Sketching sketching sketching

Today warm up session has been devoted to self portraits, whaaaaat?!

Want a self portrait for the web so I'm just playing with some ideas lately, this is one of them.

Ok, so it doesn't seem to be going anywhere as it is right now BUT it's been fun, and a needed milestone, maybe it evolves into something that worth further development or maybe not, but either way it needed to be out and done to jump to the next one.

That's the brilliancy of quick sketches, you can try tons and discard tons and let the milestones guide you in the right way.

I used to get engrossed for weeks into drawings that might or might not work. These warm ups have burnt something in my brain, brainstorming works, rough and quick works.

I'm finally allowing myself to embrace the "just do it" "doesn't need to be pretty" motto and encourage you all to do it too.

Go draw something!

Leaving Mirkwood, slooooowly

Not there yet, but it's getting closer :)

I know what's bothering me so much about this one, I killed the composition in every single possible way, overall wrong placings, the horizontal line, the verticals splitting in half the upper half, mirrored negative spaces, Bilbo right in the middle, how did I manage to do this? it can be mended though.

And this one is gaining positions and might surpass the other composition in the end, not yet but it has potential. The big problem with this one is that there's too much dead space, and that barrel needs to be lifted, moved around and overlapped with other elements, then it might work... (and for crying out loud that hand must leave the center of the pic again, how does Bilbo manage to get in the middle all the time?)


Right now I think that overlapping is key, and unbalance, I need to break the quietness, it's time to go bold! don't you think?

Illustrating the Hobbit: Leaving Mirkwood

Bilbo estaba ahora en un túnel oscuro, flotando en el agua helada, completamente solo
He was in the dark tunnel, floating in icy water, all alone

There we go, skipping Mirkwood without mercy. The dwarfs and Bilbo finally get out of the forest, but poor Bilbo didn't notice an important detail missing in his plan :)

"He was in the dark tunnel, floating in icy water, all alone - for you cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels. Very soon a grey patch came up in the darkness ahead. He heard the creak of the water-gate being hauled up, and he found that he was in the midst of a bobbling and bumping mass of casks and tubs all pressing together to pass under the arch and get out into the open stream"

These are the 2 roughs I'm pondering:

This one is truer to the text and does have a confinement feel to it but I'm worried about it getting too busy, I didn't even add the barrels and Bilbo in it, on the other hand for this scene I kind of favor a long format vs. my usually loved squared formats.

This other one feels better in my eyes, it has more interesting shapes, some areas to rest the eyes and overall more possibilities, but it will only work the way I want if I manage to accentuate more the perspective and put Bilbo in the very foreground, the key will be in being able to lower the horizon line enough to make the viewer feel like floating in the water right there behind Bilbo *I think*. The only thing that I'm not sure about this one is the format, I usually love square formats but for this illo maybe a long format would be better....

I'll start playing with some line drawings tomorrow and then decide.

Illustrating the Hobbit: lanterns to the shore - pencils done

Check this out, I've just noticed about this today while merging the scans in PS, I scanned the illo in 3 parts and upside down, and somehow they make much better abstract paintings unintentionally than the finished illustration does on purpose. I have encountered feelings about this right now, excitement for the chance of strong new paintings hidden in this illustration and sadness because they're happy accidents instead something elaborated on purpose.

But the post is about the illustration itself and here it is, it's been three weeks of working on and (mostly) off on this one and now that it's done is time to move on.

I am glad for the potential it has for the final piece but I know that even when I've stick to my goals and made a finished drawing before picking up a brush it's not what it should have, it should not be focused on anything other than stating the values perfectly, but somehow I've been caught up in fiddling with tiny details instead of values (which still need some severe adjustments).

What I'm happy about is that, even if it needs some tweaks on the values, I know exactly where and how much, and even if I've gone way too far with unnecessary detail now my brain and my arm know exactly every shape and movement and it's going to be so much easier to paint it, I have a much better understanding of the image and how to control the eye flow around it.

Now a secret between us, using a kneaded eraser to lift up the graphite back to white for the lanterns is not as good an idea as it appeared to be, using white chalk over it ain't the brightest idea either...

