Zombies

Older sketches from ~a month ago :)

Boyfriend playing "Walking dead" game = chill zombie drawin' time.
I mostly approached these as sorta anatomy sketches which makes it super fun

Frog guy - it was a figure study gone completely experimental with filters, effects and whatnot!
Was curious on how to achieve the night vision effect. :)

Been to London

Saw a few Rembrandt paintings at the National Gallery.

Two words: holy shit.

My mind is still blown. I can't wrap my head around how amazing his self portrait at 63 is. I am devastated, but not at all surprised to not have found a photo or reproduction that would do justice to this artwork, it's all so much flatter than when seen live.

Odd Nerdrum's Rembrandt obsession makes so much more sense to me now.

That is all.

Dogs again

Doodlin' some imaginary dogs...

...aaaand my dog Spike. Sleeping as he often does.

It was really loads of fun to do these -- though I'm not too used to actual living animals as models to be honest. :) Gotta fix that! There's no natural history museum in Warsaw that has as many stuffed animals as the one in Goteborg so I suppose it's the universe's way of advising me to do more life drawings. :)

When in doubt, paint a princess

Today I've been having a hard time with a painting I've been recently working at. At some point I decided to screw it for now and use the leftover paint for a Snow White speedpaint (~15 mins).
Lately I've been in love with paintings that are build up with very soft brushstrokes and toned palette, like Auguste Renoir's or Olga Boznańska's (whose works I'm always so happy to see at Warsaw's National Gallery).

oil on canvas, 24x24cm

Hopefully later today it will be easier for me to work on the bigger project, but for now - lunch break. :)

Shamanism

I am always inspired by certain roughness and primitive -- yet, in a way, sophisticated -- character of shamanic rituals and apparel. I love the fact these otherworldly traditions can be observed in just any part of the globe - from Lappland to Oceania - so the subject seems to be a limitless supply of inspiration to explore.  Following are sketches I did just to get things going, I am with all certainty going to develop this artistic research further. :)

I actually went quite far with developing the idea from the far right -- but it was digital, and the computer I was working at died, taking the work with it to the grave. I'm not giving up on it though, I will likely restart after I get my pc fixed. :)

Awakening

Finally got around scanning some older works of mine.

I roughly titled this drawing "Awakening" (or rather, Polish "Przebudzenie") and it kinda stayed like that. It seems an adequately titled piece to submit after such long absence of updates.

pencil on toned paper, 21x30cm

a quick study of a tree branch

Will post more works soon!

Doggies

Today I saw a photograph of a shibu ina, a beautiful japanese dog and I instantly felt like drawing it :) eventually it ended in a small dog-drwaing fest, haha.

I used photo references to draw these. :)

Next one is based on my dog Spike! And doggie treats my grandma gave for me to give him, haha.

And some of you must know this next one... since I was drawing dogs, it only felt natural to doodle a picture of my favourite image on the entire internet. (Close second place is this but I'm not likely to draw it. :<)

Quick small works like these are so much fun to draw! :) Though right now I'm working on something hopefully a tad bigger ;)
See ya!

Gaia

I had a rather busy day today but I still managed to "paint" this one hour doodle :)

Inspiration came from detail picture of Philippe Lallemand's portrait of Charles Perrault - especially the palette he used. I love the armospheric yet luminous earthy tones he used. Though obviously in the begining I also used it as a face reference :)

I also used an old sketch of a bird I did back in Goteborg as a reference, so I can't really say what species was it supposed to be exactly, heh heh... 

 

Obviously I'm happy to be back to working on my big ol' computer instead of my tiny laptop ;) so much more comfortable, gee. :)

Until next time!

Quick works

I'm finally moved and settled at my usual place! My flat underwent some serious rebuilding so it took a while, but now it's super awesome and I'm loving it. It took a bit of time to get everything in the right place but now I feels comfortable enough for me to stop rearranging stuff and draw! :) Which resulted in two quick pieces done in Photoshop.

