Week 10 Sketch Dump

 Life drawing from last week.  Really pleased how these turned out.  I used conte pencil which is a medium I usually don't find much success in however I really like my line weight in these images and I'm starting to get a lot more confident with proportions, however the proportions in my 1 minute gestures could definitely be improved.  I haven't done any in depth portrait studies in a while so I think I might focus on that aspect of life drawing next time.

I've also been doing some fashion studies as I realised I have a tendency to put all the characters I doodle in the same sort of grungy clothing.  I figured these studies would be a good way to broaden my visual library and also help me work on character poses.

This will probably be the last sketch dump for a while as coursework deadlines are looming!

Week 9 Sketch Dump

Various life drawing.  Pretty sure I'm getting worse - Not really happy with any of these and I decided against posting the worst ones on here.  In the first image the 1 and 2 min drawings look way too lumpy and careless (granted those poses are always warm ups) and in the last image the 1 minute poses look far too stiff. I quite like how the style of the 5 minute drawing turned out however - I'm quite pleased with how the subtle shading and minimal facial features turned out, however I completely messed up her left arm and shoulder and her other arm feels pretty off too.   

This was my interpretation of a Hungarian Horntail dragon from the Harry Potter franchise for a friend's creature design project.  He wanted a range of different artists to interpret the following description in their own way:

"Supposedly the most dangerous of all the dragon breeds, the Hungarian Horntail has black scales and is lizard-like in appearance. It has yellow eyes, bronze horns and similarly coloured spikes that protrude from its long tail. The Horntail has one of the longesr fire-breathing ranges (up to fifty feet). Its eggs are cement-coloured and particularly hard-shelled; the young club their way out using their tails, whose spikes are well developed at birth. The Hungarian Horntail feeds on goats, sheep and, whenever possible, humans."

I tried to focus on the lizard like qualities and was inspired by the build of komodo dragons.  Was a good opportunity to try out my copic markers too as I'm usually too nervous about rendering anything with them.  I added the figure in for height reference but wish I hadn't now as it kind of ruined the image as a whole.   

Week 8 Sketch Dump

More tiny studies, 15 to 20 minutes each.  Starting to feel a bit more confident at blocking in shapes with my brush at 100 percent flow and opacity (which means I'm finally starting to focus on the big picture in my environments rather than getting lost in the details!) just need to keep practicing.  Didn't get as much environment practice in this week as I'd have liked.

Really pleased with how the second bottom right and top right one turned out.  The exaggerated curves were the product of rushing to get the figure finished in the 2 minutes I allowed myself but I really like the relationship between the curved and straight line work in those figure drawings in particular.

Completely messed up the right drawing with the massively long right arm so gave up half way through.

Tried to experiment more with style on the left drawing here.  Was going for sort of comic style line work but the proportions just look really messy and the lines are almost too clean.  Definitely prefer working in a more sketchy style, though finding the right balance between the two is proving tricky.

Week 7 Sketch Dump

Trying to get better at sketching environments.  This turned out really scribbly and the cross hatching didn't really work out the way I thought it would to convey tone and lighting.  Think next time I'll focus more on perspective and line work (and not use a biro.)

Live drawing from various places in London.  Still struggling to achieve clean, accurate flowing lines but I think I'm improving a little.

Some animals from London Zoo.  Need to pick better, more contrasting angles when rendering planes with straight lines.  I think the gorrila or the tortoise shell is the best example of this.

And finally a bit of life drawing using brush pen.

For week 8 I think I'm going to try and churn out some more detailed environment studies as I feel I've really been neglecting them lately despite environment painting being a major skill gap.

Week 4 - 6 Sketch Dump

Apologies for the lack of sketch dumping.  Been focusing on coursework after hours a lot recently which has left a lot less time for personal drawing.  

Sketch of a cool building I saw on my way home.  I want to start trying to do more on scene environment drawings like this because I feel it really helps me to build my visual library and work on my perspective drawing too.  

 Some drawings from a recent day trip to Broughty Ferry.

Stylised portrait.  Trying to render the planes of the face with dynamic lines.  Starting to get a bit more likeness of the subject when doing these kind of portraits but still got a long way to go.  The features are a bit wonky in this and I need to take more care measuring the distances between them for a more proportional likeness.

Starting to think more about the design of the protagonist of my game.  I always like to start off my character designs by doing random doodles of ideas before moving on to the silhouetting stage.

Raven Mocker for Sketch Dailies but I messed up the hands.

Doodle, mainly practicing rendering hair in pen.

Continuous line drawing.  Never tried one before but they're really fun to do and something I'd quite like to improve at.

Doodle of some sort of forest scene.

