Einar's railroad pencilogue

[Toddoss]

This is looking great. I really hope you keep it up. Looking at others sketch blogs the ones that stick with it have tremendous success and I can see your art being that way. One critique would be to try and sure up your lines. Dont pet your lines looking for the correct one. It will clean up your pencils tremendously. One comment is that your figures have a good sense of weight. Keep it up

[Einar]

Hey Toddoss,

Thank you for the nice comment. You really hit it with that line issue. One of my main problems with my last drawings is that they lack some sort of contrast, everything is blending a bit too much and the piece just doesn't come out clear. Is this what you talk about, am I right? And if I got you correct, the suggestion is to keep only one (thinner), but well defined line instead of their multitude, right? Sorry for asking all over again, but my English still needs improvement and I would like to understand you 100%. And should I also use such a well-defined clear line, even if the adjoining area is much darker and has a different depth in space? I mean if we take the Alba-like volleygirl, such area would be the leg in front against the leg behind, or, a more tricky part: her jaw against the shaded parts of her neck. Thanx for the help again and in advance!

[Einar]

Oldies keep the spirit without a scanner

Due to this moving to the UK, and my own stupid wavering I am still missing a bloody scanner. I have found a good (?) rent and things really should have been settled done by now, but still I have not bought a scanner. My stupidity, nothing else. So I would have a great flood on PJ, when I can put my hands on one. Apart form the scanner issue, I feel pretty good here and must tell that Leamington has been a good choice, a really pretty town and a superb place to live. (But unfortunately misses the charm I had petted in my sentimental mind, but Warwick could still compensate for this)

But getting back to drawing stuff, I must admit that I have found myself every now and then browsing my scanned stuff over and over again. And this way sentimentalism has taken root and my old stuff came into focus. So I decided to post my Vampire series from 2002. According to the better ones, you can't really tell the progress I have achieved, but please take into account that I didn't really draw anything between 2002 and 2010 (trying to cover my back). And there are also very miserable ones, like that Tzimisce piece charming a smile to my lips all the time a take a look on it.:-)

So, here is a bunch of pictures from my 'Era of Ridiculously Small Hands'. All of them are after a photo (if you recognise a celeb that's definitaly a plus point!), with some alterations.
The Vamps:
Gangrel

Malkavian

Brujah

Toreador

Nosferatu

Tzimisce

Giovanni

A (now funny) werewolf (I mean the wolf form is far from causing terror:-)

And the protagonist from the novel I wrote in high school/first years of university: Eleanaryl Midwinter, half-elf fighter. (I even printed it in one copy and a friend of mine, who worked as a binder, made a proper-looking book out of it :-)


PS: Thanks for the PM Toddoss, first new scans will show the attempts on solution 1).

[Einar]

Settled and Back

Hello Everyone,

Now I can claim that I have finally settled down after moving to the UK, since I have my scanner for two days now and my little 'art workshop' is up and running again. (obviously some minor issues, like national insurance number and the like have also been sorted out, but the point is the scanner:-) The 'workshop' also has gone advanced, since along the printer-scanner came a Wacom Intuos 4 L. So far both the use of that and the scanner is a pain, but hopefully I will sort out everything soon. Nevertheless I plan a flood of drawings accumulated during the last month, hope you enjoy.

First the picture I promised for Toddoss, with an attempt to clear up lines:

Best is that I used no refernce at all in this one.

With my arrival in the UK and the first week free my sentimental mind drove me easily towards Britain-themed subject, so I plan to draw a collection of historical (and semi-hystorical) heroes from different parts of the isles. Obvious start off is Arthur, from Bernard Cornwell's fictive-historical Warlord trilogy, a favourite of mine.

Some studies for drawing his stead (named Llamrei in the book)

First two are after photos, the third is after a creation of the late Hungarian illustrator Max (Csaba Zsilvolgyi), whom I had the luck to know and also had the chance to attend his lessons a couple of times.

First attempt on the planned picture (horse is after photo, else is without ref):


Here the head is anything but not I imagine for Cornwell's Arthur, so a retake:

[Einar]

Study type of things

Due to some unimaginable luck I got Barcsay's Anatomy for the Artist in a second hand book shop during my last days in Hungary. This book is claimed to be the alpha and the omega by artist students in Hungary and hits hard, that's for sure. (So its a shame that I haven't started drawing from it, but this is mainly due to the fact that I didn't want to take the whole table at my former and temporal place and this book _needs_ space:-)
Nevertheless I used some other sources for practice.

