How my first life drawing practice went

I found a life drawing event in my area

and I had to go!

All the artist emphasis the importance of drawing from life, and you would think, yes of course it is important to practice, and I may just practice in my style, use other peoples life drawing to copy or why not just taking photo reference.

To really bring it to the point, you need to teach your eye to see what there is, not what you think there is. Art and photos from other people show you what they see and that is rarely what you would see yourself.

My goal was to look at the model and just draw exactly what I see. And that is harder than you think. We do build a version of the world in our head and live through filtering out all the things that we already think we know how they work so we can focus on something unusual. This way of living and drawing is prone to wrong perspectives, and odd repetitive mistakes. I have done it myself a thousand times. The other thing is, we also miss out on the opportunity to add new knowledge. Think about it, when was the last time you have payed attention on how many fingers there are on the hand... maybe when you were 2, right? Have you updated your knowledge since then? You drew the hand back than as a square with 5 carrots sticking out and maybe today you wonder why your hand drawing sucks.

 You have to draw what you see 

and correct the model of the object 

you build in your head.

So, there I was, sitting in the room with the nude drawing model in front. I see the body, but I can't see the model. All my anatomy knowledge was distracting me from drawing what I see. So I implemented a trick.

I started drawing shapes, 

negative space shapes,

and I compared measurements  

I started drawing the things I didn't know. That is the shapes around the body. It was completely new to me how the body fills up the space and as I brought my brains attention to something new and unusual, I was able to really see what there is.  How the arm holding the hip builds a triangle, the big square made out of both legs and the floor. This helped me to go through even most challenging poses. Because this way, I never asked myself, how I learned the arm is jointed up the the shoulder, or how are the hips positioned on the chair, i just drew shapes that I could see.

2 min poses: Here still thinking too much about shoulder joining up, torso being three heads high, etc...

10 min poses: Slowly finding the shapes around the body and working in big lines. The back and bottom are one tilted line, the arms and chair another, all builds a triang.e

20 min poses: Finally I am drawing what I see, there are triangles, s-curves, bony rounds

By the end of the class, I was able to draw what I see. And it worked so well. I then implemented that way of looking also on observing the shades. What shapes are the darkest part of the shade, how long and dark is it compared to the rest. 

About the class programm

At the start the poses were 2-5min long, and then the model changed the pose. This time was just enough to warm up to the paper and to start concentrating. The next set of poses was held 10 min, and that was for just too long for a quick sketch and just too short for working out the details. The 20min poses were brilliant, as you had enough time to start with the rough shapes and then work out smaller shapes and more detailed shapes that would finally form the body.

random tuesdaynews

work
Finishing the roughs for book Africa was harder than I thought. It took me really long to finish the scenes as they have a lot of details. I am drawing different places of a big culture market. Lots of things, items, people, food, buzz and action. It is the most challenging project I had so far.

business
I have learned of the illustrator Kendyll Hillegas and her vlogs. In her videos she shows her studio, her work and daily tasks as illustrator (and mum). The basic element that I learned from her is: keep organized and effective.

private projects
I was inspired by Kendylls videos and last week I tried to do a vlog myself. But I failed quite obviously. I wasn't surprised, as it was my first one, but realize I will need a lot of training and a topic list, if I want to do it. Initially, I wanted to save some time and talk instead of write, but it turned out that taking a video without being a very chatty takes so much much more time for me. I guess, for now I will reserve to photos to show my face :-)

Illustrations are telling the background story

work
It is time for the roughs. I got good feedback for my story board and could proceed with working out basics of every page. That means, I will be drawing the characters making them look the same on each page (recognizable), design their clothes, and working out what is happening in the background. I am not putting all the work force in this stage as it still a draft and can undergo major changes. So far, I have been really lucky in the other books, so fingers crossed.

I get to tell a whole background story to a picture. The text gives me the lead on what is happening right now, and I fill in the history. For example, if the text says something like: It's a new day and the kid jumps out of bed all excited, my picture will also tell you if the kid has had a calm or rough sleep (maybe the hair is ruffled), whether it played or read something before the sleep, does it need a glass of water before bed, are there any siblings, favourite toys, preferred colour, boyish or girlsh, and so on.


private project
Inktober2018 - it is going well! 15 days done and 16 to go. Here is the result so far of drawing every day. Each picture took me 1h in total and brought me a handfull of new followers on instagram

Passive income - my aim is to sell prints of my current private projects and invest the money in getting me more time to work. We are talking about being able to pay another morning session in the nursery.

Coloured light sources are tricky

Work
The storyboard for "Africa" is finished and send in. I will be waiting for the comments. In the mean time I am working on some Ankara pattern. It will be a very colorful book!

