Sketchbook of Noë

[TheGnoll]

hey Noe

that sketchgroup reunious looks like real fun, wish i could do something like that around here...
update in post 495 is really good, gestures and sketches are pretty solid :)

kudos for getting a summerjob and not beign a lazy bum like me :P :D

keep sharing!

ciao

[fooxoo]

!!! :D you re working hard girl!!!! and it s paying off greatly, every drawing gets better and better! I think still more work on the proportions, i got that as a prob too! You re doing fantastic!

cheers!

[D.Labruyere]

hehe, well after meeting you with the sketchmeeting I couldn't be neglecting this thread any longer :) nice stuff! I wondered if you had managed to make a picture of those drawings in my sketchbook, but I see you've done that, so I don't have to scan them for you. Was fun meeting you!

daniel

[JellevdVegt]

hey noe, thx for stopping by my sb! nice updates! really like some stuff in post 495. the guns with marker are awesome and this (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=164799) one has nice atmosphere, really like it. i've seen the photos of the sketchmeet and i recognize you so well done haha. 2 bad i couldn't come, it really looked like fun. maybe another time :)

well, back at topic: for tips and comments, i would say maybe do more perspective studies, so you get more feel for stuff in dimension. its very usefull imo, not just for mechanical stuff but also for figures.. (foreshorting also). you work hard on figures and gestures and you're doing great, but maybe spread the focus so you'll get new insights about handling the same subject matter. a thread definatly worth looking is mentler's trhead 'book of bones' who has a totally different aproach to figures...

well, good luck with yur holidayjob and all. i will definatly check back for updates.

cya around girl!

[JWashke]

Hey Marleen,

Rockin' sketchbook! It's really inspiring for someone just starting like myself to see the vast improvement in the 2 years since you've started it. I love the tone paper works and the set of guns.

Josh

[gtgauvin]

I really like your quick thumbnails. They show a good understanding of how the body is oriented in space. I'd try to carry over that same looseness in your more finished pieces.

[Noë]

@Chris; Thanks :) I'm liking the toned paper a lot as well. And yes it's been really nice to have a dutch gettogether thing :)
@ Nizza; Thanks! Go ask in the local art supply store for toned paper sketchpads, it would be really undecent if they didn't carry them ^^ toned paper rocks
@ Kronos; thanks! I'll come online some time tomorrow and we'll do the OC then I hope.. Unless Harry Potter book seven arrives early :S I guess..
@ TheGnoll; Thanks dude! Yup I like making money with the summerjob, but I hate that I don't get to spend 8 hours a day drawing.. But I need the money a bit more than drawing at the moment I guess. And why would you be a lazy bum for not having a job? If you can manage okay without one, why take one :P
@ fooxoo; hiya girlie! Thanks for stopping by and encouraging so much. :)
@ Daniel; thanks :) was nice meeting you too ^^ I'll just have to stop by in your sketchbook soon (or did I already? can't remember.. :P)
@ Teh Gosu; yup, perspective! I'm on it! Gotta do some tomorrow... I'm kind of limited to figure studies and doodles at the moment so that's gotta change. Thanks!!
@ Josh; thanks :) yup I like to see the improvement also ^^ is always nice to see for motivation :)
@ gtgauvin; hiya :), could you give me a little example of how to use the looseness in finished pieces also? I don't really understand.
----
Small digital only update
I'm currently working 9 hours a day or more and doing quite some cleaning and cooking makes it pretty much impossible to do more than one/two hours of drawing each day But at least I still have weekends. Just not this weekend because the new harry potter book is arriving tomorrow :P hihi ^^
Well.. Here's the all digital update. Most of it was created today.

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this one didn't turn out so great :) but ah well, any ideas on the colours? I'm rather stuck with them.

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1 hour greyscale doodle

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.. and some 30-40 minutes colour added to it

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self portrait from image.. Pfoo the colours were really interesting in the image, but hard to grasp while painting!

So that's the smaller update. I did sketch some, but not quite as much as you're used to. Think I only have 10 pages so far.
But I shouldn't complain really ^^ I'm having fun
Love,
marleen

[Taj]

good update, the second last one needs better composition, instead of just random things, a couple things that come to mind are a spiral onf things that lead into the focus, which im assuming is the girl in the middle, or, something more dynamic for the girl in the middle (arch her back backwards more) or you can have somethign about all the images around her zoom into her in the middle.

Your characters need better form, you nail it sometimes but most of them look flat, try to see some 3d shapes in them before you draw. Instead of drawing an oval or something for the body, imagine an egg shape attached to a cube with some space in between for the abs.

EDIT: you uploaded something new, alright the portrait is nice, pay attention to where and why you use your warm and cool colors. Warm pull, cool push. Try working some light purple as your cool color instead of blue (blue's better for high lights). you have broad shoulders :P

[Dose206]

10 pages? Man, I'm never gonna catch up.....
So yeah, this latest update looks pretty good, but I agree with Taj on most points. His paintover looks pretty good. On your first image I really like the character that could be looking on through a window or something, with the hands around the face. Awesome hands!
Eh, that's all I have for now, I'm definitely understanding the busy with work deal, and the can't draw because reading Harry Potter deal too.

Chris

[Noë]

Here are two tingies,
first one was done yesterday, 4 hours spent on it I think. I've been having trouble with the skirt and hands mainly.. Any tips on those?
Second one I started today, one hour so far I guess.. It's not much.. really

Love
Marleen

P.S.:
@ Taj Thanks loads for that paintover! I will definately try to take another stab at that speedy to make the composition better, I also really liked your idea.
@ Chris;thanks :) I really like that character too, but have no idea really on if I could do something else with it..

[(c)]

Hi

like the first one!! the skin is really nice. dont worry too much about the hands. in this case I would focus more on the face. look at rembrand he never really painted hands. just give an idea of it and our brain will fill in.

the last one is a good start. the composition dont really work for me and also is this for the Glen Angus COW??? then the pose of the girl doent fit the tank in the bg..

goood besig

have fun

[Nizza_waaarg]

awsome update, that first one is really nice. I think the hands look alright as is, as for the dress, not to sure where to go with it, try studying some similar material in real life, make sure you've got the folds and such worked out and try and work in some harder edged shadows (not to sure, im hopeless with clothed figures :/ )

as for the chow piece, the composition could be a bit more dynamic. Maybe try having the tank shown from a more front on slightly turned to the right from a lower angle shot and have the gal higher up in the pic, hope that made sense >_<

keep up the great work

cheers,
chris

[bumskee]

coming along nicely, I think her head is slightly too big and also her mouth is pushed to the right too much. Maybe you want to use the guides in PS to see that you are lining them up properly? I think the rest is looking solid. If you get stuck just quickly dish out a mirror and use yourself as a ref! :D
is that tank girl forthe ChOW? keep going, cheers, M

[Dose206]

Marleen,

I agree with Bumskee on this latest girl, and I'd like to see what you do with the second one.

Chris

[Noë]

Hello there !
I have two images again (yeah I don't do that much digital stuff), so here's another update. It's been almost 5 weeks or something since scanning, but next saturday I will scan it all :). Now here are the replies:

@ (c): Thanks man, yup you're right about the CHOW thingy, composition totally sucked. I didn't manage to make the deadline though, but I'm thinking of finishing it anyways as I need to learn to finish stuff I begin. Thanks for the nice reply man :)
@ Nizza; thanks :) yup the folds on the dress are bad, I have no idea how folds really work actually. I should do some studies of folds! :P Gonna do that tomorrow yay! *writes it down*, I tried to work on the composition of the chow, does it work a little better now? Also I should really reply in your sketchbook soon.. I'm such a slacker :S you're doing really great with all the updates ^^
@ bumskee; woohoo! Thanks Min :) Yup you're right in all the crits I guess. I'll have to work on this one some more to get the errors out of it :). Oh and the tank girl was indeed for the chow, but since I am a slacker (and I was really busy :P) I didn't finish in time.
@ Chris; thanks ^^
-----
(If you don't want to read about my holiday, then just go straight towards "Update!" :))
Soo, I've been busy working 45 hours two weeks, and last week I was voluntary "worker" at a childrens camp, my love and I were leading a group of 28 kids, aged 7-9. It made me way more tired than working, but it was much more rewarding I think. So last week I went to bed at 8/9 PM, got up at 7 AM, usually I can do with less sleep than that but the kids just made me really tired :P ^^
Well, now I have one week of real vacation left, I don't have to do anything (except for some cooking and cleaning :P) so I've been drawing pretty much 7 hours a day these last two days already, and as I'm enjoying this I'll probably continue on doing that this week. ^^
I recently went to visit the local art supplies store and I got a little carried away and purchased for over €30 on sketchpads, fixative, charcoal, kneaded eraser and some more pencils ^^ so I've been doing some more traditional stuff (and rediscovering charcoal).
Ah well.. Enough babbling!!

Update!
Today I did something digital, just because I didn't do digital in a long time.
This took approximately 3 hours (or maybe 4, I've been getting carried away with small details the last hour :P)
Things to work on are (in my opinion, please correct me!):
ear, hair at the top, right (our left) eye and mouth. If you find more things, please tell me :)
Here's the progress and the "final" image (so far):

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Also I worked some more on the CHOW thingy. But it didn't get finished in time. Here's where I am on that one so far.

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So, that's it already.. I hope you'll forgive me for the lack of images. :) :bashful:
Loads of love!
Marleen (who will be back in school monday the 20th :()

[Nizza_waaarg]

glad to see you back marleen, u sound like your keeping busy :P

Good job with the digital, i think you got most of the crits yourself already, right eye looks like its facing us to much, should be wrapped around the head a bit more. Hair looks a little to single mid-toned in value, most noticably towards the back. Some highlights here or there might remedy it. I'll try and do a quick paint-over cause im horrible at trying to crit in the traditional sense :P make sure you keep on posting (or at least drawing if nothing else)

cheers,
chris

edit: did a quick 'draw over' (cause i suck at painting). Basically brought the head in a bit on her right side and adjusted the brow and cheek height, im pretty sure mine's off due to only drawing one main head type primarily so take it with a grain of salt :P (and the eye on the left of mine is to high up :dead: )

[themissinglink]

nice sketchbook, everything is coming along nicely. i think your weakest area right now is color, i have been doing some sargent master copys and they have really helped with my understanding of color and expand my color palet.

[Dose206]

marleen,

I agree with nizza, the way that you've drawn this face it looks very wide. I'm guessing it's a self portrait and judging from the pictures I've seen of you your face is not that wide. I think that it's looking pretty good so far though.

I'm liking the gangus tribute, it's too bad that you didn't get it finished in time, but I do hope that you'll continue to work it.

CHris

[gmags]

Great progress here girl!! Your stuff went up a couple knotches from your first page. Keep going Noe!!! :)

[DIMAGYAN]

nice works.i think the last portrait is quite nice, just some minor changes in the structure of the rigth side of the face.honestly i think the paintover is too thin.the principal thing you may want to check is the rigth eye.(fix the perspective and that lead to the cheek) anyway take this as a suggestion.

good works

[Ios]

That last portrait is pretty nice :D
lot of improvement since the first post! keep it up!

[h2rra]

You have quite a busy summer compared to mine :O On the last portrait make sure the background doesn't blend in with hair and check the structure. Nizza's overpaint was pretty good. Did you draw it from life, photo or mind? I like the skin colors

Now scan those pencils :traced:

[Noë]

Wow! What a shitload of replies! I am not worthy.. :P
@ Nizza; geez thanks! Since I did this from mirror I took another good look in it and tilted my head a bit more and a bit less. I think for this angle the nose was a bit too much tilted sideways, and the face was a bit too wide. So it kina looked extra wide. I turned my head a bit more and redrew the left area of the face so that (I think) it doesn't look too wide anymore. Thanks for the awesome drawover! Though it does look very different I think it's loads better. You're right that the eye is a bit too high in your drawover, but who cares right :teeth: ? Thanks! Oh and I still didn't go by your sketchbook.. *slaps herself* :P Will do so soon!
@ themissinglink; hey thanks! I agree with you that a weak area is colour. I'll be trying to do many studies in colour so I'll learn to understand more of it. Sargent studies are a good idea, for the future ^^ I'll be a little too busy to add them to my daily sketches at the moment I'm afraid.
@ Chris; thanks :) yup you're right. It did start out as a self portrait, but I deliberately changed some features like the mouth and eyes a little. You're right about the wideness though. Funny how I didn't see that at all before Nizza pointed it out.. ^^ Even wíth flipping the canvas horizontally every now and then.
@ gmags; thanks :)
@ DIMAGYAN; hey man, thanks! Yup I guess the draw-over turned out maybe a little too thin, but the points made are good. I tried to fix the perspective a little, but it's hard ofcourse. Thanks again for stopping by!
@ Ios; thanks!
@ h2rra; thanks! I'll have to do some extra work on the hair soon.. I'll just make it a hair study.. Damn, I really suck at hair :P I drew it from life (me in the mirror to be exact).. Recently my portraits have all been SP's from mirror as I recently bought a nice mirror and I really want to put it to use ^^ Oh, and a little patience with the pencils please! Tomorrow evening maybe, or saturday definately, there will be a pencil update for I will be back home with my scanner then. :)
---
Update!
Phoo, I have a little headache so I'll be going to bed early. Didn't draw too much today since I started to read Harry Potter 7 for the 2,5th time (2nd time was only the last 250 pages again, so that counted as half :P) I guess I didn't feel like drawing too much. Here are three small thingies. Two speedies, and a few little changes to the portrait I posted previously.

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a speedie with my new brushie (left), it's kinda nice, very different though.. And on the right a really quick SP which ofcourse doesn't really look like me.

186880
some minor changes on this one, including a bit more contrast and mostly changes on the left side of the face (our left).
EDIT; sorry that it's all female faces.. I guess I should vary more. This is my comfort zone perfect spot I guess :P I've decided to focus on one topic every two/three weeks, since my work recently has been females and portraits, I guess my next topic will be environments.. I tried a few but I never got into it and all the stuff I did on enviros so far sucked big time, so time to change that! (h2rra and Teh_Gosu, do you maybe have some tips on that?)

Well, I feel kinda sorry for these short updates.. But I feel better thinking about the rather big one you'll be getting in a few days :)

Lots of love!
Marleen

P.S. should I start a new sketchbook in a while? Maybe in the beginning of 2008 or so? I'm not sure yet since I don't see a really good reason to do it, but it feels a little weird having my new stuff being compared to the 1st page stuff all the time. Give me your input please ^^?

[Noë]

SKETCHY UPDATE! :P

I know it's not much for the time I've been away.. But well I've been busy ofcourse.. Hope you enjoy despite the crappyness of most stuff :P
If you look at something and think "that's awful!" then it's probably a quick tryout with for example charcoal or whatever.. I won't put descriptions under every image because that would take me another hour (it already took well over an hour to scan and resize this stuff :P)
Thanks for watching, and tell me what you think!

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Love!
Marleen

[Nizza_waaarg]

ack, so much art. brilliant update :)
the drawings on the toned paper are stunning, they look fantastic. And the hands pic is great too.
also forgot to comment on your last painted batch (the custom brush one really has good form and the second one does too actually). Great to see this much art out of you.

that second last pic is also amazing, great quality of work in there.

ill try and come back with some proper crits later if i can

cheers,
chris

[JellevdVegt]

some of these anatomy studies look really sweet yeahh. i think at some of your doodles you should really take your time more. try and get it right and erase when its looks bad until you get it right. instead of continue fast doodles. im not saying its bad but i think you can push yurself to do better. anyway, good going and good luck marleen :)

[Noë]

@ Nizza; Hey! Your name is Chris? Now we have two Chrisses in our SSG :P that must be confusing when I call Dose206 Chris in my posts :P Ah well I'll just call you two Nizza and Dose from now on then :P.. Thanks for the compliments!!
@ Teh_Gosu; thanks :) I know what you mean with the doodles, I guess I should pay more attention while doodling. Ah well I'm not that good at doodling.. it's like I have a million ideas but when I try to draw just one all the ideas are gone and I have a temporary block or something :S so I get discouraged and mess the doodle up too :P hihi
---
little update
I decided to start enviros, so I'll do enviros only these two weeks. But I have some stuff to do for something in the Girly Forums, so I won't be updating daily.

188801
first drawing in my new (and first) moleskine. I got it from my parents for my school report thingy (?? :S), I can't believe the price though.. It's really good but oh my.. €15 ?? anyways it was a present so I shouldn't nag about that. I'm going to use it only for more finished stuff, so it'll be a little book to flip through and see only (sort of) nice stuff. This is sorta skewed on purpose.

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trying to get into enviros.. I just don't understand much of perspective I must say.. Can't find much on the net about it.

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trying to get some creativeness.. It's hard :P Please give me some tips on enviros!!

Love
Marleen

[Taj]

awesome, i've been trying to do enviroments also. I'll check back to read up on any tips you get.

[LifeWontWait]

This sketchbook is SO cool!! I love seeing how far you have progressed. You really have gotten SOOOO much better. COOL! :hatsoff:

[0shade0]

marleen, the only two things I can say is: wow you've improved so much!!
and f*** you Have improved so much and I haven't :(
time to get off my lazy butt and do something about it.
for enviro's I believe we have a lot of threads covering that stuff, yet I can't find them atm :/ personnally I always loved these threads:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=56806
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=71673
not really what you were looking for but it may help.
and for ideas on the enviroments this is a nice thread: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=43791
I see two main catagories in environments: the more acurate perspective / design 'approach'(focus on detail and function and possible depth) and the more moody/ atmosphere aproach(more focused on the use of silhouettes and colours)
the way i practice perspective is just making drawings and thumbnails out of architecture focused books. (both interieur and exterieur). the downside is: these books are damn expensive(i use the ones my dad has.) this isn't the best way of doing them but if helps atm.

