

#1

Hi all. I’ve been working at this for a few weeks now, so it’s high time I started a thread. Here goes.

Roughly in chronological order since I started getting serious about anatomy.

Hogarth copies/studies:

Caravaggio studies:

#2

From life:

Open Master workshop. Yep, I’m still working on it…

#3

Some anatomy studies, mostly ref.d from Sheppard, some copies of masters, esp. Raphael (who I’m digging deeply right now), and others…

[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec18_hip-leg3.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec18_hip-leg4.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec18_hip-leg6.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec18_hip-leg7.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec23_torso2.jpg[/img]


[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec27_torso_scapula2.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec27_torso_side.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec27_torso_side2.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Caracci_studies_Dec27.jpg[/img]
#4

Some gestures from the head…

[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Gesture_Dec23_4.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec27_improvisedposeA.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec27_9gestures.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/Dec24_hand_self1.jpg[/img]
The hand is mine.

15-minute sketch-a-thon-lettes (for improvement of pshop skills):
[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/15min_Dec22_B.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/15min_Dec23_A.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/HoldenSouthCaulfield/15min_Dec30_A.jpg[/img]

The colour didn’t translate properly for web here, so just pretend it looks lovely and I’ll figure out my Colour Management issues shortly.

Thanks for stopping by. I'm really pleased to get involved here. Any comments and critique are warmly welcomed.
#5

Wow,
very nice sketches here!
I really like the sketches of your third post,
espacially the ones with the legs and angles.
Also the motiion in the sketches of the third and
fourth post! :):thumbsup:

Kepp going!
MfG Seb

#6

Hi Holden! beautiful drawings! :thumbsup: keep it up!! … can see you improve already!

#7

holdensc,

Very very cool to see your thread go up. :slight_smile: Your improvement is really impressive - are you also taking a course in drawing? I like this drawing in particular. Please tell us a bit about yourself. Your contributions to the Beginners’ Lounge have been terrific.

Cheers and Happy New Year! :slight_smile:

-Rebeccak

#8

Hi holdensc, nice studies you’ve got here. I also really like your first drawing up there, the cowboy guy :smiley:

#9

Thank you Roja, Rebecca, Anand and BapKe. Your encouraging words really keep the fire stoked.

A bit about myself: I am a graphic designer by trade, but I am increasingly finding this to be a bad fit with me. I’d really like to move towards a more art-centric field. Editorial illustration and concept art are beginning to interest me a lot. These are early days yet, I have a lot to learn, but I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to be on this journey now. I think for the first time in my life I might be developing a 5-year plan.

I am 35, old enough to be happy with a birthday drink (instead of drinks), but not too old to change my life’s direction.

I have been a compulsive scribbler my entire life but for various reasons that sound kinda dumb now, I’ve never undertaken any kind of art training. I tried a life-drawing class early last year, however it was un-tutored and I was completely lost at sea. I’m now looking for a good tutored class, but I live in a city where abstraction and amateurishness are in vogue. (If anyone out there knows of a good life drawing school in Melbourne, Aus., please I’d love to know!)

When I was a kid my biggest influences were Mort Drucker, Don Martin, Dali and Daffy Duck.

Currently I’m inspired by Lucien Freud, Odd Nerdrum, Francis Bacon, The Incredibles, Raphael, the Bone Doctor, and many of the artists at all levels on these forums.

Thanks again, and happy new year to all! May it be filled with inspiration.

ps - Rebecca, I’m stoked that you like that messy drawing. I spent a couple of hours just trying to find a pose I liked and flipping between trying to get the anatomy right and just going by feeling. The end result is interesting to me because all the thinking is still there on the page for me to remember.

#10

One more thing…

Roja - the cowboy is a charicature of Bruce Campbell in a quirky 90s TV show called Brisco County Jr. It only looks a bit like him. Thanks for the comments.