Life drawing.  This was my first attempt in a while (and it shows).  I really struggle with 1 and 2 min drawings because I focus too much on copying the pose exactly which is impossible to render in such a small time period.  

In this attempt I allowed myself to be a lot more scribbly and take liberties with the poses.  It felt a lot more natural and a lot less stressful.  Still lots of mistakes in all these drawings and I'm definitely going to have to be stricter with my life drawing if I want to see any improvement this year.  I think I'm going to start incorporating it in to my daily routine as a half hour warm up in the mornings before I start working on coursework. 

Lots of foreshortening issues (and what is going on with that neck??) in this one but I think I'm starting to feel more confident using pen for my life drawing work.

Next week I'll be down in London for the Strawberry Thief launch party and plan on doing lots of live drawing practice.  Really trying to improve on using pen and ink so expect lots of messy work using my new brush pen!

Week 3 Sketch Dump

 Here's some studies of trees I did in my sketchbook last week in preparation for the tree tests in my previous post!  And I also managed to get more digital stuff done than I thought I would in spite of the broken laptop (which is all good now!)

Here's some "tiny studies" of environments inspired by this ctrl paint video.  By doing these studies at a small scale it allowed me to focus less on the tiny details and more on the general form and lighting in the scenes.  I really struggle with environments so I thought this would be a good jumping off point before I do any bigger studies.  Each of these took between 15 - 30 minutes each.

And some more hands!  I currently have a folder of 50 hand references I'm working my way through.

Week 2 Sketch Dump

Not too much to show this week unfortunately.  I'd mainly been focusing on preparing my presentation for the Nine Trades of Dundee.  Nine Trades sponsored my internship on Strawberry Thief this summer and now that the project is more or less done I had the opportunity to meet some of the members and tell them about the game.  It went really well and everyone I met was really lovely and interested in the project.  It was also the first presentation I've ever done where I haven't started shaking with nerves which is a huge, huge deal for me and I'm really happy that I'm finally improving at public speaking!

I don't usually post my doodles on here but I thought I'd post the drawing below as I'm quite pleased at how it turned out - No reference was used and although there's a few issues (her head's a bit too big, her right hand should be slightly smaller as it's further away from the viewer, the right leg of her shorts should be receding further, her knees aren't defined enough, her left foot should be a bit bigger, the line work is a bit scribbly)  I really like how the posing/attitude/facial expressions of my characters are starting to shine through more.  

Aaand finally, I've been working away on some Gamemaker tutorials thanks to this fantastic Youtube channel ran by Shaun Spalding.  Pretty simple stuff so far but I'm starting to get the hang of it.  

There probably won't be a sketch dump for next week as I'm planning to give Duality some much needed attention, however I'm going to start doing some media tests for my project too.    

UPDATE:  So as of today my laptop and graphics tablet will be in a repair shop until the end of the week.   However I still have access to the uni computers so I'll be keeping on top of my reading list and my vector art for Duality.  I'm also planning on sketching out some rough ideas for potential characters and environments for my horror game.  Unfortunately though no laptop/tablet means no media tests or Gamemaker tutorials which effectively puts me behind schedule.  Going to have to work extra hard next week to catch up.  But hey, I guess if I'm getting these kind of technological blips early on in the year the rest of fourth year will be smooth sailing, right?  (Right??)

Week 1 Sketch Dump

In addition to project work I'm going to be posting weekly "sketch dumps."  This week I've tried to focus on improving my life drawing, more specifically trying to let my own style through (instead of copying the photo exactly) and getting faster at drawing within time limits.  I've mainly been using pixelovely.com for this but I recently discovered Croquis Cafe which has a much more diverse range of body types to use for reference.  

I planned to focus on environments next week but today I tried doing studies of hands in different poses and I'm even worse than I remember!  Therefore I'm dedicating week 2 to hands. 

Project-wise I'm going to be finishing up my 2D horror game case studies and making a dent in my reading list.  I'm also going to be doing some Gamemaker tutorials.

 I feel I'm slowly managing to get a style across although I think I'm going to experiment with mixing in some more dynamic, angular lines.   I have to stop being lazy with feet and hands and also improve at rendering quicker!

On the left I drew a quick portrait based on Kate Bush in copic markers.  I tried to concentrate on style but I definitely lost her likeness in the process.  Need more practice.
I'm really unhappy with how the drawing on the right turned out as it's totally disproportional - the arms are too long, especially her right one, the right hand is too big and the legs are too short.

 From left to right, 30 second drawings, a 5 minute drawing and a 10 minute drawing.  (Apologies for the dodgy quality, my pencils lines were far too light for the scanner!)

30 minutes for the drawing on the right, forgot to time the others!