I am finally posting the gallery of the Facial Expressions Sketchbook project. This is the second sketchbook project. And just like the first project it was interesting and a great opportunity for growth. I had trouble at times with getting thing in the right places. There are some eyes that are too close and some noses too long. But, as you would hope, by the end of 50 days of drawing facial expressions, I got better at getting things in the right places. Occasionally I would choose an expression that would give me a challenge and I didn’t always get it right. Overall, this was a great project and I really enjoyed it. I liked that the reference material I used used models of different genders and ethnicities as well as a progression of ages. It meant that I started with models in their 20’s and progressed to models in their 70’s. I did not get to where I could create the expression quickly and with just a few strokes or minimal lines. That is something I am still working on. Enjoy the pictures.
I have started the new sketchbook project that I mentioned in the previous post. Though at this point I’m not sure how new it is. It’s coming along, I am about halfway through the sketchbook. So, I thought I would fill you in a little. And by a little, I mean that this will probably be a short post.
Day 1 Body In Motion Sketchbook
As I expected, this project has been a challenge. I have struggled to get some consistency. I think it is the nature of the project and the images I am working from. Not the quality. More the poses themselves. I am not used to drawing full body poses, figure drawing.
I find I have two challenges. The first, which I’m getting better at, is scale and placement. Which sounds like two different things but in this case, not entirely. I sometimes have trouble fitting the entire pose on the page. This is sometimes the scale that I don’t get quite right and sometimes it is placement. That last is an issue I have struggled with when doing portraits as well. I tend to start with the eyes too high and lose the top part of the head.
The other challenge is proportions. Some of the errors I have made are things like getting the head too small for the body, or too close to the body. Sometimes the legs aren’t right compared to the rest of the body. And I’ve even gotten the body a little too long or tall depending on how you want to phrase it.
Day 2 Body In Motion Sketchbook
I do have some poses that I have gotten much more right than I expected. Even when I thought I’d chosen a really hard pose. So, I keep going and keep trying. I do find it interesting to see how the body moves and the contortions it undergoes when doing certain things. Those stranger angles and poses I don’t choose to work from. I may attempt some as the project continues. But for now, I have enough to master.
As I usually do, I’m including a few examples from the Body In Motion Sketchbook Project for you to enjoy. I will be posting the gallery of the facial expressions soon. I’m a little delayed in posting that. I did a not very smart thing New Year’s Day and injured myself in a way that makes a lot of things, including, mousing and typing uncomfortable so I’ve had to pick and choose the things I work on and when. And while I am on the mend and finding things that help, some things just take longer to happen right now.
I took a little time to relax over the end of year holidays. I enjoyed the extra time off from the day job last couple of weeks. I didn’t have any big plans for the time aside from sleeping in and working on some art. Even with the relaxation time I managed to keep up with the current sketchbook project, Facial Expressions so I thought I’d give you a bit of an update on it.
Wow did those 50 days go by fast. I have just a couple of days’ worth of pages left in the sketchbook, and I will probably have it completed by the time I get this posted. Which means I am nearing the end of this project. It has been interesting for me. I started out rusty, as I mentioned previously and then got a bit better, and then I slipped a little again. For the most part I have found my footing again and most of my exercises look right, though there will be the occasional expression that I just don’t quite get.
So, what happened? Well, to fix some of the initial placement and proportion type of issues I had I reverted to the basics that I know. Which is to use the eye as your measuring guide. At first this was fine and then I started being much more rigid and specific with the measurements and I started to lose some of the character in the expression. As a response to this one night, I just drew some of the basic shapes I was seeing and then started to expand from there.
I went from being very precise and measured in my approach to relaxing and using very loose strokes to start out and get the basic idea of placement and shape and then I would fill things in from there. And amazingly, it works. That’s a big step for me. To go from controlled to relaxed. I still have days where I can start out like that, controlled, especially if it is a particularly intimidating expression. Or even when doing different subjects. If it’s something I’ve never tackled before, or even a few things that I have tackled before. I can tense up and get too precise and cramped in laying in the basic shapes and then it takes longer and much more erasing.
