Learn by studying the creation of these beautiful works of art

Follow the step by step progress of three dancers coming to life. 

One is a painting in progress by Bryan Larsen.

Still in the early stages you get an idea of his way of creating concept drawings and priming the canvas. 

The sculpture being created is by Holly Crocker Garcia. 

Here we have come a bit further, and we've learned about her choices of materials, the photoshoot and the initial modeling.

There's many more entries to come and much more to learn. 

So if you, like me, are looking forward to the next posts head on over to The Artist Studio at Cordair.com

Looking forward to trying out the open source version of Toonz :) 

http://www.awn.com/news/open-source-animation-production-software-opentoonz-available-march-26

Bought these beauties from Grainworks on Etsy.

A 2mm and a 5mm mechanical/drawing pencil in Honduran Mahogany and Bubinga wood with chrome accents.
Have been using them for about a week and really love their weight and feel.

https://www.etsy.com/se-en/shop/GrainWorks?ref=l2-shopheader-name

VALUE STUDIES

Lately, I've been doing a lot of value studies on my commute. Mainly using photos and movie stills as references. Getting values right is something I have a huge problem with, and the exercise, even though it can be a pain, helps a lot.  

Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo have a good tutorial on this over at Schoolism, if you would like to learn more about the subject.  http://www.schoolism.com/school.php?id=30

The drawings are something like 1*2inches in size, and I think there's a point in keeping them small, since this exercise is all about simplification. Squinting and keeping it loose with big strokes is the way to go here, I would say. No point in getting lost in details.

SCHOOLISM COURSES NOW OPEN FOR SIGN UP

The subscription courses at schoolism are now open for sign up!

A while ago I supported their Kickstarter and I'm now taking Sam Nielsons "Fundamentals of Lighting". A course I can recommend to anyone who wants to improve their 2D rendering skills. During my eight (8!... jesus) years of art and illustration studies I never heard about some of the things Sam is teaching in his course. In a few hours of study and for a very low fee I've learned so much. It's also really enjoyable to listen to Sam and to take part of his knowledge, and I'm already looking forward for many months of learning from the masters at Schoolism.

LINK

Motion studies

POSEBOOK

POSEBOOK

I've been using Posebook by Stephen Silver for the last few months.

Mainly during my commute, holding my phone in one hand and drawing with the other on a more or less bumpy train ride.
There are two versions of the app: one with male poses and one with female versions. Besides the pose references there are a number of short instruction videos from Steven and some other info.
The functionality of the app in displaying the references are a bit weird. They are stored in sheets. So you view about 9 poses at the same time and have to zoom into the one you are interested in. This takes a bit of time. Not much, but if you do it many times on a daily basis for months, it adds upp. The references as such are mostly rather good. The poses are expressive and fun to draw.  However many of them are less interesting since each pose have been shot as turn arounds, making many angles less useful. There's also facial expression references as well as hand references. Same goes for those, some useful some not.

Besides the galleries there's a potentially great functionality of timed poses. This part lets you pick number of images (1-10) and the amount of time (30sec to 10min) each image should be displayed. I use this all the time for warm ups. Doing ten of them at 30sec is a great way of loosening up. However, this function could be improved in so many ways. For example by adding choices for which albums to include or to upload your own images.

The app is fairly expensive at $9.99. It also has a seriously annoying bug that shuts down all music you might have playing in other apps. It does this just for playing a warning sound during the timed poses. Even when exiting the timed poses it still blocks other apps from playing music.
Still, despite the negative aspects I find the app to be a good tool for improving my drawing skills.

(examples of 30sec warm up drawings)