[Jason Rainville]

All this time and I never posted in here :(

Not to be an echo of a broken record, but yeah, improvement. Woot :) These last few pages especially. The thing is, there's still a consistent misplacement of features that can be seen. Location, location, location! Nail the lineart, nail it like a 20 pound sledge and THEN when you can say "it looks great, nothing to switch around" then get into rendering it.

<3

[Nizza_waaarg]

yo marleen, been busy working the enviros too i see :D

just re-discovered tom's (IA) demo thread: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=74478
seen 'em all a billion times over but those enviro demos are really helping me out now more than ever, hopefuly you might get something from it.

i think 0shade0 is right about the 2 types of enviros (perspective technical or arty brush stroke landscapes). I think all enviros require a good bit of study with perspective. An architecture book would probably be a big help for doing technical, perspective enviros and then trying to paint up landscapes would be the other mode of study, with more focus on shapes and colours.

sorry if im rambling a bit, seems kinda revalatory to me at least *runs back to more enviro studies* :P

good luck with them

[hp]

hey i can see you improved a hella lot...i'm so jealous! gah i haven't had time to do all these studies like you ^^

anyways i would just watch the delicacy of your markmaking in some areas...it seems that you shade some areas a little too soft and some areas kind of hard and not following the contours...

[_andreas_]

its good and healthy for me to see the hard work your putting
into your art.
i really like the sketches on the cardboard(?)

AND yes, moleskine are expensive but worth it.
try putting some paint in them and see how they shine =)

[h2rra]

hey, I like the moleskine portrait ;D

For perspective try this (http://basangpanaginip.blogspot.com/2006/01/downloads.html) site and that perspective handbook. Some loomis books also had topics about it (fun with the pencil or successful drawing I think). Or you can just google perspective. Some watercolor site had really in-depth articles about it.

And for photoshop and perspective check this (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1386367#post1386367) thread.

For me it also makes sense thinking of distance between vanishing points as focal length of the lense. If you put the points really close the scene appears as photgraphed with a wide-angle lense(a lot of distortion + spherical perspective occurs). If you move the vanishing points far away the scene appears as shot by tele lense. Don't know if this thought is completely wrong or common sense but I haven't seen it written anywhere.

I've been struggling a lot with environments myself lately, can't say anything helpful :^^;:

[voraz]

Hi that last portrait is lookin great!

The environments still need some work though not much to see yet, lets see how they turn out!

update?

cheers

[JellevdVegt]

hey marleen i see you're trying some environments. also, i saw yur request for tips on environments in one of your previous posts. one big tip is seeing the dvd of feng zhu :) thats where i learned most of.. and watch other concept artist that are good in environments and try analyzing what the are doing.

some things to look out for:

1. always have a clear foreground / midground / background. why? it creates the illusion of depth. also, try to (pretty much) evenly devide them (back/fore/midground) over the composition so that its balanced.

2. have some scale elements. this can be a person, window, car, something everybody knows how big it is. place them at least in 2 of the 3 'grounds' ( i mean back/mid/fore grounds), for example. in foreground there is a building with a window in it, very detailed drawn. in the mid ground u see the whole building with all little dots. instinctively you know that they are windows. same goes for people.

technical tips:

1. most manmade things are very straight and geometric. thats why you should know how to draw a straight line. its very different then drawing organic shapes. keep your elbow on the table and try drawing a straight line. one of the ways feng practices this is drawing 2 dots and connect them with a straight line. if you missed it, then you should practice more.

2. know perspective. most importantly, alway know where the horizonline is. this way, you always know if you look up or down to something

3. drawing circels in perspective (ellipses) is very hard. so i would reccomend in this stage not to draw these :P

wow, this is my longest post ever haha.

hope this helps a little. good luck and all

[JellevdVegt]

Not to be an echo of a broken record, but yeah, improvement. Woot These last few pages especially. The thing is, there's still a consistent misplacement of features that can be seen. Location, location, location! Nail the lineart, nail it like a 20 pound sledge and THEN when you can say "it looks great, nothing to switch around" then get into rendering it.

i recognize myself in this problem haha

[Newbs]

I'm really liking all the studies you are doing and the difficult angles you are going for!

[Dose206]

Marleen,

Good stuff since last I've been able to brave the internet. To answer a previous question, I don't particularly see any great reasons to start a new sb unless you want to. The thing that's nice about keeping the same one is that you (and everyone else) can easily look back to page one and see how far you've progressed. I'm sure you're getting tired of everybody telling you that you've progressed but take a peek yourself and I think you'll find that the evidence is overwhelming. I've been thinking about starting a new sketchbook, but part of me is waiting for something, some kind of milestone to spur on a new sb. I dunno.

You're PoseManiacs sketches are definitely helping but I think that it's time for you to buckle down and do some longer studies from other sources. I know you have been doing this (I can see it) but I think that you should do more. Vary your subject matter and poses/angles. You seem to have a pretty good general understanding of where things go but when it comes time to change the viewpoint it seems to get tricky for you.

But, of course, keep up the great work! It's always inspiring to come here and see you still working hard. Oh, and I wish I could help you with enviros, sorry I can't but I am excited to see some more.

Chris

[loveandasandwich]

This (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=187731&d=1187447346) is gorgeous.
You should really develop this one (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=187710&d=1187447253) & make it into a finished piece! I think it has the potential to be tooootally awesome.

Lots of hard work in this sketchbook, keep it up!

[paperX]

sorry for not stopping by in so long marleen, you're working hard as always i see, i really like all the studies and figures and sketches (especially this one: (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=187731&d=1187447346))

keep working hard! ill drop by more often from now on :)

[Kir Nuyts]

U seem to be a verry active one, wich is good...
Now, this one is a beauty:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=187729&d=1187447337

Simple and effective! U should make more like these,
Ur going great Noë,

Groetjes,
kir

[Jushra]

this (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=187731&d=1187447346) is awesome. looking forward to seeing more.

[Jens]

Hey, just stopping by, nice to see your progress

A lot of the self portraits you posted are really intresting, the way you pick different ways of lighting your face and different colors. Nice!

[Noë]

Next post will be reply post, because I really need to sleep after posting this.

I just want to thank you all soooo much for the great tips on enviros.. I guess I should work more on the creative aspect and less on the technical stuffs because it's more about the creative side anyways. I've read all the tips ofcourse and put them in my memory.. Oh and those threads linked to are pretty cool & awesome too!.

[dont read if you're not bored and want to make yourself more bored]
I want to apologise for the long time no post.. It's partially my and partially school's fault.. I'm burried in homework (usually more than 2 hours a day) and I sport three evenings a week.. And when I finally have time for myself I actually don't want to draw because I'm tired and I think something like 'I need to relax now, so I can't draw'.. But that makes no sense ofcourse because I like to draw and it's a form of relaxing for me. So I've decided to make a schedule for me which allows me two hours of homework a day but not more, and which puts in an hour of drawing time as well.. Let's just hope I stick to it.
Oh damn :P the typing has become way too much again.
[/don't read]
Well here's just the crappy update.. To show I really didn't do frak (yup, I díd watch Battlestar Galactica) these last two/three weeks.

my quick (mostly bad) stuff

200812 200813

200814
this one's just for fun to show you what I do at least one hour a day (one hour in school, and usually some time out of school) : maths! ^^ for the ones for who this is gobbledegook: this is the easy stuff :P, for the ones who understand what I'm doing here: this is still the easy stuff for this chapter :P

200815
did this one today, from photo. Is also a little study for school project.

School project stuff
we have to create two designs for wall cloths, theme is Balance, and it should be suitable to hang in a courtroom.. But nobody's really sticking to that.

quick (awful) sketches
200816 200817

200818

the main thing after about 3 hours of work (it's already a lot more progressed, I'll try to get hold of a digital camera to take new pics soon)
Oh, and it's one meter in width and 35 cm in height.

200819

200820 200821


I'm sorry peeps of SSG #11, I will try to take an hour this weekend to comment your sketchbooks!! I've been so slacky!!
Love
Marleen

[0shade0]

nice update, you're working hard and it's paying off. (even though school is killing you) I had the same thing you know last year, so I made a schedule too. very smart of you (but battlestar galactica?) c'mon! :p
what paint are you using for the balance painting?

[Dose206]

man, battlestar galactica is killing me! I'm waiting for season 3 on DVD. The rumor mill said middle of August and here it is middle of September and still no DVDs! Ah well.

I like that ladnscape for the school project, and I'm excited to see where the other one, the main one for the same assignment will end up. That one actually looks like it is sticking to the subject fairly well.

Keep it up and don't let a crazy work load get you down. If yo uget to busy to really focus on your art and don't produce anything that you don't wanna show here, don't worry, we'll forgive.

Chris

[Noë]

(will edit this post soon with replies)

Well here's a little update.. not much ofcourse. I actually spent 10 hours on homework already this week (so that's in three days.. :P) I started writing stuff down in a homework schedule to find out where I'm losing time. It's helping.. I could take three hours off today for CA and drawing ^^

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sketch was done in the train last sunday, and I did the colour version just now, took about 0,75 hours so far. It rather sucks :P but I like working with lines as a base. It's rather different.

205043
Well, this is my school project so far, still a lot of work to do. Sorry for the crap photo. Our camera thing isn't that great. I'll take a sharper picture next week.

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To see how I work at the drawing classroom.

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The table next to me with the brushes and paint, and the sort of paint we use (Interglot translated it as "poster paint", is that the right word for "cheap paint which dries up a lot lighter than it looks when first applied" ? :P)


So well, I'm keeping busy. I'll switch to the laptop now because dad needs the computer. And I'll write the replies from there.

Lots of Love!!
Marleen.

[Myrridin]

I wish I had some useful crit's for you, but I don't. So, I'll just stick with compliments. Your art looks great, well, much better than mine anyways. :P Goed bezig en blijven tekenen!

[Taj]

I believe you're using tempra paint for that piece. I remember hearing once that the easieest way to paint with that stuff is in a sort of hatching method except with different saturations. I have a friend who used to do amazing stuff with it. Good luck!

[Noë]

damn :P I did an hour of reply typing yesterday and forgot about it and turned off the computer.. So I guess I'll reply soon, but only to the ones I really have something to say to. Sorry others! Really appreciate that you're stopping by and everything. But I don't have the time to reply now.

@ 0shade0; hey man! Thanks for the handy links a while back.. And thanks for the reply a few posts back :P Battlestar Galactica is awesome! Love the series... But now I'm waiting for season 4 so no battlestar galactica anymore..
@ Dose; thanks man! And whee! I found someone who agrees with me on BSG :P I think my schedule thingy is paying off.. Getting some more drawing time now.
@ Myrridin; thanks man! Enneuh, same goes for you ^^
@ Taj; hey thanks! I don't think it's tempera I'm using, because tempera has eggwhite as a base right? And this stuff has some glue like gum arabic as a base.. It is related to gouache, but cheaper, as in less pigments and more filling substances in the paint. It's hard stuff to work with because it dries up a lot lighter than it looks wet. But I'm getting used to it now. Thanks for the crosshatching idea. I'm doing allright now with thinning it with water and making the opacity lower though.

--
small weekend update
Well, here it is:

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left: colour pencil.. Yes I didn't focus enough on lineart.. I just felt like rendering :P right: well.. I saw a nice photograph and felt a bit bad and drew it :P

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from the "feeling bad" day.. It's pretty screwed up hihi ^^

YES! I'm getting back to environments and creatures now ^^

Love,
Marleen

[Merlin]

Hey Marleen, how are you doing? Nice stuff, I like the painting you are working on. Which school are you attending?

[Noë]

@ Merlin; Heya! ^^ Thanks a lot :scribble: I'm currently attending a secondary school in Eindhoven, doing 6VWO with the NT profiel and Informatica and Tekenen as extra subjects hihi :P So that was my drawing classroom. You just posted a really nice new update.. Gotta stop by your sketchbook soon!

little updatesie
I forgot all about time yesterday and didn't do homework outside school at all :P So that resulted in me getting up at 5 AM this morning so I could finish my homework and not fall behind :P Am I a geek or what?

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two sketchpages from mind, just felt like scribbling.. (the third and fourth were so bad that I didn't want to scan ^^) Oh and yes, wonky hands I know.. But do they become a tiny little better when I say they were done with my wrong drawing hand? (Damn you Kronos, you seem to handle that so well!)

209097
A little dragon painting study.. Done from this image (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=91821) If it turns out nice I'll give it away as present, but I doubt it will :P Also I feel a little double about giving a reproduction of someone elses idea away as my own painting.. :S Just doesn't feel right.
It's watercolor so far because I didn't have any acrylic white or black anymore, buying new paint this afternoon to put some lighter tones in the thing.

209098
something entirely different than I usually do (or so I think :P) I felt like doing this girly girl fashion like portrait :P it turned out quite fun I think. And yes, the eyes are this far apart on purpose :lineart:


Hope you enjoyed ^^
Love,
Marleen.

[voraz]

Hi Marleen, nice work. I especially like the work from post #554, the portraits.
how's that painting from school going?
cheers

[Nizza_waaarg]

watercolour stuffs look great :D
and about the whole watercolour dragon thing, if you put enough of yourself in it or if it just turns out really nice looking in the end i think it's all good as a gift (looks great btw :P)

and that colour pencil portrait a couple posts back also looks really good, especially on the hair and eyes (think its the contrast makes them stand out).

i meant to post before as well but my internet was acting all funny. Those trees from a little while back are amazing, especially the lines. It'd be cool to see more whole scenes or somthing done in that same style (and cleaned up that nicely as well).

keep on drawing and painting and make sure you keep having fun with it (it's what it's all about :) )

cheers,
chris

and i gotta try and crit better >_<

[Noë]

no replies for now, I'm in a hurry :)

lifedrawing update

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5-min

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5-min

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5-min

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15 and 30 min

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5 and 2-min

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2 and 10 min

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5 and 5 min (same pose)

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3 and 10 min

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30 min


Love,
Marleen

[Noë]

@ Voraz; thanks man :) painting from school is pretty much finished, background needs some more work.. I have a test week first, so in one or two weeks it should be done.
@ Nizza; Wow :) Yup you didn't crit too much but the reply made me go all warm and fuzzy ^^ I'll be trying something in the tree style soon, but first: super secret girly forums project!

smallllll update
I'm busy with some secret stuff (don't get enthousiastic, it'll probably suck big time), and I have test week so that is a lot of work..
Heres the stuff for this week so far:

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The dragon thing, didn't give it away by the way.

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a little sketch I would like to take further maybe someday :P, and some environment thumbnails for this assignment (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1470346&postcount=4).
I've decided to follow some good assignments given to other people by great mentors. I'll be following Moai's mentoring assignments (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107182), and some by Idiot Apathy (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107208). This one is from mr. Apathy.
PLEASE CRIT THE ENVIRONMENTS!!! ANYTHING :)

Some questions and notes I wrote down with the thumb enviros:
- does the hallway from no 1 become this dark even with the lights? Or should it become lighter towards the end?
- this stuff looks pretty boring huh?
- how to render water? And a lake?
- trees?
- which values should I use?
- what would be things to keep in mind while drawing an interesting enviro?

Love
Marleen

[Noë]

updatezors
It's funny how I tend to draw more when I really should be doing other things. Today for instance, I really need to study for school exams.. What did I do so far? 3 hours of studying and 4 of drawing (or something like that :P) ah well.. it'll turn out allright.

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acrylic paint in moleskine, not so great.. The hands were so difficult! Maybe I should do some hand paint studies some day.

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some figures on my A3 sketchpad.. References: characterdesigns.com
These were approximately 4 minutes.

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left: approximately 4 minutes, right: stupid sketch..

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These two were approximately 8 minutes

Love
Marleen

[Mr.Delicious]

ouu, I like that painting in your moleskin a lot, especially the skin tones! I'd love to see more of these paintings, theyre starting to look really good!

[JellevdVegt]

hey marleen, i see you're doing good!

and i see you practiced drawing some thumbs for environments. cool! in adition to my earlier post where i gave you some basic tips about how to draw environment, i did this demo/tutorial thing. i wanted to pinpoint some stuff to share with you. most of this i learned watching fengs dvd.

its about:

drawing a straight line
drawing shapes in perspective
repeating shapes
repeating shapes eyeballing / and how to approach getting into details and stuff

hope it helps.

cya

ps. mhmpppfh my scanner doesnt scan those light lines, sorry for that!

[crimsoneye]

I see you have been working pretty hard on those sketches. Also, I see lot of progress in your work since I last posted on your sketchbook. The anatomy and color that you use in your piece have gotten better. I going make some more comment next time that post in your SB. I really need to post more to keep up with what you have been posting.

See ya, RNJ

[wil.whalen]

You've been practicing hard, I see. The life drawing are starting to look really good! What I have tried to do in my recent lifedrawings is, no matter the time limit, to go slowly around the outline of the figure, even in 15 - 30 second poses. It has really helped me get some cleaner lines and some more natural looking figures. This (http://youtube.com/watch?v=QhF4fBetN4Y) helped me a lot.

