Day 31: Late evening sketch.

Quiet day at the studio

It's been a quiet day drawing-wise. Spent the whole day doing everything else except drawing, since my hand got a bit sour yesterday and the idea was to take a rest for today. So didn't do any drawing the whole day, was resting and relaxing but the hand felt okay in the evening and couldn't resist touching the pen even though it was quite late when I started (23:36).

So. Woody Harrelson. Amazing actor, not the least for his work in "True Detectives". Around 40 minute sketch, with my weary eyes (I usually draw early, during the day), hence the mess with his left eye (his left). Not fully satisfied but came out somewhat recognizable to me?

Day 30 of the project!

Hands & Poses

Hello! It's 30th day of my project. By now the feeling is, I'm kind of getting the hang of drawing faces after drawing them for around 30 days, so it's time to step out of the comfort zone, which is THE REST OF THE BODY. I'm not fluent with drawing the body, let a lone hands. My male or female models usually come up a bit too stiff even standing, so you can imagine that drawing them doing something i.e. in different poses is even more painful, which is because I don't know what I'm doing.  So, for today the plan was to focus on the following:

1. Getting familiar with drawing hands

2. Working on drawing women (this time) in different poses. 

In a hand-drawing-exercise, I did some brief groundwork by reading on the subject in Andrew Loomis book about drawing hands "Drawing the head & hands", and checked out one tutorial on youtube. Drawing hands exercise was quite brief, around 1,5 hours. 

After this switched to posture drawing. Did some browsing in the internet and stumbled upon into this beautiful girl facing sunlight and worked on the quick sketch in around an hour.  Had a break and continued on with drawing some random poses for around an hour.

Day 29: Ricky Gervais

..in a Bath.

After drawing Steve Merchant felt like drawing another portrait and naturally it was Ricky Gervais. The bath photo, which I used for the reference was a bit unplanned pick, but it's so bizarre I couldn't resist. 1 hr sketch on A4.

Day 29: Hello Ladies!

Steve Merchant

Mad a quick sketch in around an hour in the morning of Steve Merchant, known the least from the tv-series called "Hello Ladies" in a bit exaggerated style (seen mostly the long neck), while thinking what to work on today. Here it is.

Day 28: Environment and Concept Design "Flying over the fjords"

Day 28, Digital drawing

Had this idea for couple of days, to experiment with environmental design, which is one of the things I wanted to concentrate on during this project. So I had an idea of drawing something snowy, with mountains or cliffs and made this fast sketch (around 10 min) yesterday evening, which I continued with today.

Here's the concept at current state. I tweaked a bit the overall composition, mostly with focusing on the position of the plane and also thought about adding a person (little boy) just below, waving at the plane.

Visual development and the initial sketch

Portrait of a friend

Day 27: Fisherman

Fast sketch of a friend, steering a motorboat while fishing. 1 hour, graphite pencils, A4.

John Malkovich

Day 26: Being John Malkovich

Sketch of John Malkovich. Graphite pencils H5-B6, A4, 2-3 hrs.

Day 25, "Not alone anymore"

Day 25, Fast concept

"Not alone anymore". Photoshop, couple hours.

25th day of the project: Portrait of a friend.

Half a way through the project

It's the day 25th! Fifty percent of the project is behind me. What is strange, is that I'm not fed up at all with drawing portraits. And that's definitely something I thought I would face that some point. So if it still goes well, why not to continue?

Anyhow, 25th day of the project? What would suite better than drawing a portrait of a friend and trying something new? As a medium I chose pencils first to draw raw outlines, 0,4 mm marker to make those more precise and "Indian Ink" to color the whole thing.

Here he is. Handsome fellow. :) Took me around 1.5-2hrs.

Day 24: "The studio"

My Studio

More than a corner and the desk really, but anyhow this is where I draw, in case anyone was wondering how I work. This is it. Tiny desk, with 21,5 inch iMac other stuff which easily keeps piling up. So usually it's a bit messier than in the photo.