And now, sooner than I expected, I am at the end of this project. I do have the next sketchbook project already planned. However, this project has made me think of a few more things I want to work on. For example, a good pose to go with each facial expression. Because you know, some expressions are not just in the face, they are in the whole body. And I want to learn to capture that. With that in mind I think my next project, though not that directly, will help get me there.
I know, what’s the next project? I have a great book “The Human Figure in Motion” that I purchased several years ago. The nature of the plates in it is to show how the human figure looks from different angles while doing different activities. I have not done much figure study work so I think this will be a really good exercise for me and give me a chance to look at how the body appears in these different positions.
As the plates/pictures in the book are taken using a high-speed camera around 1955, and because they are from a distance great enough to capture the entire body, there is some sacrifice in the detail. Detail is one of the things I can get lost in when I’m doing a drawing, not that it’s a bad thing, but sometimes, I get so caught up in the detail that I don’t get the overall form right. Another reason I think this will be a good exercise. There will be more of a focus on form rather than the exact detail.
And just as I was a little apprehensive about each of the previous projects, I am a little apprehensive about this one. I expect to take a few days to get my bearings and proportions right. And I think I am prepared for things to look really ugly at first. They won’t be as exciting sketches as what I have been working on, even with the facial expressions. And that’s ok. These are the stretches and warmups that we do to become better artists.
I expect, that like I have done with the last couple of projects, that I will be doing additional art pieces and sketches along the way. I did one the weekend before the New Year’s holiday that I really wanted to do. It’s a marker piece. And I have another one that I have the outline sketched out and I’m just waiting on the markers of the right colors to arrive so I can finish it. That one may turn out to be really interesting; I’m thinking of including some background and foreground.
So that’s where the art projects stand right now. Enjoy this sample of the Facial Expressions project and as with the first project, I’ll create a gallery post so you can view them all.
An additional piece I did over the year end holidays
Full disclosure regarding the link to the book. I have no affiliation with Amazon or anyone else so if you are interested and happen to find it some place else, go for it.
As promised, here is the entirety of the sketches done as part of my first sketchbook project. As a reminder, I started out intending to participate in Inktober for 2021 but due to some misunderstanding on my part I decided to do Drawtober 2021. That changed again at the end of the month when I decided to just keep going and finish out the book.
If you are counting, yes there are 49 pictures here. I had one page that I accidently left blank. I considered putting the blank page in just to be silly but decided against it. Enjoy the pictures, and seeing the progress.
Day 1
Day 2 – Project name revised
Day 3
Day 4
Day 4 again
Day 5
Day 5 again – more interesting
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23 – Quokka!
Day 24
Day 25 – Almost Hallowe’en
Day 26
Day 27
Day 28
Day 29
Day 30
Day 31
Day 32 – November now
Day 33
Day 34 – Cassowary!
Day 35
Day 36
Day 37
Day 38
Day 39
Day 40
Day 41
Day 42 – It’s a turtle
Day 43
Day 44
Day 45 – Platypus
Day 46 – that face
Day 47 – Preview of the next project
Sketchbook Project 1 – Originally to be Inktober 2021 and then Drawtober 2021
It has been a bit exciting around here this fall. I have been tackling projects and making so much art I am excited and stunned. No really. I don’t remember when I have done so many pieces of art, either full pieces or sketches in such a short amount of time and even so much in one day. I would credit both the daily sketch projects and the experimentation and use of a couple of new media.
Quick side note because someone will ask. And I just looked it up. If you are wondering why sometimes you hear or read media and mediums used regarding art and are confused here’s the explanation I just found. Medium(s) is the materials used to create art, such as oil paint, pastels, pencil etc. Media is the plural of medium, so they mean the same when it comes to art. I found the explanation here.
Now, on with my story.
I have been wanting to do more digital art, along the lines of drawing or painting, not just the 3D digital art I do. I’ve tried a couple of different programs, but I haven’t put a lot of time into really learning how to use them. As an effort to start to get comfortable in at least one of the digital art programs I took one afternoon and opened up Adobe Fresco and decided to make a cartoon like mushroom, or maybe a storybook type of mushroom. It came out pretty good. From there I tried taking a sketch I had made and set about recreating it digitally. Things were looking good, and I was thinking I might have found something that I could get comfortable with. So, I decided to take a sketch of a crooked Christmas tree that I did late one night and work it up as a digital painting. That became this year’s Holiday card and t-shirt.
