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Edinburgh Fringe festival

Posted on August 19, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | Leave a Comment

For my coworker and environment artist extraordinaire John’s birthday, we went to the Edinburgh Fringe festival this week end. The town is soo pretty that I will have to come back and do more architectural drawing.

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Back from California

Posted on August 9, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | Leave a Comment

With my hero Mike

I just came back from California and I am completely jet-lagged ;-)

This is the second time I visit San Francisco and Los Angeles but having been invited to visit some of my favourite animation studios made the trip much more special.

I had decided to focus mainly on my sketching skills this time and try to apply what I learnt during the past seven month. My knowledge in anatomy and proportion combined to 7  month of intense life drawing practice helped me to make the most of those very long journey on bus and subway. The Santa Monica/Downtown LA journey was probably the most fruitful since people tend to quickly fall asleep and not pay attention to that one guy with dark glasses and hat screwed on his head, frenetically moving a pen on a tiny notepad, in a corner, at the back of the bus ;-)

If I lived in LA, I think I would take the bus everyday, the passenger always presented amazing features to capture and every ethnicity and age range was on display.

Here are some drawings and pictures from my trip. I had brought some watercolours but eventually decided against using them. I didn’t want to ruin the sketches with poorly chosen colours. I need more experience with those however….. the reason why some of the sketches don’t have any shading,  is because  I still intend to colour them at some stage :-) I just found a great video tutorial with Jason Seiler that could prove useful. Jason Seiler/Schoolism

Forgive the poor line work, I was using a cheap Bic cristal and those don’t allow much thick and thinness. I had in mind to buy Glen Villpu’s favourite Namiki Falcon fountain pen but at $180 a pop at Flax, I eventually decided against it. It is only $120 online. Still very expensive for a fountain pen but the nib is really really flexible.

Here we go, that’s it. Enjoy

[ps] if you don’t know Matt Jones, check out his work, he has some really nice sketches on his blog
http://mattjonezanimation.blogspot.com/

Related post:
Sketchcrawl material

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Life drawing obscurantism

Posted on June 12, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | 2 Comments

Some time ago, my friend Annes sent me a link to a different Life Drawing class that I would possibly enjoy more than the one I am currently attending and everything finally made sense.

In life drawing, there seem to be a predominant “school of thought” that believes in learning by pure academic observation. That “London Atelier of Representational Art” (LARA) in Clapham Junction, even goes to the extreme of forcing you to draw using a “Sight-size method”. As they describe it, here is how it works:

“the artist first sets a vantage point where the subject and the drawing surface appear to be the same size. Then, using a variety of measuring tools – which can include strings, sticks, mirrors, levels, and plumb-bobs – the artist draws the subject so that, when viewed from the set vantage point, the drawing and the subject have exactly the same dimensions.”

I think “academic observation” is very valuable when drawing from the model but as Glenn Villpu implies it in his theory and instructional material. This is just, one tool!

How long is it going to take you to finally be able to work as an animator, illustrator, storyboard artist and draw from imagination then? Years and years and years and years!

Why not instead, add more tools to your toolset. Why no try to understand the underlying structure of the figure? What about learning proportions and the different parts of the skeleton but also the few muscles that shape the surface of the skin? How to represent the figure in simple geometric shapes?

What about learning … the Structure!

The big problem with the “Academic observation” approach is that you only discover the elements of the structure through experiencing them, this can take a very long time. It is what I would call “brute force life drawing” teaching. But there is a smarter way!

K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer published a great paper a while ago, about “the Role of deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”. The paper is a bit dry so you would be forgiven to skip to something a bit more approachable and that great article from CNN called “The secret of greatness”.

What those articles try to demonstrate is the importance of having a plan when learning and focus your practice on specific areas. This is what they call “Deliberate practice“. “Brute force” learning is great but it is definitely not the deliberate practice sort of approach.

Where can we learn about structure? well Glenn Villpu is the obvious start, then all the AWESOME blogs, Dreamworks storyboard artist and life drawing teacher, Rad Sechrist, is part of!

Rad How To
Analytical figure drawing
Advance figure drawing
The Art Center

Reading those blogs and learning what is on display should help you improve tenfolds!

I would also recommend Andrew Loomis pdfs as a start actually and this great 1890 book by french Dr Paul Richer
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k205846w.planchecontact.r=richer.f145.langEN where he shows the relationship of the head height to the rest of the body.

To finish this post, here are my two last drawings from my thursday class:
Contains nudity
[...] Read more

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Life drawing, second term just started

Posted on April 24, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | 1 Comment

This term I have gone a bit mad and enrolled for 3 classes a week for a total of 7h. I can already see a lot of progress compared to last term. Better composition, better line work, better shading, better proportions, speed. Good thing I didn’t walk out or gave up like other students.

Here is a 2 hours pose. My Thursday tutor keeps telling me that I would be a great forger. That’s not a good thing for him. As artists, we shouldn’t try to copy the model like a camera would.

I don’t care much for the moment, being a camera is still a good thing for me until I have mastered anatomy and proportions.

