Illustration

First Drawing Class Assignments (Prospective Illustrators) 2.Semester

In the Drawing Class for prospective illustrators we already completed the first two homework assignments:

  • Character Design: Draw three of your co-students and create their characters (including your own).
  • Concept Art: Everyone received a small sketch book (40 pages) which had to be filled with sketches from “a forgotten valley in south-east Russia on the border to Mongolia”. We were encouraged to think of unique animals/plants/architecture. In short: Draw whatever we want 🙂

As usual every drawing material and technique was allowed but since I’m a pencil junkie I stuck to clear forms throughout the whole sketching book task. I still haven’t quite finished the first task ^^;

The valley panorama at the beginning.

The grotesque but gentle monster.

The mysterious sign.

The exploding mist-insects.

The bizarre drumming fiend.

The He-Sirens XD

These are just a few excerpts. We were given two weeks for the forty pages. Oh, and did I mention there’s supposed to be some kind of a story 😀 I made a tiny story-board for that purpose (the reserved space for one page is about 2×3 cm + text descriptions on the sides).

Our next task is about painting landscapes…Preferably from Mongolia but the professor told us it’s ok to draw whatever landscapes we choose. He wants to see some images we “drew with all our heart”.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Drawing Class Homework: Time

The semester is almost over but I still have some past topics to post 🙂

After the last homework à la corporate design we were given the task to draw the long ride on the Trans-Siberian Railroad (if you don’t really know what I’m talking about check out the older posts). We were not allowed to use any typical time measurement aids like watches or calendars in our drawings so I decided to go for a big establishing shot and a long middle strip throughout both pages acting as sundial (“sun-watch”). By the way, we were given only to pages to work with, no more!

Comic pages with transsibirian railroad trip

Since my computer couldn't do the work I had to shade everything manually! My wrist really hurt XD

Here are some close-ups:

Harald reading

No one's talking. Every background sound can be heard loud and clear. Harald is reading a book on martial arts and eating a chocko-bar...

Sleeping and daydreaming. You can see part of the middle strip in the upper part.

It’s not mandatory to work with comics/manga like I do the most of the time, but 90% of the course are also choosing this type of art because it’s really well suited for almost every assignment and it’s a lot of fun 😀 Besides, our professor is a comic artist too, so he doesn’t mind at all! I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to assume that there are only comic artist at my university. There are three more drawing classes with different focuses (product design, anatomy, traditional art). Unfortunately the anatomy course has been cancelled for next semester. Instead another illustration course will be made available.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Character Design for Beeline (Homework)

In drawing class we got one corporate design assignment: Design modern versions of St. Nicholas, Ded Moros (Santa) and Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden) for the Russian company Beeline. Needless to say “modern” is a very vague description and can be interpreted in various ways. Oh, and the corporate color yellow is a mandatory. Green and red on the hand are to be avoided as much as possible.

I didn’t have a lot of time so I just colored the figures with crayons 🙂

St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas

Santa

Ded Moros (Santa Claus) Note: One fellow student told me he looks like a professional killer. He's not a hit man XD He's bringing presents and he doesn't want to wake up the kids...

Snegurochka

Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden)

I included the bee pattern in every character. After doing some research on the company’s page I figured that’s a must-do.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Most frequent drawing Assignment

Every 2-4 weeks we have to create new characters for drawing classes. Sometimes we are given preset information on the appearance or the character traits (like being afraid of cats or being shy etc.). And other times we only get names, nationalities or very vague descriptions like “make him/her look modern”. The more creative freedom one is given the more complicated the initial concept can get, but on the other hand you can give your characters your unique design (it’s best not to get too carried away, this is design and not art!).

Well, let’s return to our story. After the accident in Odessa (Harald survived ;)) a new disaster takes place: Someone steals all our luggage and on top of that the police officer we turn to doesn’t speak English well enough to record the exact stolen objects. After drawing (!) every single stolen item (this was part of the homework) everyone leaves the police station disappointed…

(Western reading direction) As already said, some of the main characters leave the police station. Harald (panel 4) feels bad about not being able to overtake the bandits because he's sitting in a wheel chair (he used to do a lot of martial art). While speaking a young man called Ludomir suddenly appears out of nowhere overhearing our conversation. He is a Ukraine student and he HATES criminals, hence he decides to help us and inspires Harald to take his destiny in his own hands and stop feeling sorry for himself.