Ok, here's the first linework that was the skeleton to all this drawing, from the moment this line work was done all my body has been urging me to stop drawing and start painting, the devilish little teresa on my shoulder kept whispering that it was more than enough to get to painting. Even if I followed the little sensible teresa advices and finished the drawing it'll be used as one more reference, it's served it's purpose to let me familiarize with the surroundings, the shapes, the values, the flow and the mood I want, but the base for the painting will be a rough line drawing similar to this one.

The palette I have in mind will range from dark blues to fuchsia unless the color thumbs get to look too weird.

But that won't happen yet, I'm going to let this one rest because I'm too much into little details about it right now and I don't think that will be of any good to the final painting, also my goals included a "finish all the drawings first, for cohesion" and I'll try to stick to that (for as long as I can :P)

Baby's first value study

Today I've just tilted the drawing table, taped an A3 paper to it and made a value study of yesterday's quick sketch, guess what, it finally looks like her! Could it be more finished? yes, quite a lot more, but I don't think it's needed, it's served its purpose already.

After spending almost 3 hours working on this, studying every plane and shape of her head, I feel like I have a much better understanding of her facial features than I did before, drawing values really force you to pay much more attention to all the little details and to realize what's where. And maybe when I make the next one I'll have to swallow these words :)

I don't feel like starting the color sketches yet so probably there'll be more quick sketches and value studies in the near future, though I feel much more comfortable already, even with this sore shoulder, I could do with a massage, volunteers?

One more warm up sketch

Better but not there yet, though it's already resembling her. This one deserves another attempt, without the time restrain since, in an attempt to loosen up my arm and wrist, I'm doing these pretty fast, for me anyway, I know people who can get finished colored sketches in 10 minutes but I'm not one of them.

Things to have in mind for the next one: the eye is still a bit large but not too much, and probably what's making the huge difference is the shape of the eyelids, they should have a bit more roundness.

I think it's time to start alternating these roughs with more finished drawings that'll allow me to define the shapes better, and following my friend Ben's advice I'll work on those bigger, probably that'll help.

Baby portrait operation: face

This is the first attempt I make at sketching her face. The bad thing about it is that it doesn't look like her AT ALL, the good thing is that ...it looks like a baby? an old baby with a bit of a mustache?

On the bright side I think I know where is the problem/s, I did the eyes too big, moved the angle of the nose and - trying not to add too many shadows to avoid an old look - I just lost the roundness of her cheeks and forehead, not to mention the mustache.

All that should help for the next one, right? or maybe I'll just create a brand new human being mwahahahaha!

Shaking the rust away

Have you ever got that mix of excitement and fear when someone ask you about a possible comission in the manner of "could you make it look like *insert here one of your previous works*"?

I recently have and it's kind of scary, I don't like that feeling because I know that any piece that I begin with fear won't flow, won't work at all, so I've decided to take action and just get familiar with the subject, I'm lucky enough to have several pictures of this little sweetie around so why not, right?

So I'm gonna aproach it in different ways:
a)warm up with some gesture drawings of the baby, full body.
b)sketches of her facial expressions to get familiar with the subtleties.
c)value sketches, the goal is to get so used to her correct volume and proportions that it comes natural.
d)color swatches and color sketches to see which ones suit her better and getting confident to use them boldly.

Sounds like a plan? It does to me and after drawing this first gesture I feel more confident already.

I'll share the wip of this process, for better or worse, wish me luck!

Sketching

These past months I haven't been too productive, at least in my main field which is watercolors, just some marker sketches here and there and digital stuff. But these days I'm having the chance to sketch human figures from life and it's bringing back the urge to pick up the brushes again, I recognize this kind of itching so yeah!

Here are some of the quick sketches I'm doing, not refined but that's not the purpose, the goal is loosening my arm, wrist and fingers. On a side note I'm loving the texture of this paper for graphite work, it feels really good under the pencil, even if at first I bought it for watercolor sketches.

Muffin top illustrated, take one

Lately I haven't been very productive but my friend Angie has put a stop to that asking me to make some illustrations, so I'm having fun doodling, inking and playing with them in photoshop.


She's starting an awesome fashion blog called Fashionista Mileurista (it's in spanish but I'm pretty sure with time she'll make it available in both spanish and english, go take a look!) and wants some illustrations to go with the articles, since one of the images she wants is a muffin top and I was already in the funny-faces mood I came up with this one that may or may not be suitable, either way I did have so much fun with it!

Now I'm thinking that I'll probably play a bit more with this image on paper, with watercolors, to see how it looks.



