[Josseline Jeria]

@Zach – Thanks! You should give one a go sometime. They have a folder here of some of his drawings and etchings. YES! We need to constantly remind ourselves that. A quote I have on my study wall from Jake Parker, goes “Finished not perfect. Triumph over resistance”. I need to have that on a post-it note everywhere I go, haha. Bobby Chiu just put a video up yesterday about that very thing. How it is a neccessary process to get all the bad drawings out, essentially everytime you draw, til you get to the good ones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8OD0_nbqoM&feature=em-lsp

@JohnHuisman Thank you! I enjoy seeing full pages – it’s part of what makes my sketchbook feel playful, which is absolutely essential for me.

@PaulDidier – Thank you! 🙂 I really enjoy doing those little observational drawings, in particular with fineliners. I can’t hide my mistakes with them, but I like them for that. Speaking of boxes and ellipses, I’ve spent all day yesterday and today drawing MANY of them for the Russian course. The Russians really know how to train.

@ShazadMadon –  They are a great learning exercise and enjoyable to do. That’s the fourth one I’ve done. Yes, hundreds more till they start to take better shape 🙂

Lucas – Observational drawing is essential!

@PeihongJiang Thank you – they’re with a Faber Castell Pitt Pastel. Yes! That’s my goal – to make sketching a daily practice and to have fun in my sketchbook. For it to be a personal and special place for  me.

[Josseline Jeria]

Day 8 – start of second week! I really pushed myself today. I was feeling discouraged with my timed gestures from the previous day, but with all your support and feedback,  I was able to loosen up mentally throughout the day, and got more and more drawing in 🙂 Thank you all.

I’m finding myself wanting to do more than my set 2 page sketchbook goal, as the two are beginning to feel not enough, but I want to stick with the goal, to allow the ability to do less on days where I’m feeling exhausted or time restraints don’t allow for more.

Together with my course work outside of sketchbook, in total I have been drawing a fair bit compared to the past. Proud of this 🙂 drawing in general is still something I have to overcome, lots of fear. I’m looking forward to when I’m able to feel more at ease with my drawing practice.

Graphite pencil and Stabilo point 88 fineliner – I hadn’t done observational drawing in a while, so I thought it would be good to get some in. Top drawing is of my cockatiel. I love how peaceful and fluffy she looks when she’s sleeping. I set her large cage next to my table as I work, for she insists to have company at all times. Bottom drawings are odds and ends on my table.

Fountain pen – study of part of a Zorn drawing. I didn’t set myself any time to consider the layout of everything, so many mistakes. I still have the habit of diving right in. Need to untrain that!

Pitt pastel – a timed gesture session. Hesistation but got through 🙂 I’m planning to get in one session daily.

Graphite pencil – trying to draw cubes in space and perspective and ellipses. Practice, practice, practice.

  

[Josseline Jeria]

This is such a gorgeous illustration. You’ve captured such a sense of joy, freedom and unity. It makes me want to enter their world.

I think to enhance the drawing to make the perspective look more cohesive, I would make it look like you’re looking down onto the trees as well some what, or if you want the viewers eye to be closer to the figures and slightly below the trees, have then a bit more directed to the eye line. I love all the colours you have used, but I think it could be worthwhile doing some colour studies to make the overall colour scheme more cohesive. It’ll help bring the image more together, further emphasising the sense of unity with the characters.

[Josseline Jeria]

oooo this is real nice! I love the colour palette for this one.

[Josseline Jeria]

Nice ones Eden. I like how you’re getting more flow to your line work

[Josseline Jeria]

I like the sense of flow in this drawing and how you’ve captured her hair. I’m a sucker for colour, I have to make myself use neutral mediums.

[Josseline Jeria]

Hi Shazad and welcome 🙂

I think you’ve set yourself a real good goal. Consistent daily practice for coursework is so important, and learning to juggle that along with your own other work and studies is important. The more we can do, the better. I’m up to the geometric form section of the Russian course too! I am digging into that lesson today. I am terrible at drawing ellipses freehand. I’m sure learning from Iliya on the conceptual understanding of them will help.

Good luck and looking foward to your posts.

[Josseline Jeria]

Nice podcasts. If you ever want to listen to other art podcasts, I highly recommend the following: 3 point perspective – an illustration podcast. The three guys that do it are so lovely, so much fun, it feels like getting together with friends when I listen to them. They are very business oriented and driven, provide SO much practical advice. One of my faves. Johh Dalton – gently does it and Lo-Fi – sight and sound podcasts. They interview contemporary artists, mostly in the fine art world. John’s most recent one has Cesar Santos.

