sketchysketchin

[sketchysketchin]

i think i just stumbled into a new fave aver piece of art but i cant find a title...

[sketchysketchin]

hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

#I admire this artist so so much :)))

[sketchysketchin]

サニーボーイ (2021)

[sketchysketchin]

It’s Black History Month and we’re celebrating Matthew Henson, the famous African American Arctic explorer who co-discovered the North Pole! Henson was a master craftsman with expertise in building and driving sledges. He was able to quickly integrate into the Inuit culture of Northwest Greenland, and learned to speak their language. Despite his many accomplishments, Henson was unacknowledged for many years because of his race.

To share Henson’s story of perseverance and resilience in the face of obstacles, we’ve reproduced an image of him on our February button of the month. They are free in the museum. Read more about Matthew Henson’s life here:  http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/2018/02/arctic-museum-celebrates-black-history-month-with-matthew-henson-button/ or come into the museum! 

[sketchysketchin]

[sketchysketchin]

#dying #bit of a brain teaser!! ; ) #me in real life #but I’ve worked hard to be this stupid #aulllll naturaleeee

[sketchysketchin]

Another hurricane with a sardine garnish please.

Ink and watercolour on paper, 6x8 inches.

[sketchysketchin]

Quick note that sometimes “third party vendor” does actually mean a small team of artists who work under a very tiny company title to net credibility and land larger clients - I worked in a tight knit team like that for a pretty neat two years, and I miss it, and it was very feasible job to me as a junior artist.

That job and the space where that type of company could fit kind of evaporated once we made it clear we wouldn’t be using AI in our workflow. Other teams just full sold out, and made impossibly cheaper pitches based on impossible (AI workflow powered) turn around times.

Anyway, just pitching in to say the shit show is like a super layered shit show.

we’re really out here living in an AI dystopian hellscape and this shit has just begun… the future is grim…

[sketchysketchin]

they're not that nice......

#the realest #the nice guys #fantastic art :))

[sketchysketchin]

porcelain prince

#absolutely adore this #so fucking cool #illustration #character art

[sketchysketchin]

scully !! drawn on procreate

#the x files #dana scully #<<<333

[sketchysketchin]

happy hallowing you can take TWO pieces

[sketchysketchin]

Caleb Hahne Quintana (Mexican-American, 1993) - Talons Reach (2022)

[sketchysketchin]

Another year another Zine-o-ween on the horizon! I had so much fun doing it last year that I'm doing it again this year! Even made my own prompt list. If you wanna use this list for your own Halloween zine I'd love to see it!

[sketchysketchin]

My Etsy shop is now live with one product: Guillermo Slayer tees!!

Give me a follow, and hopefully I'll have more stuff available soon, like stickers, buttons, and other designs!

Screenprinted by me and guaranteed to last wayyyy longer than the off*cial m*rch💖🦇

#the best shirt on planet earth and it could be yours #I LOVE mine I wear it all the time and it makes me feel like a million bucks

[sketchysketchin]

"Cupid with a Pistol on Top of a Mountain of Skulls" by Gustave Doré ( 1832 –1883).

[sketchysketchin]