Your paintings look nice; it sucks that you have to use poster paint (which I think over here is called Tempera paint.) If it is the same paint I'm thinking of, (which judging from the photos, it is) it's really hard to get anything that looks good to come out of it. So, good job making those lacklustermaterials into someting good!

Keep at it!

_wil

[Dose206]

Marleen,

I'm baack! And you've been busy, my my. These latest life drawings look pretty good, but perhaps pay a little more attention to the breasts and nipples. The hands on your moleskine paint don't look as bad as you probably think, but they do need a little work. Plus, if it gives you an excuse to paint more then it's not bad right?

Anyhoo, keep it up and I hope to comment in here more often. I'm so lame.

Chris

[AlexC]

wow I love this one http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=209097&d=1190871342 and the later updated version of it also, the colours and composition just flow so well together.
Lifedrawings look good too:)

[Nizza_waaarg]

moleskin ftw!!! awsome job on the paints, the mood and colours are awsome.

about the enviro stuff, try grabbing some architecture books or somthing. Generally you can focus more on the perspective and basic construction of the pic rather than the design details and stuff. Plus it will help you learn different architecture styles which should be useful when trying to make stuff up.
Not sure if it would work better or worse digitally (been doing this with pencil so far) but i suppose it might.

Keep at it anyway, you're improving heaps :cheerleader:

cheers,
chris

[Noë]

woo, so many replies :S :)

@ Mr.Delicious; thanks :lineart:
@ Teh Gosu; wow really thanks a lot for taking the time to put this all down on paper!
@ crimsoneye; thanks dude ^^
@ wil.whalen; hey thanks :) great advice on the lines.. I've been trying it this morning in figure drawing. thanks on the school stuff too :)
@ Dose; thanks ^^ i'll try to paint some more.
@ AlexC; well, thanks but it really isn't my composition or anything. It's just a study from this painting (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=91821).
@ Nizza; thanks :) I'll try some architecture soon.

update..
hmm, I haven't really drawn much except for today in lifedrawing. So here's the lifedrawings and a little bit more:

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some thumbs

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thumb and 5 min lifedrawing

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5-min

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5-min

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5-min

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30- and 5-min

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5-min

217605 217606
5- and 15-min

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15-min (I think these turned out really well)

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15-min

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stuff.. can't get the lines straight, but I can't really put my elbow on the table as well.. looking for a cheap drawing table..

217613 217614
other crap :P

Love
Marleen.

[Taj]

This is how i make shadow in perspective.

[armando]

Answer to the shadow problem:

This is an example of back lighting. The first thing to do is to find the vanishing point of the shadows, which is located underneath the sun on the horizon. From there you drop lines from the top angles of the block onto the ground plane, I didn't have to draw this since the block is composed of vertical lines, you'll find 3 points on the ground at this point. Draw straight lines to the vanishing point from these points. From there it's basically drawing lines from the sun across the top three points of the block and having them cross those lines on the ground.
In other news Seedling started a perspective101 thread. It'll take more than just a tutorial to really get it down though. It took me 3 books and a dvd before I tolerably understood perspective, maybe I'm just a moron, I don't know...

EDIT: Almost forgot: It's best to practice lighting using vertical lines at first, just casting shadows from those lone vertical lines, keeps the construction aspect real clean, you know, don't have to worry about all kinds of lines and planes interfering with each other.

[JellevdVegt]

hey noe, just want to tell that i think its great to see you doing those excersises i thought of! cool! about the shadow, i think armando answered your question very well. nice updates btw, with the unreal poses as always. if you have some questions or someting just tell me. maybe msn to communicate easier (dutch). maybe we can learn from eachother.

see ya

[Dose206]

Marleen, those life drawings are looking nice. Maybe you should build a drawing table? It's cheap and really, not too hard. I'm thinking of building myself one.

Chris

[Noë]

EDITED with replies :)

@ Taj; wow, thanks :) I'm going for armando's way though, but I really appreciate you taking the time to do this :)
@ armando; Awesome man! thanks a lot! I'll be checking seedlings perspective thread.
@ Gosu; heya :) oh dear I really need to stop by in your sketchbook.. Gotta plan that in tomorrow ^^ (yup I'm making a planner during the vacation..)
I don't really do much msn anymore because every time I log on I get in long conversations with people and it just eats my time.. And I have so little time already :P But I'll PM you when I have a question like this :) thanks ^^
@ Chris; heya :) thanks :lineart:, actually my drawing teacher called around for me for some drawing tables and got one practically new, and quite cheap. And even better.. (can't believe my luck :P) my parents decided to give it to me as a present :teeth:.

Here is one quicky and one longer.
Are you all excited for november 1st (international self portrait day)? :D I sure am. I'm seriously thinking about calling in sick for school and painting away with oils on canvas that day. And maybe I should do some sketches beforehands.. That doesn't matter right? As long as the actual work is done on november 1st? Ah what the heck. :)

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Love,
Marleen

[Tigermilk]

Okey, here's the deal. I've never really looked through this SB before, but a couple of minutes ago I scanned through a couple of pages, and wow! Great work, Noë!! You've got good rythm in these, I love many of the faces.
Keep posting, you're working on pretty much everything, very good. :)

/tiger

[Noë]

@ Tigermilk; :scribble: thanks!

I've been busy this vacation, but not with drawing, so the update consists of a few quicky sketches :)
Next update will probably be the self portrait sketches, so if you're saving your crits for something, please give them all away on the next update ^^ I would really like to make that self portrait rock your socks ^^..
Now here's the update:

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227198 227199

227200 227201

227202 227204

Lots of love!
Marleen.

[paperX]

nice updates marleen! are u gonna finish TC? want wait to see your kick ass SP :)

[Nizza_waaarg]

ey, ty for the reminder about sp day :P

and way to get your hatch on in that first pic in your last post :P (really cool cross hatching style). kinda reminds me of chromosome's style (link (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=83802)).
that building in the last pic rocks too, glad to see you keeping at the enviro stuff

sorry i got no real crits right now (feeling really sick :dead: ), ill try again on your next post

all the best,
chris

[**Ethan**]

Just finished going through your entire sketchbook and all I have to say is wow! your level of improvement really encourages me about what I have to do in the near future and I cant imagine how good you will be in the next few years to come :)

[**Ethan**]

sorry for the double post, learning how to subscribe to threads..

[Noë]

@ PaperX; thanks :) Well the kickass SP isn't so kickass, but it's in this update..
@ Nizza; wow thanks! Yes I really like chromosomes hatching style also :)
@ Ethan; thanks :) I hope you're right that I'll be really good in the future.. I don't see it so brightly but hey, that's just my optimism :P

Here is my SP so far.. I love oils because they dry so slowly.. And I HATE oils because they dry so damn slowly ^^ How's that?
All crits are extremely appreciated.

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I'm thinking about painting away the hands on the bottom and just have more curling hair there because right now it looks like the hands are mine and I think that makes the image really awkward.. Please help! ^^

Love
Marleen

[**Ethan**]

If you think the hands look like they are coming from you, the only way to change that would be to have more seperation from where the wrist ends and the edge of the canvas, also the light source is different for each hand which could take away from having them in contact with the portrait itself. Just ideas but good quality of work none the less!
:)

[**Ethan**]

sorry one more thing, i noticed the extra hand in the top left hand corner and if it doesnt ruin the idea you had in your head you could add another hand in the bottom right corner to make the piece symmetrical as well as making it look like the hands at the bottom arent yours bc there is three!

[Dose206]

Marleen,

Nice sp, good work so far! I'm hoping that I'll have time to bang one out tonight after I get home from work, but my mind is completely drained of ideas right now, I guess that's what 18 hour workdays will do to you.

I know it's not done yet but the sp is looking pretty flat so I just want to remind you about high and low lights, once you get your comp figured out. Don't forget! It is looking good though. Oh yeah, your face is looking a little more reddish/purple than the rest of the skin, I don't know if that's intentional but I just wanted to let you know.

Chris

[Noë]

Thanks to you both a lot! :teeth: I painted the hands away because they distracted me too much. Eventually I got sick of the oils (they are still wet.. *rrrrr*) and got a semi-good picture of it (thank god, right after getting the image on the computer the digital camera stopped working :P)
Then I worked on it a lot more on photoshop, and here is the result.
Total of 7-8 hours of work I think.
!! could someone tell me if the light parts on the face (forehead mostly) look like blues or low saturated pinks to you? I had some monitor problems and I think I might've set it too pink so that everything will turn out cooler on other monitors. Please tell me :teeth:

230082

And now I have something else for you, viewer of this sketchybook:
since the Fairy Tales and Folklore: All Girl Thunderdome! (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=109651) thread is up, I'm allowed to show my unfinished and unworthy entry (I didn't submit)
I chose "the little mermaid"
I would like to rework this and make the colour palette more interesting and I dunno, make everything more interesting.. :S :P

230086

Love
Marleen.

[**Ethan**]

I think it has a magenta tone to it, slightly blue but as a whole all the shadows of the face have a slightly pink look to them. I do think the composition looks better without the hands on the bottom and it adds more to your portrait with longer hair. Is it part of your plan to have all of the hands with the same color tone and the face to have a different tone all together? An idea might be to give every portion a different tone so that each hand looks like it comes from a different body as well as being different from you. Hope it makes ya think :) by the way what time is it in your country right now?

[B-Man]

Nice SB. I like your sketches they look neat, your line weight is good. I think you could push the values a bit. They are a bit to light, and it goes for most your pictures. And some good advise that have helped me alot in sketching is patience. Just take your time. Drawing is really about just taking your time and dont stress your drawing, dont box out the picture as fast as you can it will blend trough. It really helps for me.
Hope this is helpful in some way.
Cheers!

[Noë]

@ Ethan; hey you're back again ^^ you should start a sketchbook so I can return the favour.. :P :) Thanks for the ideas, I like 'em! I think I'll continue to work on the SP a little so they'll come in handy for sure :)
@ B-Man; Yeah thanks dude! Awesome crits & observations. I'll watch my light values :)
Sooh.. I'm really tired.. Just been through an art attack :P
It started with me going to a book thing, this is once a year in a really big hall, and has loads of books for pretty cheap. I got a few comic books with nice art, and a book on Mucha, one on Klimt and one on Schiele. I felt hugely inspired after browsing though them (especially the Mucha one)

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My two november 1st portraits. I made some colour corrections on the face in the first one.. Next stop: eyes!

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Ink drawing after being muchos inspired by Mucha :scribble: I just scribbled away with the digital colours, don't like them much, gotta think about colour choice more.

231158
30-min self portrait I just finished. It's not much, but I like the colours and I think I did pretty well with the digital painting part. An advice that really helped me with this and makes sense: "Use really saturated colours for your lights and darks, except for the midtone. When you start painting you will use the colours with lower opacity, making all the colours less saturated." (Martha Dahlig, Latest ImagineFX issue)

Love,
Marleen.

[paperX]

wow marleen great sp!!! some crits i think your facial symmetry might be a bit tilted towards the bottom left corner direction, i did a quick fix using liquify in photoshop to show u what i mean:

231504

It's mostly the chin that bugged me though, I suggest flipping your work horizontally in photoshop to spot these errors. Also i think the hands could use some more work as some of the fingers look off in terms of bone structure (eg the hand on the right (our right)).

the second sp is really cool, the style reminds me of vah gohn haha <3

and omfg Mucha, Klimt and Schiele...3 of my most favourite artists ever, good on ya :) the mucha inspired piece is pretty nice, watch out for some slight anatomy errors on her chin and elbow area.

lastly, i like the colours in the last sp alot, and thanks so much for passing on the advice on colours, i really need that :)

PS: ill get rid of the pic if u dont want me posting pics in your sb, just pm me or say something in my sb :)

[Noë]

@ PaperX; thanks so much! I think this paintover really has great improvements.. I'll use it for sure to improve the SP. Thanks for the other crits as well! And no problem at all with posting paintovers or whatsoever other helpful images in my sketchbook! Thanks a lot!
Little update
Our camera decided it doesn't "see" the memory stick anymore so it has to go back to the shop (for the second time :P).. So I tried to scan my A3 lifedrawings of last saturday.. But since we have an A4 scanner I only scanned less than half, the rest was too big.

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5-min

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5-min (getting the hang of the male body here)

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10-min and drawing after a painting in Emmanuel Civiello's "a bit of madness"

234099
Fishie studies! :P

Love
Marleen

[**Ethan**]

love the fish! the only thing my limited experience can say is there is something a little awkward in the transition from the torso to the buttocks/hips etc. It seems somewhat flat and there should be more curves. Hopefully someone trained in anatomy can explain in more detail. always a pleasure to look at your work!

[lefran]

hi marleen- your SP painting is making good progress, also like your mucha inspired drawing and i think your sketch 'a bit of madness' is nice too, perhaps you could do something similar like you did with mucha and draw something inspired by that because i think it has a lot of potential :)
Fran

[Darktwin]

fishes look great, and your figure studies are looking good also, watch the length of your torso, starting to look a tad bit long. Unless thats what your going for, keep working hard. :)

[kyronimus]

Whoa, dat er zowaar nog mensen echt tekentalent hebben in Brabant. Je hebt duidelijk veel gevoel voor anatomie en schaduw.
Wat kan ik nog meer zeggen, het ziet er allemaal fantastisch uit. Blijf gewoon doorgaan met oefenen!!

[Eric Cartman]

lovin' your sb,i really like it.

[JellevdVegt]

hey noe, i really like your improvement. you're getting better at this. also your environments get better. a noticable improvement in line quality in one of them. everything getting to feel more 'solid'. off course you know the trick with the mirror. just watch you work in a mirror and you can look for faults in your drawings. just wanted to remind you that thats one of the most awesome and best tricks for getting a fresh look at you drawing.

i just checked your site and i wanna say i like your poems pretty much. they're pretty good if you ask me.

see ya around!

[Noë]

Wow, so many replies.. Thanks for all the encouraging words!
@ **Ethan**; Thanks! Your crit was meant for this one (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=234098&d=1194372354)? I agree ^^ will take it with me.
@ lefrannigan; hiya ! ^^ Thanks :scribble: that is indeed a good idea, *writes idea list* I'll be doing something with a little more lineart for my next drawing assignment, kinda little bit Mucha insprired, with a tree! :lineart:
@ Darktwin; thanks! Will watch the torso length, but on the lifedrawing drawings, the model had a pretty big torso compared to the leg length, I might have exaggerated it anyways though :lineart:
@ kyronimus; thanks :lineart: I don't really know if it's "feeling" for anatomy and shadow, or just practicing, I think a little bit of feeling and a lot of practicing really. But thanks! And about talent ^^ yeah maybe.. Dunno :) I'm trying to practice and maintain the talent anyways. I'm not sure if we both use the same definition of talent (I mean the one which most people have and which grows when you use it more and practice more ^^) Well.. Thanks for all the compliments, gotta stop babbling away now.. :S
@ Cartman; hiya fatass ^^ :scribble: gotta love south park, but to use eric cartman as a forum name..? Ah whatever :lineart: ^^ Thanks!
@ Gosu; thanks man! I'll be practicing enviro's from now on in my free drawing time, I'm planning on following forms environmenting with form class as an outsider (and at a slower pace :P). About the poems.. :\ well, they're from my depressed period, 3-4 years ago, but thanks :scribble:, I'll have to change the website URL now though.. Can't have that old website linked here ^^
@ teena_mom; well, thanks, that is a big thing to say, and a big compliment. Start a sketchbook!

kinda little update without new art:

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the first school project thing finished (by the way, I got two 9 out of 10 and the final mark was an 8,6.. :teeth: more then I deserve I thought, but I'm not complaining)

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the second school project thing "finished"

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new school project thing: this is the collage from which I'll be (roughly) drawing a colour pencil drawing of approximately A3 size.. Gonna make it a little stylized. The topic is "waiting". Theser are all just photos sticked together, though it took me 1,5 hours (plus two for finding the images :P).

Well, that's it again..
I'm terribly busy at the moment with a lot of exams coming up and many things to take care of all at once.. So don't expect many updates in the near future :)

Love
Marleen.

[**Ethan**]

I reeeaallly love the idea for the collage! that is going to be freaking sweet! actually the pic you linked showed the transition really well, i was more talking about the life studies where they are sitting down bent forward a bit, it seems like there should be an arch or bubble in the line to show the pelvis or muscle from the buttocks or something... maybe its just me lol! should be ready to start my sketchbook at the beginning of next week! totally stoked for you to see my horrible anatomy! gotta start somewhere tho. anyway good luck managing your time and getting amazing grades on your tests!

[voraz]

Hi Marleen, I see you have been doing lots of nice studies.
I like those portraits for the 1st Nov, the first especially it looks really nice.
Those quick five minute studies are also improving a lot, the practise is paying off.
And nice fish studies too.
keep working.
cheers

[Dose206]

Marleen, nice update, like you said not new art but that collage is coming along well and I'm excited to see how it comes out. The mountains in the second school project are looking a little odd, kinda like they're made of paper mache, but as you are already done with it I guess just chalk it up for a learning experience.

Keep it up!

Chris

[Nizza_waaarg]

Been without the internet for the past couple of weeks so i'm completley stunned at what you've gotten done in such little time.

