soul alive's sketchbook album

[soul alive]

i was so bored tonight that i scanned several of the pages out of my sketchbook from art class. we studied life drawing in class this year, so many of my drawings are life drawings. my art teacher also [forcibly] suggested that we do a lot of collage work. some of the life drawings will have white blotches in them - the blotches are to cover names, i felt the subjects should remain unnamed.

the first drawing is a charcoal still life of a Bible, with yellow/tan collage background, and verses, each with the words "word of God" somewhere in it.

the second drawing is two portraits of girls in my school. i drew both of them when they did not know i was drawing them (it may sound creepy, but it makes for more natural poses) and showed them later. i cut around the pictures and glued them on a blue and green collage background.

the third is a portrait, again with an unknowing model, drawn in ballpoint pen, colored with water color pencils.

the forth is a life drawing, of one of a girl on my school bus, with colored pencil.

the fifth is a still life in colored pencil of a paper crane, with blue collage background. the text is inspired by the fact that we as Christians will all be "flying away" one day, it could also be taken from the song from "Moulin Rouge."

sadly, none of these are anime... my art teacher frowned highly on that type of drawing, so i don't have hardly any anime drawings in my sketchbook . i will post those that i do asap.

[Ssjjvash]

Wow, these are nice!! ^_^

[soul alive]

hey thanks.

i get bored too quickly and have such wierd boredom relievers... oh well. here are some more pages.

the first is a portrait sketch of my dad, done in graphite.

the second was an assignment - 'find something that you would never draw, draw it, then do a collage around it that discusses the deeper meaning of what you drew.'

the third is a portrait sketch of a classmate, done in colored pencil.

the fourth is a fan art of Yu Yu Hakusho's Hiei that i did for Heart of Sword, colored with water colors.

the fifth is the same fan art, inked, before coloring.

[Ssjjvash]

wow! So cool!
My brother gets bored very easily too, and it's the exact opposite with me because I can entertain myself for days.

[soul alive]

thanks, Ssjjvash.

i would really like to have any input from anyone on my stuff...

my latest project was an entry for this month's art contest. here are the scans of the different steps... pencil, ink, partial color, full color, and almost done with background. you can see the final result here:

http://www.christiananime.net/showthread.php?t=11039

[Archan]

*Squells with joy*

Can it be, an artist working in a primary traditional meduium?

*Wipes tear from eye*

I thought we were all but extinct...j/k

Hi there, my name is Archan. I have to say I'm very happy to see your album. Your one of the few and the proud to have so much work in a traditional medium. I love it all, the painting, the charcoal, the graphite, everything! Your very talented and brave to be training in traditional mediums. aAnd it seems you already are getting ahold of mastering things like lighting and shadows, color theory, composition, very very very nice.

I don't mean to flatter too much, It's just it's been a while since I've seen any other charcoal or watercolor pieces, Ill be the first to admit I'm biased towards these kinds of pieces.

Anyways, I'm also happy to see your recieveing additional training, dont be too hard on your teacher, he probably want to see you master the complexity of the world around you before you simplify it into anime form.

Also, keep working on your proportions and such, I'm sure however you'll master everything if you keep commiting yourself.

BTW: I luv how you broke down your last piece from start to finish, that's something I see very rearely around here. It kind of gives an observer nd fellow artist a peek into your thought process when you being anf finish a piece. All of it is just groovey!

God bless,
Archan

[Ssjjvash]

I am very impressed! I think it turned out rather nicely. Kenshin's hair looks a little less puffy than from the show or whatever, but it's still good.

[soul alive]

arg, my computer is driving me batty - this is my 4th attempt to post a reply, it keeps shutting down the window before i finish .

hello and thanks Archan, it's nice to meet you. i really enjoy using traditional mediums, water color and colored pencil are my favorites. what types of traditional mediums do you use? learning traditional methods has definately helped me as i start drawing anime, especially life drawing, and i am looking forward to more art education in college.

Kenshin's hair is a bit, erm, flat, because my gel pen was too wide for the size of the picture, but oh well - now i know better. i had fun scanning the different steps, and will do more in the future.

[Archan]

YAY!

Made a new friend. How groovey!

Well, I pretty much train in any medium I can get my hands on. I've done Pastel, Watercolor, Paints, Oils, Wood burnings, Markers, Graphite, Charcoal, Contae, Air Brush (No, not in photoshop ), Sculpy, Ceramics, Color Pencils, Water Color Pencils, Ink, Eraser (Yup, there's a way to draw with an eraser....fun but increadibly dirty (But that just makes it more fun for me...tee hee) and whateve else I can get my hands on.

My faves though are ink, marker, graphite, watercolor, dry pastel, and SCULPY!!!!!! I also like to mix mediums as well.

