Sketching - October to December '13

Yes, I've managed to go almost another month between posts, and in all honesty I didn't get as much done in that time as I would have liked in order to share with you over the next one.  It's not that I've been doing nothing, just that not much of it is the sort of stuff this blog covers.  One thing that is related though is that I've been doing some general 'housekeeping', and I'll get into that further down.  Part of the housekeeping has been to actually start compiling the 8 months of sketches I'm behind on sharing, and that's the focus of today's post.  There are also some speedpaints for me to share, but that will probably be next week's entry.

I'm ditching the usual format of these sketching posts until I get caught up.  Usually I compile all the sketches for the time I've been lax and they're organized into different images by what they're of.  This time there's one image per month, with everything lumped in together.  It's marginally more manageable this way, so I'm more likely to do it.

October
It's been a while, obviously, but I don't believe I used reference for any of these, which means that I'm quite pleased with a couple of them (for a change).  Not all of them, and most of them have issues that I will now address.  One thing you'll see wrong with a few of the sketches here, and in the next two months below, is that I do a poor job at getting the angle on the far side of the head right.  You can see it here most obviously with the chaps head on the centre left there, and the girls next to him.  It's like the far side of their head is half as wide again as the side closest.  It's something I've been working on correcting, but it still happens an embarrassing amount of the time.  The  backside on the figure near the top right is also severely malformed, as is quite a lot of the unfortunate woman bottom left.  These things I know.  Things I'm happy with are the portrait in the top right (She's odd looking, but fairly believable), the girl in the bottom right (I'm really happy with some of the cloth creasing there, even though her nose is a bit strange), and the robot, because who doesn't like robots? Yes, this was long before the robot mania of March this year.  The rest all falls somewhere in between.  Oh, and the reaper?  Well, it was October.

November
I didn't sketch all that much in November, so this is actually a good percentage of what I did.  Not much to say, except the arm and shoulder area on the guy top right is appalling, but I really rather dig the hair on victorian dude at the bottom there.  The rest is just somewhere in between.  I guess I was getting better at the torso stuff here, but I've back slid since then, which is a shame.

December
Used some reference for some of these.  That's probably obvious given Luke Skywalker hanging out on the right there.  Two above him is a girl I found on Pinterest.  Sadly I have no idea who she is or who took the picture.  Reverse image search just returns "Dyed Hair," and sure enough she's on the top row of that image search.  It's not a great copy, but I quite like it anyway.  A couple of the other small sketchy portraits were done on the plane when we were going to my Mother's for Christmas.  Pretty par for the course, and this time I did barely any sketching while away because Christmas meant having surprisingly little time to do so.   To the best of my recollection the rest were with no, or minimal reference.

Housekeeping
You probably didn't notice, but there have been a number of small changes to the blog; specifically in the sidebar.  Mostly this was just some reorganisation, but under Pages you'll find two new links.

One is to my other "blog" The Art of James A. Taylor.  It's using Blogger and it's fancy new interface, but it's basically just a gallery of some of my work.  Some of what I consider to be the more successful pieces.  Each post has one image, and where relevant there is a link back to the corresponding post on here.  Not everything I do will go up on there, but what does go up might be up there before it's up here, but I suspect I'll partly be using it as an easy access index to the posts back on this blog.  I've had the blog and URL for ages, but only got around to adding anything to it a couple of weeks ago.

Secondly is the My Useful Links link.  This is more for me than you (in case I need to reach my list of links on a computer I'm not logged into), but it is public, so feel free to take a gander.  It was actually a surprising amount of work to organise it and make it presentable, but I figured if it was going to be public I should at least make it pretty.  If you have any links you think I should add, or that I might be interested in, let me know in the comments, where the tumbleweeds usually hang out.

Other than that I also started going through my Anatomy board on Pinterest and labeling things so they actually turn up when I search them.  I haven't made it very far through that yet, but it's a big board, so it will take a while.

And that's all I have for you today.  Back soon with those speedpaints, and maybe some other things I've been working on.

