Cwtam - Nelchee's sketchblog

Friends' figures

I have two friends who are into martial arts (and are ninjas in training :D), I referenced this from their Facebook photos.
The lady at the bottom is referenced from Bouguereau's "Bathers".

Friends and Bouguereau

Sketching pencils on toned paper.

Selfportrait #6

Slowly getting there... at least I don't look 20 kilos fatter like on the last one. I think the lips are ruining the likeness, but I just couldn't make it better.

Selfportrait, colored pencil

I also did some Caravaggio heads for my "50 heads challenge" and here are two that turned out decent:

Caravaggio head sketches

Colored pencil on some blue-gray paper, I think it's Canson.

Still life - from the sea

Drew this today while I was at my parents' place. I left it there so here's a rather noisy photo.

seashells still life graphite

Graphite pencils on A4 paper.

My parents loved it. They love when I'm drawing something dull and uncreative, as opposed to bloody and gory things I'm usually drawing.

On a side note, my CAPTCHA wasn't working so if you tried to leave a comment, I'm sorry about the inconvenience. Thanks to Slaven who let me know about this issue! :)

Male figure study

Yesterday my boyfriend posed for me for the first time, and hopefully not the last, although he didn't find this pose comfortable enough :P

Male nude figure conte crayon

Conté on packing paper, 60 x 40 cm

Dracaena and fruit

Dracaena, banana and two grapefruits

Oil pastel on black paper.

I doubt I'll work in oil pastel ever again. I gave it a few tries and even though this result is acceptable, I don't like working in this media at all - it doesn't blend easily, and it's hard to create any kind of texture that is not.. pastel texture.

boring boats

Today I decided to do what I've been refraining from for... over 4(?) years. I decided to use my fancy Windsor & Newton sketchbook, the one that's been waiting around my room for the time when I can actually draw properly. And since that's going to be never, I better use it now before the moths eat it.

I hate boat drawings because I've seen an abundance of them being sold to tourists at the stands on the beach in my hometown, but I figured I should at least try one for variety's sake.

boats drawing

Black fineliners on A5 sketchbook.

pin-up lady lineart

sexy pin-up lady drawing

Black fineliner, gray tights added in PS. Reference

some trees

I went out for a walk and drew some trees with charcoal. I'm trying to overcome my fear of drawing in front of people. Every time someone passed by I twitched and tried to hide my drawing :/
Anyway, white pencil over charcoal gives an awful result (as seen of first picture) so there shouldn't be even a little charcoal on the parts to be highlighted... blah.
They got smudged a bit before I got home to fix them with a hairspray.

charcoal tree
charcoal tree
charcoal trees

Charcoal pencil on A4 yellow textured paper. Around 15 minutes each.

Selfportrait 20091105

Still not looking enough like me. Oh well.

charcoal selfportrait

Charcoal and white pencil on brown wrapping paper (40x60cm).

Rose drawing

I really suck at color pencils (acually, traditional coloring in general) so yesterday I was trying not to. It took me an hour to do this! :/
Reference: A month-old dry rose I got for my birthday <3

rose color pencils drawing

ink hair doodles

I was trying out my ink the other day (just to see if it's waterproof and really really black, because I had some that wasn't) so I made some ladies with crazy hair. They were all made by first scribbling without thinking, and then I added faces because I thought the scribbles looked like hair.
If I tried to actually draw hair, they probably wouldn't look this cool.

ink doodles

Halloween sketch

I'll color it tomorrow.

Cauldron lineart

EDIT: Colored version

Jewelry design - from sketch to reality

Whoever has been watching my sketchblog knows my sketchbook is filled with swirls, as is the case with any paper that comes into my hands when I'm bored. Last week I was sketching some logos for a company at work, and that wasn't going very well - but I got an idea for something else, sketched it in a few minutes, ripped the piece of paper and put it in my bag. Later while driving in a bus I gave it some more thought and made the sketch on the right in my moleskine.

Jewelry sketches

10 hours of hard work later, the pendant became real, and is so far my best jewelry work.

Rose cameo choker

And I still have a bunch of sketches awaiting...

Drawing class, part VII

More drawing class. I decided to try watercolor because I suck at it, which is pretty obvious from exhibit No.1:

watercolor portrait

So today, I tried again. For the first I had a small statue as a reference. Still sucking.

watercolor horse

And the other one was from a book about Lipizzan horses. Of course, the scanner ate most of the very subtle tones, but nevermind.

watercolor horse

I think the last one is not so bad.

Drawing class, part VI

Well, okay, I know some things are off. Once you stand back and look at the drawing mistakes just glare back at you accusingly... But it was too late to fix them. Or maybe not. Maybe I fix some things later. But for now this is it.

dry pastel portrait

Dry pastel on brown paper (40x60cm).