Exercise
There is not much to say. I am continuing my training in shading and lighting and have at least two things to focusing on atm.

- Is the object 3D and correct? Did I get the right shape, did I block in the correct shades and lights parts? Do I communicate the right information about the object?

- Including special light sources. I am trying to understand how colour influences each other and am including some special effects. So, for example, this girl (foto below) with her orange shirt is sitting next to some apparent blue light and her orange top and skin tone will be influenced. I can't just mix orange and blue, as this will give me a muddy green and I have no experience how it looks in real life. So I am looking at light color wheel. The colours mix different when they are coming from a light. We remeber that taking all colours together we will get white. So, I am trying to figure out what colour I would see if I get to mix orange light and blue light... gray, turquoise?

Do the colours show different light sources? The blue light from the letters shines on her neck and through the t-shirt arm. But will it really hit all the folds in the same strength as I painted it here?

Are the values correct? Check in black and white if the shades are strong enough and if the object feels 3D. Here the folds are fine, but the whole shirt does not appear to wrap around her body. It needs to be a bit darker around the tummy area.

Inktober 2018 "splash" off

Splash!

Monday starts the Inktober challenge 2018 and I will participate with my own prompt list. The topic is toddler routines and I am hoping to create interesting colour-in pages for toddlers with pictures of activities they can identify with and that may help their grown ups to introduce as routine cards.

The tools I will be using are a blue mechanical pencil and a graphite pencil for sketches, fine liners by Staedler and Rotring for the final pictures, and then pen and Rohrers ink for maybe some fancy stuff or fonts.

The Bristol heavy paper by Canson is my absolute favourite for fine liner work. The surface is super silky on touch and the white is absolute. The ink doesn't spread and lines remain crispy sharp. It seems so effortless to slide the liner on the paper and the dried ink looks better than what a printer can press into paper... I am jut in love with it.

Happy inking everyone!

What is INKtober?

Keywords you need to know:

Jake Parker, illustrator and cartoonist, and a business genius. He is dedicated, diligent, and the most disciplined artist I have seen in online media.

Inktober - an ink painting a day, means to get into a habit of painting each day. This improves skills through daily training and sets your mindset into taking art as something that you can work on and not something just for talented people.
See more on: https://inktober.com/

What is staging in the process of creating a children's book?

Work

Book "Africa" is getting into the next step: staging! I create a bunch of test thumbnails drawing different perspective and/or different motion.

Staging is the process where you create the stage for a scene: where is the camera, what  perspective, who is going to be in the scene, where are they going to stand, what is the dynamic going to be?

For each spread (double page) I do about 7-8 and sometimes more. I try to be as creative as possible but also try to pay attention to my initial vision I had when I read the script for the first time. This first picture is an echo of all my experience with other books and movies, which means that probably a lot of people will have similar pictures in their head when reading the text, assuming we are exposed to the same culture. I feel it is good to present people with something familiar, so they can read the message quickly. But it is really important to go further than that first echo, in order to create something new. What I wouldn't want is to draw just copies of copies of memories (ref. Fight Club)

Private
I got some cheap brush pen markers to treat myself and play around with scripting and pattern design. I do feel it might have been one of those impulsive purchases ... ah well, why not. It is for fun and I will enjoy it.

It is meditative and helps me focus on the task ahead. (So it is kind of work related :-P) The tips are a bit fussy, but I also didn't want to spend a lot of money, so it will do just fine. I am enjoying to exercise my wrist and fingers and getting just the right pressure on the tip to paint smooth transitions between thick and thin lines. These are the type of patterns I do:

References
To learn what I learned about staging watch this great video by Marco Bucci!

Strong tint water colour and lighting exercise

work
I finished book JO (JO is a working alias), a story about a family that is just the mum and son, in August. The proofs have been send back to me for a check and everything looked fabulous. Now we just have to wait for the printing production. I am sitting on hot charcoal and can't wait to share the pictures, once the book is published.

The next book project is about the African culture. I did a handful messy paintings as a warm up training and posted them here below.

There is a big difference to my usual art. My usual pictures are quite pale, which was alright for Caucasian babies. To be honest I was always a bit worried to ruin the picture with a wrong placed shadow so I would work with very light washes. But that just wouldn't work for dark skinned babies. I had to soak my brush in paint and just go for it. And if you are not confident enough, they say "fake it till you make it!" And that is what I played by. The result is quite alright.

exercise
Time to get that value right! I have been watching these videos by top artists explaining value, and shade, ambient light, direct light, core shadows, cast shadows.... It's a whole library of words, and I am slowly getting the grips of a hand full of them.