Sketching For April '13

So first of all there was supposed to be a retrospective this week, celebrating 3 years of the blog.  No, that's not a long time compared to some, but for me it's a very long time indeed. Unfortunately the hard-drive with all the images for it, as well as some for my next post on optical illusions, died.  There was more on it than that of course (a terrible speed paint and vast tracts of my reference material - most of my art was backed up though), but those are the two that most have an effect on this blog.  So I still plan on doing both the Retrospective, and the other A Musing post, but that'll have to wait until I get my act together again.  I'm not sure why the drive died, but it's probably because of a static spark or getting jostled wrong when I was trying to transfer it over to my new PC.  Yes, I finally got myself a new PC; built it myself in fact. Other than a handful of small issues (and the large one regarding the drive) it's been a relatively smooth transition.  Far smoother than I thought it would be at least.

So other than ll that this has been a good moth for sketching, even though there are only two images in this post.  I filled about 10 pages in the last three weeks of April, which is rather more than I have been achieving.  None of it is directly from reference (although much of it is inspired by photos and the like, but not drawn until much later), and some of it I'm quite pleased with.  You'll note the lack of an image woth the worse sketches of the month - that's because while there were some hideous ones they were all ones that were mostly rushed.  Those below are ones I either spent a little time on or that turned out well despite being done very quickly.  OK, on to the images.

Head and Face 
Just a bunch of heads, more or less replacing the old "Free Sketching" heading which tended to be mostly heads anyway.  I'll still use the old title if I draw anything more varied, but for now it's bonces. I was mostly focusing on necks and unusual head angles this month (I still can't draw them well from above and below - I'll get there.  You'll note I did a little bit with the hair as well - not much, but more than usual. Hair is something I have terrible trouble with - especially finding styles to use.  Most of the guys are bald, but I think that's because bald guys look slightly less odd than bald girls (nothing wrong with bald girls incidentally, it's just not that common).  The skull in the top left was for the retrospective, but since that's delayed I've shoved it in here as well.  I'm quite pleased with the large portrait of the girl in the top right too.  It's not perfect, but I think she turned out better than almost anything else I've done thus far.

Figures and Anatomy
Less impressive than some of the heads, but still progress I feel (I have been focusing on this stuff a lot less than the heads after all).  Not really much to say except for the self evident bit that there's still a long way to go with my more extended figures.  Oh, you'll note I've gone back to noisy grey as a background - saves time setting these images up as I don't need to be quite as extreme when cleaning up the original scans.

I really do need to do some from reference this month so I can begin tweaking where my errors lie and that sort of thing.

And that's all there is for now.  Apologies again for the delay in this months other planned posts - I'll get to them as soon as I can.  Until then, happy birthday Blog!

January '13 and (December '12) Sketching

They say it never rains but it pours. I don't know who 'they' are, but they've been saying it for an awfully long time. Right now, with the rain streaming down the windows this seems a particularly apt term, as I do seem to have rather a lot to be getting on with after a month of relative artistic calm. Much of this comes from work, and so you may never see it dealt with here (though it's not out of the question eventually), but some of it I'll be dealing with here eventually. Eventually is an important word there, as I won't have much time to update the blog or do side work to show for a little while, so if this is the only post during February I hope you'll forgive me. But you're not here to hear me bemoan my work load, you're here to see art (come to the wrong place I suspect), so lets get on with it.

I did rather a lot of sketching in January. This may be the first time I've ever had to leave out "good" stuff because there was actually quite a bit of it. Usual fare here, although I really like the girl on the right, she turned out rather well. Here hair is actually based on hair I saw in a photograph, but I don't consider it from reference as I did the sketch sometime after seeing the photo, so I didn't refer to it directly.

The second set of Free sketching is more experimental than the first I guess. Quite happy with the Elfish girl with short hair, and the more cartoonish fellow to her upper right. The chap with the extra large nose didn't turn out as well as I'd have liked, but it's fine enough I guess. But anyway, this is more a sheet of characters than I might usually do.

The final free sketching of the month (and yes, mostly portraits this time), and I have to say I'm really pleased with these ones. I especially like baldy at the bottom there - the scan doesn't really do the shading on him justice because he really came out rather well (in my opinion).

I realised I'd been slacking off learning anatomy and such, and so during January I made an extra effort in that regard. This sheet is mostly my trying to visualize high level shapes and forms and how they fit together. I've done nothing really from a direct reference over the past 2 months, so this was a nice way to find my weaknesses so I can focus some reference drawing time on them this month (if I get any time anyway). Twisting and bending (and combinations thereof) seem to be especially weak, so that's a place to start when I next approach this sort of thing.