The self portrait from before (the one with the three hands) is incredible.
And i really like the mucha-esque pics too
Really amazing pencils too, especially the Emmanuel Civiello inspired pic

I keep hoping to come back in with some decent crits but you're getting too good :}

The new project, the photo one is looking good too, really does convey a kind of expressive, melancholy feeling and obviously fits the topic of 'waiting' really well. Only gripe with it at the moment is the un-eveness of it all; the grass especially being far to bright and the colours and saturation overall not meshing as well as they could together. It'd be awsome to see you actually do a full oil painting of it (though i'm probably asking a bit to much from you there :P).

Again, amazing stuff :bow:

all the best,

chris

[ikuru]

hey, some interesting stuff here.. this one is real nice.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=231154&d=1194044227

[Noë]

@ Ethan; thanks man! Wow, I'm really flattered you stop around here so much. I'm really not that good.. :scribble: I'll pay a little attention to the transition next time I'm lifedrawing ^^
@ Voraz; thanks man!!.. You're doing awesome as well! Agh, I have SO many sketchbooks to stop by in.. Gotta take 4 hours to do that some day.. :P
@ Dose; thanks :lineart: Yes I think the mountains are a bit weird as well.. I would've worked on it more, but time was running out I guess. It is obvious to see that I spent a lot more time on the 1st one then on the second one.
@ Nizza; thanks! The collage is not going to be an oil painting (and I doubt I could do that really, seeing how "well" my last oil thingy turned out (not :P)) But it'll be a rather big (50x40 cm.) colour pencil drawing for school. I'll try to make the thing look a little more like one in the drawing, but I'm also trying to maintain the dreamy image of it, without making it too much like the previous school assignment (that's a lot of goals huh?). Well thanks for the many compliments.. :bashful:
@ ikuru; thanks ^^ your GIF images in the thunderdome thread are quite nice as well :P ghihi. Gotta stop by your sketchbook to say something about your art.. :lineart:

update with euhmm.. new and old stuff..
I've been really busy with studying for school, the things I drew were studies for the school project and are currently at school. I'll take them with me somewhere next week to scan them to have something to show you..
For now there is only this weeks lifedrawing, the remains of lifedrawing two weeks ago (when I couldn't get my camera to work), and two old sketches I dug up in a pile of mess.. Pretty monochrome and boring, but it is something..

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5-min lifedrawing this morning

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5-min lifedrawing this morning

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5, 5, and 15-min lifedrawing this morning

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15-min lifedrawing this morning

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10-min lifedrawing this morning (I really got her likeness down well on this one ^^) and two old sketches from last school project.

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some more fishies I found back, and a 5-min lifedrawing from two weeks ago

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5 and 10-min lifedrawing from two weeks ago

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15-min lifedrawings from two weeks ago

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5-min lifedrawing from two weeks ago

Love,
Marleen.

[paperX]

great stuff marleen! the lines quality is looking good i must say :) just watch out for proportional issues when doing life drawing, getting the gesture down is important...but remember to keep the other stuff accurate too, for example in the second to last pic the guy's hips look sorta thin compared to how wide his shoulders are (u probably already know this, i'll shut up now :P)

keep up the hardwork anyhow!

[Jushra]

nice figure studies you've got going on. i'm going to tell you the same thing someone once told me (and at times i still don't listen), and that is to watch your line weight, right now it is making your figures feel a bit flattened out. don't be afraid to go bold, but only when necessary, and keep a light touch.

[JellevdVegt]

hey noe, whatsup!

i see your lifedrawings, they look good! i just want to give you some tips, things my teacher tells me. maybe you can benefit from them.

he says: "first, you have to understand that a drawing/painting always consists of several fases. the first fase is the foundation drawing. its all about blocking forms into space (form/direction/proportion) (its all about light lines!!)
second, you get into secundary shapes, breaking up the light lines. getting those bulks on outlines. getting this right will aquire anatomical knowledge.
3 rendering details all that.... (we havent done that in class so i dont know what fases will be more. he says 'its not important for now')

the foundation drawing is the most difficult and important. he says 'simplicity is the most difficult thing to achieve'. 'three things to achieve in a foundation drawing: proportion, direction and form'. he actually recommend to get rid off 'deversions' like the breasts in this stage. the foundation fase is about breaking complex stuff down to simple stuff, in other words abstraction. another interesting frase he said: "the approach of realistic art is the same as abstract art. the only difference in realism is that you can still recognize what it is."

another thing fital to understand when drawing a standing figure is how balance work. it makes your life alot easier.

a little trick on getting proportions right: looking at big triangles in the body. if you know 2 points of the triangle, you can estimate the 3th point by getting the proportion of your imaginary triangle right and you know where your 3th point is. this sounds a bit abstract and confusing i think.. so pm me if you dont understand.

so i hope you can get something out of this... it works for me. i feel im getting better at lifedrawing. good luck to you girl

[Noë]

sorry, no time to reply :) will do that later..
little shitty study update. Really boring actually :S Just posting to fill up the otherwise big gap in this sketchbook.. :P Forgot to bring the drawing colour pencil sketches with me to scan, so I might scan then néxt week :P

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should've spent more time on this

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and on this :P

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Love
Marleen

[Dose206]

Marleen,

Well, despite the fact that this update is a little bit boring, I learned something about how a horse is put together so it's all good! Great job with the lifedrawings (couple of updates ago), I really think that they are doing you good.
In this latest update, the girl with her head tilted back, watch her neck, it looks a little odd, and the foreshortening on the face jsut doesn't seem right. if I was pro I'd tell you why, but my amateur eye can only convey so much.

Keep it up and I hope to see some of this stuff that you keep not being able to post for various reasons.

Chris

[amer-nazri]

Your lifew drawings are beautiful! the 3rd from the first row especially, is really nice in its simplicity, and you manage to capture the pose and weight so well...

amer

[Noë]

:geekg: Okay, here are my replies, and one little picture :S :mittenbop: :
first of all; I'm really sorry, I should reply in all of your sketchbooks soon!! You know what: I'll take one hour tomorrow and one hour the day after tomorrow to give crits & comments, and hope that balances out all the awesome comments and crits I received in this sketchbook!

@ PaperX; thanks! Yes, gotta watch proportions more. I try though, but it is a lot harder on big paper :lineart: thanks! And there's no reason to shut up giving crits ^^
@ esraa; Well thanks.. I hope I don't live the same sort of life as van Gogh tho..
@ Jushra; thanks! Yes I do need to start with the light lines, I often go bold too soon.. Will watch this!
@ Teh Gosu; thanks heaps! I'll watch to make the lines lighter, and watch proportions above all.. I'm often forgetting this indeed. Wouldn't like to get rid of all the breast in my drawings though.. Breasts are pretty on most women :P ^^ Thanks a lot! I'll try the triangle thing and pm you if I don't understand it.
@ Chris; thanks man! Gotta reply in your sb soon.. I feel like a bad SSG member.. :( Thanks for the critties. I definitely agree with you on that face.. Gotta watch proportions way more. Getting things right before rendering. Currently I'm staying way too true to my last name (Marleen Renders) :P
@ amer; Well, thanks! :teeth: the pose was really beautiful :lineart:
---
one image update
Still studying for school exams.. But I took approximately two hours today to paint this in my moleskine. I think I'm gonna start using it for acrylic paint only! It's such a great surface to paint on with acrylics :P

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Love
Marleen

P.S. Gonna work on my last man standing entry from now on.. If you'd like to help me with it, please PM me, and I'll PM you the WIP back.. I would love having some good crits on it! (though I didn't start yet.. :P Still thinking over ideas)

[Dose206]

Marleen,

I'd love to help you with your LMS entry. I didn't have the cajones to enter this year :davi: but I'm sure I will next year. Anyhoo, I like your painting, and this is very off topic but I'm getting myself a Moleskine sb for christmas.... December 25th won't come soon enough!

[gtgauvin]

Hey Marleen. Just checking in. Things are looking good. I was going to suggest some things about your figure drawing, but I see Teh Gosu stole my thunder, so all I can say is ditto.

[**Ethan**]

hey sorry its been so long, just got a new job and the home computer is down until friday night. Your lifestudies are looking amazing! and the acrylic looks awesome as well. Love the bones :)

[voraz]

Hi Marleen, that last piece is very nice, it may be hard to paint with oils in that surface, but I like how it turned out, nice texture. My crit there would be how the folliage around her head, follow the shape of her head, breaking the pattern of the folliage in other places (I guess it would be hard to keep it without painting over her head...).
I also like your fish studies a lot they seem really fluid.
Also i see you are studying horse anatomy, so when will we start to see the whole horse? :D
About the anatomy studies, I would also like to see some more longer studies, with more details and shadows, but the fast ones are looking good, some nice lines.
keep it up.
cheers
Fil

[B-Man]

Hi
I read Teh Gosus advise on life drawing and thought I share a nother side of the subject even dough I agree with him mostly.
Its typical art teatcher to do this blocking the figure out but it kinda blends trough in your finished work if you do. Marko Djurdjevic gives some good advise about how to do life drawings different. instead of quoting him I post a link.
Marko school (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhF4fBetN4Y)
Mahalo!

[catti]

Like the one you did on the computer:)

[razz]

Pretty neat stuff. For a numerous time I must say that I' envious that people take life drawing classes, because I don't! Hard to find any in my city, if possible at all. Should just get naked in front of a mirror, but I'm sure my parents wouldn't understand that.
I assume those animal anatomy studies are from some book, no? If so, what kind of book is that?

[gtgauvin]

B-Man: I had a look at the video, and I have to say that it seems like someone could really take away the wrong message from it. It seems like pretty good advice if you're already Marko Djurdjevic, but for the rest of us who aren't Marko Djurdjevic, plotting the figures beforehand is necessary to getting it right. If the volume, angles and proportions are all wrong, pretty squiggly lines aren't going to save it.

[B-Man]

Noë sorry for starting this discussion in your SB.
gtgauvin - I agree in what your saying! You are right and Its not to talk down on blocking figures, i just find Markos way a fun exercise to alow your self to really look and take your time. I dont sugest it as a way of learning proportions without the blocking and other shape styled learning.
Just try different exercises and go with what works best for you. Right? Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.
CHeers Noë, youre doing great!

[Noë]

EDIT: and here are the replies (edited in the post later)

@ Dose; Heya! ^^ I'll PM you the sketch for the LMS as soon as it is a little more progressed than it is now (just a bunch of doodles). And nice@the moleskine.. I usually don't do clichés, but they're really as good as people say :S
@ Ethan; thanks man :lineart: but don't feel sorry for not replying for a few updates! I mean, you don't have any obligation towards me, it's only nice when you stop by ^^
@ Voraz; thanks! totally agree with the crit on the painting (which was actually acrylics on paper, which works pretty nice!), about the studies: well the first one (I think?) was a pretty long study I think (well, medium then, not very long), 1 hour for the dog skeleton I think? I'll get some stuff really rendered though when I continue the skeletons, but I'm wondering where to put my priority: learning the shapes and proportions of the skeleton, or getting it on paper correctly looking at the reference. I'm not sure, because with every skeleton I make I'll usually look up the reference and it's kind of almost impossible (but not undoable :S look at mentler :P) to learn every bump of the skeleton so I'll probably use reference always with skeletons.. :S Well.. Anyways.. Yeah.. :P
@ B-Man; no problems at all for bringin up that discussion in my sketchbook! I think Marko has a point in that video, but for me it is also very important to first get basic proportions right before spending more time on my lines.. So I guess a little of both. Something I definitely learned from that vid is to really take the time for my lines.
@ catti; ehm LOL :P which one? I mean, I have ehh.. lots of stuff I did on the computer.. But thanks anyways ^^
@ razz; Hey thanks :) yes you have reason to be envious about the lifedrawing, but you can also ask friends to model for you, draw from mirror, or photographs for compensation :) about the anatomy book: It's called "drawing classes in anatomy" from a bunch of people with very unpronouncable names (for me) which I don't remember so quickly.. EDIT: I looked it up: link (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anatomy-Drawing-School-Geza-Feher/dp/3895082899/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197398538&sr=1-6). The illustrators name is Andras Szunyoghy. I have this book in Dutch though. For animal anatomy book recommendations be sure to check out this post (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1486060&postcount=23), and euhm, the entire thread that goes with it.. Simply invaluable information there!!
@ gtgauvin; see the reply to B-man above: I agree with you, but there is a nice lesson in this vid for taking the time for your lines.

meh updatesie with school things

Here are some sketches for my process for the school assignment, in this process I need to have sketches to show that I thought about all sorts of variations for the final work. I'll try not to forget the digital camera tomorrow and take a WIP picture of the final work (colour pencil: 40x50 cm!)

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variations for the tree, trying to get a 'dream image' on the top of the drawing, and a more 'from this earth' image on the lower part of the drawing.

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left: experimenting with some ecoline and aquarel pencil where I drew over with colourpencils.. The teacher likes to see stuff like this in the process ^^ And it was fun to do.
right: this was done for the start of a step by step for m.engendahl who I'm mentoring a little (I sometimes forget to keep him updated with assignments :P but I'm trying ^^).
Here is the step by step: I'm just posting it here so you can correct me on anything I'm saying in it because I'm by no means an expert on this! Also you may point out all mistakes in my drawing ofcourse! ^^ But you may do that with everything I post here .. Rrrrip it apart!

<-begin step by step->
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I decided to do a drawing of a male face, from this picture (http://www.marleenrenders.com/plaatjes/head1.jpg).
In the image above you see in which order I drew the lines.


I start with looking for repeating proportions such as "length of hairline to eyebrows equals length of eyebrows to tip of the nose equals length of tip of the nose to chin". Don't just do this, measure on your photo first and decide whether these things are correct, or if you have to alter those 'rules'. Just measure and measure (first with eyes, and later check with fingers of pencil!), until you found the top of the head, the hairline, the eyebrows, the tip of the nose, and the chin. Then you can measure how wide the head will be, I usually look at how wide the head is in the image, and then see how far that is up from the chin to above (usually width of the head equals chin to somewhere around the eyebrows, but it can vary quite a lot).
Then I focus on angles (while keeping measuring). What I usually do with photos is drawing lightly over a rather straight line in the face, and try to duplicate that angle on my sketch, measuring every now and then if I'm not completely off. When you practice this more and more you'll notice you're getting better with this and that you start "feeling" the proportions, knowing when to stop a line and start a new angle.
Try not to go to straight in your lines, when you see a curve you can estimate how it'll go, just draw the straight line very lightly so you know the angle, and then draw the curve you know is there.
In this stage I usually try to get the outline of the face right, and the angle of the nose. Also I measured a few more points here, like how wide the eyes will be and where the line between the lips is.
Keeping the angles and measured points in mind I start to draw the more "detailed" areas, I define the nose a little and the mouth and beard. I think I forgot the eyes here, usually I draw the line of the upper eyelid and the lower eyelid as well. It is hard to not go into detail already in this fase, but just keep in mind that you need this stage to check for mistakes (looking at the drawing in the mirror helps finding mistakes easier, and also it can be good to take a break from it and view it with fresh eyes, and to take a step back. After taking a little break from this image I now see that the right (our left) cheak puffs out a bit too much, that the mouth should be a little extended on the right (our left :P) and many other little angle mistakes. I can fix these now, take another look and move on to the detailing and rendering.


So, I hope this helps you with setting up the proportions for a portrait from photo.
I'd like to note that I usually only do this when I intend to spend at least one hour on a portrait, because when I do quick 10 minute portraits I simply don't have time to measure this much, then I only do the first two steps, and make some quick angles before I make the lines more curvy and natural.

This took me 30 minutes so far, and it still has many flaws. Try not to hurry stuff like this on a sketch you intend to work longer on. Also: if you didn't check it yet: Andrew Loomis's book on figure drawing has a really nice overview of the standard proportions to give you an idea what proportions to look for in portraits.
<-end step by step->

Well, that was the update then.. Lots of text..
Couldn't go to lifedrawing last saturday morning because I went to a Machine Head concert the friday beforehands ^^ couln't get myself to get up at 6 o'clock to catch my train back to Eindhoven the next morning ghehe ^^

Love!
Marleen.

[Merlin]

It's good you'r practising proportions of the face. About measuring, it's a good method you'r using for learning. But I think your ultimate goal is to get a face right without any guidelines and measuring with pencil or fingers.

Try some quick sketches and some very precise portraits, and only rely on your eyes when measuring. This way you will train your eyes and after a wile you'll be able to see the proportions of a face very quickly.

That's the way I always do it. But you should just do what works best for you :)

[Noë]

@ Merlin: Thanks for the feedback! That is indeed how I usually approach the quicker face drawings, but this step by step was created for a person who is having trouble setting up the basic features of the face and I think that when starting out doing portraits it gives much confidence to know you measured proportions right. Usually when doing this I try stuff on the eye first and then measure to practice the eye as well.
But thanks for the input anyways! Gotta rely on my eye and memory eventually.

---
The school project I've been working on at least fourty minutes a (school)day for last week and this week (and some school hours (50 minutes minus 10 for getting stuff and putting stuff away at the beginning and end of the lesson) before that).. So this is it, almost finished, or has to be because next friday I have to hand it in..
I have some other sketches for this project that I'll try to scan this evening.
Furthermore I'm working on my LMS thing, but I've only been able to put in 2 hours because of the incredible amount of homework I have, and because I'm in school until 17.00 every day getting my school drawing finished in time :P
Well, that's plenty of blablabla again.. Here's it so far.. Colour pencils on 40 cm x 50 cm (pretty big for colour pencil drawing!).