Ludomir takes everyone to Olga, another Ukraine student with psychic powers, who can help find the luggage. She performs an exhausting ritual with her magical orb and gives Ludomir the "card of answers". He reads it and it turns out the stolen bags are at the police station. Everyone assumes the police officer is a criminal himself. Ludomir is full of rage and comes rushing into the policeman's office accusing him. And indeed, the he has the bags, but it turns out they were just retrieved. The accusations were uncalled-for.

Well, this is the main story so far 🙂

Oh right, designing the characters of Ludomir and Olga was part of the homework, which was mainly to show how the stolen luggage was found. These are my Ludomir and Olga:

Given information: The names, both are Ukraine and university students. The rest was up to me.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Some Drawing Class Results

I haven’t posted anything on my drawing classes for a while. That’s because most of the time I’m doing sketches or trying new things out (technique and working material related).

Many of the assignments we get are comic/picture book orientated, since these are the professor’s main preferences (he’s a comic artist). The first two semesters he likes to go on an excursion around the globe with us…Well at least in our sketchbooks 😉

Perhaps you remember my version of Harald, which I tried drawing digitally (by now I learned a lot). He is one of four characters with some given attributes I had to design. The basic plot for the whole semester is that these characters (and some professors/other students) go on a loooong trip. Everyone is heading east by the way. After a long train ride the group arrives in Odessa, a town in Ukraine, where a monumental stairway awaits to be conquered. Poor Harald sits in a wheelchair (given attribute) and accidentally someone lets him fall while going up the stairs! Here is my version of what happens next (format and panel number was given, western reading direction):

theFall

"Hey guys! Who's holding the wheelchair?!" These are Harald's last words before the shocking experience... Oh, and his brakes mysteriously broke 😉

Here's a close-up of the first panel.

This drawing exercise is supposed to make us find the best shots (like in story boards/movies) to depict Harald’s falling down the stairs. The trickiest part was to get by with only four panels! Action scenes in movies require a lot of different shots in order to create a feeling of speed. With only four panels one has to give some sort of an establishing shot, the action and the outcome. These are a lot of aspects to show on only two pages! As you can see I cheated just a little bit in the second panel by adding a tiny extra panel 🙂

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Starting to learn Digital Painting

I recently started learning to draw digitally and I have to say at first it’s really not that easy to handle the pen tablet 🙁 But luckily I could afford a pen tablet at all!

If you consider using your computer you’ll need good graphic processing software and a pen with pressure feature. I think most digital artists use Photoshop and some specialized in comics/manga use Manga Studio. As for pens, I suppose I’m on the safe side saying almost every professional uses Wacom pen tablets. At the beginning you can work with an average tablet without a screen but if you consider going pro you should really try to get your hands on a high-end tablet with a screen to draw on directly (although it’s not necessary once you get used to the different hand-eye coordination you get with conventional tablets).

Here’s an image of one of the characters I had to design for drawing classes, Harald – I didn’t choose the name ^^;

character design: Harald

Harald profile draft

As you can see the line-art is really bad sometimes…Well that’s exactly the biggest problem most artists have (at least the ones I know). Line-art is very time-consuming and can give you a hard time. Manga Studio seems to be better than Photoshop for the work because of its line-correction feature (which can be a curse if not used correctly). Nevertheless, there are a lot of artists relying on Photoshop alone! I used Manga Studio to try out the toning but at the time I drew Harald I didn’t know I had a line-correction tool  -_-

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Illustrators Cheat

My drawing class professor is working as a professional illustrator for decades now and he gives us some general tips time to time. But there is one thing he continues repeating almost every lesson: “Try cheating as much as possible!” Now that really shocked me at the beginning. Up until now I was told to give my all in learning to draw out of my own imagination, my own creativity, and now I’m supposed to cheat?! The word itself implies that it’s something wrong, something bad. I really had a hard time adapting to this new attitude…

I attended some other drawing classes at the beginning of the semester and the other professors always stressed the point that we should really, sincerely try to learn drawing the traditional way meaning we should learn drawing from real life, learn everything on perspectives before actually applying the knowledge, learn the human hand’s anatomy and proportions in order to draw hands “the right way” and so on. So basically one has to learn all the theory first than use only real world reference and then combine all the knowledge and create art out of one’s imagination. One professor even referred to the illustrator’s cheats as “dirty little tricks” 😀

But what are those dirty tricks? Here are some examples I learned about concerning comics/manga (our current topic):