More of the same, but this one also features the focus I gave to the muscles of the upper torso. I still need to do some work on these, but I'm also going to move on and work on the musculature around the hips and upper legs soon. After that the back, the legs, arms (again) and so on. That lightcycle is based on a toy I own - technically that's from reference, but I didn't see the point of having a From Reference sheet with only one thing on it, and also the angle it's shown here was not the one I was looking at - it was an exercise in extrapolation.

And lastly, as always, the sketching disasters. Some of these don't look as bad as I remember them looking, but really it's a great sheet to look at in order to think "must do better". Top Right and Middle left were an attempt to try something a little more Picasso like. That didn't go so well.

And that's it. If I don't get time to post again this month I'll see you in March some time(really, circumstances beyond my control and all that - not that I'm really complaining). Next month is also the Blog's 3rd anniversary, so I'll try and put something together for that. Not like a cake or anything, but maybe a progress so far type affair.

Belated Sketching for September

It's been a while hasn't it? I skipped the first whole month since the blog began (actually closer to two months at this point if I'm honest), and I've not done much art in order to say "Well yeah, but check this out!" either. You may be thinking I've been resting on my laurels after that book cover, or that I've just been slacking. Those in the second group would be closer to the truth; I've totally been slacking, but not without reason.

Some of you already know that the beginning of October (and the end of September) is a particularly hard emotional time for me, and this year saw an anniversary that made it especially so. Before I could get over that little funk there was another emotionally trying time (Mostly for my wife, but obviously what effects her rubs off on me to some extent), and then my Son was sick, and then my wife was sick, and now I'm sick - but it's now more irritating than "feel like death", hence my finally writing a post.

So the emotional stuff basically nuked my inspiration and drive so I did very little for the month. I did enough to get some more posts, but no speedpaints and not much sketching. There goes my one speedpaint a week intent - I'll get back on it soon. Anyway, before all this I did scan in September's sketching, so I have that to show at least...

Free Sketching
I may as well start with some reasonably good stuff. These are the best general sketches I did back in September. If the girl with the straight blonde hair looks familiar it's because I realised afterwards that I had inadvertently drawn her looking quite a bit like the girl in this post, except there she was drawn from a reference, and here just a random sketch that looks amazingly like her. Kinda creepy that. Other than that just another month of general sketching. I do quite like the blending on the chap in the top left, although her looks slightly creepy (the hair doesn't help either).

From Reference
These ones are taken from reference. Unfortunately the three on the right are takn from Pins on pinterest that were un-credited and "uploaded by user" so I don't know where they came from - they're just lose interpretations anyway, I don't think they look much like the original photos. The girl on the left is based on Megan Morris, but is also a poor likeness. Megan was on America's Next Top Model once and got kicked off early. I think she was robbed personally.

Focus Task 1
Focus this month is profiles. This was for the Open Art Group, but that's slowly fading away unfortunately - I'll have to keep doing these sort of things just for myself (now I'm getting back into it that is). These aren't in order, so you can't really see the improvement through the month unfortunately. My favorites are 'Asian looking science guy' and cap girl (both on the second row).

Focus Task 2
I also did some arms. I find arms abnormally difficult to draw, so I gave them some focus time. Most of them are wrong, but I think they're an improvement on what I was drawing before. Some of the hands turned out okay too. Since I've not drawn much since this I've probably forgotten everything I learned. So it goes.

Gesture Drawing
Just some gestures. Highly variable quality. Nothing much to add except that I haven't done any since. I must rectify this shortly.

Sketching Failures
I think the awfulness speaks for itself don't you. Basically revolting.

Well, that's all for now. I'll try and get what little I did in October compiled soon, and there's also the painting class I'm taking to talk about (plus my terrible paintings to show of course), and after that I should be basically back on track. We're planning to visit my Wife's family for Thanksgiving, and that usually gets some dreadful sketching out of me, so that's something to look forward to. Until then, excelsior!

The Best and Worst Sketching of May and June

This one's rather late in coming, and for that I apologize (you're used to it by now I'm sure).

