The dinged up snowglobe

David: "I just wanted to give you this, I picked it up at a yard sale in plymouth and I thought you'd really like it.
It's a little dinged up and it's missing a few steps but.. "
Millie: "I love it!"
David: "You do..?"
Millie "I do"

This scene from the movie jumper always stuck with me and I decided to draw it.
I actually wanted to do more detail but I just can't find the time right now so I'll have to come back to it later.

The light packer.

A quick little thing I did in between projects. My schedule is quite tight (which I generally dislike) so I don't have time to do more studies. I have got more on the way but time will tell when I have time to finish.

Doing exploration sketches

Doing some exploration sketches to work out a look I want for a short story.
A story about a boy going on an adventure with his dad and finding something special. More to follow!

Quickstudies #12

 I now have time for more studies instead of working on schoolism assignments. I loved doing them but there's not much to show here. So here are 4 black and white composition studies. Really quickly and loosely.

The process of a painting: backing up

I'd like to take you on a short journey of a painting I've been working on during the last schoolism class environment design by Nathan fowkes.

In the final few lessons we would go towards a final rendered portfoliopiece. I'd start with a bunch of sketches ( seen here: http://sammavanklaarbergen.blogspot.nl/2014/12/composition-sketches.html )
So this is where I started. This is the first sketch I had and I agreed with Nathan on this; that this was a bold statement that worked well. So I decided to pick this one to take further.


Moving on this is what I wanted to do as a color key. I liked how it worked and the statement was still bold and very clear. That was important here. The values stayed strong, the cooler temperatures on top and the warmer temperatures down below made it dynamic in terms of color. But it needed more.



So this is what I thought was a decent render of the color key. Pretty alright don't you think? I honestly didn't really know where to take it so I just did what I could. Nathan knew I would have trouble detailing it and what he critiqued me was not really what I expected. He said the focus was a bit lost. And he was right. The simple color key worked better.
 
'Go back to the color key and add some very subtle textures without breaking up the simple statement'

And he was right. This is an important lesson to me. More is not always better. Keep in mind the painting as a whole and don't get lost in detail. Don't lose the focus of the picture.

2014: Year in review

What a year it has been!

For me 2014 has been a year about creating a strong foundation to build on. The essentials; color, light, composition and using shapes and lines. I have been very busy and I learned more than I could imagine at the start. Looking at these drawings I did I already know how to improve every single one.

This year I have finished my third schoolism class and my first freelance assignment, did illustration & graphic design for a magazine and started a promising project with my art friends. I launched my portfoliowebsite : www.sam-art.nl , this blog, got to the front page of drawcrowd.com and was featured in a magazine. Not too bad I'd say!

I have no intent of slowing down a bit and 2015 will be the year for me to nut up or shut up.
Game on 2015!