This term is very exciting, I am sharing two classes with a lot of very talented concept artists and artists from the Video game industry. That is a lot of competition but at least that pushes us to get better.

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“can you draw the nose without the nostrils?”

Posted on March 31, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings | Leave a Comment

Beata

Tonight was my last drawing class for this term and once again my teacher decided to give me a hard time.

I have had two teachers this term. One that would pat us on the back congratulating us on our work: “you are doing fine”, then would disappear for the rest of the hour to probably smoke a whole pack of cigarettes or hang out at the school’s café while, I, would share the teaching of Andrew Loomis and Glen Vilppu.

The second teacher has been trained at a tough russian fine art school and would instead draw with us and try her hardest to teach us life drawing but there is one big problem, she is a very good artist but she completely forgot what it means to begin in life drawing. Very often she would come to our easel making completely useless comments. “The proportions are off, imagine you saw that person in a restaurant, wouldn’t you be scared? can you see why is wrong now?”. Of course not! If I could i would correct it! Man this drove me nuts. Luckily once in a while, the ramblings would be followed by some amazing tips….

This week, she noticed I was really struggling drawing the subtle changes of shadow of the nose and asked me: “can you draw the nose without the nostrils?”…. well of course not and why would I? When you have two big black marks right in the middle of the face, why wouldn’t use them as landmarks?

After nearly 20 minutes of rambling and argument she eventually drew a simplified representation of the nose using shaded planes…. man THAT was useful! I had seen similar drawings in the Loomis books but completely forgot about it. If you can break down the face and probably the body in term of planes, things are so much simpler and you might not even need a model anymore.

Here we go, as Glen Vilppu would say, I have now got one more tool in my life drawing toolset alongside my knowledge of anatomy, proportions, volume and “academic observation”.

I just found a great link to most of the books you need for life drawing. Check out Alberto Ruiz’s amazing blog:

http://processjunkie.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

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Tom Fluharty Chiustream

Posted on March 23, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Drawings | Leave a Comment

man one more amazing Chiustream interview with Oil Painter Tom Fluharty.

I never expected to hear about Rembrandt, cad reds and ultramarine on the Chiustream but yeah, they did!!!

I had never head about Tom Fluharty previously but Tom is once again a crazy inspiring artists.

“You make want to break out the oil paints and start painting right now” says Bobby. I definitely agree!

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5570014

Interesting is also seem to be suffering from RSI like “Cheeks”.

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The Art Center

Posted on March 21, 2010 
Filed Under Character design, Drawings | Leave a Comment

Rhino crit

If you like the Radhowto blog you will love the Art Center. A blog sharing ideas and tips from Artists to Artists. The contributors are no less than some of the best artists in the industry: Florian Satzinger, Rad Sechrist, David Colman, Louie Del Carmen….

http://theartcenter.blogspot.com/

Thanks Annes for the link!

Read more
Drawing reverse engineering
“Paperwalker” Florian Satzinger

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Life drawing week 03

Posted on February 2, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | Leave a Comment

Here are my latest drawings. Two long poses.

I tried to think about the composition a bit more this time. The thumbnails on the top left corner are the base for my composition.

I wasn’t too happy the way things were going for the first one and restarted from scratch, which didn’t leave me with enough time to finish the pose. I had in mind to incorporate the little platform the model was standing on originally but realised that it didn’t present much interest so I decided to go for something tighter, with the feet fading away.

The second one is pretty good, but the model is way to high on the page. The foot is better than my last attempt but the hands, especially the right one would have needed more work. The quality of the line is still very poor but I am working on that.

Things are getting better and better I feel and there is definitely some improvements compared my first drawings. My skills in drawing from imagination have also dramatically improved and I can now draw different body parts without reference.

Those two drawing will probably be my last pencil shaded piece as I feel it is now time to move to Oil painting. I have been told that moving to paint would help me to improve my drawing skills and Painting is also something I always wanted to try but never found a good teacher/course until now.

Marc

Robert

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Life drawing session 03

Posted on January 26, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | Leave a Comment

Here is the pose we worked on yesterday with Marc again. 1h40 pose. Longer poses are great as they allow for corrections and trying different techniques. I got stuck with the feet so moved on to do some shading in order to define the belly a bit better and try to create some volume.

Contains nudity
[...] Read more

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Life drawing session 01

Posted on January 21, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | 1 Comment

Working in Guildford is just as good as London as I found an Art center offering evening life drawing classes. I enrolled to two life drawing classes and 1 watercolour painting class. It has only been a week but this is looking really promising. The teachers in both classes are really good artists … which doesn’t mean they are good teachers but I have some of Glen Vilppu tapes and the Force: Dynamic Life drawing for animators book which are really helpful.

I regularly sketch from memory while commuting on the train but the first drawing proved really overwhelming. I didn’t know where to start!