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EDIT: here are the other two images.. For my process
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Love
Marleen.

[UriL]

Oh I really enjoy the colors of your most recent one, but I feel as if there should be more of a visible sepration between background and ofreground, but I guess that will come with the missing part right now, very enjoyable sketchbook.

[Flutic]

I've lost this thread for a while, and when I come back to visit I see allots of improvement.

I like you're animal studies.
Ps:do you now the name of the kind of paper you use in the last drawings the brown stuff. (Dutch name also, I can't find the paper here or don't know the name)


Keep the good work up greets,Tom

[Noë]

@ Uril; Thanks :) Well the drawing is finished now and there is indeed a better separation between foreground and background, had to rush the background part though, so that is a bit meh :\ Ah well. Thanks for stopping by!
@ Flutic; Thanks :) I just asked for a toned paper sketchpad, aka "grijs of gekleurd papier". I scanned in the front of my sketchpad to show you which brand I use, maybe you can recognise in the art supply store? But there are other brands that sell this paper too ofcourse. CLICK (http://www.marleenrenders.com/plaatjes/front-sketchbook.jpg). Hope that helps ^^
---
I'd like to announce that I'm one of Moai's mentees, learning Animal Anatomy and Creature Design (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107182&page=20) :teeth: I'm really happy to be one of his mentees. I'll be spending my drawing time mostly on my assignments from now on, so there'll be less posting in this sketchbook I think.
I'd like to know from you whether I should post my assignment stuff in this sketchbook as well? Right now they're going to be mostly skeletons from quadruped animals. Ah well. I'll see..
Also I'm working hard on my LMS entry (well, not just yet, but I will be!).. So I won't be posting too much in this sketchbook I think..

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This took 3 hours: skeleton of a goat, on A3 paper.

Continuing with this morning's lifedrawing: I'm pretty ashamed of most of the charcoal stuff, but I'm posting them anyway :\ :P I couldn't scan three of my charcoal ones because they were too big for the scanner. Photos will come after the weekend.

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5-min

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5-min

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5-min

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15-min

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15-min

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15-min

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The above four drawings were done from one 30-min pose.

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20-min, and the last pose.

Hope you enjoyed :) Gotta get some work done on that LMS piece now! ^^
Love,
Marleen.

[crimsoneye]

Hay, I just been very busy lately since I had finals last week.
I glad see some more improvement in your art work. See that you have made significant improvement in your ability to draw. In the drawing with the girl coming out the tree and man sitting under it, I think the girl is larger than the man in proportion. If the girl was sitting next to the man she would be lot more taller than the man. I just wanted to point that out. I see you have gain lot more understanding in your ability to draw the human figure.


Keep up the good work

[paperX]

sorry for not dropping by for so long marleen, i really like the amount of studies and life drawing you are doing (makes me feel so ashamed haha) and i dont see why u shouldn't post your creature studies in here, i for one, find them pretty interesting and not boring. :)

also i like the colours in your work recently, although i think there is a perspective problem with this piece (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=257437&d=1197395786). the tombstone in the foreground, the seat, and the lady upside down dont seem to match very well in spacial sense...but i suck too badly in terms of perspective to tell you how to fix exactly sorry :(

keep working hard! i added you on msn if u dont mind :)... would be nice to crit each other on LMS3...(i still have to start on mine :^^;:)

[Dose206]

Dammit Marleen, of course post the work that comes out of being a mentee! We don't care if we just see skeletons, we (or at least I) will still enjoy them.

I'm still waiting on that LMS entry to hit my PM box...... I know you're busy but if you have nothing at least let me see a sketch or something.....

at this point I don't have a whole lot of crit for you, but I'd like to see you take some of those life drawings further. I know you have limited time per session but I'm thinking that you could go back later and begin to render some of the sketches that you have. It would be good practice rendering forms and it'll look nice to boot.

Anyway, keep it up!

Chris

EDIT: i wanted to ask you what's the deal with the little orb deal in your avatar, i've seen it on a few other people but don't know what it means. is it an LMS enterer thing?

[dadushin]

hey wow gotta say there is a lot of improvement happening in this book
and its really good to see you got started early
studies and things are looking great
keep it goin!

[AphexTweak]

Spent part of my afternoon going through your SB. Really nice work you have in here and a great showing of progression. Your work has really matured over the last few years and it looks like you are heading in the right direction to continue to develop your skills. You show a great amount of dedication in this SB which is commendable. Thanks for sharing and I look forward to future updates.

[Noë]

Thanks for all the great crits! I'll reply a little later, I'm getting a headache from sitting behind the computer at the moment (feeling a little ill)

First: the drawing update
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These are all 5-min lifedrawing sketches, these were too big to scan for the previous update.

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One more lifedrawing sketch (gah :P) and two figures from mind.

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My 'finished' 40 x 50 cm colour pencil drawing. I got a 9 for this (despite the proportion issues with the female and the gravestone that were pointed out ^^), and for my process (which I spent a lot of time on) I got a 10 out of 10! :P that rarely happens so I was really amazed when I got my final grade: a 9,5 :S I feel pretty flattered to get such high grades..

Second: some fun pictures that I thought would be nice to share here

These are from a boring science class where we (meaning the teacher and the group) usually don't do much because our class is very quick in understanding things he explains, so we only need 10 minutes a lesson for school stuff :P
A friend of mine and me took my kneaded eraser and made two cats, a giraffe and an elephant of it.. I happened to have a digital camera with me so I took some pictures.. Just for fun ^^

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my awesome super duper drawing table (got it second hand for really cheap.. so lucky!) + anatomy book which I usually work from.

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My collection of sketchbooks and pads (left), and my art books and ImagineFX mags on the right! :teeth: Gah, I feel so spoiled!


Love
Marleen

[voraz]

Hi Marleen, still improving in your lifesketches...
Congratulations on the great grade you received from that work, the human figures look great, but I think the "intersection of the girl with the tree is a little odd. Also I think the foliage needed some more work, did you use a specific tree as a reference? It seems like a Ficus from the roots...
I have that Schielle book too.. :D (great price...)
cheers

[paperX]

congrats on the great grade marleen! and merry christmas too! :)

PS: i like the recent life drawings a lot :)

[Marjolein]

woohoo!
good stuff from the netherlands! ;)

[Dose206]

haha, those kneaded eraser sculptures are sweet. congrats of course on your grade. these latest sketches look nice, but the farting bent over person has odd arms. I think the forearm is too long.... well, on second glance perhaps it's just unclear to me where the wrist is... anyhoo, check your email and get crackin' on some more LMS sketches.

Keep it up,

Chris

[Nizza_waaarg]

grade well deserved, congrats. And those kneaded eraser cats made my day :)
maybe work on getting more volume into your life drawing stuff, i dunno (my crits are getting worse and worse :P). I've found Bammes to be really good latley if you can find any of his stuff, though it's all in german but the pictures are really good.

all the best and keep on drawing (and happy new year), :party: :vodkamachine:

chris

[MonkeYoakum]

Nice drawing table, what a find! I love to see peoples spaces. Any way, quite a nice sketchbook you have here, the life drawings are convincing and clean. on the upside downgirl with the guy i feel like there could have been some more interesting lighting to make shadows to break up the space, but good job on nice grades ;P

[ruuhkis]

Sweet progress, Marleen! Keep it up :)

[gtgauvin]

Hey Marleen. Some good work here, but I'd like to see the volume of the figures established a bit more forcefully. Check out this (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=259859&stc=1&d=1197742682) image from Nizza's sketchbook. Maybe co-opt that trick with the contour lines.

Also, I find that when I'm drawing organic figures, it helps to establish the core of the figure; that is, establishing a center line for every dynamic component of the body. Once I'm sure the figure is bending correctly and all my proportions are more or less accurate, then I can fuss about establishing boundaries. I've got an image in an upcoming update where I disregarded my own advice and only realized how grievously I f'ed it up once everything was all nice and rendered.

[JellevdVegt]

hey noë, nice update. congratioulations with your excellent mark.when will youo update again? post more often!! ;)

[Noë]

That's funny, I came online to post my new update and saw that my sketchbook was first in the sketchbook section because you just posted Teh Gosu! :P

I just typed a big rant here for my parents but that's not really interesting I guess, so it's deleted. But the point was that I couldn't take the laptop to work on my LMS this vacation, and now it turns out the excuse they used so that I couldn't take it isn't true.. HARR :xplode: so I'm stressing out getting up two hours early to try and get some work done. So sorry, no updates soon.
:xplode: I'm SO mad at them!


some portraits for school.. Next wednesday is school exam portrait.. 3 hours. Can't wait! ^^

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Killarney international youth hostel is very very nice, and there's beautiful nature around Killarney.. But I just drew the reading room.

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Pages from school I found back, it's hard to draw all those moving classmates :S

Love
Marleen

[Ezidof]

hey man, keep it up!good luck with your exam!

[0shade0]

staat daar nu mislukt op zijn hoofd? :p
well these updates are sweet! I esp like the reading room.
of the 3 portraits you've made I think the first one is the less strongest,hardly any value change, I have a feeling it may just be the scan or the paper choice.
2cond one is the best out of three, good use of value, a bit rougher and proportions are better. third one I think you were tired ;)
great work Marleen, and thanks for kicking me to work in my sketchbook :)

[Nizza_waaarg]

bummer about what happened with your lms and vacation :S
those portraits are great though, especially the third one.

and that's so cool you get to do portrait exams

i guess my only crit is make sure you keep volume in mind and don't let shapes become to flat (gotta recommend k-chen's figure studies and stuff over at character designs tutorial section, they rock :D)

cheers and good luck on the exam,

chris

[JellevdVegt]

hey Noè. i think you really getting better and better. cool!

someone PM´d me to tell more about the traingle system i told you earlier about. so i made this kind of explanation, but i figured maybe it would help you too understand this method better. (im bad in words)

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1603442#post1603442

[Noë]

Hello all!
I've been working on homework in all my spare time, and tried to get some LMS painting done as well, right now I'm kinda stressed out because even though I've been spending approximately 3-4 hours a day at my homework, it seems to be building up anyways (or maybe I'm just trying to do too much..). But I guess after my test week (next week) things will quiet down a little.
Here's my update.. I think I'll have to skip replying to all your great replies here, and just thank everybody heaps! I'm really sorry!
--
Things to come in next update: two more portraits (for school).. I had my first practical drawing school exam (portrait drawing from life) and I got a 9 out of 10 for the portrait, so that's quite nice. Also I have some quick figure drawings from fashion magazines (that was also a school assignment). And later today I'll have my second practical exam which is figure drawing (form life), I hope that goes allright because I'm feeling ill at the moment (stayed home the first few hours to get some more sleep), so I'll try to get a picture of that as well..

First: LMS stuff.. I know it's sucky and all.. :\ but I tried..
I got my ass handed to me by bonedog and Trevor, but oh well.. Better luck next time!
I'd like to thank Fran (Lefran) and Chris (Dose206) for the many awesome crits on this! I'll really have to find time to pay you back.. :S

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Second: a school portrait: spent 40 mins on this

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Third: some lifedrawing (we had a "big boned" woman this time)

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Thanks for viewing :)
To SSG #11: I'm really sorry for not replying in your sketchbooks for so long.. I'll plan in some time this weekend for that!
Lots of love,
Marleen.

[paperX]

good job on your lms marleen! i think you could add some more saturation to some parts of the piece to bring out more contrast, also the roots of the trees aren't really interacting with the bodies enough imo, they look sorta just hovering about the bodies rather than grabbing/sticking on etc

anyways, its always nice to see you do more life drawings so always keep that up! :)

[Flutic]

Nice Sketches Again,
Love The Figure drawings,

Greets,Tom

[Noë]

@ PaperX; thanks for the crits! I'd really like to work on this image some more so they will come in handy (but I wonder when I'll have time for it :P)
@ Flutic; Thank you :)

Update;
I didn't get round to getting a picture of the portrait exam yet, but here's some more school work.. Besides schoolwork I had some time to get some mentee drawings done. These are all skulls this time, and now I'm planning to do a few cat skeleton drawings.

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40-minute portrait: charcoal on A2 paper (school)

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40-minute figure drawing: charcoal on A2 paper (school)

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90-minute figure drawing from life: charcoal and pencil on A2 paper (school exam)..
Aargh! I hate that tiny hand and those wonky legs! :P Too bad I didn't notice them until after the exam.. Ah well, at least the face and upper body look okay.

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sheep skulls (mentee stuff)

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generic skull (mentee stuff)

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sheep skull and two sheep scapula's (mentee stuff)

Lots of love!
Marleen.

[crimsoneye]

I really like what seeing your work. I see that you have firm grasp on your line work. I glad see those improvements in your work. The skull drawing have line work that is nice and clean. In the third figure drawing I feel that you have elongated the torso of the female figure.

On another note really like your third sketch for the last man standing contest. I like the way that lines flow with in it. The idea for it I find interesting.

[Liam Harvey]

the pencil case with the million zips on it is absolutley fantastic and amazing.

[Noë]

@ Esraa; Hmm, would you call 90 minutes a fast sketch? Anyways, thanks :)
@ Crimsoneye; Thanks! Yup I guess you're right about the torso.. I had more trouble with the proportions than I thought I'd have, probably because the model moved slightly after each time getting up (every 10 mins she had to get up and walk around from our teacher), but that's no excuse ^^ Gotta do better next time.
@ Gerbil Fetus; Yes, I think that as well.. Sadly I lost it on the train last week :(

kinda sorta update;
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20-mins (for school)

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40-mins (school)

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some thumbs, android style (but much much worse ^^) I think they look like crazy insects and butterflies, viewed from above.

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the thumb with the arrow pointed at it, a little worked out (just an idea)
Please crit this! It's just a sketch ofcourse, but I'd love some crits on how it's put together.

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a sketch page from the train, black ballpoint and white pencil

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left: sketch from mind I'd like to take a little further
right: cat skull, drawn from www.digimorph.org

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cat skeleton drawing from anatomy book

Lots of love,
Marleen

[m.engdahl]

Heya Noe!

Wonderful improvments, following your progress from Johannesburg atm :)
Keep it up!

[Jorge Gecov]

Hi Noë he cat skeleton looks good, i like some life drawings and portraits too.
Nice stuff!

[Frank Gressie]

good studies here, noë

[Jakers]

Your sketching is getting much better, as expected, but I wonder if there is more you can look into for how do you start your drawings - say your portraits? How do you start them, shapes, light horizontal lines to space features, contour style linework etc? its good to try different ways to see what gives you the best results so make sure your exploring that somewhat.

It will be neat to see the mentored animal stuff in some original art! see you around

[Noë]

@ m.engdahl: Thank you
@ Jorge Gecov; Thank you
@ Frank; Thanks ^^
@ Jakers; Thanks a lot :) Will (and am already a little) try different approaches! Also about the animal anatomy: soon I'll be making a skeleton design of my own, so that will be a sort of original art thing.. :)

Small thingy
I almost feel bad for posting this, as I should not be wasting so much time looking through the forums and drawing some from time to time.. I need to study for my last two tests this week :P but since they're friday it seems so far away.. :S I always waste so much time during test weeks :S pretty weird.
So after this update I'm gonna study!

So this started out as a colour study from ref (http://pinkpaint-stock.deviantart.com/art/Water-Spirit20-49657660), but then I went on and got a little carried away.. Didn't watch proportions in the beginning (because it was just a colour study), so I ended up changing proportions quite a bit, and it still is pretty wonky..

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EDIT: here's a 1,5 hour bear skeleton I did yesterday.. It was too little for a new post, so I just edited it in in this one:

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Lots of love,
Marleen.

P.S. I promise I'll reply to some sketchbooks tomorrow.. It has been far too long..

[Mikhael]

I really love the concept you had with the piece portraying bodies of people being cradled under the swamp by the roots of the trees. It has alot of potential with lovely colours and composition. I honestly think you should continue to develop it further.

Just my two-cents. (:
-Mike

[Ignominious]

whoa noe! i'm in love with those new tinted paper sketches!

[paperX]

good stuff marleen, one crit would be that the tattoo's you added on her look a bit flat, the ones on her face look good, but around the chest area the values look a bit out of place, also watch out for some of the muscle forms, they look a bit strange in the chest/shoulder/elbow area :)

[Dose206]

Marleen, I agree with PaperX on the tattoos on this last one. Good stuff though, glad to see that you're still trying harder than the rest of us.

Chris

[pbgse]

i love your life drawings your line is very sure because the forms are revealing
i'll be watching :)
cheers :) and thank you for the crits

[Noë]

@ Mikhael; Thank you :) I will continue this image, though probably in two months or something like that, because I am way too busy with school and being a mentee at the moment. But I will continue it.. Thanks for your input.
@ Ignominious; Well thank you! I sure love my tinted paper ^^ And it seems to love me in return..
@ PaperX; thanks for the input! Yes the forms are wonky.. Next time I'll have to make colour studies about shape as well.. Maybe I should just do "studies" :P I see what you mean about the tattoo, thanks for that! I think I understand now.
@ Chris; Thanks man, I haven't been trying so hard with the replying.. :S gotta do that! But I'm not making any more promises because I tend to break them..
@ pbgse; Thanks you and no problem :)
--
Small slacker update
So.. I've been slacking this vacation, and I will have to work extra hard now that school started again to make up for not doing anything during the week of freedom.. Here's what I díd make: a load of crap and some studies ^^

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Doodles from mind, except the hands and little tree

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doodles from mind, tree was reffed in beginning, but I added a lot to it

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left: studies from Moai's post of generic skeleton, right: some skulls I made up.