Since I last posted I've had another virus infect my machine, I've upgraded windows and re-installed twice (partly due to the virus), gone deaf in one ear due to allergies (which cleared up - but now it's happened to the other ear) and discovered my scanner no longer works (Windows 7 incompatible, there's nothing actually wrong with the scanner itself). There was probably some other stuff in there too, but if I don't remember it it's probably not important.

Thankfully I had the good sense to scan sketches before that first re-install, so I do in fact have something to show today.

 Figure and Perspective Practice

I really need to work on my anatomy properly soon (and I'm taking steps to make that more likely to happen - but more on that some other time). It's improving, and I have a general idea of it, but I regularly forget some of it when I most need to remember (mostly on arms) and other parts I have very little knowledge of at all (legs). Still, some of this turned out okay.

I particularly like how the girl in the lower middle turned out, as well as the guy in the upper right corner. Other than that, fairly average stuff.

Free Sketching

Lots of free sketching this time around - much more than I would have expected, but I guess if you post two months worth at once that's what you get.

Not much to comment on except that I think the sketches in #1 are far better than in #2. And yes, that is a chainsaw; it's a prelim for a work I'll probably never get around to painting (but there again, I might.

Focus Sketching

I didn't really have a focus during these two months, but I did draw more hands than usual. Many of them are attached to people and can be seen in the other images, but this is a small selection of free floating ones. Still bad, but improving.

Work From Reference

Not a great deal given the time period. I need to set some time aside to do this more often - they're rarely very large and don't tend to take long when they're at this level.

Anyway, I had a link to the image the first one is based on, but it got nuked by the virus. If I find it again I'll add the link here. The guy with the hair is based on this image by Random Acts

I don't recall where the other two came from, just random images on the web I think.

Oh Dear

And as usual I'm finishing on a low note with some of the worst (as in, most disappointing) sketching of the time period. I really don't have much to say about these - they sort of speak for themselves (admittedly spattering you with phlegm as they do so).

Anyway, hopefully less of a delay before the next post. I have some speedpaints lined up to show, and a new scanner is winging it's way across the country to me so I can scan this months sketches for next months post. Whoopie.

The Best and Worst Sketching of December

Oh, all right, I'll bring back the bad sketches!  No, nobody has actually asked me to bring them back; nobody ever posts any comments remember? You're allowed to if you want to though, I don't bite. Well, my blog doesn't at least...  And yes someone did comment on the last post, but I'm married to her so it doesn't count ;).  Anyway, I just felt guilty for not showing them.  One of the things I decided way back when I started the blog was that I would show a good sampling of everything I did, good and bad, so I'm letting myself down.  You probably don't care, probably see them and say "Why'd he post that? It looks like I spider sneezed on the page and then died!"  before moving on.  Really I have no idea why anyone would read the blog that by it's very concept is admitting it's full of dreadful pictures, but you do, and I'm happy for that.  And since you do read it (presumably) and look at the pictures (hopefully) I'd better post something for you to look at.

Figure and Perspective Practice
We'll start with the Figure Perspective practice this time, although now it's Figure and Perspective practice thank you very much. Yeah, that "and" makes all the difference doesn't it? Not much to say about this that the images can't say themselves. I still need to work on hands and feet, especially from certain angles, but there is some improvement in them shown here I think. I also came to the realization that people do have another half on the opposite side of their chests and abdomen, so I started sketching people from behind - only one of these was any good, and it's down in the bottom left - I think it may be my favorite single image of the month in fact - except the hand, which I made a bad mess of. No reference used for any of these by the way, though I'll have to start using some soon for this or I'll just continue making the same mistakes over and over.

From Reference
Sketches from reference. The only one I recall where it came from was the profile of the girl on the right - that's from Stockness on DeviantArt. It's recognisable, but not terribly good, mostly because I made a mess of her eye I think (I adore this stock shot though, and another side shot of her in her gallery, so don't be surprised if she pops up again sooner of later). And yes, I do occasionally draw men, as you can see here.

Free Sketching
Actually, I think the balance of guys to girls in my sketches is starting to work itself out, as this image shows. Yes the girl in the lower right was supposed to seem basically anorexic (not a look I like, but interesting to draw). Yes, that is another elf/sprite/fairy in the top left, and the guy next to her with the top hat is the Doctor. A sketch for a painting I was planning, and may yet do one day. Yes, I was frustrated when drawing that scribble in the lower left, I still like it, so there.

