Left and right lifedrawing

Wow a post so soon after the last one! Well it's kinda a continuation on the last post in the sense that I immeadetly witnessed that every time you start fresh and it sucks.

It was a bad drawing day to say it simply but I think it was a combination of being tired, lacking focus and the fact that it felt like my left brain was fighting with the right. On the other hand I was like "yeaaa I'll just whip this thing on the paper boom!" but also on the other hand "wait wait, hold on now for one darn minute. Put down the main line, directional axis, weight, boxes etc etc and use what you've just been studying". The end result being something in the middle and not really using in the end the half ass construction shit I'd put down. Thinking too much and that froze me up and I could barely get the 5 minute poses done.

Oh well, even if it was a struggle, it was fun to use 20 year old felt pens of mine which barely gave any colour and thus slowed me down a bit but threw me off to try something a bit different maybe. Which was nice.

A whole lot of life drawings

Hey everybody and Happy Holidays!

Haven't posted in a while but that doesn't mean I've been totally idle with drawing. Indeed I have been doing life drawing again and I should consider renaming this accordingly 'cause it seems those are about the only things I post here...

But I must say (and a lot of professionals and artist veterans agree) that life drawing really is the best drawing training you can have. Observations and lessons learned can be applied to so many other subject matters, styles etc.

I'm gonna post a lot of stuff now and in a way the chronological order might be interesting because I really have realized that "Janne K, you know nothing". One must unlearn to learn and nothing is better than throwing yourself off balance to maybe be able to shake of some mannerisms and stylistic shorthands that prevent you from seeing things and from being downright lazy.

We organized recently through the Animatricks animation festival a life drawings course from the perspective of animation. We were fortunate to have Samantha Youssef giving us a lecture for 2 days that somewhat differs from traditional life drawing. It was very inspiring, eye opening and also depressing in the way that I realized how much I have to learn. The latter is obvious for everybody. I just thought that I had some touch for it but the fact is that I was gettin too content with the way I was drawing from life. I wasn't looking carefully enough. I was doing too much just to achieve a fun line or graphically interesting picture and neglecting lessons in front of me about actual anatomy, volumes and sense of direction etc.

So what I'll post here is now before the lessons, sketches from the lessons and then from a life drawing session after the lessons. Starting from the topmost drawing (click for bigger view):

The first drawings also are another example on how switching the medium makes you rethink and struggle. I hadn't drawn with charcoal in many years and I was completely lost for a moment with the medium on how to take advantage of it and what is useless to try with it etc. Then I also just switched to pencil and I was drawing like before, just drawing quickly how I saw the pose, volumes etc but really doing too much of contour drawing and playing around stylistically.

 

The first drawings from the lessons are fast scribbles of 15-30 seconds poses but during that time one should be already able to get the essence of the pose which will prevent the further elaboration making the drawing too stiff. Then we started to add more thinking into the basic masses of the body ie rib cage, the hips etc, eventually moving into even skeleton and muscles. This started to seem like an overwhelming amount of information to have in a drawing that was max 15min. I totally felt slow and crappy after the lessons! I barely finished one pose properly... *sigh

But then on the 1st life drawing session after the lessons (the male model ones) I forced myself to first look for the main line, directional axis, weight line, rib cage, hips etc. I was definately falling back to my old tendencies and skipping those aforementioned essentials but just observing them more and being concious of them while letting the pencil move I think I made some advances in the way I drew.

BUT nothing comes for free so it'll just mean more and more life drawing to get better at it and after all if the day comes that I'd feel that "yeah Janne K now you know your shit" then it's time to take another lesson and forget all those foolish thoughts that just prevent you from being an artist stuck in a groove.

Lifedrawing needs to go on

Life is sometimes cruel and unjust but that's why we need to keep studying and witnessing it. Doing art is one of my ways.

Maybe we learn some day that what is most important is to just keep on living together.