I've promised to make a little smiling face for her Twitter icon too which hopefully is up to par with the ones she made years ago for mine, I like the final linework but was worried because once resized to the actual tiny icon size it wasn't working, a cropping was needed but I still wasn't happy (click on the image to full view it and you'll see the cropped icon actual size) and after taking a look at it she agreed too.

So this is currently in the middle of a changing process, as much as I like the idea of having her inside her bag that will most probably be edited out, and I need to figure how to keep that scarf in, happily floating around and still not interfering or getting the face reduced.

So revamping the current icon is already in my to-do list and -since I've been playing with styles for the blog illus- I'll probably give a shot to the idea of a more realistic detail of a muffin top seen from behind too (such as the rough sketch on the left of the page), in graphite/charcoal and watercolors.


What do you think? quirky and crazy fun or serious and realistic?

Going romanesque in this new watercolour painting

This one is a detail of the romanesque main facade of the Basilica de Santa María la Mayor in Pontevedra, I took many photos of this doorfront and surroundings when I was there last september with the idea of a series so it was due time to make the first approach. I chose this one first because I loved the idea of having a figure sculpted with glasses on, and I liked the fact that a skull was included too.

Each time I think of Galicia the 2 words that come to mind are "green" and "stone" that's what I want to be the focus in these series, today I'll be working in some texture tests, so instead of a color test I'll see what kind of pigments will work better for texture purposes.

I don't usually share the process previous to painting, right? it's different for each new painting I do. Here are some rough sketches and value studies for this one, I always said my sketches were rough, that explain my "rough sketches" to be uber rough.














Links to the whole WIP: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5

The man himself

This time one of the projects for the color group is portraiture, it was supposed to be better to choose someone we don't personally know yet I wanted someone familiar and since Alice will be airing soon it felt like a good idea to make my own little homage to genius Tim Burton, plus there are beard and wrinkles and colored glasses and crazy hairdo, that can't fail!

So far I've finished the value study, after hours of hard work while I was doing the pencils it was surprisingly fast and easy to do the monochromatic painting, half hour aprox. and enjoyed one single second of it, no struggles, not doubts, no pains, just fun! Maybe so because I wasn't putting any pressure on me, just thinking that it was only an intermediate step and any error could be fixed in the final piece.

I should have done it in a better paper but I just wanted to bring on the paint so I did it over the pencil drawing. How I managed to splash paint on the other side of the little palette remains a mistery...

Now there's only the finished painting to do, I'll try to approach it relaxed, if I mess it I will always have this one, right? Who am I trying to deceive, I'll be nervous and hesitant because I want a great final portrait, the sky is the limit!

Here are the pencils before adding paint (click to enlarge):



Links to the whole WIP: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5

Ready to rumble

Quick update while I wait for the watercolor paper to dry after stretching it.

This is the final sketch on the watercolor paper, as soon as it dries the fun begins. I'm thinking greens and yellows or peaches for this one, then reds browns and purples, I want ot try perylene maroon + manganese blue since they made a nice reddish eggplant color in one of my swatches.


Links to the whole WIP: Step 1 (rough), Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5, Step 6.

One more christmas card in the making

It's midnight already but I thought I could post the sketch of the 5th card before going to bed, BTW the "stuffed with love" sentence I put there is not going to be part of the illustration, it was floating in my mind while I was quickly sketching it, it gotta be the best sentence in a zombies' game EVER, true, in the actual game you can throw these sweet teddies that say "I'm stuffed with loooooove" and then explode taking down lots of zombies ^____^. I'm sleepy, ok?

There will be only 1 candy bar in the final illustration, I was just checking the best positioning while making the sketch.

Can you see the resemblance with the teddy in my banner? yes, who said I'm not good at portraiture...?

Links to the whole WIP: Step 1 (rough), Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5, Step 6.

BTW, deviantART is giving a discount offer this week, 30% off any greeting card until friday, so if you're interested pay a visit there, it would be great if you'd check my store if you see something you like, these are the greetings in it, click on the image to get redirected there:

September swap

Well, I've just received an email from Reni saying she got it, I'm so glad that the small painting arrived safe and sound and that she liked it, I guess now I can post it and why not as a little step by step?

It is based on one of the drawings I made during my trip to Galicia during early september, we have an old little quince tree there, I have no idea how old it is, sure older than me, it feels great to sit on that wall so what better idea than taking the sketchbook and draw for a while?