In my work I just started to separate the way I deal with form shadow v.s. cast shadow. The first is to bring the 3-D feeling of the object to life, and the latter is to bring that object into context with the surrounding, where an other object throws a shadow on to it, or itself is throwing a shadow on other things. The little picture below shows the difference.

These shadows are influenced by the light around them of course, so I always have to ask where is the light source and what parts of the object does it hit?

It involves a lot of thinking at the beginning, but I am sure it will become natural soon.

postmortem INKtober 2017

2017

For the last years INKtober I set myself a goal to spontaneously paint whatever, as long as it fits in a 2cm by 2cm box. It didn't even had to be the same topic or style, and could be characters, objects or just patterns. The year before I had a strict list what to paint everyday, and it involved a lot of research for each picture. You can read about it in this blog (see link below).

So last year, it went well to start with, but after about two weeks it became more difficult to come up with something, as I didn't had an aim. Soon house work and baby took over and pictures were pushed to the next day, and promises to finish two in a day if I missed the day started degrading the morality of continuing.

However, it wasn't a waste at all. Just another trial to complete this challenge. You can clearly see what my favorite topic was :-) My little daughter and all her adventures. And this brings me to make this years topic. It's going to be all about toddler and their daily business.

What I will do different compared to the two years before is, that I will make a list, but of things I can probably paint in half n hour without having to research a lot. I will have an overall topic and I have a plan on publishing it either as cards or color-in pages.

What is INKtober?

Keywords you need to know:

Jake Parker, illustrator and cartoonist, and a business genius. He is dedicated, diligent, and the most disciplined artist I have seen in online media
An ink painting a day, means to get into a habit of painting each day. This improves skills through daily training and set your mindset into taking art as something that you can work on and not something just for talented people.
See more on: https://inktober.com/

How it went for me in INKtober 2016

I was determined to complete at least half the list, but I delivered only one weeks worth of pictures over a period of two weeks. The problem was ... read more here

Why I am painting with my tiny toddler

I love my work and I am spending all my free time and work time on drawing and painting. It is a big part of my life and naturally I want my child to take part in it.

My daughter is 1,5 years old and I am painting with her since she is 1. She will not only learn more about mixing colours and the feel of real paint, but she will learn something about me, her mummy, about my passion and my trade. I came to believe that if you wish your children to understand what you are doing (maybe even who you are), you don't have to do much more than just make them part of your life, the private one and the professional one.

It wasn't quite easy to start with, when she took the brush and just jabbed it onto the paper and then was looking around which of our furniture will be next. I have to admit, I was sweating cold sweat trying to get her to focus on the paper only. Experience taught me to use large scale paper, that I could wrap the whole table in (our coffee table in the living room). We both learned how to paint together. I learned how to make it interesting for her, and she learned that she can get more fun out of it, if she sticks within the (loose) boundaries I gave her.

I use acrylic paint with her, which is madness to use with little kids, but brilliant at the same time. Acrylic paint is not washable from any textiles and dries quickly. The good part, however, overweighs for me the negatives by tones. You can mix the colours directly on the canvas, and you can literally observe the mixing procedure (how blue and yellow slowly turn into green, for example, the more often you smear over them). You can feel the goopy paint and squeeze it and smear it, make paths and patterns on paper, or maybe on your tummy. For that reason we paint stripped down to the nappy and the colour just goes everywhere. Acrylic is water based and washes super easy from the skin. It dries quickly on the skin as well, so there is (nearly) no danger of the little fingers leaving prints on the furniture.

These are our recent results, and we use the fun to make lovely greeting cards for the grandparents too :-)

How to: Scatter brain but need to work, now

Need to finish this sketch and start painting - oh the bin is full, I will just empty it. Back to my sketch, it really needs finishing - ah, how about I try my new pen, where did I leave it, actually this office needs a tidy, ah look at this old folder with my old postcards, actually I should also hoover, ah why not just do it now... what was I working on again?

Familiar? Then you probably have the scatter brain phase like me. I am not a psychologist, but I am pretty sure it is a self-sabotage pattern. If I'd finish that sketch I would be, well... finished... but my brain is programmed in a way to convince me it is really hard work, I better do something else much easier.

