Here is a quick costume rendering that I whipped up.

This was painted in gouache. In an effort to make my costume renderings better I’m going to work on both my drawing and painting this summer.

I’m not entirely happy with this rendering, but I learned a little bit while doing it, so I’m fine with that. I also realized after I finished that I forgot to draw the features of the hand instead of the general shape. Oops.

Also I have to figure out how to scan my images better. Or at least how to alter them well enough in photoshop to make them look a little cleaner and higher quality. Mehhhh. I’ll figure it out.

I also bought a book today about using pen to enhance watercolor paintings and I’m very excited to try out some techniques. I will post those when I get to them! 

I hope everyone is doing well! Summer is just beginning, so that’s fairly exciting!

Here’s a portrait of a friend I just did using a new method I’m trying. It’s the pie shape method that Chris Legaspi teaches. Legaspi says the method is inspired by Steve Huston. The method actually helped me a lot, but I still feel that something looks a little off. Something looks slightly off/cartoony. I think I need to restudy features before I can really get portraits down. 

The better of today’s drawing efforts. I’m most fond of the head on the top left—it’s starting to have that loose quality that I like.

Not too pleased with the other two. And considering that the top left head was drawn from the imagination as opposed to a life source is a little bit deceiving for me. I have to figure out how to really draw accurately from life to better improve my understanding.

Oh well. Womp womp. 

Here’s a quick self portrait. To be honest, it’s actually my first real attempt. Not to delve too deeply in it, but I’ve tried to avoid ever doing a self portrait due to self esteem issues.

This drawing is a far cry from Sargent’s portrait of a man. It lacks a significant amount of energy—and not to mention that Sargent’s model was gorgeous. I was able to capture a fairly decent likeness of myself, but the drawing lacks character and ease. The drawing is too overworked—it just isn’t flowing. Hmm. 

So let’s pretend that this is the inaugural post on this blog. I did mean to keep up with this blog—I just haven’t had the time.

However, let me re-update everyone about my life:

This past year of school was the toughest I’ve ever had. I can’t explain the amount of mental frustration and anguish that I went through as I tried to balance class, homework, production work, and personal health/happiness.  I’ll spare everyone the details, but the point is a conservatory program can be so incredibly mentally and physically demanding.

The good news is that things began looking up towards the end of this past semester, and I’m happy to transition into this summer and then my Senior Year of College! (Eek! Ahhh!)

I picked back up with drawing this past semester, and my passion for it has been greatly sparked. As I transition into this summer I would love to update this blog fairly often with my progress. I revisited SamC’s “sketchbook” just a few hours ago and have been inspired to start this blog back up again. 

To start here is a copy of one of my favorite Sargent drawings. It’s…okay. I feel that the placement and shapes of the features that I’ve drawn are fairly generic. Also, I get incredibly lazy when it comes to drawing hair. So I need to focus on drawing hair more accurately. 

Here are my goals as I move forward with drawing:

1. LOOSEN UP. Seriously. I have to start loosening up or I’m not going to progress any further.

2. Find a better understanding of the human (or any) form. I usually end up overworking my drawings and features. I find that my best drawings are when I’ve found and finessed the features with a certain immediacy. The more I try and perfect certain features, the more overworked the drawings look. Now this is not to say that I should draw in details right away—but I need to find a smoother transition from generalized shapes to detailed features.

3. Give my drawings (and poses) some life! I hope to apply my drawing skills to create characters that are full of life for my costume renderings.

4. Draw with continuous lines. No more chicken scratch!

5. Figure out what I’m doing so that I can draw without making a mistake when I draw on watercolor paper. (Seriously. Figure this shit out.)

6. Create smoother and more confident renderings in watercolor and gouache. 

I’m sure I have more goals, but these are decent starting points for now. 

I will post again soon (I hope!) so stay tuned! Or don’t. I don’t care. This blog is for me to track my progress. Any criticism is welcome!

Hi everyone!

I hope you’re all doing well! 

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Been pretty busy with work and general life things. School starts in two weeks (I’M SO EXCITED YESSSSS) and I’m going to really try and post often during the school year. I really just love painting and illustrating, and it’s so relaxing—especially in the midst of design work every day. So here’s to hopefully keeping this blog filled with new work!

The picture above is a watercolor painting I did of Emma Stone on the cover of The Help. I scanned it in and the colors are somewhat distorted, but thought I’d post it anyway. I made a mistake with her hands. I really had to restrain myself from putting a “u tried” star over her hands to cover them up. 

Again I hope everyone is doing well and having a nice end of summer! 

Hi everyone! I hope you’re all doing well.

So here is an in-progress painting that I’m working on. I say in-progress mostly because it’s not there yet but I don’t know if I’ll finish it. So we’ll pretend that I’m still working on it.

I’ve been drawing and painting a lot lately, but kind of in a rut at the moment. We’ll see what happens!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Okay, so I might be a little over-obsessed with Brave, but it’s so hard not to be! I just loved everything about it. Especially the gorgeous score and Merida. So, here’s a sketch I did of one of the promo images from Brave. I’m considering doing a quick painting of Merida. I’ve never done fan-art before—it’s a pretty new concept for me, but I’m so obsessed with Merida I just might have to.

Well, I’ll procrastinate on finding the perfect theme by uploading another sketch.

Seriously I’m terrible with choosing themes.

Hello! So as this is the first post on my blog I feel I should give a little bit of background on who I am!

My name is Scott and I am currently a junior in college studying Scenic Design. I absolutely love theatre and designing for it, but I also know that I love animation. Oh no, I’m torn!

So, as a way to not only improve my art skills and keep up a steady amount of personal, creative work, I have created this sketch blog to keep myself motivated and to hopefully interest some other people.

So hello, and welcome to my sketch blog!