Ah, it's so refreshing to talk about traditional mediums, you have no ideal. Anyways, I do hope you continue your art education in college, if you didn't I would have personally considered that a sin

I hope to see more of your art really really really soon.
God Bless,
Archan

[soul alive]

hey. wow - i haven't posted anything in a while. moving away to college does that to a person i guess. i haven't found access to scanners or the sort yet, so can only post artwork i have already scanned or have taken pictures of, for a while.

we have had some pretty different projects for my architectural design class, design projects. here are some pics of two projects.

the first picture is my second class project, a study in black marker of points

the second is halfway through my first project - we had to take a 18" by 18" piece of bristol board and do something 2D on it that showed what we thought "design" was. so far this only is in ink and water color.

the third is the final of the first project - i liked the halfway better - i used oil pastels, colored pencil, charcoal, and black water color wash over everything.

i, during art classes throughout my school years, have used water colors, colored pencils, graphite, pen and ink, acrylic paint, scratch board (if it can be considered a traditional art medium ^_^), markers, and charcoal.

i really hope to post more soon, but it will probably take a while, sadly.

[soul alive]

wow - that third pic ended up a bit warped, too long vertically. hmm. oh well.

[Little T-chan]

soul alive...Your art is amazing. So realistic. I'm studying how to draw people in art school...but mine keep coming out with big eyes, small nose, and the teeth are bad. =_=; Good job!!! I would like to see your anime art too!!

[soul alive]

thanks Little T-chan. drawing people is considered to be one of the hardest art forms. it is also difficult to transition between realistic people and anime people, one of my friends in art class had huge problems with it. i don't have anime art of my 'own' quite yet (although i am working on getting there) other than a few fan arts. i will try to get the anime art that i do posted as quickly as i do it.

[Archan]

Groovey stuff. I would like to see more of your life drawings in particular, being the statement you said about the human form is very much correct, even worse is getting that human form and making it move with gesture. Once these key things are mastered though you should have no prob. And once you have mastered the complexity of the human body, simplfying it shouldn't be too hard.

God Bless,
Archan

[soul alive]

thanks Archan. i will try to post some of my life drawings as soon as possible. *goes off to find pictures disk in dorm room*

had some time last night, so i drew a character concept design. i'm fairly happy with it... not totally happy though, the hands and feet are a bit odd. oh well.

sometime in the near future, when i actually have time to do things other than architecture homework, i would really like to do a sci fi / fantasy Christian manga. this character is a warrior angel, named Azriel (it means "God's Help" in Hebrew - according to my aged dictionary *see next paragraph*).

for research on his name, armor, hair style, and weaponry, i used my Bible dictionary (the thing is really quite old, no photographs at all, lithograph style drawings throughout... no publish date, no library of congress number, no copyright information, hehe. works fine for me though). amused myself for quite a while by looking for names in the dictionary ^_^.

i will try to take the time to post more stuff later today... life drawings, still lifes, architecture homework.

sara

[soul alive]

found my disk. here are some of my life drawing pictures and other stuff.

the first is a life drawing of a classmate done in colored pencil.

the second is another life drawing of a classmate who was sleeping (she wasn't moving at all, so made a good model. i drew her and showed her later). this one was done with water color pencils

the third is a life drawing of a teammate at a speech meet, in colored pencil.

the fourth is one of my favorite drawings. in Hans Christian Anderson's book of fairy tales, there is a story (don't remember the title though) about a tin soldier, who only has one leg, and has an adventure. depressing story, but i've always loved the illustration of the soldier in the book. there is also something in the book Mere Christianity by CS Lewis about toy soldiers and real men (something of the sort, it's been a while since i've read it). these two things sort of inspired me to do this revised version of the illustration from the fairy tale - no back ground, and he has both legs. i did the drawing in gel pen, then ran a brush with water over it, which bled the ink, blotted the excess water and ink off, then burned the edges after it dried.

the final drawing is a gel pen portrait of one of my little sister's friends.

hope you like. i would really enjoy some commentary on these.

sara

[soul alive]

not having a scanner just doesn't cut it for posting my drawings... it also doesn't help that the computers at my dorm have no picture editing software other than 'paint' on them... so all the pictures that i take via digi cam get rather warped, since i have to resize them so they can fit into an attachment. and since they are school computers, i can't load any better software on them. sigh.

besides doing a lot of whining... i've posted a charcoal drawing of a silk rose. (i scanned this pre-college, so it's actually unwarped.)

[soul alive]

here is another character design attempt. her name is Lia Filgham - an acronym for: Lost In Adoration Found In Love, Grace, Hope, And Mercy.

[mechana2015]

Nice pose on Lia. I like the way the pose looks so natural, though you might consider making the object under her a little more visible (I didn't notice it the first time I fullviewed the picture).
<SA: "computers in our dorms">
Dorm computers? Our school said, "heres a net connection BYO computer". There are labs on campus but our dorms don't have school computers. Guess it saves you some money though!