#11

You definitely need to hook up with erilaz / Martin. :slight_smile:

Sketchbook Thread of Erilaz (Large dl)
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=299019&highlight=erilaz

He’s a lovely friend of mine currently attending a life drawing class in Melbourne. Perhaps you could hook up with him and his group? :slight_smile:

#12

Hey, I resent that! :smiley:

Since you’re in Prahran, you might want to check out the Linden Art Gallery in St. Kilda:
http://www.lindenarts.org/classes.html

It’s cheap (Around $12-$15), and useful. I prefer the untutored classes there, because you can just get down and draw.

Other than that, check out the CAE life drawing classes: http://www.cae.edu.au/?category=37

More expensive, but they focus on techniques.

Feel free to come to our sketchgroup sessions every Sunday too (although check with me ahead of time that it’s on!): http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=317611

#13

Hi erilaz. Very glad to meet another Melbournite. I’d love to join your sketchgroup, too. Count me in for the next one.

Funny, I rang the guy who runs the Linden class and he made noises to the effect of trying to discourage me from attending his class. I dunno, maybe I rang him at a bad time, but he told me to call back in the new year. I might try out both that and the untutored if I can squeeze it in.

Sorry about the off-hand comment about amateurishness in this city, but I just saw an exhibition where an artist was flown in from Japan to pitch a $10 tent in the middle of an empty gallery. You know… sheesh.

Rebecca - thank you for the hook-up. Your powers of ubiquity are staggering and you rock!

#14

I was kidding man, I understand what you mean entirely. There are a lot of “artistes” in Melbourne. Installation art is huge and painful to digest. But for the most part there are a large swag of awesome normal artists as well. :smiley:

As to Linden, yeah, I wouldn’t even try calling them, they’re a bit vague. Just turn up to a session. They’re very informal, and the atmospshere is relaxing. We try to go every 7.30 thursday night session just to keep our game on.

I’ll pm you about Sunday as we occasionally chop and change the time and venue.

#15

Some nice and clean anatomy studies! Keep going!

#16

I particularly enjoy your pencil sketches! Also great sense of movement on those ballet studies - keep going indeed :thumbsup:

#17

Update on my OFDW. Not a whole lot of progress but quite a few hours of trying different ways to add detail and smooth out the strokes. I think I’m stuck. Any tips on how to progress with this would be greatly appreciated!

This was where I got to a while ago…

This is my newer update, but aside from the repositioning of the right arm, I think I was better off with my previous version. Been using the blend and blur tools to try to smooth out the strokes. Then using small brushes to add finer detail, but these end up looking ungainly (as in the dark area around his right hip).

#18

Hey there,

Looking good so far! :slight_smile: I think one reason you might be stuck is that most of the values are in the light - midtone range - try getting a full range of values, with areas containing very dark darks and very light lights. You shouldn’t overuse black or white (value wise) but you should have values approach pure light and pure dark somewhere in any image that you create.

Wherever light meets dark at a corner, there will be an area called the terminator / core shadow (3 in the diagram below) where the form begins to turn. Adding this core shadow EVERYWHERE that you have a corner of form will lend your image more realism.

Shading is the most important tool for giving a two-dimensional drawing the appearance of having three dimensions. The figure to the right shows how shading turns a flat circle (lower photo) into a sphere (upper photo).

                 The numbers on the upper green sphere indicate the basic formula for shading objects with light coming from the upper left. 1) is the highlight, or lightest light; 2) shows the intermediate tone; 3) shows the core shadow - or darkest dark; and 4) shows the reflected light coming from underneath the object. This formula can be applied to the shading of all objects.

(Illustr. and text from this page).

Areas where a terminator / core shadow might effectively be placed in your painting, for example, might be the elbows, where there is a clear turning of the form.

Hope this helps! :slight_smile:

#19

Your gesture drawings look great, my sketches from-the-head are always so awfully distorted. I’ll stick to copying for a while :slight_smile:
Yay for continuing the master copy!

#20

Somehow I missed your thread…

I really like your pencil work. Great things going on here…
Do you ever sketch with a ballpen? Great way to push your shading skills.