Loish

TUTORIAL // creating interesting & flowy shapes

Here it is: this month’s tutorial! It’s about shape design, or more specifically, creating interesting and flowy shapes. Basically, it covers how I approach shapes, and how I use them to enhance movement and appeal. I tend to approach this intuitively so in order to explain how I use shapes, I really had to dig into my in...

EARLY ACCESS // portrait sketches

One thing that I’ve kind of missed doing lately was some quick stylized portraits. I’ve been doing a lot of studies lately, but I kind of lost my flow when it comes to rougher portraits in my own style. I feel like I fall back on realism too much and have lost the ability to turn them into “loish characters” when I dr...

EARLY ACCESS // forest

It’s been a while since I’ve drawn a scene that isn’t a photo study! The first leaves of spring are starting to appear here, so I felt an urge to draw a lush, dense, green setting. And of course indulge in some soothing flowy shapes, which are always so satisfying to draw for me! I recorded the process of this one, so l...

UPDATE // video issues solved!

Hey patrons! Just a quick update about the vimeo problems I posted about earlier this week. I knew that Patreon was working on a video hosting tool directly through the platform, which is currently in Beta, so I reached out to them....

EARLY ACCESS // anatomy sketches

More sketchbook stuff! This time some pose and anatomy studies, as always using the amazing Senshistock as a reference for the poses. I’m becoming quite addicted to the blending stump, so much so that I’m always thinking about using it, even wh...

EARLY ACCESS // breeze

Finally got around to finishing this cloud painting I’ve been working on for a while! My aim with this one was to really capture the specific type of volumes that you can find in these fluffy clouds. It’s really tempting for me to u...

UPDATE // problems with Vimeo

Hey lovely patrons! I have some frustrating news. Today I received an e-mail from Vimeo saying that I have to upgrade to a $3500/year plan or find a different place to post my videos within 7 days, because they say my videos are using up too much bandwidth. I use Vimeo for my Patreon videos, and they only get a few hundred vi...

EARLY ACCESS // sketchbook session

It’s been really sunny weather here lately, even warm enough to spend the afternoon in the backyard! So I sat down to have a drawing session in the sun for the first time this year. I missed these kind of sessions! Here are some faces, drawn with a mix of HB mechanical pencil, blending stump and eraser. All of my pencil ske...

EARLY ACCESS // poppies

Finally got around to finishing the WIP I posted last month! It’s heavily inspired by the art of Leyendecker. I tried not to divert too much from the rough version when finalizing, to keep that painterly sculpted look that I was going...

EARLY ACCESS // head studies

Diving back into Procreate for this one! I love using textured brushes with this app, so here are some head studies with some nice, gritty, traditional-feeling brushes. They are mostly Maxpacks brushes, specifically the gouache set! I feel like procr...

WIP // March WIPs

Hey lovely patrons! Just like in January, I’ve been working on some rough setups for some digital paintings that I hope to finalize soon! I’ve been wanting to make an icy environment piece and also something with water. Which one do you like the most?

I aso made a little bit of progress on the cloud painting that I ...

UPDATE // March is around the corner

The shortest month of the year is almost over! Here's a little review of how this month has gone for me:

FOCUS ON ARCHITECTURE

Drawing buildings and architecture has always been a huge weak point for me! I find that my workflow for characters just doesn’t translate so well to architecture, and t...

TUTORIAL // Finalizing a painting without over-rendering

It’s time for this month’s tutorial! It’s on finalizing a painting without over-rendering it. This is something many of you have requested, and it’s a very common struggle for any digital artist! It can be super tempting to keep rendering your painting for a long time but feel disappointed with the end result despite ...

WIP // poppies

Here’s the current state of a painting I’m working on right now! It’s heavily inspired by one of my favorite artists, J.C Leyendecker. I just felt his urge to channel the aesthetic of his art into a pinup type painting and I’m really enjoying the process of rendering it. It’s so much fun to lean heavily into the pai...

EARLY ACCESS // more buildings!

