Erik’s 100 Day Challenge: Say More With Less

[Ian Coltman]

Hey Erik, I appreciate your openness to critique. You really do really excellent work… and its fun to have something interesting around here to comment on… and I’m always open to your opinions on what I’m doing.

This painting presents another intriguing opportunity for investigation.

I’m in agreement with Christopher on matters of color but we perhaps diverge on the issue of scale. I think you have a workable if not strong composition as-is that would benefit from the establishment of “the moment” (primary focal point) through effective color keys and depth-of-field.

Assuming that if your preference for “the moment” is the city in the distance, you may use complementary accents and temperature zoning to isolate and enhance.

Here’s 10 minutes of color adjustment in photoshop using a complementary magenta to cast the town in the sunlight… notice how your painterly sweep from the bottom right now graduates into the color of the town in a manner that drives the viewer straight to it… really just amplifying the strategy that you already have in play.

Anyways, that’s probably my last photoshop image for you… I learned something from it… hopefully I’m not driving you crazy… but I am interested you fella’s opinions on this.

 

 

[erikdennes]

Day 27

About sight size, Florent Farges has a video where he compares doing sight size to going to the gym to prepare for a sport. It is good exercise, and if you want a very accurate drawing, it is good for that too.

Today I went for quantity. Started Bill Perkins costume drawing course (again). Did a bunch of 5 minute quick draw sketches focusing on economy of line.

These are some of the better ones.

 

[erikdennes]

Day 27

Quantity today. Did about 20 five minute quick sketches. Started Bill Perkins costume drawing course (again). Tried to focus on economy of line.  Here are some of the better ones.

[Joshua Jacobo]

Nice studies though it would be good if the images were higher resolution and lit better. My recommendation would be to work larger and make clearer simpler form statements. Don’t try to get as many details into the figures but really try to push the clarity more.

[erikdennes]

Much thanks to Ian, Christopher and Joshua for the comments and critiques.  I had something come up and haven’t been able to work on the challenge, so I’ll have to roll it back two days.

Thanks again Ian for the photoshopping.  I was going to do something similar, and really like what you came up with.  The landscape painting is trying to capture a memory I have of a particular place.  What I remember are the colors in the buildings blazing like neon signs in the distance, the field bathed in bright sunlight which gives it a vibrancy, the expansive view which includes San Juan bay, Old Town,  the Atlantic, and rainforest in the distance (the viewpoint is El Morro, a spanish fortification that guards the bay and commands an expansive view for defense), and the clusters of clouds that form in a line as air from the ocean moves over the island and condenses.  I think I am trying to capture too much in a single painting and what I should really do is do a series and focus on each one of those things one at a time.

I agree about the horrible photos Joshua.  I was having a really hard time posting that day.  The sanguine chalk is really light, and the camera just didn’t want to cooperate even though I tried photographing it with different light set ups.  I also submitted a couple posts that disappeared, then one of them reappeared, so things were just wonky that day.

[erikdennes]

Day 28

This is from the Vilpuu lesson on invented light.

[Iliya Mirochnik]

Hi Erik,

I really like this last drawing you posted from Glenn’s invented light lesson. I think it’s very strong, especially in the areas where the foreshortening is most obvious like the legs and left arm (our left). I know Glenn has a way of really bringing light into the areas of shadow to define the forms better and give a real sense of atmosphere, but he doesn’t repeat values too much inside of those shadows area. I think that’s something to consider when modeling in the shadows. Make sure your terminators are prominent and ease up on the values as you model further into the core shadows. In a lot of areas in your drawing, the terminators are missing altogether. Just in case “terminator” is not a word used in the lessons, it’s basically the edge of the core shadow closest to the light.

I do also think it’s important to establish the shoulder girdle, the elliptical origin of the neck at the first rib and then plant the head on top of that. Also, an easy proportional thing to keep in mind is to look at your drawing, and compare the 2 legs to each other, and the 2 arms to each other, and make sure they’re proportionally similar.

I’ll be checking in! Keep up the good work.

Best,

Iliya

[erikdennes]

Day 29

Thanks for the tips Iliya!  I made the corrections you suggested and the drawing looks much better. I really felt like I was flailing around trying to keep up with Vilppu’s when I did it, so your suggestions were most helpful.
Today’s project is my first attempt at doing the figure with invented lighting on my own. I did the figure first using conceptual light (center of the form gets the most light).  The background I had was not working for me so I added the city from another reference I had from Old Town San Juan (since that is still on my mind) to give it a bit of narrative just for kicks.

[erikdennes]

Something weird always happens when I try to insert more than one image on a post. I hit submit and it just disappears.

[erikdennes]

Day 30

I guess my post from yesterday didn’t go through. I went back to the fundamentals and tried to draw objects from a different angle than the reference using construction. These are a few of those attempts.

[erikdennes]

Day 31

Did some drawing from Wil Weston’s Instagram feed on his inventive figure drawing lessons.

[erikdennes]

Day 32

Ready to paint this on Friday.

[erikdennes]

Day 33

Client wanted some changes: more and varied color, multicultural portraits instead of the cartoon jaguar, and more even spacing with the lettering.

[erikdennes]

Day 34

More revisions. Primed wall. Painted letters. 2 portraits drawn on each side of the lettering. Monday is airbrush and portrait work.

[erikdennes]

Day 35

Started working on an old half finished painting correcting all of the perspective mistakes I made. Thanks to Erik Olson for all of the perspective lessons.

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