Lifedrawings to the ballpoint

Some latest life drawings. I think I wouldn't advance or learn anything if I didn't do these. Everytime it's daunting and difficult and makes you doubt if know anything. It's brutal and nice at the same time (masochistic :D? ). There's no autopilot. Every time if I start to think of something else, it breaks the concentration of observation and thinking what you see in front of you then I loose the flow and I get crap. Ballpoint pen. Click for bigger view.

Blurry model

My old scanner seems to have kicked the bucket, thats one reason why these are so messy. The B&W ones are 5 minute poses and thin ballpoint pen. That made me approach things a bit differently again which is always fun. I'm quite happy with the movement on some of them. There's 2 pics from the previous session as well.

Bigger then lifedrawings

A bunch of lifedrawings. Tagged one for #inktober which has been making me draw some other stuff too lately, Which is nice.

White ones are short poses.

Thin Life Drawing Line

Life drawings. Again switched the tool a bit from the thick brush like to a thin ink line so that forced to think things a bit different on the fly again.Also these were a part of my today's #INKTOBER post.

Brown Doodles

Some latest life drawings. I tried again using a "different" technique with the fast poses, presenting a a challemge for myself... with the result that I really didn't know what to do with multiple colours :D

Rusty toenails

Hmm one does get quickly rusty at lifedrawing or maybe it was a bit of a pain just because it's always hard.

Anyway again interesting was that in the white paper ones I was testing a new ink brushpen and quickly it came clear that I can't do teh same kinda big and bold moves with that as with some other similar pen so I had to adapt on the spot. I began to draw really small. It was challenging 'cause trying to get shapes and pose down in 5 minutes in some degree of accuracy in a small space didn't make it quicker. On the contrary I really had to look on how will I create the depth and intersection of body parts with minul lines. It was a very good exercise in overlap and line width- and direction.

That's why I like and hate drawing. Every time it feels like the first time.

Doodle inventory collages

Well since I'm nowadays slow with posting... Might as well do an inventory on sketchbookpages. These are once again collages of doodles and scribbles from random sources that I find fun to put together on same pages, sometimes finding new and surprising relationships between them :)

Click to get a bigger view.

Doodl en plain air

Hey, a quick post with some random collected doodles from scraps of paper or digital and a few #Sketchcrawl ones.

I don't have a properly working scanner atm so that's kind of hindering me from my old habit of scanning doodles in sketchbooks and note papers... Still resisting going totally digital :P

My left lifedrawing

OK, some lifedrawings (yaaaaa...)! I don't why it is but when you don't do life drawing for some time, not even long, you just get...rusty.

But I enjoyed it anyways. It's so relaxing and it's fun to give myself surprises by changing the technique midair.  Added some bar doodles in there too.

They range from from 15mins to 5 mins. Click for closer look.

Happy happy pinecones!

These are bg characters from the great animation series Gigglebug I'm working on as a Story and Layout artist. I just thought they are great and create happy mooood!

The design and animation you see is by Joonas Utti, the co-creator and Director of the series.

Life in drawings

Did some life drawings after a while. Again experimented with changing tools a bit leading to some more "comic book" like shading.

Orange Is The New Black

Howdy!

Well my last post was in November. What has happened since and why havent I posted anything?

First of all I quit my job at the Rovio Animation Studio to join a startup animation company called Gigglebug. It's been great but also quite busy. To add to that I've been busy with trying to do my best in organizing the upcoming Animatricks animation festival in Helsinki on the 24th of April 2015.

It had been also months since I've done any life drawing. I did feel a bit rusty but so much as I'd expected probably due to teh fact that storyboarding and also doing layout for the Gigglebug series has kept my (cintiq) pen moving. Which is nice. But I will need to find to start to again draw some own stuff.

When I look back in this blog I sometimes wonder "did I draw all of that?!". Even if they're just doodles, I just don't do it as much anymore not for a long time. That has to change!

One step is getting back to the life drawings so here's some of those. 15-10minutes ones in pencil and having fun again with color and bw line 5min each (click for bigger view):