Today, I have the scatter brain again and today I am doing it different. After each single disruption I go back to my work, and don't care that I disrupted the work flow, for even 5min. That is the deal, get interrupted, get to terms with it, go back to work, allow more interruptions, get to terms with it. The more I am at ease with it happening, the easier it is to get back to work and not feeling guilty. And that is the fix, because my brain (I am) trying to make me feel guilty. It doesn't make sense, but it is something familiar, and just know best how it is to feel guilty... however, it does not bring me closer to my goal of being a professional illustrator, so I consciously decided: It doesn't bother me,No brain! Thank you very much for trying to make me feel guilty again, but I actually don't feel guilty, because I am coming back to my work every single time, and I move on. My brain is a noisy monkey, I won't be able to shut it up, but I am able to not be bothered about it. IT will shut up, when it doesn't get the attention anymore :P

Ok, finished writing the blog, let's get back to the sketch :D haha!

How I sharpen my pencils more economically

Work

Second week of my paint-run and my lack of sleep blows a massive hit on me. I can't remember when I was last so tired. Nevertheless I keep going, but the quota starts stressing me out, and influences my work considerably. I know how this can evolve in a minor catastrophe if not taken care off. So, I take two evenings off and do the rest as best as I can, without thinking about the quota. This week I am back on track

Exercise
Wanna see a master of water colour who also is an entertainer?  Check out Alvaro Castagnet presented by Graeme Stevenson (Colour in Your Life) on Youtube. Water water water and absolutely stunning colours.

Tools

I work a lot with colored pencils. They are used for my outlines and to enhance some shadows. I love to work precise so I sharpen them pretty often.
It always bothered me how much sharpening rubbish I created and I felt I go through a pencil to quickly. So I started sharpening the tip with a carpenter knife. Once the tip is short, I carve some of the wood away and start again. It saved me some time, and a lot of rubbish. 

Do I need to remind people that they can hurt themselves badly with this knife if not used with caution? I probably do. Please be careful and Kids, please avoid sharp tools until your hand-use-skills are developed completely, until then just use the save sharpener!

sleep deprived, but 10 mini paintings richer

work
Painting painting painting... I have set myself a quota for book JO and came up with 10 paintings per week. This could be characters, object, plants, backgrounds. That really helps me to know where I am and to reach the deadline comfortably. It has to been done, as I planed my vacation two weeks after the deadline. So, there is a bit of a breathing room, but only a bit.

It was really difficult to reach the aim and I had to work every night til midnight, so I feel slightly sleep deprived. The trick was to have several paintings at the same time, so while one dries I could work on another. Also, I mixed up the stages of layering. For example, I finished the faces completely (shades and pencil), then I did clothes, and different parts of the clothes. To be honest, for me the finishing part with pencil is the most exciting one.

I didn't get fed up of painting and I made it! I could send in my first preview in on time. The editor and author are happy, so I am happy. I wish I could show you something, but it is an absolute no no for ongoing projects and you have to wait until the book is printed.

Book MO has not started yet. I am waiting for the approval of the new contract and it looks like I have to study a bit "lawyer"-english. While I am waiting, I will be collecting some notes for the story board, as there has been some additional comments on what should be in the illustration.

Exercise

I found new videos to watch. This time it is all about good water color work. Check out Liron Yanconsky and The Mind of Watercolor on youtube.

Private

I have to share with you the lovely painting my baby daughter made. I let her play with my little travel kit (under supervision of course) and the brush pen. She is only 1,5y but loves testing the colours. She went in all the color pots at once, so I had to guide her a little. She also tends to smash the brush on the paper... and to prevent that, I was just holding her little elbow up, so she would be able to have a relaxed wrist. That really helped her to use the brush properly. I am so proud of my little artist 

vacation and work

work:
Doing two books at a time is a new experience. I am hoping that the books will be always in different stages to each other (stages are: story board, rough drawings, clean drawings, paintings) to keep them apart in my head and not to get fed up. So far it looks promising. One book is ready to be painted (all drawings done), the other is just about in the story board process. I better find keywords to refer to the books. book one: JO, book two: MO

It was alright to work on the storyboard for MO during the vacation. I had a half a day for myself and that was enough to get some rough ideas down. I usually draw up 3-4 possible scenes per double page.

samples:
no sample work at the moment... But it is time to update my portfolio.

private:
I mentioned I am bringing along my small water color kit. I did a couple plants sitting in the garden. Painting outside is a bit difficult, but very meditative, I found.

Backgrounds get more attention now

work
Finished the roughs for my current book project and send them in. Yey!

I was working on this A3 paper, I mentioned a few weeks ago, and I just loved it! I was a bit skeptical to start with, yes, but I quickly learned to appreciate the space. It is much better to work on details on the characters and backgrounds. My aim was to put more attention to the backgrounds, so they support the scene and mood, and make it believable that the characters are existing there. I had a few garden scenes this time, and I really wanted to create the feeling of romantic, playful, and natural chaos. Just what a family garden is.