  • when drawing a background image, simply find a picture and use Photoshop (or any other image processing application) to trace it and color it
  • when you can’t draw some particular subject than don’t (the example our professor used was to draw horse legs, we were advised to draw the horse standing in tall grass or just cut the image so the legs aren’t visible)
  • try using perspective in order to create a view of the image where you need to draw as less as possible  (like when you draw a crowd of people from a low angle as opposed to a top view where far more individuals would be visible)
  • additionally I know of some professional concept artists who don’t even bother applying perspective on their own but use computer programs like Google SketchUp instead
  • and of course cheating with digital painting is a well known practice (for example line correction or texture application)

Well, some of these “dirty tricks” turned out to be actually really necessary for professionals since there’s no way one can know every aspect of drawing theory or know how to draw every subject. This would be too time-consuming, and time is the one thing illustrators apparently don’t have.

At the Comic Action exhibition a few weeks ago I saw a lot of artists using their cell phone cameras to use pictures of their own hands as reference material. And I really thought professionals don’t need to…

As a consequence I started asking myself “What is the right way to learn drawing hands for example? Should I learn the proportions and anatomy thoroughly first and then start drawing following those rules or should I simply make a picture of the hand I need for my image every time?” I’ve already read a lot on hands but I have to admit that didn’t help me dramatically drawing basic gestures. I came to the conclusion that the pure observation way is quite good for general drawing improvement but as soon as you want to draw a subject really convincingly, realistically and perhaps even without reference you’ll probably need the theoretical knowledge.

Considering both, the traditional and the illustrator’s approach to drawing, the perfect way to go would be to build up a solid basis of minimal knowledge which you should expand whenever you’ve got the time to combined with “cheating” in order to save time and/or achieve better results. So in my point of view trickery should be the ace up your sleeve. You’ll need to learn when and how to use it. And don’t be afraid to do so like I was.

in Illustration / Personal  by Savina 0 comments

Mr. Scheinberger on Illustration and Sketchbooks

This week I attended a short lecture on illustration and sketchbooks presented by Felix Scheinberger. His recent book dealing with this topic “Mut zum Skizzenbuch” is nominated for the Binder Award & the Graf Ludo Award.

I was fairly lucky to be able to get some firsthand tips 🙂

Of course I want to share with you the most important points!

  • You should start drawing for yourself and nobody else but you! Trust your own skills and preferences. Don’t try to satisfy someone else, be it your teacher, your friends or some rigid fashion. You need to let your own style bloom and that’s only possible if you embrace it! This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t accept any criticism nor does it mean you should ignore basic drawing rules like perspective and proportions. You need to learn the basics but you shouldn’t wait to develop your style until you’re a pro in “conventional” drawing. You have to start now! Following your very own preferences will show better results than trying to draw the way people want you to.
  • Go outside and explore the world with your own eyes (and sketchbook)! Don’t always rely on Google for reference images. It’s very easy to just type in what you are looking for, but the results you get are very limited and sorted out. Besides that, if everyone relies solely on the internet for reference someday everyone will be drawing fairly the same dogs, the same cars and the same landscapes! You need to see the world through your own eyes in order to create your own style!
  • Start drawing everything you desire in your very personal sketchbook meant only for your eyes! Don’t show it anyone. It’s supposed to be as intimate as a diary. It’s meant to be a place where you can create whatever YOU want.
  • Try to find all facets of a subject. When going to Athena, for example, don’t simply draw the Acropolis only because it’s the first thing people connect with the city. Exactly because of this fact you should try to find Athena’s other faces. Always strive for new points of view!
  • Over time the purpose of illustration has changed. A century ago illustrators were needed to depict subjects as accurate as possible. They were sort of a human photo camera. Their job was to show people the world as it was. Nowadays everyone has got a camera and obviously its way easier to quickly take a picture than to illustrate it…And still illustrators are still needed! But what can an illustration do a photo can’t? The answer is it can reduce, it can concentrate on a certain subject/part of the image and alter reality. It reproduces something through the inner eye of an artist. The viewer in a way takes a look in the illustrator’s soul and this connection makes drawings so special. I think we can agree that it’s by far more interesting to look at drawings than photos.

Well that’s basically what Mr. Scheinberger told us. Please bear in mind that this is his opinion and he doesn’t expect anyone to fully agree or disagree with him! It’s a free world 😉

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments