Sketch Journal - Day 3

This is becoming more of a Saga of the Flat Tyre. :/

Guess it could be worse? Hope I'm not saying this too soon. :|

Sketch Journal - Day 2

I am going to add a page to my blog just for the daily journal. :D

Sketch Journal

I don't write a journal because later when I read it, I realize I only write about things that make me angry. Those are not the type of memories I want to keep.

So inspired by lots of other artists on the internet, I started a sketch journal ^_^ Here goes Day 1. Its a bit messy, but I hope I improve soon. I shall do this everyday.

Fail and learn

The reason I started Headshots Week is because some of my friends thought my shading style was boring. :| I like the old-school 2D shading with only a few tones and I usually use shadow work just like that. For example:

 

This is typical to the shading style I use. I could have worked harder on his hair, I guess. Anyway, so when my friends said I need to try my hand at soft shading, I started coloring headshots for practice and I was able to come up with some good results:

 

 

I tried varying the amount of soft shading I used with the extent of cell-shading. So in every picture here, we have two elements - one is the soft indiscernible shading done with a powdery sort of dry brush set at low opacity and the other is a smoother, defined ink that contours the shapes.

If you look closely at the purple drawing, you'll see that i used more definition and more softness. I don't like the result. 

In the green one, I used very little of both and I liked how it turned out but I wasn't sure I could use it often. For example, if I colour a comic with this method, there will be scenarios where the drawing needs more definition and this light look won't do. 

In the blue drawing, I used high softness and low definition. It kinda worked and I think it works best when working in dark tones. 

In the orange drawing, I used high definition and less softness. I think I like it because it makes the subject very clearly outlined but also manages to make it closer to reality (less cell-shaded, i guess).

But then these are my opinions. Maybe if my friends looked at it, they'd argue a different way. In any case, I got carried away with all the soft shading and I thought 'Hey, I should try to make a painting taking a photograph as reference and see how close I can get to it.' So I found this picture on the internet.

 
The reasons I chose this picture were : ONE, the limited color palette; TWO, the high contrast which makes her look almost plastic; THREE, some challenging parts like the sleeves and the hair.

Maybe I should have chosen an even less complex picture. Maybe something like this would have been better for a first attempt:

Maybe next time. :) Anyway, what I'm going to say is, I failed quite terribly. But once again I learned a lot. For one, I know I don't do enough paint-work. My deviantart account hardly has any drawings, mainly because I don't have paintings to post and I think its a waste to put sketches there (unless they're like WOW). Secondly, with this exercise I was able to test my ability to start with a definite idea and be able to stick to it till the end. I'd give myself a ... 40%? x_x Bleh, nepotism. Without blabbering on for any longer, here's the painting:

You don't even need to place them together. :P Its obvious. Sorry for the long post.
 

Skeptic chopstick

Lousy title, I know. I was watching this Korean film called 'My Tutor Friend 2' yesterday. The film's better than the first film, IMO. Its a romance comedy. Right now, its in my top five Rom-Coms. :D I recommend.

Anyway, so there's this scene in the film where the two comedic characters Poongi and his friend (never caught his name) are having breakfast with the main characters and they look at them with this skeptical expression.

Its hilarious, of course. XD But what I loved about these expressions is the very conspicuous use of chopsticks. I've seen so many Western films all my life that I end up using Western expressions in everything I draw. Although, Indians use a very different set of expressions, its good practice to learn as many facial expressions as possible.

So I drew this. They aren't exactly placed where they should be, but I wanted them to appear separately. Its a study, after all. I learned a lot while I was drawing. ^_^ It doesn't look exactly like them, but I had to stop. :D