First one was a very quick, 1 hour warm-up, a while of which was spent making custom brushes which I never really did before but boy, was I a fool not to!
It was fun drawing a bearded dwarf - especially since it's not something from my usual repertoir of characters :)

The dwarf approves.

I also felt inspired to create a children illustration and I really enjoyed making it! It was the first time actually doing something like that and I think I'm hooked.

Yay, all the colors of the rainbow. ;)

I'm a little ill (common cold in mid-August, gosh) so my mind refuses to come up with anything more to add... sorry!

Anyway, I hope you liked it!

Queen of Spades

 

Queen of Hearts

I've been reading on color theory lately and decided to study how it's going to be with a steady, pre-determined palette thanks to gamut masking method on a yurmby wheel. Before this, whenever I drew digital I just dabbed whatever seemed to fit, having indeed made a very primitive color thumbnail but leaving my "color planning" at that... Nevermore! The wheel rules. It was a very good exercise and I'm excited to use it in the future, whether using digital or traditional mediums.

Since it was just a small study I didn't really come up with anything too creative as a subject so I decided to go with my rendition of "Alice in the Wonderland" Queen of Hearts, hence white roses painted ruby red and a vague heart shape out of the rosy collar.

As a loose reference for the face I used a sketch of Johan Tobias Sergel's "Queen Sofia Magdalena" I did at a museum in Stockholm a few months ago.
I am also guilty of using two stock splatter blobs. I am so guilty that I can't even link the source because I just took what google gave me.
 
I really enjoyed making this drawing and as I mentioned earlier, I'm excited to use this method in my future works!

Note to self: buy roses and learn to draw/paint those little fuckers.

Short trip down memory lane

Pencil craze. I decided to re-do a drawing I made back in 2008, which I remember I had a lot of fun with -- I mean, it featured an aquatic creature, a human in high heels and headphones and lots and lots of frills. That's almost all my guilty drawing pleasures in one piece (I'm simple like that).

Pencil on board, 25x40 cm

I had a hard time getting anatomy to the point it didn't hurt to look at just because I couldn't be bothered to find any reference pictures. Pff.  Lesson learned!
And the drawing from over 4 years ago:

Pencil on paper, around 21x29cm

I think it's fun to look at progress pictures, both other artists' as well as my own. Certainly gives perspective!

Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel

Crazy weather in Warsaw today! But I'm cherry picking and forgetting about snow, hail and rain and I'm focusing on the sunny parts of the day. Since it's springtime I've been feeling more energized and I even started drawing some more than just doodles... which is actually very good for my sake, haha. ;)

Well, without further ado... the drawings!

Both are pretty small (around 13x20cm), drawn with pencil. (Or rather, two pencils.)

Red Riding Hood (with a bonus caption in Polish)

Been in my sketchbook for a tad too long and got fuzzy. :( Fuzzier than it originally was, at least.

And Rapunzel which I only finished some two days ago so it didn't yet have a chance to smudge... I didn't put a polish caption there so here you go: ROSZPUNKA ;)
Big thanks to my beloved boyfriend Karl who kept my spirits up and gave me a few tips to make the drawing better! :) :*

That's it for now. I'm hoping to be more consistent with drawing (and blog updates) now that I feel better.
Take care, everybody! :)


PS. Specjalne pozdro dla Grzyba który mi zazdrości blogaska i dlatego by się z niego śmiała jakby o nim pamiętała. :P <3

Portraits

I obviously enjoy drawing people most. And I love drawing portraits. That's why most of my freehand doodles are heads floating in space, but that's not the point I'm trying to get across. What I'm trying to say is that a lot of times innocent people become unaware victims of involountary modelling, whether it be at Starbucks or Stockholm's central station.

Sometimes Starbucks are pretty empty, at least on summer mornings, or maybe it's just a Warsaw thing. With no faces sticking around long enough, I just may end up doodling that mutated double-tailed mermaid from Starbucks' logo. (Yes, that fishy lady has two tails in case you haven't noticed before.)