Hit the link for my drawings. Obviously this post contains nudity

[...] Read more

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Angouleme International Comics festival 2010

Posted on January 10, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings | 2 Comments

Angouleme festival

Angouleme festival

Well, well, well…. It looks like I might be able to make it to the Angouleme International Comics Festival this year. It is running from the 28th to the 31st of January in the gorgeous town of Angouleme.

http://www.bdangouleme.com/

Just for a reminder, as well as some NLP and Reframing tips, here is what Bobby Chiu had to say about the festival after visiting it last year:

YouTube Preview Image

Bill Presing also posted some pictures on his blog last year:

http://billpresing.blogspot.com/2008/02/destination-france-final-chapter.html

Is anyone else interested in going? I have no clue what kind of accommodation I will organize but I am sure it will be fine.

[...] Read more

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Bobby Chiu Video interview

Posted on September 6, 2009 
Filed Under Character design, Drawings | 1 Comment

Bobby Chiu

Bobby Chiu

CG talk just released a short video interview with Bobby Chiu during ComicCon2009. Check it out.

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Back from Angouleme

Posted on September 3, 2009 
Filed Under Animation, Drawings | 4 Comments

Cobbled street of Angouleme

As some of you might know, during the Annecy animation festival I got myself a great gig at animation studio “2 minutes” in the capital of “Bande dessinées”: Angoulême.

Angoulême is a gorgeous historic town, ideally located between Paris and the basque country, not too far from the seaside resort of also gorgeous La Rochelle and Royan. Angoulême is a fortified town with cobbled street located on top of the “Plateau”, a huge hill overlooking the Charente river.

All the houses are made of white stone which gives it that historic middle-age feeling.

[...] Read more

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The importance of the tools when drawing

Posted on June 23, 2009 
Filed Under Drawings | Leave a Comment

Just to balance things up a bit with my previous post here is a funny video from Sheldon Arts Academy on Youtube regarding the importance of the tools when drawing ;-)

YouTube Preview Image
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Sketchcrawl material

Posted on June 23, 2009 
Filed Under Drawings | Leave a Comment

Here is a summary of recommendations given by different artists for sketching or sketchcrawling.

Glenn Vilppu uses a Namiki Falcon fountain pen filled with a range of Sepia, brillian brown and black non waterproof Pelikan ink but also Polychromos Faber-Castell pencils. The Namiki Falcon nib is solid gold hence the price but doesn’t corrode like cheaper models. Glenn also recommends the $15 “Pen and ink sketching fountain pen” which comes in extra-fine, fine or broad size. expensive but the pigments are much stronger.

Enrico Casarosa uses the Fabriano Artist journal which alternates white and brown pages. He also carries a Water brush pen like most Sketchcrawlers and a set of Windsor& Newton Artist watercolours and does most of his drawings using a pencil.[...] Read more

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“Pinpin et les Estragon balls”

Posted on May 25, 2009 
Filed Under Drawings, Friends | Leave a Comment

Some time ago my friend Sebastien created a 66 pages comic Tintin/Dragons Balls spoof titled “Pinpin et les Estragons balls”. Unfortunately it is only in french but even if you don’t understand the language you might still be seduced by the action and the funny drawings. Here are the first 4 pages

pinpin01

Page 01

[...] Read more

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Welcome to my new blog

Posted on May 24, 2009 
Filed Under Animation Mentor, Drawings, Graphic design | 5 Comments

Old and new design

Old and new design

I have finally been able to work on the design of my website.

People will probably scream when looking at the code but why would I spend 10 hours pulling my hair troubleshooting some nasty CSS when I can just do the same job in an hour using HTML?! [...] Read more

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Painting exercise

Posted on May 23, 2009 
Filed Under Drawings | Leave a Comment

Bath time

Bath time

As suggested by Bobby Chiu, I just did a quick painting exercise in the style of one of my favorite artist Nate Wragg. Well it is pretty much a copy of one of his paintings. The grey background was just to avoid working on white but in retrospect white could have been better ;-) Ah I will have to learn colour harmony one day… how/where to start?

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My TV Paint toolbar

Posted on March 10, 2009 
Filed Under Drawings | Leave a Comment

someone was asking about TV Paint on the AM forum so I decided to share my toolbar with everyone. The drawing underneath is based on someone’s blog.

You can download my toolbar here

http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/uploaded_images/tvpaint/Olive_TradiTools1.6.zip

robot

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TV Paint fun

Posted on February 26, 2009 
Filed Under Drawings | 2 Comments

head

For the past few weeks, I have started sketching on my way to work. I am still using a demo version of TV Paint that closes down after 20 minutes and doesnt allow saving.

TV Paint is a really great software and I haven’t used Sketchbook pro for a more than a year now.

I mostly do caricatures/character design and usually start with 2 spheres, one for the cranium and an other one for the chin/jaw, then I place the different features (ears, noze, eyes) at different height, in order to give some personality to my character. That s a tip I got from Steven Silver. The drawing above was my first test with shadows and didn’t work very well. Instead of starting with a white page next time, I will start with a mid gray background. This should will give me more range. An other exercise I learnt from Steven Silver is to draw the feature into a geometrical shape (triangle, square, rectangle and circle), do you know any other?

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