More building sketches, this time in Photoshop, which instantly felt more natural and intuitive to me than drawing in Procreate. One of these is based on a town in the South of France, taken by me:

…and the other one is base...

EARLY ACCESS // whisper

Here’s a new digital painting that I created pretty spontaneously! I was working on other stuff and had a sudden idea for a sketch, so I started sketching it out on my laptop with my intuos pro. It’s been a long time since I drew with a USB tablet instead of a screen tablet, but I think it made the sketch a bit looser whi...

PROCESS VIDEO // abundance, part 3

Here's part 3 of the process for abundance! Part 1 is here, and part 2 is 2022-02-11 09:29:34 +0000 UTC View Post

PROCESS VIDEO // abundance, part 2

Here's part 2 of the process for abundance! Part 1 is right here. Just like the previous video, this has been sped up 1.5 times. 

PROCESS VIDEO // abundance, part 1

Here’s the process video for the Abundance painting I made last year! This is how the painting turned out:

I thought this was a good one to show you guys since it shows my process for creating a character-based digital paint...

PROCESS VIDEO // procreate buildings

I threw together a quick video with the exported timelapses from my recent sketch sessions! Hope it's helpful in some way.

Here are the reference images in order of appearance in the process video: 

2022-02-07 11:59:09 +0000 UTC View Post

EARLY ACCESS // more buildings in procreate

Back to drawing buildings in Procreate! Still struggling to make them expressive and dynamic. These studies are based on a picture I took in Annecy:

For this one, I tried out a workflow where I created the basic structure and ...

EARLY ACCESS // buildings in procreate

Drew these sketches to try and tackle two of my biggest art frustrations! The first of which is my (in)ability to draw buildings. I have a really hard time capturing the detail, perspective, and sense of scale. I want to get better at drawing them, so I did a quick study of a picture I took in Porto, which only reminded me ho...

UPDATE // first month of 2022 down!

We're already on the last day of January! Here's a little overview of how this month has gone for me:

SETTING NEW GOALS

It’s the start of a new year! In 2021, I finished off a lot of paintings that I had lying around for a while, and am starting this year with a clean slate. It is kind of daunti...

WIPS // winter painting ideas

I was out of ideas for new digital paintings, so I sat down to conceptualize a few new ones! I like to sit down and brainstorm a few different ones in one sitting, so that I have them on hand to finalize at a later point. Which one should I finish first?

EARLY ACCESS // tree studies

Here are some studies that match the topic of this month’s tutorial! Here in the Netherlands, we have a tree called a “knotwilg” which literally means “knot willow.” It’s a kind of willow tree that is kept small and short, and has its branches removed every so often so that it stays small and chunky (otherwise it ...

TUTORIAL // stylizing trees & plants

Happy Monday everyone! It’s time for the monthly tutorial! This one is on drawing stylized plants & trees, and the main reason I chose this topic was because it touches on a few other subjects that I wanted to discuss. The main topics covered in this tutorial are:

• Which kinds of reference images are...

PROCESS VIDEO // red robin

Here’s the process for the Red Robin drawing that I made earlier this month! It was a fairly short process (less than 2 hours of drawing time in total)  so I made the video in real-time, but you can speed it up or down using...

EARLY ACCESS // winter landscapes

Sat down to do some quick landscape studies! I’ve really been enjoying the winter this year. I usually dread it because I always feel cold and depressed in the winter time, but lately I’ve been learning to enjoy it more. I feel like there’s a unique beauty to the world during the winter, something about those muted colo...

EARLY ACCESS // stone portraits

I wanted to try some portrait studies where I took the color / surface texture of an iridescent stone, and applied this treatment to a face. The left one is inspired by reference photos of moonstone, and the right one by rainbow quartz. It was fun to do, I think it would be fun to expand on this idea for a digital painting in...

EARLY ACCESS // red

My first drawing of 2022! Gotta get back into it after taking a few weeks off for the holidays and doing a bunch of boring tasks that I needed to get out of the way. Here’s a very red drawing, trying to play around with a harsher color combination than I usually do! How is your year going so far? Have you made some new draw...