Sketch Faliures
So these are not the worse sketches I did this month as I decided that actually showing the *worst was pointless since something that's scribbled down inside of 10 seconds is never going to be good, likewise something that's just an exploration for something else that I didn't actually intend to be any good. So the straight up bad has now been replaced by the most disappointing. These are works where what I had in my head just refuses to translate to the page, or where it was all going so well and then went terribly wrong, or where I just utterly forgot some basic principle of anatomy or perspective or proportion and... well, you get the idea.
I actually do like a couple of these as they show potential, but they are not, in and of themselves, remotely good.  By the way, you can't really enlarge this one, but the rest are embiggable.

Until the next time! Which will hopefully be in a few days.

A Conglomeration of Ineptly Placed Lines

I've been putting of writing this post for far to long. I would blame the rather excellent new Deus Ex game, but that's rather like patting my large Budai like stomach and saying "but it was entirely the fault of the pastry chef!" Clearly the truth is I'm just a lazy schlub. The odd thing is that despite my putting it off I've had the post "prepped" for a while, and prepping is by far the most time consuming thing about making one of these posts. It's not like the writing has any time spent on it (as I'm sure you'll have noticed). Well, let's go and see what all that preparation has to show for itself (and more on what goes into it a little later).

The Good

From Reference

Hitting the ground running here, the very best sketches of June and July as based on photographs... at least I think they are. See, the one in the top left and the one in the bottom right might not be based on anything. I have no recollection of what they may be based on, but they're a bit to good to have come right off the top of my head, so therefor I must have copied them. It's a rubbish rational, but probably correct. As to the others, the bloke up top is off some generic muscular man (I don't recall where from), and the "angel" in the lower left is based on a fabulous model who's name I've completely forgotten even though I knew it when I drew it. I'm bound to draw her again at some point, and I'll make a note of her name next time. Finally the image in the top right is of the lovely Lala Ward in the Doctor Who serial City of Death (It's not a halo, it's her boating hat).

Without Reference

Quite pleased with a few of these. The expression of the girl in the lower right is quite good, as is the musculature of the figure at the top. The running guy (top middle) I like, though his head is to small, and next to him is a picture based on a photo of my friend Elisabeth, but went from memory rather than from the picture so it still counts (and looks nothing like her). The caricature of the chubby fellow in the middle is interesting, and the girl on the left is my first attempt at a Manga type styling.

The Bad

From Reference

It's not that I didn't do many bad images from reference in this time period, it's more that I did little from reference at all (don't forget that half of July was already covered in my last sketches post). I forget who the model for the ink sketch was, but this doesn't look like her anyway. Also, the sketch at the bottom is of my wife, if my wife was fatter, uglier and looked like a man. This looks almost nothing like her. Dreadful.

Without Reference

Really, words fail me at how awful most of these are. Just terrible.

So that's about it really. I did say I'd write a little more on the preparation that goes into these sketch posts, so I may as well cover that here, along with a "toy" I desperately want for Christmas (no honey-who-I-know-is-reading-this-and-is-still-offended-by-that-sketch that's not a hint). Generally the work it takes getting the sketches into something displayable on the blog takes longer than both drawing them and writing the text to go with them.

Firstly of course I have to scan the images, often several pages of them, especially in cases such as this where I've put off scanning for over a month. I have a good scanner, but it's not exactly the latest and greatest, so this can take a while.

Secondly I have to chop out all the individual images I consider the best and the worst to be found on those pages in Photoshop and throw them into one image.

Then I need to go through each of the images and remove artifacts left by the paper and/or the scanner (wrinkles, grain, smudges, that sort of thing). Darker areas where the paper isn't flush to the scanner are generally a pain as they can be darker than the pencil lines. In extreme cases I'll scan again making sure I get a good scan. While doing this I try my very best not to damage the integrity of the original sketch, which isn't easy with light pencil on dark paper I can tell you ;)

Once all that's done I need to lay out the sketches in a relatively pleasing manner. I allow myself to resize the sketches if necessary, but I try to keep them all the same comparative size whenever possible. Doing this is very time consuming - it actually reminds me quite a bit of doing UV Unwrapping at work, the final stage of which is almost the exact same process.

Once all that's done I just need to pick a small part of the image for my header icon. Sometimes there's just nothing that looks interesting that's the right size, but I try to avoid resizing the image for it if I can possible avoid it. I don't know why, I just prefer them when they're like that.