The work setup depends on the task. If that's portrait, I'll usually draw from the screen, sitting in front of the computer, holding sketchbook. If that's something digital, I use my old intuos wacom, A5 size. Because for now I'm mostly by myself, therefore I'll lake to hear someone babbling about something just for the sake of background noise. Usually it's either radio, spotify or podcasts.

Day 24: Car sketch.

Arnolt Bristol Spyder Sport 2 S

Spent the whole afternoon, around 3-4 hours drawing this beauty from 50s, designed by "Bertone" company (specifically, designed by: Franco Scaglione) and remeniscing good old times from design institute when I was quite keen on drawing cars along few classmates.

In this one, was using "Masters of Car Design" by Larry Edsall as the main example and internet as well for reference check. Started out with rough hand sketch and finished up in photoshop.

Day 23: Wildlife

Day 23

Was watching BBC's "Life" documentary and sketching at the same time. Couple of hourse, 4 sheets of A4 sketches. Here are results. First one is colorized sketch in photoshop, rest are untouched.

Fast application of color in photoshop.

Original sketches

Day 22 Portrait

Day 22 Portrait: Martin Freeman

An attempt to draw Martin Freeman's portrait. 1 hour, graphite and color pencils on warm-grey, recycled paper. Not fully satisfied, although it was fun to draw with color pencils on different background.

Day 22 Portrait

Day 22 Portrait

1 hr, graphite-, color and sepia ("cretacolor") pencils on A4 recycled paper, 110 gm/m (warm grey).

Day 21: Andrei & Taru

Day 21: Andrei & Taru

Me & my sunshine. Portraits from family circles continue! This sketch, drawn with graphite pencils in 2 hrs on sketch paper was drawn based on the photograph taken in Venice last year. It was mid-day, sun was shining and it was very warm.

Day 20 Portrait: Anthony

Day 20 Portrait: Anthony

My take on Anthony Bourdain, in somewhat caricature-like style. 40 minutes, graphite pencils on A4 90gm/m sketch paper.

Day 20 Portrait: Sara

Day 20 Portrait

Felt like drawing something else than celebrities, something close to my heart as this is 20th day since I started this blog and the project. So here it is, my daughter Sara, 2 years old, lying in the snow while I took the photograph which I used for this drawing.

1-2 hrs on A4, 90gm/m sketch paper.

Day 19 Portrait: Bill Murray

Day 19 Portrait: Bill Murray

1 hr sketch. Graphite pencils on A4 90gm/m sketch paper.

Day 18 Portrait: Oh James!

Day 18 Portrait: Oh James!

Spent most of the morning working on my portfolio, deep in the jungle of html and css and felt like having a break of such 'serious' stuff. So, in the portrait exercise approached Daniel Craig as James Bond in exaggerated, bit caricature-like way. Just wanted to see where the pen would take me, drew without overthinking it too much.

Here it is, 1,5 hours. A4 90gm/m with 5H-8B graphite pencils.

Day 17, Digital drawing: Mecha

Day 17, Digital drawing

Wanted to to something different as bumped into fascinating dioramas and models by Satoshi Araki (https://www.pinterest.com/satoshiaraki1/) and got an idea to try something similar. As a result mostly copied the piece in front, only changed color and added supporting troops to the background.
The result is pretty rough and fast, spent around 1,5 hours on this one.

Day 17 Scarlett, take 2

Day 17 Portrait

I felt a bit unfinished, unsatisfied with the outcome from the previous day, so wanted to continue with Scarlett for a little while more and took a close-up approach. Here's the result.

Finished with adjustments in nose are in photoshop

As usual (so it seems) I'm having troubles with proportions. The nose came up bit too long in the initial sketch so I tweaked the sketch in Photoshop a bit to see if the sketch would improve. It did to me.