Old nemesis, the lips (mainly from the Loomis book)


Legs from various sources:



Folds from a catalogue:



A messy girl from a december bus trip and same catalogue:


And two figures I drew on the airplane from a booklet I found there:-)

[Einar]

A sketchpage ending up in the idea for a bloody cyber-soccer team.

Taking me the anatomy is good for a non-ref drawing, although the girl's hands are deliberately left as a mess and her feet is omitted completely:-) I am really playing with the idea to get a bit distracted from direct practice and design a team on that basis.

[Einar]

Muscle guy speedies

I have grown liking speedies, now I usually use them as warm ups. Here are a few, references are usually from the late (?) Muscle Sketch Group.



(ok, this guy is not from the MSG, but I have found him with google on the keyword 'athlete')
--




(the girl is non-ref, but the idea came when I browsed Morganza's sketchblog:-)













Usually I cannot handle the time well and have problems from not measuring part distances beforhand (so a lot of redraws), but sometimes I finish within 15min.

[Einar]

14+ years speedies

.....NSFW.....

Continuing with the pelvis region I figured out that nude pics usually 'focus' more on the pelvis parts, so it is easier to find good references. So nude speedies, all after photos found on the net:

[Einar]

PJ regulars I have missed

Hey There,

Here is a collection of pics I have missed to post in time for PJ weekly regulars. All of them are non-ref pics.

Weekly sketch group:
Lorna, WSG #189 (first attempt to fix up things a bit with my brand new tablet)

Power Girl, WSG #190


Public Domain Character Sketch Group:
Black Diamond as the Amish Protector Gunslinger, PDCGS#1

Princess Pantha, PDCSG #2

Microface, PDCSG #3

Red Ann, PDCSG #4

Lancer redesign, PDSCG #5
I am really happy with how that one turned out. I must say that it's the best piece I have ever had. But I am still not on good terms with the left leg, you just can't see the bend there....

[Einar]

The Birth of Iron Maiden in PDCSG #006

I struggled very long with foreshortening trying to figure out how these arms, legs, etc. should shrink. The right arm (left in pic) is not the best, but hopefully I can get away with that forshortening this time.



Character background
Charlotte knew nothing. She was an ordinary schoolgirl fidgeting around boys, painting her fingernails pink and watching Dallas. But the mysterious Overlord was secretly watching her, and found all the abilities in her he had needed: power, agility, cunning intelligence(?) and the most important - purity. And a shiny day turned into the darkest of nights when a great black car appeared from nowhere and took Charlotte.
When she opened her eyes again she found herself shackled at a dark place, menacing machines shrieking all around pointing razor sharp, bony fingers at her. Frozen with terror she saw an iron mask, a mask of the worst nightmares decending upon her to be connected to her face once and for ever.
She was to become the liutenant of the metal forces, the grimm Iron Maiden.

[Einar]

Black Venus in PDCSG #7 and an attempt on rendering latex-or-wathever-suit

[Einar]

As it seems I tried this week to draw faces of people from different nations without reference. So here is my original concept for Black Venus, but it is rather a practice for face drawing. And in the end I added two clumsy skulls in Photoshop just to make her more or less fitting for PDCSG subject Fantomah.

[Einar]

Sketchpages

Just a few sketchpages from this week. One is to practice a bit this shiny dress thing, obviously with photo ref, and the other two are just idle-minded sketchings from days when I had no concept in mind. And the stepping woman has some problems around her hip against my best efforts, so it helped at least to get myself back to practicing with direct references. :-)

[Einar]

This is not the direct practice part I was talking about, but I couldn't miss WSG again...
(I always write Imperium instead of Empire.... WH40k seems really hard-wired in my thoughts:-)

[Einar]

Back to practice

I have got back to practice using direct photo ref. Nearly two month ago I collected a bunch of gymnast pictures for reference, and now I am onto them. And I must say they make good ref with interesting and challenging poses.

Two speedy attempts here (most of the 15minutes was spent on that closer arm of the girl and it still looks unnatural... - just for excuse, it is not really natural in the original photo either)

And a speedy start that turned into a practice simplified (quantised) rendering.


And another semi-speedy drawing, using D.C's recetly posted reference pics from MSG. (Good stance, not just muscle)