Or some other faces I felt like drawing at the time.

But for better or worse, people will eventually come in the end.
Being interested in animation, I very much enjoy drawing in more stylized, cartoony style.
The following are based off actual people:

But I guess I do have the Florence Academy on the educational part of my CV so sometimes I try to make it more realistic, yet still stylized drawings; and sometimes I try to draw realistically but end up with cartoony anyways. Obviously I've got a lot to study and I can't pretend I don't. ;)

Speaking of school work, I copied two portrait Bargue plates at school during my first year. This is one of them, the unknown woman of Seine.

Sometimes, very rarely, I draw self-portraits. I made following quick (some 20-30 minutes) work yesterday when having an exhausting, very extended (in terms of time - it lasted a couple of hours) anxiety attack and was trying simply anything to refocus my attention.

They say that Photoshop is supposed to make people on the pictures pretty, I think there's something wrong with my version. ಠ_ಠ ;)

Blah, that's a downer way to end a post but I'm out of more pictures that I wanna submit, haha.
I guess good news is that I'm working on two bigger portrait projects - they're nowhere close to being finished yet, but hopefully at some point this winter I'll get them done. :)

Hope you liked it all, see you next time!

A good evening

Mindless, nonetheless enjoyable doodling while watching "Once upon a time" and breeding pokémon to fill that damn pokédex.
If it wasn't for some leftovers from my cold and multiple panic attacks I'd say it was the most relaxed evening (spent alone) that I've had in a long while. But hey, calming pills worked eventually too, so who am I to complain!
Hah, one of the good sides of nobody reading my blog - I can write whatever the hell I want... hehe.

Hopefully I'll wake up healthy tomorrow and then -- back to school getting some serious drawing done!

Snow White

A friend of mine told me she had a dream that she was watching a picture of Snow White that I made in her dream. She asked me if there's a chance she could see it come to reality and I figured, why not? :)
It feels strange though - I made quite a lot of sketches and fiddled around with the idea for a while, but as soon as I scanned the picture to color it I got kind of tired of it and after barely couple of hours I felt like I really just wanna be done with it already. But still, it was nice since it's been a while that I actually made a finished picture. :)

The pose is very very much inspired by Alfons Mucha's "Two standing women" (from his tableaux decoratifs, no. 45).

First I was thinking of a Snow White in a veil.
I also randomly drew her playing some medieval guitar or something, heheh.


I kinda liked the pose but meh, obviously didn't really work for me.

I tried with a profile portrait, but I wanted to come up with something more creative.
I was stuck and clueless, so good thing I got that Mucha album on my shelf, it got me going right away. ;)

Anyway, nice to have it done, nice to have done it.
Tomorrow my boyfriend and I are going for a trip to Stockholm, I hope I'll bring back sketches galore!

Monsters from under the bed

...Or from the clouds, really! I was on a train and started doodling monsters based on shapes of clouds out the window. I've never really drawn any kind of monsters before - I rarely have creative ideas for them - but clouds turned out to be a really cool starting point that worked really well for me :) well may not look dashing, but at least I had a lot of fun! And that's what drawing should be in the first place. :)

That one in the bottom is unfinished but I don't think I'll get around finishing it anytime soon, so what the heck. ;)

So if you're out of ideas what to draw, I'd definitely advice cloud shape monsters! ;) (Or gesture drawings, of course. ;))

Birds

Birds are awesome, that's a fact. Gotta love those strong gestures!

Sketches from the Natural History Museum in Göteborg.
What can I say, stuffed animals make great models, as opposed to living birds:




Those are sketches from life -- damn those critters are fast. ;)
While sketching I tried to remember how Disney's birds looked like, but I was out so I couldn't really check them out. I relied on a vague memory and, well, a feeling of them -- which, I suppose, it's all what gesture drawing should be all about anyway.
By the way, kudos to Disney and his animators for creating birds everyone remembers, even if they never paid any attention to them. ;)