Initial sketch

Satisfied overall, except for the lenght of the nose. 

Day 16: Scarlett

Day 16: Portrait

Quick(ish), 1,5 hrs portrait of Scarlett Johansson. Graphite pencils on A4 sketch paper.
Most difficult part at this moment is the hair. It's something which I leave for last and yet the technique of mine is not sufficient to replicate hair. Something to tackle in the future I suppose...

Day 15 Drawings - monastery

Day 15 Drawings

Tigers nest monastery

Was experimenting with a scenery digital painting today for couple of hours in photoshop. Hard pencils (3 brush presets), no antialisation whatsoever. Used a photograph as a reference and painted directly on top of that, so in the monastery building itself, there are some remains of the photograph still visible. The outcome is still quite rough, but I'll let it sit for a while and might come back to it later at some point when I'll know better what to do with it.

Day 14 Portrait - Hello Natalie

Day 14 Portrait

Hello Natalie! My Take on Natalie Portman. 3-4 Hours on A4 (90gm), with mostly hard graphite pencils. Mostly satisfied with the outcome, except for the hair. Something to improve in the future.

Revised in photoshop

I noticed only after the drawing was done, the nose was just too long.

Original hand drawing

Day 13 Drawings

Day 13 Portrait

My take on Jack Sparrow / Johnny Depp. Quick sketch, A5 (14,8 x 21 cm) Water Color Pencils and Water Resistant Pencils.

Here's warmup exersice. Sketch with the same technique. Sunset over the sea.

Day 12 Portrait

Day 12 Portrait

Here is my take on Matt Damon. Took around 2 hrs to draw this one.
Medium: Hard graphite pencils on A4 90gm sketch paper.

Day 11 Portrait

Day 11 Portrait

Tim Robbins from his Shawshank Redemption - years. A4, graphite pencils.

And here's the reference image.

Day 11: Getting the geometry of the face right

Day 11: Getting the geometry of the face right

This morning I spent few hours watching couple of Youtube videos about caricature drawing. It's an interesting subject in itself and when linked to drawing traditional portraits (something I focus at the moment on) is especially interesting for me, because it appears to be twice or even more difficult when compared to drawing traditional portraits, yet many artists seem to succeed in drawing amazing caricatures which still have a resemblance of original characters. In other words, I was looking for some tips.

When making the house, start from good foundation.

This was what I was thinking when looking for tips. When following skillful artist's work, one can see - they know what they are doing. They have the vision, solid foundation, and usually know where things should be even before the actual drawing has started. So. There's no use in inventing the wheel twice. Learning is about making mistakes, but if someone has made those mistakes before you, figured out how to draw effectively and has some insight about the technique and approach, make sure you follow.

So, I was watching few youtube videos, when I bumped into one by Jonathan Appleby focusing on measurements of the face. You can go and watch that, I recommend it highly as it provides some background on how to structure the face and once you learn that, this knowledge can serve you later.
You can also check omy own notes as well.

It all starts from the circle

You can see the length of the face, as well as hairline.

The diagonal line, divided into 3 parts 

This helps in determing places for eyebrows and the nose

Eyes and lips

The place for the eyes is got by dividing the whole length of the face into half.
The place of lips is got by dividing the line between the nose and chin into 3 parts and the lip-line is the 2nd line from the bottom.

The width of eyes, nose and lips

The exact width of eyes is got, when the eye line is divided into 5 parts. The width of nose and lips uses the width of eyes as the reference.

The face

So, even though the result is quite squarish, somewhat generic and doesn't have the "life" in it yet, it does prove the point. If you're not sure where to place the features of the face while drawing, use this or similar approach. There's no harm in knowing the basics. 

Day 10 Portrait

Day 10 Portrait: Reese Witherspoon

Spent around 1.5-2 hrs on first attempt then realized it was off and started from the scratch with the new one. Spent around 40 minutes on second attempt.

Second attempt

First, initial attempt