Now I will work on the colors. I usually go back to Photoshop, and start with giving each page a basic colour. For example, if the scene is in the outside, the block colour will be either blue or green, so either there is a lot of sky visible, or a lot of ground. I also consider the mood of the scene.

private
We will travel for a short vacation. I bought an A6 water colour pad which I will bring with me along with my small water colour kit together water brush. Now from working on A3 for weeks, it will be fun to shrink down even smaller than my typical papers. But I have a plan! I am hoping I can do some loose water color doodling of plants. I always need plants for the garden scenes, and want to expand my visual library on plants.

Time management

First of all, you have to understand: there is plenty of hours in a day for you to work. Even if you have parent duties or things to tidy, there is physically time for you to draw.

For me it is about the to-do list paired with time management, meaning how much time I want/need to spend on each task.

For example 80% of my time should go to the current main project (anything with deadline), 15% to making samples and finding new work, and 5% extras like webpage or drawing exercise. I count up the minimum weekly available hours. In my case, I have time available while my daughter has her daily nap (which can be short), when she goes to bed (if late I have to go to bed shortly after), and the two half days when she is at the nursery (constant).

In my case this comes to min. 20h available during the week. Thereof I have to spend 16h on the project, 3h on making samples, and 1h can be spend on anything else. Seeing this numbers motivates me to not check emails or social media at all during my available, because simply, I cannot ever get the time back and catch up.

I started a time logbook which helps me see if I overspend time on something.

That can happen, for example if a potential new projects is very inspiring, I tend to put more energy into that rather than into finishing an old job. Let's be honest everything new is more exciting than something you have been working on for months :P at least for creatives.

Work
I work a bit on the roughs for the book about family models, but spend most time on the samples.

Samples
I finished the samples for the book series and am very pleased with them. I hope I can convince the author of my skills and I get to illustrate them. It will be awesome!

Private
My husband found a great game for the garden that involves painting. He grounded up some chalk and added a bit of water. Then my baby daughter got a sponge ball to dip in and paint on the house wall. She absolutely loved dabbing the wall in pink. It was great and with the warm weather at the moment the water dries really quickly and leaves very pretty patterns.

training perspective rotations and forshortening of figures

work
I needed to do some studies before I could continue... There is this moment, when I try to draw the picture I got in my head, but just can't get it right. One figure should be half crouching to be on eye sight of a kid, and it should be in a half perspective. Instead of struggling with that one pose, it is best to do some studies of a pose in different perspectives. I found out that I do know one pose, but often only in one perspective and have never tried to turn it around. This is probably because I have seen the pose somewhere, but haven't expanded my visual library, and just stayed with that one example.

There are some good tutorials on how to train different prespectives. If you are into books look for "Hogarth drawing", if you are looking only online, search for: foreshortening and projections into space. You could check out moderndayjames on youtube, for example: https://youtu.be/aS-5A3Veue4
for an introduction into perspective and rotations.

samples
I was approached to do a sample for a series of book. I am so excited about it and want to do my best. Lucky for me, the agent discussed that I will be payed for producing the sample, a generous move. Thank you <3

working on bigger paper

work

I decided to make the sketches bigger this time and then shrink them on the computer to the actual book size. I have had lots troubles in the past with characters becoming too small for watercolor. In pencil it is easy for me to draw the details, but painting it even with the smallest brush removes the details. The water drops are to big and I can't do the gradients on so short surfaces. I ordered A3 printer paper and was very excited to start. I have to get used to the new dimensions though, and have to be careful about the proportions of the people. Big heads and small bodies is a typical mistake.

new applications

I am preparing a sample about animals for the agent in London. The painting is done on cardboard paper. It's something I learned from an illustrator on YouTube. It works with watercolor as long as you keep the brush dry enough. I love the clarity of the finished picture and it is much easier to draw lines in pencil and ink.

private project
The cute robots are on hold atm. So I try to paint an easy random picture a week and post on Instagram.

Private
I made a new toy for my toddler (16month). Porridge flakes in a transparent box... She loves to dig through and pour the flakes through her hands. I believe it's called sensory play. Very modern :P

Tuesday news

Work
- I will be working on the new book project. The publisher showed me the manuscript just last week, but I was really inspired and have already done a story board. It is a children's picture book about different family models.

- continue my private project: cute robots 🤖

Education
I picked out stuff on YouTube about composition (golden ratio, rule of thirds, etc) and about staging your illustrations. Check out Marco Bucci's absolute must-watch lecture, if you never heard of staging or concepting:  https://youtu.be/rYOox8E8ohc

Private
really boring, but necessary: waiting for my parcle with vaccume bags, so I can pack up guest duvets and winter clothes really neat.