Storybook Mushroom in Fresco
I continue to do pieces in Adobe Fresco. Most, right now, are quick sketch sorts of things since I’m still learning my way around all the brushes and layers and so on. Right now, I’m looking for a good fur brush for a couple of things I want to do. Even though I am looking for a fur brush, at the moment I mostly use the two basic marker brushes. Which leads me to my next new adventure in art-ing.
I’ve started using markers. I got a bug in my brain one night to try them. I think it came from a couple of things. One, was watching an artist drawing a Venom cover while basically being interviewed for Adobe Max this year. The other, probably has something to do either directly with Inktober or watching some artists on Instagram. At first, I thought I would just use the set of Prismacolor markers that I purchased several years ago and haven’t used. I thought that since I already have them, they would be a good place to start. And it turns out they work pretty well.
Christmas Stocking in Fresco
But I confess, what really intrigued me were the Copic markers. I’ve heard about them for a few years, even sort of looked at them one in the art supply store. But, as I was not using marker at the time, and they are not inexpensive, I didn’t bother to pick any up. I also couldn’t figure out what the big deal was about them. So, I did some research.
Here are the cool things about them. They come in three versions that all use the exact same ink. The Sketch version has the largest number of colors. At current count that would be 358. The ink is refillable. The nibs are replaceable. I was excited to see that they have four different colors of grey and each of those come in eleven different tints. Oh yeah. This is cool.
A little more research helped me understand why they are used by artists to create pieces. If you’re like me you use the markers you get at the local box store and try to color with them and you get all these streaks and such when your strokes overlap and if you try to fix it, it just makes it worse. So why use markers. It turns out there are two types, water-based, and alcohol-based. What you get at the local box store are usually water-based. They are less expensive as well. The Prismacolor markers I have and the Copic markers are alcohol-based. They behave differently when the color hits the paper and if you do it just right, they don’t streak like the water-based markers too. Oh, and they layer beautifully. The only downside to markers is that, unlike paints and many inks, they are dyes and not pigments which means they are not light fast. They fade when exposed to light for too long. They are great for creating a piece and then scanning it at high resolution and using the digital copy to create prints and other things from.
Frog created using Copic and Prismacolor markers
I decided I would worth it to pick up a small set of the Copic markers to try them out. And if they worked well, I have my Prismacolor ones that can help to fill in some missing colors until I get them in Copic. The one big difference between the two brands is that though they both come with a chisel tip on one end on the other end the Prismacolor come with a bullet tip, which is short and good for more detailed or more precise lines while the Copic comes with a brush tip for the other end, which is much as it sounds, longer, more flexible, like a round paint brush without the hairs. Because of the difference, and my tendency to really like control over what I’m putting down, I wasn’t sure how I would like the brush tip on the Copic. That changed considerable when I used them. Oh wow.
To start off I ordered as small set of Neutral Grey markers, that happen to come with a multi-liner pen. I thought they would be good to work in with the Prismacolor markers and would be a good base for some shading and such. But of course, I really wanted to give them a good try out. So, I chose a frog that I had done for my sketchbook project. It is mostly shades of grey with some splashes of color. I was able to use the Copics for the greys and the Prismacolor for the splashes. And holy cow. I was so surprised, and stunned even, at how well they handle and how well the piece turned out.
Christmas stocking created using Copic and Prismacolor markers
And now I’m hooked. I turned around and ordered another set of Copics the next day. This time a basic set of colors. I find myself looking for opportunities to use them. And I’m doing a bit more sketching with them, though not as much as I would like, or I hope to. That’s a time issue, and to some extent a limited color palette issue. Though, I do have the Prismacolor markers to compensate for the lack of colors I have in the Copic. I also have a couple of ideas I want to try out with them and another medium that I think could be interesting.
So those are my new adventures in art-ing. I’m really excited about working in these two new to me media and I will have much more to say on working with the markers as time goes on. It feels like they are opening up whole new opportunities for creation and I look forward to seeing what I can do with them.
Snowman created with Copic and Prismacolor markers