[soul alive]

it's nice having a few computers just downstairs in my dorm, but the computers are a bit, erm, ghetto (for lack of a better term). they have no sound function, we are not allowed to download anything, from the net or from disks, and they are only good for basic internet use and for typing papers. oh well - at least they are there.

the object Lia is leaning against is kind of an afterthought . i just lightly sketched something in, because she looks like she is leaning against something. i will do a better background later, but what is there now, works for now. (that's code for me being lazy) ^^

[mechana2015]

yeah, at least they're there... ^.^;; (Everyone and their mother have their own computer at my school, so its hard to picture not having a personal). Lazy is OK BTW... when I'm lazy all kinds of goofy stuff happens in my drawings.

[soul alive]

yeah i know how you feel about everyone having their own computer - everyone here does too. i am not 'allowed' to get a pc until (if i am accepted into the program) the second semester of my second year, when all architecture students are required to get a lap top capable of running heavy duty architecture programs. for now, the dorm computers work fine. besides, other than lack of scanner and picture resizing software, i have no big beef with the computers here.

for me, being lazy usually means nothing gets done, or what does get done wasn't worth getting done - ^^ lol

[Golden_Griff]

Hmm...nice life drawings! What's your favorite medium to work with?

for me, being lazy usually means nothing gets done, or what does get done wasn't worth getting done - ^^ lol

I can relate to that

[soul alive]

thanks GG. favorite medium huh? i like working with pencils - i use graphite or colored pencils for almost everything. for painting i like watercolors. i also like gel type pens occassionally.

[mechana2015]

yeah i know how you feel about everyone having their own computer - everyone here does too. i am not 'allowed' to get a pc until (if i am accepted into the program) the second semester of my second year, when all architecture students are required to get a lap top capable of running heavy duty architecture programs.

I do have my own computer....actually I've had two different comps in two years, a desktop Windows PC and now a Mac Laptop. I use a lot of computer graphics programs, and a lot of classes use internet related programs... its pretty crazy here for technology. Most of the school lives online. AIM blips are the most common noise here...its really rare to see people meeting in really large groups in the dorms just to talk.

for me, being lazy usually means nothing gets done, or what does get done wasn't worth getting done - ^^ lol

DITTO!
Oh and my fave materials are pencils, brush and ink and pen and ink, then computer graphics. I would use colored pencils but they dont like to scan...

[WhiteKnight23]

hey
Well heck your just awesome... something I wish I could be when it came to color. I stink with color. But awesome job, keep it up. I really like the last three, they are very cool

[soul alive]

hey! thanks, WhiteKnight23. i keep telling you not to get down on yourself about what you think you can and can't do with your artwork... practice, practice, practice was what it took me to learn to use colors well, so don't discount your ability to use colors quite yet.

mechana2015, how darkly are you coloring with colored pencils? most of my pictures that i've posted have been in colored pencils, scanned. i have found that if i color very lightly, they don't show up, but if i color a bit darker, and adjust the brightness/contrast of the picture, that they show up fine.

[mechana2015]

i tend to be very subtle and enjoy using a really varied range of shades to make the shadows (layered).... so very lightly. ^.^;; Oh, so this explains....thanks!

[soul alive]

you're welcome. it's taking me a really long time to get used to drawing darkly with colored pencils... i don't like they way they become shiny on the paper when you color darkly with them (it has something to do with the paste that is used to hold the color pigments in the pencil together >.<). oh well. my high school art teacher making me do layer after layer after layer to get a darker picture seemed like torture last year, but has really helped. but you have to admit, while you are trying to get it figured out it feels like beating yourself up :hits self: lol

[soul alive]

i had some free time the other day (!!yeah!!) something my major (architecure) doesn't normally allow me, so i spent it getting started on a watercolor of 'Azriel,' my angel character. since i was feeling lazy (again, lol) i used carbon paper to transfer the pencil drawing i did to computer paper, and inked it. i started watercoloring it, but didn't get very far.

it seems my digicam likes ink much better than pencil... these pictures ended up looking better than the pencil pictures.

just a note - carbon tracing doesn't erase . but since i am watercoloring over the picture, it didn't matter all that much...

i made some attempts at making his hands and feet/legs look better, but like i said, they were just attempts... his hands still look a bit wanky though. but i am happier with his feet and legs. i will post pics of the further progression of the watercoloring asaih (as soon as it happens)...

bleh, i say, bleh ( ). no matter how hard i try, i get smears (see above the wings)

i am also having a bit of a mental block about how to color the rest of him. since he is an angel, i guess i have a bit more of an artistic liscense about his hair/skin/eye colors. all i know right now is that i want to do his eyes a silver/greyish color... any suggestions on this matter would be helpful. (nothing outrageous though )