And the step by step (ok, I know, it's easier to see them if they're not changing constantly so here are the finished quinces and the former graphite sketch), now I can sit, relax and wait for my own surprise in the mail, can't wait to see who's from!

Quickies

Months ago, during a stressing couple of weeks at work, my friend Angeles started to send to my cell a photo a day of a stuffed monkey named Cholo, everyday he was doing a different thing and she accompanied the photo with a description of "his day", Cholo's daily agenda put a smile on my face every time I got one of those messages and I decided someday I'd paint some of those.

This morning Angeles was really sick and I went to make her company, I didn't want to disturb her so I thought it was a good moment to make some sketches of Cholo's anathomy, yes, I've never done it properly with the human body yet here I am doing it for a stuffed doll, what can I say. It was due time though, I've been delaying it but I think it's a good moment now, while I prepare the next lantern painting carefully these Cholo pics will take the pressure off my shoulders, right?

So here are some head quickies, some hands and some feet.







Sweetheart get well soon!

Feeling a bit gloomy today

Teresa's surroundings

July project with my dear pals, sketching weekly whatever is around us and related to us, I'm liking it a lot so I'll probably keep doing it, I've started it in my new small Fabriano Venezia, it's a good sketchbook to use a lot of mediums plus is small enough to fit even in a pocket.

Last saturday I had breakfast with my brother and my friend Angeles as usual, so while I was waiting for the bus on my way I decided to sketch a bit, it's right next to my house and it looked a good subject, I wasn't as fast as needed and before I noticed the bus was going away, without me, and the bus driver was looking at me with that kind of look.., a mix of evil pleasure and shock, I still got to have my "americano" brunch, YUM!



And these are from the clinics where I work, late at night or early at morning are perfect quite moments to take a few minuts and make a quick sketch:




And the ones from the subway, SHAME! each time I look at those.... EWWW! anyway practice makes perfect, I don't know when I'll get brave and bold enough to take the sketchbook out again in the subway and sketch my fellow travellers.

Lunch with daddy

That's it, or maybe not, for now I'll call it done but maybe I'll revisit it in the future because I'm not that happy with it right now, but since it's gone a long way already I'll let it rest for a bit.

The scanner has done something with the contrast, it screams a bit, anyway this is it


So after looking at it for quite some time the analysis comes to this:

- The center of interest: the bug, it does grab the eye so one minipoint for it BUT it grabs it and doesn't let it go anymore, yikes! I've gone too bold and that should be the thing to fix if I revisit this pic.
- Unity: After the addition of Raw Sienna and some Quin. Burn Scarlet toad and the greenery are better binded, the con is that the blue irises are not working after all, funny that I chose blue on purpose for contrast, it seemed a good choice when the greenery was going to be blue/green instead of yellow/green.
- Eye Flow : Other than the strong contrast between the bug and the rest I'm happy with the movement of the composition, is much more dynamic than the original concept. The upper part is kind of a dead area right now, I added it to give some room to the action but maybe it's cropable.
- Values : The kid, I love her in her own but she has so light values compared to the toad that she looks a bit washed out, I don't even wanna try to compare her values to the bug's 'cos they're in completely different leagues.
- Colors : I wasn't going for a realistic look at all so I chose colors that could work in a cartoonish image or rather I indulged myself using colors that I don't usually use but that make me happy (I'm looking at you Spring green ^^), then I tightened up as I usually do and ended up having to go for classic colors to "fix" the unity, a pity, but I'm still happy with the spring green :)
- Opaque white : my new best friend, I didn't need to use it at all here, yet I found myself adding extra blue in the bug's wings and sweat just to be able to put some opaque white there, note to self --- YOU DON'T NEED TO DO THAT!

It's been a long way baby :



Links to the whole WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, step 6

War of Opaques begins

It's decided, the first attempt for may's study of opaques will be Ernie taking a bath with his beloved rubber duck, it seemed mandatory to do such a classic, and looks like a good choice to test some of the opaques I have and make them work together with transparents, the hard thing for me will be to use them trying to get advantage of their characteristics as opaques instead of dilute them to use them as any other transparent color.

I've done a couple of quick sketches and decided on the composition of the image already, yes, it's pretty rough and it's as elaborated as it's going to be, I don't feel like spending more time with the line work.





Links to the whole WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4