Love,
Marleen.

[Nizza_waaarg]

haven't been around here in a while :S

those hands are looking good, a little flat in places though.
And that tree is great, especially the clean lines, works really well.

And good job working on the animal anatomy. Always good to see some different subjects.

All the best,

chris

[kidult]

Nice fluid sense to your linework! The skulls look pretty believable

[pbgse]

doodles from mind are the best of everything i don't know how others see it but i always made the coolest things by having no refs - but just doodles -otherwise scroll google allot :D
keep it up and more more more :)
you do art school ?

[Noë]

@ Nizza; Thank you! Crits are right on :)
@ kidult; thanks :)
@ pbgse; Hmm, I actually have a lot of trouble doodling from mind, I found that I usually need to have done a lot of studies of a subject, before I can draw it from mind in a reasonable way.. Oh, about your question: no I don't do art school, I'm currently in the last year of my pre-university education, and after my exams I'll study Illustration :)
--
crappy crap update :P
So, here's a little bit of lifedrawing, and a lot of school sketches for my drawing exam project.
First: lifedrawing; I felt pretty ill that day, and went home after 1,5 hours, I think it shows in the drawings that I didn't feel too well.
These are all 5-min, except the last two (10-min), after those two I left.
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And now: school project: I chose "Imaginary Architecture" as topic, and my idea is to make two illustrations of a skeleton inspired building: one from the outside, showing more of the structure, and one of the inside, showing more of a mood. So here are a lot of sketches showing how I struggle with lots of things.. :P
All crits on this project are extremely appreciated!, especially how I can get this to look less like a rip off of the Bone Palace art from Guild Wars Nightfall.. (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=57180&d=1180103391) :\

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left: trying out some things with thumbs (thumbs are way easier to do digitally, so I'm making use of that)
right: the i-dont-really-know-what-I-want phase

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the "I like gray paper!" phase

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the "I réally don't know what to do with the entrance" phase

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left: the "just scribbling down some lines and hoping it looks nice" phase
right: the "just try to rip off the ArenaNet artists" phase (link (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=57180&d=1180103391) from link (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1122548&postcount=63))

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"don't know what to do with the building and composition" phase

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left: just one more of those sketches
right: "trying out soft pastels" phase

[yoitisi]

hey Noë, nice SB you've got here :) Not sure if I commented in here before actually, but there you go.

You seem to be struggling a bit with that last building project. I've got two suggestions to get your mind set in a different approach so you stay away from the Guildwars thing (which isn't a bad direction at all, only you seem to be stuck on that particular shape :)). The first is to just check out some existing architecture or other concept art architecture, simply to find a new form and shape for the actual building. Thinking about what it's function would be could help here as well. The second suggestion is to try out shapes that resemble bones and the bone structure but aren't exact copies of existing skeletons. In the Guildwars example, they used a sort of bone-ish style for key elements like the front gate and the windows. In your sketches I noticed you tried to apply existing ribcages and skulls straight on the structure. Hope that helps :)

Ah, one other thing, you could try to flip the ribcage so the spine is on the ground instead of in the air. Makes for a more balanced structural element I think.

[pbgse]

www.calatrava.com <-- here's a link to one architect i think you can relate if it's bone structure or just trying to bring on some reference to form... i think it shows some of his sketches to and how he brings form using nature as reference .hope its helpfull :) and i agree with yoitisi u shouldnt get inspired from guild wars - "study nature it will never fail you" F.L.Wright

and after my exams I'll study Illustration
hooraaay :)
cheers

[JellevdVegt]

hey marleen, nice updates.

i noticed the similarity in design of the bonebuilding of this other guy. i actually have a real neat reference for you of a real bone architecture (bonechurch, build in praque). its got all kinds of ornaments build from the bones of the graves. a long time ago there was a disease and many died, so they needed space and emptied the graves to make these ornaments from them.

(btw, these pictures are from my brothers photoalbum, he lives in praque at the moment :P)

http://arjenvdvegt.myphotoalbum.com/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album06&id=IMG_1001

http://arjenvdvegt.myphotoalbum.com/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album06&id=IMG_0991

http://arjenvdvegt.myphotoalbum.com/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album06&id=pict0168

[Noë]

@ yoitisi; Wow, thank you so much! I was really stuck on that shape indeed, so I took your advice, and I took a look at some more existing architecture. Also I looked at some bones that might be an interesting shape for a building, I tried a stylized scapula (shoulder blade) and I think it's looking much better now. It's not good yet, but after a detailed sketch I will probably know what I want more or less.. I would very much appreciate it if you could give me some more crits on the final idea thing, but I'll PM you about that. Thanks a lot Dutchie :teeth: I'll need to stop by your sketchbook soon :)
@ pbsge; thanks for the url and crits, I think though, that it's okay to get inspired by (for example) guild wars art, as long as you're not doing the exact same thing in your own work.. And that was what I was doing (and still am a bit.. But working on it). That is a great quote by the way. Thank you :) Oh, by the way, why did you say "horaaay"? I'm not accepted for the education yet if that's what you mean, but I'm pretty much counting on that. Plus I have two backups if I don't get accepted.
@ Gosu; Thanks man, those references are awesome hihi ^^ I'll probably have some good reference an idea for a chandelier with bones from that :teeth:
Thanks for the super duper crits on the project :) I'm not finished though, so still: all crits are immensely appreciated.. I feel I'm learning heaps from this, and I'm glad I've chosen this topic because it it out of my comfy zone.
I was really stuck on that particular shape indeed, not because I intended to do the exact same thing, but just because it was stuck in my mind or something. I took a look at some more existing architecture. Also I figured that a scapula (shoulder blade) shape might look nice, and applied that. So here are some quick sketches of the new idea. Detailed sketch coming soon! (starting that tomorrow evening).

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The new idea

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figured it might be nice to work with watercolour because the pencil lines stay intact, but this first try was a mess
Oh by the way: I'm thinking about going with this composition.. Would you think this is the best composition as well, or maybe the image above this one is better? I was thinking that with this composition I could maybe add some birds in the sky, and use those to lead the eye back to the beginning, so that the eye doesn't leave the image? (I'm really a noob on composition, so all ideas appreciated ofcourse)

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But soft pastels are also really not right for this idea

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So I got back to another try with watercolours, and after figuring out that you're supposed to keep the areas wet while you're filling them in with a specific colour, it went a lot better already, so I think I'm staying with watercolour (though I need a lot more practice with it)

I'll take an hour tomorrow to reply to sketchbooks (for real this time), because it's been too long.
Lots of love
Marleen.

[lefran]

you said that you didnt think that some of these mediums were right for the idea, i think maybe because the paper is so white behind and there aren't strong values in your sketches so far. Personally i like the soft pastel one, have you tried soft pastels on toned paper? can look cool on black paper too, but that might be too strong. But would say push the values some more, also including a cast shadow on the floor. I like the more dinosaury buildings further up like this one
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=311913&d=1204039594
a nice idea might be to make the building entirely out of bones or smething? have you seen that church place in prague with the huge chandelier made of human remains?
http://www152.pair.com/tierney/travel/images/bones.jpg

anyway thats just my thoughts! feel free to ignore them as i'm just rambling hehe

life drawings are improving too :)

[Noë]

@ Lefran; Hmm, soft pastels on grey ish paper would look nice I guess. But I really need to get started on this one, since I have 24 hours to make two final exam pieces plus a shitload of sketches.. :/ Thanks a lot for all the great input! That bone chandelier is really great.. Teh Gosu pointed to that church in Prague in post #673 by the way, but I'm happy to see another image of this.. Gotta visit that place ^^ it looks awesome..
-----
Lifedrawing update: white paper + pencil.. yeah I know, need to work larger

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left: 5-min, right: 10-min

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Still working on the building sketch.. Difficult decision making and all that.. :P
Love
Marleen.

[yoitisi]

For the updates on the bone-building, the composition could indeed be a bit stronger. First and foremost, you've got a lot of empty space going on in the piece. The building is rather small, while the landscape takes up a lot of the canvas while being rather featureless and empty. I'd say either play with the landscape a bit more or enlarge the building.

The path itself might need some more perspective as well. Right now its still quite wide where it reaches the door, and without a figure walking on it to give scale this makes the building look a bit smaller than what you probably intend.

Using a shoulderblade for the building is a good idea I'd say, but again consider the scale. Adding some windows, stairways or other structural elements that give it some scale but do not take away the idea of the shouldberblade would help giving it the right scale I think.

As for the tools, ever considered using markers? :P it's easier to get some more contrast and more saturated colors out of those than with watercolor or pastels.

As for the latest figure drawings I agree with teena mom, dropping the eraser and just starting to sketch fearlessly takes some getting used to but in the end your lines will become more confident quicker.

Long story, hope it helps a bit :)

[Noë]

@ esraa; Hi there :) Thanks for the crits.. I'll try to erase less, though I don't think I did that too much this last lifedrawing session. I wonder: why do you call me Mary?
@ Yoitisi; thanks a lot! Lol.. I totally forgot that a building should have windows... So I added a few of those yesterday.. Still gotta figure out what to do with 'em though ^^ Thanks! I'm also going to add a few figures in the final piece, to indicate scale. I will make the path smaller where it reaches the door. Also I'll make the composition different, so the building takes up most of the space (see last image in this update). About the markers: I guess they would be a good idea, but (1) they are pretty expensive to buy a lot of at once (i do have some grey toned markers though) and (2) I don't know how to make an object appear smooth with markers, I mean I usually get some stripes, or other marks of where the one marker line goes over the other marker line. I guess you're probably an expert on the marker thing with your industrial design background, so if you have some tips on how to use markers to fill a larger area smoothly, I'd love to hear them ^^
But I'm really quite happy with how the colours are on my sketches now, so the medium is okay with me. Will try to erase less while lifedrawing.. I'm considering using ballpoints for a while. :) Thanks for the awesome crits!!
--
small schoolie stuff update;
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so here are my last two sketches for the building.. I think things are finally getting interesting here. The windows on the left part of the building create a nice shape I think.. Also the skeletons have a nice place I think..
Things I'll be changing from the last sketch:
- the building stands more to the front, making the line of it standing on the ground, more straight and horizontal
- the shadows will be lighter
- the skeletons will pop out more
- the drop shadow will be wider
- I'll make the skeletons much more detailed and well proportioned
- I'll use less pastels on the foreground

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this is a stupid practice with soft pastels.. I know.. looks like a bad doll face.

[Merlin]

I thought it was time to look at your sketchbook again, nice studies. The last sketch for the building has a very interesting shape, I like it.

Oh almost forgot to ask: have you been accepted at any art school yet?

[fantasyartist]

Ah people from the Netherlands! I like the figure studies, but you have to give them more volume. Some parts are looking really flat. Don't draw lines but forms fitting one into another and pay attention to what direction they're facing in space. You may want to study the structer of the shoulder more, it seems to be a major weakpoint in your sketches now. Keep it up!

[boogz]

Hey! It's been a while. :) You got some great improvements since the last time I saw you draw. I have a little tip for you: get the book Dream Worlds by Hans Bacher. He's an artist who works at Disney. In his book he explains some really helpful composition and rhythm 'rules'. You might be lucky to still find it in Selexyz in Utrecht, that's where I got it from. :)

Btw, I've read you are applying for Illustration at the HKU. That's exactly what I'm planning to do, so I might see you around if we both get accepted. :) Oh hey, were you planning to go to the Open Dag the 29th? It's different from normal Open Dagen in the way that you can actually participate in 2 classes. Also you show your portfolio to students there which could help to get accepted. :) If you didn't know about this, go to the HKU website and apply! There are limited spots, you see... Wait... You probably already read about this in the letter you got... Hmm.. Oh well. Enough yapping! Hope to see you next week! :)

[m.engdahl]

Noë!!

You have improved so much, youre really a rolemodel on the learning front :D

[Kanan]

This skecthbook is absolutely stunning! I saw your drawings on first page which needing much attention and then come here to page 23 and you have improved so much! I am very proud, I always appreciate seeing somone improve. I can see my old drawings from maybe a year ago and they are terrible. Now I have confidence and will try hard to get better.

I like the builing using the skeleton of animal, it is unique and very cool. Keep up the good work.

The nude woman laying down with hand on her cheek: Nice position but her bottom look very lumpy (unless that's how the model looks), also her shins are too straight and flat. Try to give them more volume and rounder shape.

[Dose206]

Marleen,

Sorry it's been so long since I came by here, I've been moving you see (notice that my location has changed?) and haven't had my own internets for awhile. I'm really glad to see that you've been busy since I've been gone, and the progression on this building was interesting to be able to see from start until (I gather) almost complete. My only suggestion is that the building seems just a tad unlikely, as though it is likely to topple over. I dunno though, I didn't read anything about your intentions for the building.

The life drawing looks great but all your sketches are bleeding through to the other side! Are you perhaps pressing too hard, or maybe using shitty paper? Anyhoo I suppose it's not such a big deal, just wanted to point it out.

Keep up the good work and I look forward to being around here more.

Chris

[Noë]

Hello lovely CA people,
It's been a while, guess I just didn't feel like scanning..
Here's some replies:
@ Merlin; Thank you, no haven't been accepted yet, admission day is April 25th.. :P Pray for me :P
@ fantasyartist; thanks a lot! Yup I've been noticing that shoulders aren't going very well, I guess that is a good idea..
@ boogz; heya! I'll put the book on my list of books to get (truly, there are too many art books I still want :teeth:), thanks for the suggestion. Seeyou on the 25th!
@ m.engdahl; Thanks!
@ Kanan; thanks! :bashful:, Yup, volume is a little problem in my lifedrawings I guess. Gotta work on the volume..
@ Dose; Heya! :steph: Cool that you've been moving! Are you happy with the new house and living environment? :teeth:?
About the building: for my drawing (and painting) exam, I needed to pick a subject from a list, and make two (or more) finished works and sketches for that subject. I chose "imaginary architecture" because I felt I needed to push myself out of the comfort zone. I'm glad I did, because I learned a lot from this. I guess it looks indeed like it would topple over, I hope that's a little less in my finished work, but anyway, I guess it doesn't really matter because this doesn't have to work in real life, because it's imaginary ^^. Oh and about the lines showing through the paper, yes it's the crappy thin sketchbook paper, but I don't really care because it's just a sketchbook meant for practice anyway :) Thanks for the lovely reply!
-----
So after 1,5 month (:bashful:, woops, it's been too long), here's an update with all the things I've managed to find from the last couple of weeks. I know there's more somewhere, but oh well, who cares ^^

[b]Part 1: all the sketches for my school exam drawing&painting + one finished work

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Part 2: lots of crappy and less crappy lifedrawings

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Part 3: some doodles from school

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[crimsoneye]

I see that you have been really busy over the past few weeks. I see you been put a lot of work in these new drawing and studies . In the dinosaur building I think you could of expanded on the exterior more. Like putting more details into the windows. I feel with more details it can be more exciting to look at. Also felt that you should of separated the colors of the windows from the background itself. Other than that I really enjoyed what you have done with this picture.

In your life drawings I think really capture the movements of the model themselves. You do good job at getting their proportion, but felt you made certain parts of their bodies to skinny.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=347834&d=1208249891
The calf of this man I felt was little bit to skinny.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=347842&d=1208249950
In this one I like how you got every thing down in it. You did really good job of drawing him. I like how you used line to describe his figure. (ya, I think I was wrong in that statement, after looking through an anatomy book I feel that I made a mistake in judgment.)

[Marlisa]

Hey Marleen!

Wow... your sketchbook is awesome!
You've improved quite a lot since the last time I saw your work.
(My english is pretty crappy, the temptation to write this in dutch is huge :P)
When I have no inspiration, I go to your sketchbook and browse through your sketchbook. :)
Isn't that quite a compliment, haha!

Before I open my own sketchbooktopic over here, I think I rather make some new sketches, then start my sketchbook with dumping old stuff. :P

By the way: You gave me a link to a website with 15 sec. models (a while ago) and I can't find it back. Do you know which site I mean?

hugs!

[Nizza_waaarg]

Great to see the all that work, the thumbnails and process stuff for that imaginary architecture building is looking really good. Glad you're still doing some perspective and technical practice still.

Also really liking that black painting with the pale face, works well.

As for the life drawings, maybe work more on gesture and capturing movement and all that.

anyways, hope all is well with you and hope you keep on posting

all the best,
chris

[Noë]

@ Crimsoneye; Thanks for the good crits! I applied some of the crits on the building to some last minute touchups with soft pastel, it looks a lot better now because I darkened up the sky a little. As soon as I get a picture of the other project, you'll see some detail on the windows, I promise ^^. Great lifedrawing crits as well :) I think I might be getting worse proportion wise with the lifedrawing.. :S Gotta do some more proportion exercises then I guess. Thanks again, I'll drop by your sketchbook soon :lineart:
@ Marlisa; Hey thanks (again) :teeth:! It's so great that you've decided to go post around here.. I hope CA can be as helpful for you as it has been (and is) for me.. Oh well, I guess I've said it all in my PM already.. Seeyou around :)
@ Nizza; Heya! Thanksies for the crits! I've decided the gestures are definitely lacking, so I took your advice and did some 1 minute gestures from posemaniacs.. Took some getting used to, but I guess it's a really good exercise.. Thanks SSG buddy! :teeth:
---
So here's a small update ^^
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exploring a little more of the girl with the music lines in her hair, I think it might make a nice painting :)

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Yay! The skeletons turned out allright, except for the dog skull.. :) I like this page.