Drawing class, part V

My today's assignment was to draw the figure in shades of blue. Dry pastel on brown paper (40x60cm).

blue dry pastel portrait

Drawing class, part IV

I'm back to drawing class after a few months break. Here's an ink figure and a dry pastel figure on brown paper. This is my first time using dry pastel, so I think it's pretty fine.

ink figure pastel figure

Drawing class, part III

More charcoal drawings made in class. That's all* for now, I took a pause this month because of exams.

charcoal drapery charcoal drapery

* well, not exactly, but I don't plan to publish the rest.

Drawing class, part II

More drawings I did at the class... The first one is pencil, the rest are charcoal.

female torsofemale torsomale torsomale torsofootarm

Drawing class, part I

I mentioned I was attending drawing class for a few months. We leave all our stuff there but today I took photos of my drawings so here are some of them in their crappy quality.
The first two are graphite pencil, the last is ink.

fruit still life
still life
blender

(To be continued.)

Lectures are back

Black ballpoint pen. Again.

sketchbook page 41

random typography

Sometimes I pull out my sketchbook only to realize I don't have any idea what to draw (yes, it happens even to me, now more than ever), so I just write random words in hope some day perhaps I will make a font or two.

The first one is one of my regular "lectures are boring".

sketchbook page 39 - typography

The second one was made during a V:tR RPG session.

sketchbook page 40 - typography

As usual, black ballpoint pen. Lyrics are from the Tori Amos song "Icicle" (though I got one word wrong, blah).

If you're interested in nice typography, go check the I love Typography blog, some good stuff gets posted there..

Seems life my sketchblog features more text and less images with every entry, I'll refrain from doing that... but all the things I draw at class remain there so I don't have much left to post.

take a deep breath and count to ten

It always amazes me how certain people have no shame. Not only will they claim your work as theirs, but upon confronting them about it, they will
a) blame it on "a friend who gave it to this person claiming he/she created it"
b) have the nerve to say those drawings were copied from some reference book, even though most of them are scribbled directly from my morbid mind (what kind of book would offer references like this, anyway?), and some of them are parts of my own face or objects found around my room
c) call me immature, poorly raised and what not, because I did not accept the fact my own work was taken and presented as someone else's. Not even copied by the offender's own hand, which I would understand, since that would mean the said person is at least interested in gaining the skill herself.

Just because I don't write NELA DUNATO on every fucking piece of my work no matter how insignificant, someone jumps at the chance and yay, look what I'm drawing when I'm bored at school — right, electrical engineering is certainly what you're made of.

Steal this, bitches.

sketchbook page 37

biomechanic sketch

It's been 3 months since my last post (and 3 more months between that one and the one before), I hope this won't turn into kind of tradition.
Seriously, I wasn't drawing at all in the past few months. Not a sketch. Nothing.

So here's a warm-up from yesterday's lectures. Black ballpoint pen.

biomechanic sketch

sketchbook update

I finally started driving school. I do pay attention to the class, but my hands have to be kept busy at all times. (yep, I'm a very mercurial type)
You can see some preliminary sketches for my last digital painting at the bottom.

sketchbook page 28

This one was started at college (hand, eye), continued during the driving school lecture (glass, ear) and finished at home before bedtime yesterday (candlestick, shuriken).

sketchbook page 29

As usual, black and red ballpoint pen.

warming up

Today's lecture was almost interesting, the professor is a funny man and can keep his audience awake with his witticisms. But I still decided to pass.
I feel a bit rusty, but here it is. No horror vacui on the first one!

ballpoint sketches
evil gnome etc.

back to school

The first week back at college hasn't been very fruitful... actually I didn't go there much at all. But now I'm back with my sketchbook ballpoints.

ballpoint sketch

bad student

random sketches

Black and red ballpoint pen.

Costume stuff

My friends are attending Carnival in Rijeka so I drew a costume they decided to wear for them.
Black fineliner and marker.

Chess costume

Lilin or something

daemon lady

Perhaps I should be drawing bigger boobs. And more curvy women in general.
Black ballpoint pen, cleaned up in Photoshop.