The process probably takes about an hour per image (more for the larger ones such as the one here, but there tend to be less of them. Actually doing it isn't hard, but finding the time and the inclination simultaneously to do them can be a problem, which is why I've been putting these off as long as I could. It's the end of August though, and I want to get back on a better schedule, so I have most of the last month scanned already, I just need to lay them out for posting, hopefully in the next week.

Oh! The Christmas present (still not a hint dear). Well, this was announced today from Wacom (who do all the best graphics tablets). It essentially allows you to draw on paper, while sorta/kinda scanning what you draw on the fly. The paper is still the medium, but it, and how it interacts with a scanner, ceases to be part of the equation when it comes to inputting what you drew into the computer. It's expensive though, and the quality of the pen could make or break it. I don't know that I would use if for all my sketching, but for pieces I plan on inking anyway, or rapid pose sketching (which I prefer to do in pen to begin with) where lots of close sketches are drawn very quickly and separating them is a real problem, this could be a real boon. Fingers crossed... Y'hear that Santa?! (still not a hint...)

Playing Catch Up

I know, I'm terrible. I should update far more often than I have been. Let's just move on and pretend I'm updating regularly shall we? No? Oh OK, I can deal with that. What can I say, the new Assassin's Creed is pretty engrossing.

Actually today's post does have a little to do with catching up in general. I realised I hadn't posted any good/bad general sketching in... 3 months? Yeah, I think that's right. So this is a big catch up.  To save time I just threw the best and worst of the last three months into one image(With some exceptions that were prep sketches for things that may still happen).
You'll want to click this through to get a decent size.

You may note I threw in a couple of sketches for Wolverine that I forgot about for the Wolverine post. Other than that there's some muscle studies, some gesture drawings, some facial studies, yada-yada-yada. It's a real grab-bag of good and bad. Obviously I did more in the way of sketching than this, but this is the very best, and the very worst.

And there you have it. A short catchup post. I'll try to crank out another before the end of the week - though Burn Notice is double the length this week and I'm off to see Tron Legacy on Friday so time will tell if I succeed.

Blart #10: Wolverine

More specifically "Wolverine Slashing Prices With His Adamantium Claws,"  which is a quote from Spaced.  Simon Pegg's character Tim is working on a poster for the comic shop in which he works, but you never see the poster, hence this Blart was born.  And no, you're not missing any, I skipped from 7 to 10 - I may go back and do the two I missed at some point, but I won't be spending much time on them...  So, on to the price slash!

And there you have it. There's more if you want it - a little step by step, but really it's not the most interesting piece to have a step by step unless you really want to know about how to do a fake screenprint in ArtRage (I guess you could modify the technique for other software too though).

Firstly I did some rough sketches - I actually did these back in September, and then stalled on it; I wasn't happy with what I had and other things came up.

You can see that the general idea behind it didn't change much, except I wasn't sure if he should be in full costume or not, or which direction he would be slashing in.  Also, some of these b-l-ow, but I don't think I used references for any of them (not that this is an excuse).

After I drew these I took a couple of reference shots of myself posing. You don't get to see those because I'm a fat hairy Welshman with my shirt off, and nobody needs to see that before whichever meal you have coming up next. I took them mostly to see f the sort of pose I had in mind was even physically possible - it turned out it was, if a little awkward.

So time passed and I didn't think I'd get back to it, until I did the following unrelated piece on the 21st, and suddenly decided I would go back to Wolverine using a similar technique.  As it turned out I liked the following piece more than the finished Wolverine.

This put me in mind of some of the screenprinting I did way back when, and I though that would be a cool look to go with a process style limited palette. Open ArtRage, start drawing:

This last coloured one had each colour on a separate layer (they didn't even need to be the right colours, but this made it easier to keep track of).  I saved each layer out as a mask (including some text I added later) and then used each of them as a stencil in ArtRage which I painted over using the roller tool (high pressure, low load, lots of thinners)  Once it was all painted up I offset and rotated some of the layers slightly to give it a more rough and sloppy feel, and that was pretty much it.  The arm looks a little short, but it's actually slightly foreshortened - I managed to make it look less so because I didn't curve the line of his glove enough, which was rather silly of me.