How To Train Your Selfportraits

I was traveling by train late evening yesterday. I of course went to the restaurant for a couple of beers. The darkening winter night was behind the window, the train was shaking and I decided to do draw something that I rarely do - self portraits.

Quite revealing.

Flashdoodle

Sketches and some more mindless scribbles..the way I love 'em!

ParaDoodles

Hehey, only a month has passed, I'm picking this up wohoo!

And collected doodle scribblettes it is. From scrap papers and various sketchbook pages. Mostly done in planes, trains and automobiles but also some at my workplace...

Click for "better" view!

(np. score from The Phantom, excellent track by David Newman!)

Old promises

Hey and how are you? I'm fine and maybe not so busy in the evenings as I've been the last half year or so. Doing freelance work can get tiresome in addition to a new daytime job where you're still (even with my age) a beginner in the particular job I'm currently doing (animation layout artist).

Life drawing sessions started again so at least those will be appearing here. The zombie was some older doodle that I meant to color/paint but never got around to it.

So expect more sketchy stuff from me in the not so distant future and with brisker pace.

And speaking of layouts..I've been getting many comments on that I have the basic template on my blog. I can say now that I suck at web page editing and similar but maybe the next thing could be that I spice up the blog's visual appearance a bit, shoemaker's sons shoes...

Yankee Doodle

I'll do a post for the 4th of July. Nothing to do with the old US of A but just seriously due for a post.

I've been workin my ass off in my dayjob and doing freelance stuff. I'll have to do some posts of sketches of them.

But now them familiar totally random doodles. Click for bigger and Enjoy!

Dr. Sketchy, I presume?

Been quite busy at work and then also on my "freetime" so the blog has been a casualty 'cause of that.

But it's not dead! Here's living proof. Some sketches from the latest Dr. Sketchy session in Helsinki.

From 1min to 3min poses.

Crawling scribble peeple

While going to a party elsewhere, I quickly participated to the international Sketchcrawl day. Here's info on it:
What is a "SketchCrawl"?
In short, roughly every 3 months we put a call out to people around the world to join in, put pen to paper on a given day for as long as they can (be it 20 minutes or 8 hours) drawing, sketching, journaling about their day and what's around them. For a day, slow down, look around you, see ... and draw or write. Record your day. No specific level of skill is expected ! Anyone is welcome.

SketchCrawl international forum with all the events:
http://www.sketchcrawl.com/forum/index.php

This event in Helsinki, April 21:
http://www.sketchcrawl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=7651

So I sat into a cafe in the middle of busy Helsinki, grabbed a cappuccino and a bun. I sat there for a generous half an hour and alongside sipping the brew I made some quick glances and scribbled the impressions down. It was good exercise again..need to do that more often.

I see doodle people

Heyheyhey, back with some collected doodlings. The oldest in this bunch are from around 2009 from a sketchbook I've forgotten that I had.

Also in this post I included some caricatures I made of people during the Kuvita! 1st Nordic Illustration Festival which I helped to organize too. On sunday I was just supposed to sit in the cafe of the Design Museum and draw people there. Some of them asked specifically to be drawn and some I just drew silently. I took photos of the drawings since the originals ended up in Kuvittajat Ry archives...

The interesting part was that I had promised to do this 'cause there didn't happen to be anyone else available for that specific time slot aaaand that I really haven't done caricatures before. Of course I've done lifedrawing but this was something totally different.

I know that they're not caricatures in the sense that they would be funny or looking exactly like the subject. But certainly this was excellent practice of observation and trying to find the essential with sometimes just a few seconds glance at someone..

Click for bigger view with the collected doodles. Some of them I could have just thown to the bin (as I did after scanning) but I find it nice to preseve them somehow to see development if any. Also they can spring up ideas later on for "better" drawings.

Croquis to the max (amount)

Heyheyhey,

to "compensate" the lack of posts again recently, here's more of the same, yay!

No actually this post has something a bit different. And that is those drawings done on brown paper. It was a apecial life drawing evening with some live music and a dancer.

I did a lot more of those 'cause the idea was to keep constantly drawing and since the model was moving, trying to capture a moment or movement as it happened. It was challenging but fun.

Then there's a naked guy. I'd say his poses were a bit less dynamic *yawn*. But then it's the mass that needs to be held on the paper :)

With our powers combined...

I thought that I should in the future combine more of the lifedrawings and sketches. So that I won't choke the blog with every poor pose drawing from every session. Because there tends to be a lot of crap but I guess that's the idea, to get it out of your system.

In this post those character sketches were done for an unrealized project (on my part). In a tight timeframe I tried to do characters of different styles (mood, period, technique whatever) under a loose Xmas theme. I know I could have gone more overboard with them but decided to play safe. I have to get rid of that mindset... I like the sketches more than the colored versions.

What Dr. Sketchy ordered

And that is a bunch of 'em from Dr. Sketchy Does Mother Russia and then some random doodles from various grocery bills etc.

Click it.

More to come.

Hello and who were you again?

Huh, I've got no better at this updating business have I? But have I've been up to then? Well to start off with the good news, I switched my job and to the field of animation, yay!

I started in the start of the year as a Graphic Artist at Rovio Entertainment in the animation department. I've already been drawing quite a lot more than in my previous job. That drawing requires always some warm-ups so expect this blog to get filled with oodles of doodles again...

The team is soo talented that I really have to do my best to keep up and I do expect to learn a lot too. I mean I do know my animation, the theory, artists, studios, technique, history etc since I've been an animation buff for as long as I remember. But it's a whole different thing to do it...on this level at least and in actual production pipeline. It's not Auteur animation and I mean that in the most positive sense now ;)

Still. I have confidence in myself (for once). I know I can do a lot of the stuff there but I just need to get me warmed up :P

And as we all know, animation artists are one of those who are one of the best draughtsmen out there so practice is good and keeping up with the life drawings..essential. The birds only LOOK simple by their design btw. But to get a nyance in your line and expression to it in the simplest possible way...that's something to strive for!

So life drawings, searhing that loose feeling and not paying tooo much attention to anatomy. I'll go for Expression and fun. Doing it slow tends not to help.