Sketchbook update

The first drawing is something I sketched a few weeks ago, and goes well with the rest of today's sketchbook pages.

doll face

The next two are sketched today, during lectures.
During one class some guy I never saw before sat next to me. I was paying attention to the class for a while, and then I noticed drawing movements of his hand. I couldn't see what it was, but he seemed like he knew what he was doing. (Mental note: I have to take a video of myself when I'm drawing, because other's people's movements always seem so different than mine!) I was thinking of asking him about it, but changed my mind. I guess I am a shy person after all.
But I should be looking for such people around me. I feel like a misfit sometimes.
Anyway, here's the stuff.

random eyes and faces
girl with a kite

Black and red ballpoint pen.

nude chicks

First I sketched a few figures using reference, and they didn't turn out too well. Then I tried a few figures from my head, using principles I learned from Mr. Jack Hamm and they turned out much better than copied ones.
The right one is a quick study for my next drawing. I still haven't decided on the clothing, and whether I will draw it digitally or traditionally.

nude girls sketch

A sketch a day keeps the insanity at bay

I'm trying to sketch something every single day, so I did this now although my eyes are dry and demand sleep... An ordinary human skeleton (reference: Images of the Human Body) and Caravaggio's John the Baptist. Skeletonwise, it's cool to compare how much one improved in the past year.

skeletonCaravaggio's John the baptist sketch

White and graphite pencil on colored paper.

still life studies

I neglected real practice lately, I've been only sketching random junk from my head, so today I decided to draw something real.

glass of waterbrushes

I bought the heavy-textured yellow paper and a white pencil some time ago, now I finally put them to use. But the paper is not really suitable for detailed drawings.

on a trip

I was on a 4-day trip (SF convention in Osijek, Croatia), and during our long train ride I played some boardgames and sketched some random stuff in my sketchbook. Here are two pages I like the most.

victorian fashion
still life

Black ballpoint pen.

not quite there yet...

self-portrait

Fineliner and marker.

lectures are boring III

I should make a category for these. Again sketched during the lecture. Obviously I haven't used reference, so some mistakes are evident, especially on the female — wrong direction of spine at the bottom (it should be aligned with the butt) and lower ribs are too narrow, but the figure silhouette is fine I think. Except that knees should be lower, but I ran out of paper space.

skeletons

Black ballpoint pen.

lectures are boring II

I went to my first lecture this year. Things haven't changed much, still sketching obsessively instead of taking notes.. :)

Red ballpoint pen and white gel pen.

reminiscence

I removed these images from my gallery, so I thought I'd post them here since I'm rather proud of them. Both are from nearly 2 years ago, January 2006.

Oil lamp
Reference

crab's arm

I started drawing in summer 2005, and I had no previous drawing experience. I drew Kidush out of boredom, and next thing I knew people were praising my pencil work. That made me all enthusiastic about drawing so I did some photo-referenced portraits, but then a wise man said that drawing from photo reference is not so good, and that I should draw from life. And that's what I did.
Then I started drawing people, and they pointed out how my anatomy is all messed up. That's when I left still life and started sketching people, faces, skulls and bones, muscles and body parts... And while I think I made progress, I'm sad to see how I've become so impatient, I never thought about sitting in front of a inanimate object and draw it for hours again. It seemed so much easier before.

toilet sketches

My plan to draw every day this summer failed miserably. I did a few sketches of my co-workers which I gave away and that's it.
This is a sketch I did few months ago in the bus, and decided to shade it while I was on the toilet. Not kidding.

Succubus

I still can't quite nail the figure without reference.
And here are two face sketches I did on the toilet earlier today. Really inspiring environment, I tell you.

more random female faces

eyes & lips

I'm not lazy, I was just very busy during the past week. Here's something from my sketchbook. (a couple of lips referenced from Jack Hamm, see books list for details.)

eyes and lips sketches

face sketches

some random quick female faces..

random female faces

and one less random. looks like my mom when she was a teenager, so I guess it looks a bit like me as well :p

self-portrait

ballpoint Caravaggio

Shading with ballpoint pen. The works referenced are Caravaggio's Amor Victorious and Sick Bacchus. I screwed up the mouth and right eye on the latter.

ballpoint pen drawing torso and head

not that chubby

I wasn't home yesterday (reason: the fabulous Tori Amos concert in Ljubljana), that ruins my "at-least-one-drawing-a-day" plan, but let's continue like nothing happened.

Another try at self-portrait, it didn't go so well, but at least I know what I'll look like if I put more weight on.

self-portrait

A simple composition of brushes.

brushes

today's sketcbook page

My attempt at using color pencils failed miserably. I'm missing some essential tones (like pink and peach) I can't get by mixing, and it just looks... blah.
Studies from life, day 3.

miscellaneous sketches

hand and foot

Mine. Almost.

hand and foot pencil drawing

Let's see if I can draw at least one sketch from life a day, for a week.

airplane boredom

I planned to draw a lot on my short trip to London, but instead I used it to recover my health and get some sleep.
This is the only sketch I did, made in mechanical pencil. Reference is from Peck's "Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist".
(there are some anatomical mistakes, I'm aware of it.)

skull

I like to sketch

So I decided to give my doodles, studies, in-development and other stuff a decent home.

Nudity, blood and gore are present on some of the images displayed here — you have been warned.

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