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some 1-min posemaniacs, to get the gestures working a little again.

Thanks for viewing!
Love,
Marleen

[Niko_Cakes]

your progress is amazing

[kasblue]

you have improved a long long way indeed!! its so interesting and inspiring to see how much you have improved and gives me hope that i can learn!!

[Noë]

@ Niko Cakes; thank you :lineart:
@ Kasblue; thanks also :scribble:, yes I believe that with enough perseverance, practically anyone can learn to draw at quite a high level.
---
meh update;
I've gotten a chance to photograph my final works for my exam in drawing and painting:

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first exam painting (I guess you've seen this a few times already)

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Second exam painting: the colours in this pic are pretty crap, the windows are a bit brighter blue and green, so the contrast is a little bigger.

Also, for my entrance examination for art school (Illustration) I had to make four images based on current events, I made two collages, here are the two drawings/paintings I made:

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sketch and pencil drawing for the first

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first image (downloading music from the internet)

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second image (china and tibet)

And I found back two lifedrawing things I didn't show here yet.

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left: 15 mins, right: 5 mins


So.. Tomorrow is my entrance exam thing for the art school where I want to study. I've been stressing over my home assignments all day because I kinda left them until the last minute (that's why they're not too good also).. So I'm kinda nervous.. Whish me luck ^^ :bashful:

Love,
Marleen.

[Marlisa]

Well...How did your entrance exam go? :)

I really like the first and second painting... awesome concept!
It looks like the last window at the left wall is bigger dan the last window at the right wall? It looks a little bit strange, but maybe it was your intention to do that?

Why did you choose skeletons? What was the assignment? :)

[tsujni]

lovely work Noe! The bone buildings are an interesting idea, reminds me of http://www.kostnice.cz/.
I like how it ties your bone studies into a concept.

[DragonSnail]

Really fun to see your amazing progress from the start of this SB to finish! Your first pages looked quite shaky, and the last ones... sweeeet. Especially love the bonebuilding for your school exam, very interesting concept! :^^:

[joaKimArt]

Many figure studies. Looks good, keep it up!

[Noë]

@ Marlisa; Hiya! Entrance exam went quite okay.. There were over 80 people applying that day (and another group that large later in the schoolyear), and they looked at our portfolios while we were waiting. Then a list of approximately 15 people was called, who were through to the afternoon part of the entrance exam, I was with those 15, so I was pretty happy ^^. Then I had a talk with the people who decide wether I would get accepted or not, that didn't go great, but not awful either.. We also made an assignment that afternoon (a political poster for your own political party :P). The assignment turned out quite okay for the time we had. I just got the letter from the HKU (a week later), and.... I'm accepted ^^ yay :D I'm so relieved! :teeth: (I've been nervous all week :scribble:). So that's the story about the entrance exam.
The topic I chose for the two exam paintings was 'Imaginary Architecture' (Imaginaire architectuur). I kinda like what it became ^^ I guess it shows that when you put a lot of work in studying something, you can get some nice results. About the windows on the second one: I drew it in perspective, and then decided on a composition I'd like. I'm sure the perspective is correct, though maybe the chosen viewpoint or frame is slightly confusing in wether the windows are the same size on both sides or not (I drew the perspective so they are :) ).
Oh and on your last question: I chose skeletons because I am currently studying animal skeletons and I'd like to apply those studies in that exam work. Also I just thought it would be cool to have skeletons and buildings merged together.

@ tsujni; Hiya :) thanks, that church was indeed a big inspiration for me with the skeleton buildings.
@ DragonSnail; Thanks :)
@ JoaKimArt; Thanks :)

Updatesie;
All of you who would like to know how my entrance exam to art school (Illustration) went: see my reply to Marlisa above here in this post.
I have a small update here.. I'm at my boyfriends place currently, staying over for the holiday. I can't get his scanner to work.. I did go back to my home for a night, where I scanned stuff from the normal sketchbook that I brought with me. I left my smaller sketchbook at my bf's place though, so I'll have some more sketchies next week when I'm able to scan those. (Or maybe earlier if by some miracle I can finally install the driver of that stupid scanner.. Does anyone of you know how to install the driver for a CanoScan D646U ex?).
So right, enough babbling: update!

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some skeleton studies (left) and crappy concepts (right)

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just two sketch/doodle pages

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horse studies..

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some wacom sketches.. I kinda like the colours in the left one, I'm scared to ruin it when I work on it further though.. But I'll try ofcourse. Oh yeah.. Click for ref (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=357523&d=1209395103).. I'm liking that pic a lot :bashful:

Please crit!
Love,
Marleen.

[JellevdVegt]

good studies overall. i realllllllly like the very last picture in your very last post. it has much potential.

see ya around.

[anabanana]

Wow, it's so cool to see how much progress you've made in this sketchbook! I'm amazed that you've kept it going this long (I'm terrible at updating mine)!! You've improved a great deal and you're recent stuff looks really good! I especially like the last post; the colouring in it looks really well done. Keep going!

[ajvenema]

hi there! its nice to hear that u also did the exam at the HKU! for illustration that was i suppose? thats funny, cuz i was also there, and i got accepted as well, and im gonna go there next year. So now im pretty curious who of those 15 people was you...nice to see a person on this website thats probably gonna be my classmate next year:)

nice book by the way, looks like ur pretty serious, updating a lot, and making nice things, great!

[Marlisa]

Woow.. I really, REALLY like the last one! Beautiful colours! And the muscles and bones look zo real... Nice job!

Oh, and her hair reminds me of the celtic tree of life ;)
Now I'm jealous... I never have very creative/artistic ideas :(

I find it very difficult to translate this in english, so I write it in dutch: Ik zou heel graag die wacom paint thing na willen schilderen, ben namelijk zelf ook bezig met skelet/spier studies van het menselijk lichaam... maar helaas heb jij het al gedaan :P Haha. Heb je het nou van een ref. ?

Oh en niet te vergeten: Supertof dat je bent aangenomen!!

[Dose206]

Marleen, this stuff is great. I'm sorry that I haven't been around, between getting situated and starting a new job, not to mention getting plugged in with the Seattle sketch group I've been a busy puppy. Good work and hopefully I'll have some time for some crits soon.

Chris

[Grafguy]

thnx for passin :)
i didnt had the time to look through your whole SB, but the last pages look awesome, i wonder what u study?

[Noë]

@ Teh Gosu; Hiya ^^ Thanks, I'm liking that one myself too (and trust me, that is very rare :P)
@ anabanana; Thank you :scribble: I'm a tad amazed myself that I've kept drawing this long.. I guess I must really like it :teeth:
@ ajvenema; hiya! Cool that we're gonna be classmates :teeth: It's gonna be nice ^^
@ Marlisa; Woohoo thanks :) I'm completely flattered by your compliments :scribble:, but well, I already PMmed you in reply, so I guess I don't have to repeat that.
@ Dose; Thanks dude, and no problem ofcourse! I'd like to see some stuff from the Seattle sketchgroup soon :) sounds like you're having fun!
@ Grafguy; Hiya, and thanks :) About my study: I'm just finishing this year with VWO (pre university), 6th grade (which is the exam year). And after the summer holiday I'm going to study illustration.
--
little update :)
So, I still didn't get the damn scanner to work :P So here's a digital painting update:

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Not going further with this one. I've decided the colours are too bold for me to handle right now, and the pose is just not working for a balanced composition.

Love,
Marleen.

EDIT: Woohoo! This is my 200th post in this sketchbook.. Let's celebrate!
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EDIT 2: Wow! This means I got approximately 5 replies to every update I made! Awesome guys and gals! I really appreciate that!

[johanson]

Congrats on 200! I’m really liking this Mucha-esque piece you’re working on. It looks like you’ve spent the most time on the figure’s back and it’s paid off. A little more time with the rest of the figure and you’ll be all set. What are your plans for the background? Anyway, looking good. Your diligent practice is really paying off.

[Noë]

Hiya!
@ johanson; hi man! Actually I spent most time on the arms, but I think this only means I am not so good with arms yet.. I'll go over the figure detailing and placing the shadows a bit more accurately. I'm not sure about the background yet.. I was thinking about keeping it plain but that is a bit boring eh? Maybe a bit of low contrast stuff.. I'm not sure. I'll browse through my Mucha book for inspiration hehe. Thanks for stopping by!.
--
sketchy update: so.. I bought the A5 Moleskine plain paper notebook, because in the A5 sketchbook I'm afraid to just sketch because there is so little paper in there, and it is such good quality (yeah I know, it's a bit weird). But anyhow. Here are some sketches from last week.

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some sort of pillar and reffed sketchy

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two selfportraits and a figure from mind

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blergh and blaat ^^

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some doodles and skeleton from mind

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skulls from mind and more doodles

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skull with octopus *yay* I think it's so awesome :P

Love,
Marleen.

[Merlin]

Hi! You are right about the octopus skull. It is awesome. Nicely drawn also. You should make a painting of that one.

I also saw that you are accepted at HKU! Congratulations!

[Noë]

@ Merlin; heya! Thanks :) I might paint it ^^ would be a good exercise to do traditionally I guess..
-
Update some lifedrawing and bits of studies. Pretty boring acutally :P :scribble:

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Some quick arm studies, all were under 5 minutes, so I didn't focus so much on proportion. Guess it shows.

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doodles

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last figure drawing session.. The model had a bladder infection so we did different times each pose, depending on how long she could hold it. Poses go from 5-15 mins

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I kinda liked this one a lot.

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Love,
Marleen.

[Nizza_waaarg]

ey, cool updates

I might suggest trying to add a bit more volume to the life drawings, other than that looking good, and great to see you doing those anatomy studies :D

And that last pic is my favourite, really nice

all the best,
chris

[Dose206]

Marleen,
I agree with Chris, a little more depth and volume on your life drawings would be nice. It seems to me that you're not paying as much attention to proportions lately as you usually do.

As for the Seattle sketch group, not a whole lot of sketching, but we've been competing in the Seattle vs. Vancouver drizzledome. Round one is finished and it looks like Seattle will take it. There's a thread in the FF section with some of our concepts.

Anyhow, keep it up, keep showing the rest of the SSG that we're too lazy and ought to follow your example!

Chris

[Jushra]

Looks like you are doing anatomy studies too. Looking good. Your second exam painting is eye catching, some further pushing of your lights/darks would help it pop a bit more.

The figures here (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=354946) and here (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=354947) are quite nice. I've never tried doing watercolor figure drawing, maybe I will at some point.

[Jakers]

Lots of work, keep on going! I liked the bladder infection comment...unecessary but I could imagine being in that class hah.

It would be cool to see some ref'ed digital studies...not necessarily full figures or anything complex, but just something to study brush economy and how to efficiently get down what you see - I think that will add more confidence to your digital works. Give it a try!

[AsaB]

Hi Marleen, congrats on making it into art school!

You've got so much great work, it's been a joy browsing through your work. Some of your finished work look very good, I like your use of colours. Your anatomical studies and life drawings are nice as well! The charcoal ones are my faves. I think though, as you and others have mentioned, that a little more detail to proportion and form would push your work further. But great work, looking forward to see more!

[the ANGRY filipino]

Nice female studies...they really make me angry! In a "Nice" angry way.
MOAR please...

[Noë]

@ Nizza; Thanks dude! I'll try to be a bit better in replying to sketchbooks from now on :$ Will work on the figure drawings.. I have the feeling they're not going as well as they used to.
@ Dose; Heya :) I'm the one feeling lazy at the moment, but ofcourse I've been busy (but who hasn't). Will watch the figure drawings.
@ Jushra; thanks dude!
@ Jakers; Thanks man! That's indeed a good advice.. I'll make a list of things to do this holiday (besides work :P)
@ AsaB; Hiya :) thanks for the lovely comment! Will definitely watch getting more volume in the figure drawings.
@ the ANGRY filipino; why thank you :p :) moar coming.

Finally!; an update..
I know, I'm super lazy and bad and I've been reading too many books while I should be drawing..
I went to the hellmouth sketchmeet this last weekend and here are my results (mostly figure drawing)... I've noticed all my from mind skills are very (VERY) bad... Looks like a drawing from when I was 10 or so.. Gotta remember to work on environments and just well all from mind stuff..

Figure drawing; in no particular order.. Poses go from 2 to 10 minutes

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Some referenced figures
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and one of the many tries to draw something fun from mind (right)


I promise I'll use my 2,5 hr train ride tomorrow to draw so I have an update ready soon again..

Love,
Marleen.

P.S. I took pictures instead of making scans.. Still didn't find the driver of the scanning machine of my boyfriend.

[mya]

Nice life drawings! It looks like your hitting the overall shapes of the figure (especially those little figure sketches on page 17)- like the others have said, it'd be nice to see you do some more in the way of tone/volume.

Thumbs up!

[Dose206]

ah Marleen,

yor stuff from the mind isn't as bad as you seem to think, I believe that you have the neccessary knowledge in your head, but perhaps you're not thinking enough while you're sketching? You've done so many lifedrawings and studies that you've definitely picked up some knowledge but it hasn't become muscle memory yet. So instead of sketching and thinking, "I know how this should look, it will come out right" you should think more on what it looks like, slow down and things will fall into place.

Anyhoo, good job, and I neglected to tell you that the skull with the octopus on it is indeed awesome.

Chris

[johanson]

Hello,

I agree with Dose206. So many times I heard teachers saying that we needed to “turn off what we know about the figure” when drawing (which I always thought sounded so stupid). Now it makes a little more sense. When I try to force my knowledge of what a figure should be onto a life drawing it comes out far too wooden and I miss out on a lot of great information being given to me by the model. It’s only when a drawing gets into trouble that I have to back up and ask myself what I Know about the part that’s giving me trouble. It’s a push and pull thing.

Other random advice: You seem to be paying more attention to the interior shapes of the body compared to your last post. Try pushing that even further. Using the interior shapes along with reference points from the background behind the model really helps when mapping out the basic proportion and gesture of the figure. It also makes it easier to build in form later.

Holy crap, sorry for rambling on. Keep up the good work, and congrats on art school. I’m sure you’re going to kick some serious ass.

-andrew

[Noë]

@mya; thanks :)
@ Dose; Thanks man! I think you're right. I was just being my demotivating self posting that stuff about not being able to draw from mind.. Thanks for the motivation ^^
@ Johanson; please don't stop rambling on! :P Definitely great advice, thanks!! I'll definitely keep that in mind, especially the thing about using the interior parts to map out proportions.
-
So I guess I'm a slacker (again! :P)
I did move in with my bf who lives across the country (2,5 hour train ride, our country isn't that big), and I have my summerjob again.. I already earned €700,- !!! Woohoo! I almost have my tuition money (which is €1565,-) saved up now.. Too bad it'll be gone in one instant soon when I have to pay it :P but for now it feels good to have all that money :P
Enough babbling and rambling..
I forgot to post some stuffs earlier, so I'm going to post them now. Also there's a little bit of new stuff.. Gotta learn to sit down and draw instead of watching movies & reading books.


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speedie I forgot to post.. 2 months ago I think

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My entry for the all girl tarot cards thunderdome.. I chose 'death'.. Not too happy composition and colour wise, but I think the digital painting part worked out alright, maybe a bit too smooth.

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Stuff from the London meet, from my visit to London

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Stuff from the London meet, from my visit to London

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Stuff from the London meet, from my visit to London

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some more stuff from the Hellmouth sketchmeet

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On Floris's advice I did some 30 second drawings again.. Trying to keep very loose and fluent in my lines.. I feel that the proportions are suffering on this, but this was only the first try so I'm going to stick with this for a while. These are all 30 second drawings by the way.

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these are really quick drawings from mind which I did during breaks at work, we had one day where we had to wait quite a while, so I pulled out my SB

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one more work thing, and one quick digi after a picture.. (20min)


... Right.. So now I'm going to do some household chores (can't believe how much time that stuff takes :P it was much easier when my mum still did most of the household stuff back home :P).. And then I'll draw draw draw ! I hope..

Lots of love to all CA ;),
Marleen.

[Taj]

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=417095&d=1216551413 amazing noe

[crimsoneye]

I see u r really getting Noe.
This is really good sketch, you did a good job on the faces.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=417114&d=1216551759
I'm looking at your figure sketches and I see some remarkable improvement in them.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=417095&d=1216551413
I also like this one too. The only thing I would suggest would be doing something with the pose of the arms. The bottom right of the painting feels empty. Another suggest would add is adding some of the green to the skin tone of the girl in the foreground or some other color that would add contrast to it. I really like what you're doing with it.

[Marlisa]

Woow... I really REALLY love this one:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=417095&d=1216551413
<3

and... your figure sketches make me jealous. I wish that I could reflect the shapes of their body that good with a few lines (it took me ages to find the right words). I tried but I'm not satisfied yet...

hugs!

[Nizza_waaarg]

hey, long time no post (from me at least :\)
sketches are looking lovely as always, and http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=417095&d=1216551413 is really stunning, great job.

Some of your quicker gestures are looking abit lost or rushed (or somthing, the forms aren't coming across as well as they could be). I'd really recommend some k-chen studies (http://www.characterdesigns.com/index.php?sitepage=tutorials) and focus on getting some 3d form over the initial gesture line as early as you can.