What an interesting life travels you’ve had so far! You’re talking to a born and raised Australian here 🙂 The east coast is spectacular. I haven’t been to Alice Springs, the far far north and west. After the travel bans lift I’d like to travel to one of them sometime this year if possible.

You are very hard working and driven, so I have no doubt you’ll be able to make a career out of this. Depends what kind of art education and direction you’d want to take, but since you’re doing studies here on NMA I think studying at an atelier would be great. That is my goal. I can’t afford to do many days, but I’d like to do two full days once the bans have been lifted. There is an excellent atelier in Sydney: Julian Ashton art school – The Rocks. I did two painting workshops there beginning of this year – Still life and portrait sketch. They were fantastic. Love the instructors. Speaking of which, given your love of smooth blends, you should check out the instagram account @james_tucker_art He’s one of the instructors there. He studied and taught at the Florence academy of art. Have a look at his still life work – I think you’d like how smooth they are.

[Josseline Jeria]

thank you! I love watching everyone’s progress, especially students of NMA.

[Josseline Jeria]

The light and shadow is coming along well.  The bottom right horizontal line needs to be adjusted I think. It doesn’t look like it’s converging to the same vp as your top two horizontal lines.

[Josseline Jeria]

I like the learning direction you’ve given yourself throughout the two years on here. The quality of the courses on here is outstanding. Your goal sounds wonderful – an admirable and ambitious one. I think the compositional aspect that would go with creating that kind of drawing would be beautifully engaging and challenging.

Good improvements on day 1 and nice drawings for day 2.

[Josseline Jeria]

I like that you’ve chosen to have objects with varying surface textures. Some slight overlapping of objects can be good to suggest more depth in your image. Analyse your horizontal and vertical lines of where your objects are placed and the general directions. Analyse how the objects in space will direct the viewer’s eye. This is good to see if you like how the viewer will interact with your image.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by Josseline Jeria.

[Josseline Jeria]

You’re welcome, and yes, very impressive. Takes me about a 1min just to get that stick in! It’s challenging because it’s what I think is the default way our brains wants to understand things we see – it’s how we learned how to understand our visual world since we were a baby, so it’s not unsurprising that it’s difficult to change the way we think. Indeed, practice, practice, and then some more.

You can see the improvements in this session following Vilppu’s technique/approach. Well done. Your 1min ones are actually my favourite.

[Josseline Jeria]

@Birgith thank you! 🙂

@PaulDidier Yeah I was starting to let go a bit as I did more, so that helped. The line of the spine and general line of action of the whole pose helps me a lot – it’s the foundation to build everything up from. I will take your advice and do them with pen and sharpie. Have to be brave and persist to improve! I’m looking forward to seeing my drawing loosen up and overall improve with this approach 🙂 I don’t have the habit ingrained in me yet to use my shoulder, and I don’t have a good handle of inch long tipped pencils. I want to practice with those as well. Again, very generous of you with your post- thank you so much.

@LauraEspinosa Thank you! 🙂 And likewise

@Dennis you’ll be my gesture buddy throughout this challenge, haha. I want to do one of the daily sessions daily as part of my sketchbook challenge. We WILL get better 🙂 Thank you, glad it reads ohk.

 

[Josseline Jeria]

Paul, thank you so much for your generous and encouraging words. Thank you for mentioning the sport warm-up analogy. I come from a sporting background (powerlifting) where the warmup efforts have to be very deliberate and approached in the same manner as you would for your top weights/performance. So I think that’s how I have been approaching the timed gestures. So feeling my gestures as performative rather than warming up was placing pressure on myself that made me feel nervous and uncomfortable.

Thank you so much for providing all these examples of how your approach your gestures. These are very useful for me to see. The way you approach doesn’t appear too disimiliar to Karl Gnass’ approach that I’ve been learning, but could also be my untrained eye. I like how Karl teaches a stage approach. It allows me to better understand each element better, but I’m finding attempting to doing so is difficult for me – I just can’t get enough in in time. What you achieve in 30secs is what I can do in about 2 mins, haha.

I can empathise with the perfectionism. I show my husband my work and though I may feel happy generally speaking for my efforts, I always find and focus on what I didn’t do right, and discuss that with him rather than what I like about it. He always says I’m way too hard on myself. I will begin to see my gesture work as you do – for fun and time for myself. I will aim to do gestures x2 daily, morning and evening once I get more and more comfortable with it.

I was very hesistant at first, but I’ve only been met with kindness and support here – it’s been wonderful. I’ve already found how this community is helping me. This is going to be a great 2+ months 🙂

I like the idea of using a sharpie and larger surface. I don’t have any newsprint, so I will get some soon.

Thanks again Paul.

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