Sketchbook: Dabelnedy

Dabel

Hi guys, my name is Dabelnedy, Dabel for short, Da for shorter.
I'll use this space as a progress map for myself pretty much like anyone else. C&C appreciated!

Dabel

20200407: Little egg study from Laurel D. Austin. Great style, I like how she manages to keep a loose painting very clean. Thanks to this study I've remembered:
1. the importance of edge control, defining where needed and using hard to lost edges for composition e.g. the egg yolk.
2. colors and values: Despite having a very limited value range, make it varied to prevent flatness, use the form as guide to reinforce each other. Saturate your hues as the material transitions from light to shadow (i.e. terminator)
3. Don't be lazy with details if you commit on them i.e. pepper sprinkles.

Dabel

20200408:
- Anatomy poses from imagination (2.5 hrs). It's so weird to stop a sketch when there's still so many mistakes all over the place. I know time shouldn't be taken into consideration when learning but erh. I'm the type that prefer to separate studies from work though reality isn't as simple. Seeing how much I struggled because of not regularly doing studies was not cool. Hopefully I've learned my lesson.



- Environment study - Nature (1.5 hrs): I thought it was gonna help me relax just wandering all over the canvas without trying to deliberately practice but it was the complete opposite haha. Spent most of my time trying to make something out of this chaos. Maybe next time!

Dabel

20200409:

- Environment study - Man-made structures (2.5 hrs): As I painted those I asked myself what I was actually learning doing this study. I think it'd help me to read some background information before starting these next time! Maybe it's got to do with the level of details I'm going for. This could be a combination of so many things. Oh well, just gotta keep on going!

- Anatomy study - muscle (1 hr): I originally wanted to draw some more as yesterday's poses from imagination study produced wonky anatomical structures. I didn't expect to produce only 3 of those in an hour. It makes me wonder how much I should clean those up vs basic roughs. The latter being most likely the smartest move.

Dabel

20200410:

 - Quick gesture drawings from reference (1 hr): Oof. Gesture drawing is hard. I've still yet to figure out how to get proper flow and good looking shapes. I dont even remember the analytical theory. Better grind 'til it's fine!

 - Clothes & Folds study from reference (3 hrs): The cloth felt more like value practice than actual cloth study. Maybe it's fine or I should find a better way to practice it next time around. For the shirt it was mostly about having some lasso fun. Though by the end it went a bit out of control and wasn't very efficient. I'll have to look up good practices. Still fun nonetheless!

Dabel

20200411:

- Quick perspective drawings from imagination (1 hr): Bad day for perspective but I'll achieve victory. Eventually.

Dabel

20200412:

 -  Quick gesture drawings from reference (1 hr): Tried to focus on motion lines for the 30s ones and think of structure starting with the 2 min ones. Stiffen everything up. Slows down. Gotta grab some more mileage. Cannot wait.

- Anatomy study - Portraits (7 hrs): Should have been a 2 hour practice at most. 1.5 hr in I was still fighting against structure and likeness. Tried to salvage the line drawing with value. End result is good enough though I dont like the smooth digital effect on the skin. The rendering pass was heavy grunt work also, used one charcoal brush. Next time if I still insist on using one brush, better pick the airbrush to save myself some trouble.

Dabel

20200413:

 - Anatomy sketches from imagination (2 hrs): I tried to better implement my latest study of the knee joint. Mostly remembering the different elements and where they are considering the motion. I also had some fun trying a more bulky body shape. Hard but fun task, failed to see certain parts such as trapezius/neck muscles deformation at that particular angle. How to inflate the pecs in that perspective without them looking all saggy. As well as the lower leg muscles, the anterolateral group and how the intersection points connect. Decent sized toes and feet would have been welcome as well. Still cool!

- Anatomy study - Forearms (1 hr): Aside from keywords like "bullet shape/Y shape tricks and tubes, I have forgotten a lot about that section. One of the many thousands to come.

Dabel

20200415:

 - Quick environment drawings from imagination (1 hr): Trying to be disciplined while being sick, ugh.

Dabel

20200420:

 - Painting practice (Couple hours each): The color version is bad freestyle i.e. no thinking. It actually made me want to do it "correctly" and got the value version down. I'll leave it unfinished since I ran out of time and also because of lack of proper understanding and technique. Mileage required.

Dabel

20200421:

 - Anatomy skulls study (2 hrs): Simple fun.

Dabel

20200422:

 - Anatomy study - Eye socket edge shading practice (3 hrs): Tried to be more conscious about how to produce my edges. Not a lot of variety yet as I try to get one technique down. Though I'm wondering if clamping values has its place or pushing contrast by default should be a no-brainer. We'll see! Grinding the mileage.

Dabel

20200423:

 - Anatomy poses from imagination (1 hr): Bad day, lazy and tried something too hard i.e. semi-realistic shading on a anime face. Next time! 

20200424:

 - Volume shading (4 hrs): Most fun part to do was the nose (started with it). Super struggles with eye rendering, likeness, lips. All that time spent on those "higher priorities" actually prevented me practicing fixing details and subtle nuances. Like fighting a boss underleveled. There should be better and more efficient practices but wouldn't be as exciting. Satisfying result at least!

Dabel

20200426:

 - Cloudy colors (2 hrs): Started this piece as a warmup following a Youtube tutorial. Autopilot mode made great colors. As the piece progressed I tried to have better volume and overall silhouette as well as good brush strokes but it's still too soon. Interesting note: the piece seemed quite saturated when I was working on it but not so much afterwards. Might be faulty perception or force of habit like using HSB sliders (something I remember Atey Ghailan said about his usage of HSB vs RGB).

Dabel

20200427:

 - Color study (3.5 hrs): Specifically trying to get accurate saturation. The warm yellow point light doesn't seem to be as pure and bright as it should be, I'll blame the screenshot. For the cloudy scene shot, I didn't work on the skylight much since it looked good early on.

Dabel

20200428:

 - (Artist) shading study (2 hrs): Hmm.. I [think] learned nothing. These days (more like forever) I'm a bit too self-conscious about my brush strokes and I don't know how to practice them efficiently. Though there's plenty of more important things to improve upon, sometimes it's nice to indulge yourself.

Dabel

20200429:

 - Skylight study: Got defeated by clouds. Next on the study list.

- Inspiration style sketches: Late night sketches based on Neo Tokyo first segment: Labyrinth Labyrinthos. Pretty curves are tedious.

Dabel

20200501:

 - Simple sketches: Low effort deliberate practice.

Dabel

20200502:
- Anatomy expressions study: Played around with different line drawing approaches; with/without underdrawing, without rotating the canvas, zoomed out, least comfortable views (3/4 view facing right ugh). The most terrifying sketch turned out to be Ranma front view + girl version...! The likeness was so hard to achieve (triangle shape face, proportions, eyes), it was astonishing. I plan on doing dynamic poses with him as a base, should be interesting.