Anyways, hope to see you posting some more, really great art going on here :D

all the best,
chris

[Verehin]

great works!!! dont make wait new! post!

[batang-gala]

Wow..I really like your studies..also the colors you pick in your pieces.
Great stuff!

--------------
My sketchbook:

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=136427

[D@niel]

Great studies!! I really think that the tarot card piece is stunning!)

[Noë]

Hi everyone,
I'm absolutely ashamed for not updating for so long. Actually I almost didn't draw all summer.. Did make a lot of money though.. About €1500,- which is my tuition money so I don't have to borrow money to pay for that ^^
Anyways I'll go reply to your awesome posts and get this update posted..
Also I'm thinking about starting a new sketchbook, because a lot of the images on this one will be going offline soon and also I've started to study illustration, so it's kind of a new period of my life :)
Will post the link to my new sketchbook as soon as I've started it.

@ Taj; wow :bashful: that really brought a smile to my face ^^
@ Crimsoneye; Thanks dude :) Yes it might be a good idea to go back on that last one and try to really get it right.. Agree with all your points :)
@ Marlisa; Hi :) How are you doing on your new school year? Are things going better? Thanks for all your compliments :) Your English isn't as bad as you think y'know :)
@ Nizza; Thanks for the input :) Will try some KChen studies soon.. As soon as I have my planning for school in order :)
@ Veherin and Teena_mom; :) sorry.. I'm a little late, but here's a new post?
@ batang-gala; thanks :)
@ D@niel; Thanks man, love your works & sketches.. So it's a really big compliment ^^ :scribbly:
________________________
Update with art school stuff
So yeah, I'm studying illustration now.. We've got a couple of assignments. All had to be in Black/White because we have to focus on the shape and composition before going to colour.

Typography; First is a quick design for my name, second is the first sketch for an assignment: composition with your initials (M.H.) in black and white.

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Illustration; We got this pictures (see below) in class, and we had 1,5 hours to make 4 translations of the image in black & white.

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Then we got the assignment for at home to find a new image and make 4 new translations of it, where we had to try out different techniques.
I chose the image below, by Lob19 (http://lob19.deviantart.com/gallery/#_browse). The first two images are sketches, and the next 4 are translations. Sorry for the blurry pictures.. Will put a better pic in my next update.

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ABO (which means Algemeen Beeldend Onderwijs in Dutch.. Where we basically get to work with lots of different techniques, and we will also have lifedrawing there)

We got some plants and had to draw the contour line of them in class.

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own stuff
I painted the front of my dummy for Typography.. Also I made myself a new pencil case, because I have so many things to take with me.

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Love
Marleen.

[voraz]

Hi Marleen, its nice to see a new update from you.
Great stuff, it seems you are entering a new level! :D
cheers

[Marlisa]

Whoot! Those things are really awesome! :D

How's your new school? The assingments seem to be very interesting and challenging (is that a real word?).
My new schoolyear is soooo much more fun than last year. I can hardly believe that I made it through last year, because of the very boring and annoying people in my class, my lousy mentor and the complete chaos.
My fellow students this year are so much more open and funny!
And even now I have the same assignments as last year (for the largest part)... I think I like them more (which I think is weird, but perhaps it's obvious...).

I hope you like your classmates as much as I do now, and that you have as much fun as we have every day ;).
I look forward to your next update :).

x Marlisa

[paperX]

hey marleen sorry I haven't dropped in for so long, great to see so much improvement in your work, it's really great that you're experimenting with different approaches and mediums...keep working hard! :)

[Grafguy]

nice updates
i like the bookcover alot, to bad the face isnt correct :s
hopefully illustration is goin good :p

nog veel succes ;) grtz

[Noë]

@ Voraz; thanks dude :)!
@ Marlisa; hey nice to hear you're doing so well in your new class :teeth: I'm doing okay, the organisation is a bit lousy but class is nice.. I think the assignments are allright, perhaps a bit too vague. I don't really know what to expect from the teachers and what they'll like, but I'll find out in a few weeks at the first review of my work. Meanwhile I have some more assignments and sketch stuff for you to look at ;)
@ PaperX; no worries ^^ thanks for dropping by.. I like the experimenting as well, though there are so many techniques now at hand that it gets hard to pick the right one to use...
@ Grafguy; hiya :) What do you mean the face isn't correct? Could you be more specific as to where the anatomy might be wonky? I'm asking this because I can't see huge obvious mistakes and kinda like it right now so crits are always appreciated ^^ Dankje :) bye!
--
scan update
I found the scanners at school (the exact same scanner I had at home with my parents, though I don't live there anymore), so I made a few scans during a long break. I also have new big stuff to photograph but it's dark outside at the moment, so I'll do that tomorrow (look out for a new update then ^^)

1 I've been starting some (ahum almost) daily posemaniacs again.. I feel the improvement already after 5 times x 20 min. I scanned 4 of those 5 times.. Might scan the last one tomorrow, but it's a lot of work to do, so I might not. Anyhow, here are my first 4 tries at posemaniacs again.. 30, 45 and 60 second poses:

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---
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The non-blurry version of the sketch in my previous post

Illustration: We had to draw cars, here are some of my sketches to find out what cars look like:

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Illustration: New assignment: Make a composition with a font character, a person, a car and an abstract shape.. And make lots of sketches.. Here are a few first sketches from me:

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After that I started doodling faces with my conté crayons:

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oh, and here is a scanned version of the face made out of letters, also from previous post:

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I hope I'll have some more to show tomorrow. But this update already took ages, so I might not have time for one tomorrow.. Please crit me ^^
Love,
Marleen.

[ajvenema]

hee! grappig dat ik nu je schetsen voor vrijdag al zie:)
vind de laatste het tofst! ik ben vanmiddag ook maar begonnen met schetsen, en valt nog niet mee vind ik! vooral omdat het zo open is, alles kan eigenlijk! naja ik zie wel.. zou ook weer eens moeten updaten...
vrijdag ben ik er niet, dus tot dinsdag!

[Marlisa]

Whaha, en ik doe helemaal mijn best altijd om het in het engels te typen -_-'

Looks great!
I think I also should update my sketchbook, because i've made some weird and cool stuff at school too :^^:

[Noë]

@ Aart-Jan; Hiya :) in the end I stayed home sick last friday but there were about 5-6 people absent I heard so I guess we were not the only ones. I have one final image for illustration but I did it in a hurry and am not quite happy with it. It would be fun if you would update your sketchbook with school assignments as well :) and Yngwie (Yngling) has a sketchbook here as well. Anyways, see you next tuesday :)
@ Marlisa; hi :teeth: I guess it's a good practice to type in English but if you want to type a quick reply you can do it in Dutch as well.. I don't mind ^^ I just type in English so that everyone who might want to read this can understand :) So anyways, I'd very much like to see what you're up to this new schoolyear so let me know when you updated your SB :lineart:

---
Update with some more large stuff


ABO; "make monoprints with black blockprint ink and make an organic and a constructed collage out of that".. I kinda rushed these, but the teacher was happy with them so I was too I guess.. (not my cup of tea.. :P)

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Illustration; "make different shapes out of font characters": (sorry for blurryness)

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Illustration; We had to draw cars: a social car, a grim car and a sick car.. (sorry for blurryness)

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Illustration; Composition with a font character, a car, a person and an abstract shape: More sketches and one "end work" wich I'm not happy with.

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I feel that the figure looks too stiff, also the anatomy is wonky (huge upper leg.. :S) and I feel that the different objects don't really form one image but are more like separate images on one grey background.

Typograhpy; more sketches on the assignment "make a composition with your initials" (my initials are MH for Maria Helena which are my official fist names)

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Well, I hope you enjoyed :P I'll try to get some work done on new stuff today but have to work in a few hours as well :) and have some time to relax ofcourse hihi.
Love,
Marleen.

[erik-jan v/d schuur]

very nice experiments

i can learn alot from this thread thx for posting



doeiiii

[purb36]

lots of new and different works they force you to do...good. you're doing well dude, keep it up. :)

[brentos8]

nice stuff girl, enjoying your gesture studies, youve obviously put much work in and its showing in the confidence of your lines which are very sexy,(no pun intended) and the realism of your figures, don't shy away form those hands and feet though;) and just keep at it, nice stuff

my sketchbook http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=128243

[jedininjaman]

good work, I personally do not find this kind of stuff very interesting but you are doing a nice job with it
keep it up mate

[Yngling]

Hey! Sorry it took me a while to respond. When I'm busy, CA always comes last, and busy we have been, right?
You've been around here for a while I see, and lots of studies too! I liked your work for the photograph assignment, especially the first, even though it might not have been 'experimental' enough. Always hard to do something you've never done before, when deep down inside you want to make something beautiful of it as well! I'm still struggling to 'let go'...but it's all part of the learning process.
Anyway, hope you feel better now, and I'll see you tuesday!

Groetjes, Yngwie

[Noë]

@ `ej; Thanks man :) Doei ^^
@ purb36; yup :) I guess it's good to do such things, trying new stuff and all.. Though I'd like to do some simple figure drawings also some time ^^ Guess I'll have to do that in my own time.
@ brentos8; thanks! I'm getting back into hand studies atm (see update), you're absolutely right about the hands and feet. Gotta work on those.
@ jedininjaman; thanks ^^ Me neither to tell you the truth :P but I'm just trying to make the best of my assignments (which is not really working out :P)
@ Yngwie; Hey Dude! Your work rocks ^^ I think you're doing great things with our assignments. I'm being a fangirl hihi.. :) I think for illustration I liked that first photo assignment best as well out of all the assignments I did. :) Thanks! Agree with what you said on doing something new and wanting to make something beautiful out of it as well :)

---
Update, mostly lifedrawing

So I found out we have a walk in lifedrawing session every thursday evening! This is good because I heard otherwise we only get lifedrawing 3-4 times a year!! So I'm going to try to work on lifedrawing every thursday ^^

ABO: we were to draw a seashell and then at home make a creature that lives inside this shell.. Here are my drawing and my creature :)

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Lifedrawing!:

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both 3-min

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3-min and 5-min

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both 5-min

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5-min and 10 min

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both 10-min

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2-min and 10-min

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both 5-min


Typography; just some tryouts from the bookprint work area we have at school (much fun!!)

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train sketches!
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Illustration composition with car, font character, abstract shape and person.. not finished.. I'm not happy with this.. Yegh, this assignment isn't working out well for me :P
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That's it for now!
I'm sure I have some other stuff lying around which I haven't photographed yet but these updates are already taking me long enough (2 hours or so), so really I can't afford to spend more time on it ^^

Hope you enjoyed ^^ Crit me!!
Marleen.

[seth1]

You're really picking up the pace. You going to start improving in leaps and bounds. keep on rocking girly.

[algenpfleger]

So much hard work! Amazing! :O And I love all the different things you do.

[Grafguy]

great updates, i love what you did with the landscapes in 737
as for the face you asked about:
her right eye and brow are to high, and the right side of the face should be turned away more (less visible)
But im still learning faces and anatomy so it feels stupid to me to tell you whats wrong :p
keep it up! ;)

[Marlisa]

Woei, really cool stuff!
On which size did you make the lifedrawings? The proportions are good.. funny to see the underlayer through your sketches (3, 4, 5, 6 and 7) :P

I guess bookprint is the same as "grafiek"? (voor hoogdruk, diepdruk, lino etsen etc.)
I like that too :^^:, especially when my hands are zo black of the ink that it takes several scrubwashes to get it off my hands :P ghehe.

Funny to see what kind of assignments you get, especially because they're very different of mine ;).

btw: I updated my SB too :)

knuf!

[hp]

fun pencil case! you should start a business for artists doing that :D

[Noë]

@ Seth1; thanks man :) I hope you're right ^^ I'm certainly intending to try..
@ algenpfleger; thanks for stopping by man :) Love your book. So much improvement, it's just crazy! You're a huge inspiration man. I did a few studies and SP's after looking through your book.
@ Grafguy; thanks! I kinda stared myself blind on that one, worked a bit too long on it I guess. I see what you mean now, you're absolutely right.. Will fix it some time ^^ I'm still learning faces and anatomy as well :scribble: don't be afraid to give crits, they're usually greatly appreciated :teeth:.
@ Marlisa; Woei! Lifedrawings were done on a large sketchpaper, cut in half, so that is approximately 65x50 cm. Will do some on a 100x65 sheet next time, but last time I didn't have enough paper with me for that. What did you mean with sketches 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7? Counting from the start or from the start of the lifedrawings? Anyways, I don't usually erase on lifedrawings so you should be able to see a few basic lines underneath the bit more detailed drawing yes :). Bookprint is indeed the same as grafiek :lineart: My hands often need several scrubwashes as well to clear the ink off hihi ^^. Thanks for stopping by girl, hope you're doing well :scribble:
@ hp; Hi Emily! Thanks ^^ but there's nothing special about the pencil case you know, just a regular one like in the stores, but a lot cheaper :P
---
Update *yay* Just a bit of sketch stuff now, and one school assignment I completed today.

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Self portraits ^^ I think the girls in them are pretty, but I'm not sure whether they look like me or not :P

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Arm, hand and feet studies.. Inspired by Agenpfleger (http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=114449&page=100), check him out if you haven't yet.. Huge improvement in less than a year, very inspiring ^^.
Also: I used some nice References made (and modeled) by Seth1 (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=135881) :)

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And the cats decided to do some 5-20 second poses for me (the timing was unpredictable though :P)

ABO: assignment: draw your room (paper size: 70x50, b/w, technique free) so I did this one, started with a quick sketch with pencil and then used charcoal:
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I actually liked the line sketch better, but I mostly do :P I'm just a pencil addict.. I guess the cat should be a lot bigger, but she was lying so still for me and I just wanted her on the drawing :P

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A picture of what I drew, but that was from a different angle, and ofcourse with skewed perspective :P lol

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And -just because they're so cute- my cats: Simba and Poes.

Hope you enjoyed ^^ I certainly had fun drawing today.
Love
Marleen.

[Clochette]

Oh! The typography work is amazing! :O I love it!
I like the large experimentation in your work, and keep on the figure studies, they are better and better.
And your flat seems so warm and comfortable! Cute cats! ^^

[wookiedabo]

been ages since i checked this book out. looks like you're really getting stuck into your course, and coming out with some really great stuff. i really like the typography stuff, and the monoprints. that first s.p looks quite a lot like the actor tilda swinton... anyway, great progress.

[Marlisa]

Oooh, my drawingteacher would really LOVE your room-charcoal-drawing! (And I really love it too btw ;)).

The handstudies are cool (maybe I should practise on that too :^^:).

And about the layer in your model drawings: I meant the structure of the board, that comes through your drawing because of the thin paper (ik neem aan dat het op een ezel is getekent met houten plank waar je het op moet hangen waar ook verfresten op zitten enzo? Dat bedoelde ik dus :P maargoed, zo boeiend was het nou ook weer niet ofzo, ghehe).

[Dose206]

Marleen, good improvements, but your quick posemaniacs could still use some help. I'd say mostly proportions of limbs and a bit of how limbs interact at the joints. obviously they're not gonna be perfect in 45-60 seconds but i still see some room for improvement. Keep up the good work

Chris

[JellevdVegt]

hey marleen, nice updates, what school do you do? and a real nice room too :) looks like you have fun :)

cya

[Marlisa]

Last update in october?!!

:nohope:

Nah, I know that you are very busy right now :^^:
I look forward to a new update!



Hugsels!

[Noë]

Soo... It was about time for an update, wasn't it :P
In the time away I moved house (we're still painting walls and doors and stuff, but the biggest part is done), and did a lot of school stuffs.
I photographed the work that I still had lying around from last half year. A lot of stuff has been thrown away already but I still had over 90 images.
I gave myself an hour for sorting images and putting them together in Photoshop.. Because of the new attachment manager with the mandatory category, subcategory etc. it is easier to do that, but I didn't get all of the images done (the most part I did though).
so here goes: ......... UPDATE!

Some drawings and paintings from a school trip to an industrial place

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Sketchbook pages (in no particular order)
some of these were done without looking at the paper (blind drawing), so that might explain some scribblyness.

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Portrait drawings and paintings from a week long every day portrait drawing and painting.
Times range from 2 minutes to 30 minutes

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So, that's it.
Hope you could load the images.. :) If not, let me know please and I'll have to find another way to upload.
All crits are appreciated, as always :teeth:

Love,
Marleen.

P.S. Hope I can find another hour tomorrow to finish the batch dump

[paperX]

great update marleen! I like how you put in the effort to compile the images, pretty smart time saving method :) although I can't really easily point individual pieces this way hmm...

I really like the the dynamic brushwork on the clouds in the second piece and also the experimentation you have going on your sketchbook, very refreshing to see :) love the cut outs!

I see you're using vine charcoal on some of the portraits? I find them really hard to control compared to compressed charcoal...but I've seen some amazing stuff done with them...dunno how those pros do it...*sigh*

Anyhow, good effort on the portraits! would love to see some more finished ones, but its nice to see obvious improvement through them. There are quite a few I quite like but kind hard to point it out to you lol (7th row, middle for one)

oh yeah, I noticed sometimes your female faces look kinda similar when drawing from imagination, it can be really easy to get stuck to one comfortable method of drawing faces and such, just watch out for that...

keep working hard!