Loish

EARLY ACCESS // waterfall

I finally got around to finishing the waterfall painting that I first made a rough version of in January! Drawing this was a super frustrating process. I felt like the more detail I added, the less it looked the way I wanted it to. So it was a lot of back and forth and I’m still quite unsure of the final result. I now have two versions: one with a really straight waterfall (the first image), and one w...

EARLY ACCESS // zoo sketches

Here’s some stuff that’s far outside of my comfort zone! Together with some fellow art friends, we went to the zoo and drew some of the animals from life there. I totally cheated with these sketches, though - I drew the initial shapes and forms from life, but then later when we were having lunch, I looked up photos of the animals and filled in the details from reference. The fish and the bottom left sketches of the chimpanzees were fully drawn from life, however! These were a bit more slo...

DEMO // turning scanned lines into a transparent layer

Here’s a little demonstration of how I turn scanned linework into a transparent line layer, which is something I did when creating this artwork of Ariel! I wanted to talk you guys through it in a video, because it felt like the most intuitive way to get this information across.

Some additional info:

• Here is a super basic resource on masks for those of you who are not familiar with t...
  2022-06-01 09:02:01 +0000 UTC View Post

PROCESS VIDEO // ariel

Here’s the process for my Ariel painting from last month! It’s sped up a little under twice the original speed. The process took me about 1 hour and 40 minutes in real time. I made some final adjustments to this image after recording this process video, so there are some slight differences in the face and colors for the final version, but this video shows 99% of the process!

I figured this wo...

UPDATE // It's not gonna be May anymore

June is around the corner and the summer is about to begin! Usually I post this on the last day of the month, but I'll be travelling tomorrow, so I'm posting it up two days early. Here's a little review of how this month has gone for me:

SO MANY MERMAIDS

Because it was MerMay this month, most of my art consisted of mermaids! This is very much my comfort zone, but I found it quite challenging to make the mermaids look interesting and 3-dimensional. In the last two ...

EARLY ACCESS // desert dreams

I’m done with mermaids and back to landscapes! This one started out as a speedpaint of a desert setting, and became a slightly surreal piece. I’ve been really into iridescent colors lately and I wanted to use that effect to capture the feeling of intense nighttime heat. I think deserts are one of my favorite type of landscape to be in, because it feels so vast and surreal. It’s almost like being on a different planet!

TUTORIAL // creating light & flowy sketches (subtitled)

As promised, the version of the sketching tutorial with the subtitles baked in to the video. Please do check out the description of the other tutorial post for additional info about the tutorial! Enjoy!

TUTORIAL // creating light & flowy sketches

It’s time for this month’s tutorial! It’s about sketching, and specifically about how to keep your sketches from becoming too heavy or stiff. In this video, I talk about:

• Which tools I use

• Common misconceptions that hold artists back while sketching

• Useful techniques for sketching - like using the blending stump and contour hatching

• The 4 main stages of sketching in my process, from first lines to the finishing details

• Importance of acce...

EARLY ACCESS // ariel

To finish off the #mermay themed art for this month, I had to draw my favorite one: Ariel. I’ve drawn her so many times and wanted to tackle her with my current skillset! This one started as a sketchbook sketch, which I scanned in and added digital colors to (and changed her face and hair quite a lot in the process as you can see!).

By the way, I finished up this month’s tutorial on sketching,  and I’m just waiting for the subtitles to come in! I’ll be posting it in the com...

EARLY ACCESS // mermaid sketches

Geting sick of mermaids yet? 😂 Sat down to do a mermaid sketch session for MerMay. I was surprised to discover that my old sketchbook is now completely full, so I had to break in a new one for these! Guess that means it’s time for a new sketchbook tour soon. For now, I hope you like these ~

QUESTION // sketching struggles

Hey patrons! Next week I want to create a tutorial on sketching, and specifically around common struggles that people have while sketching. The first things that came to mind were how to shade in a way that doesn't weigh down the drawing, and how to keep the lines light and flowing. But I'm still working out the idea and brainstorming the concept!

This is why I wanted to ask you: What do you struggle with most when you sketch? Any answers would be super helpful in allow...

EARLY ACCESS // another mermaid

Here’s another mermaid! I really enjoyed the rougher, more expressive workflow of the first mermaid painting I made and wanted to try it out again. Taking a rougher approach with more “facets” and random details has definitely made the painting process for characters more enjoyable for me! I guess mermaid...

PROCESS VIDEO // mermaid (sped up)

Here's a sped-up version of the mermaid process video I just posted! It's sped up 5 times and probably more interesting to watch for those who don't want to see every tedious detail :') Hope you enjoy! You can find the real time version here. 

PROCESS VIDEO // mermaid

Here’s some of the process for my recent mermaid sketch! Unfortunately the video stopped working at a certain point and a chunk of the process is missing around 40 minutes in, but most of it is there. I dip my head into the frame without realizing from time to time, apologies for that! I need to learn to lean back while I draw :’)

As always, my sketch brush is the wonderful Macalabs HB pencil brush from this brush set...

EARLY ACCESS // mountains

Next month I’m going on vacation to the Alps. This is always something I look forward to because I live in a super flat area of Europe, and I just crave being around mountains sometimes. It gives that feeling of being small and surrounded by majestic landscapes! I had to draw some mountains in anticipation of the trip. These are based on photos I took on a trip to Canada back in 2014.

EARLY ACCESS // mermaid

It’s May, the month of the MerMay challenge! I won’t be participating each day but I might just draw a mermaid from time to time, starting with this one! Here’s one where I tried a more messy painting style which was a lot of fun to do. Sometimes I’m just craving more loose and expressive brush strokes! Hope you like it!

UPDATE // it's gonna be May

The annual moment to post this meme has rolled back around:

Are you all enjoying the spring as much as I am? I'm so relieved the trees are finally fluffy and green again! Here's a little review of how this month has gone for me:

FIRST ART EVENT IN 2 YEARS

This month, I went to Playgrounds Festival in Eindhoven to do some book signing sessions and reconnect with peop...

EARLY ACCESS // character sketches

A page from my sketchbook that I hadn’t shared yet! These girls are actually re-draws of characters I drew a long time ago, around 2003-2004. I wanted to see how I would approach them in my current sketching style. I love doing exercises like these to map my progress and see how much my way of drawing and visualizing things has changed since I started out!

EARLY ACCESS // expressions

I felt compelled to do some quick expression sketches, using a bit of a chunkier drawing style! It was fun, it felt quite freeing. Hope you like ‘em!

EARLY ACCESS // smoke (again)

Another smoke painting! (Here's the first one I posted earlier this month.) When I made the rough thumbnail sketches for this dark smoke concept, I had two variations - one from dark to light, and one from light to dark. I decided to finish both of them because I was really enjoying the flow I was in, where I was...

EARLY ACCESS // seafoam studies

I saw some gorgeous seafoam/wave sketches by Henry Wong and was inspired to do some studies as well. I just love how he captures the volumes and color variation, it’s really inspiring! So that’s what I tried to do here, I don't know if I succeeded but it was definitely a fun study to do. I also posted a 2022-04-20 08:22:19 +0000 UTC View Post

TUTORIAL // using your creative spark to generate ideas (subtitled)

Hey patrons! As promised, the version of this tutorial with the subtitles baked in to the video. Please do check out the description of the other tutorial post for additional info about the tutorial! Enjoy!

TUTORIAL // using your creative spark to generate ideas

Here it is: this month’s tutorial! Some of you have asked me how I come up with ideas, or requested an idea generation tutorial. So for this month I wanted to make a tutorial that talks about how I implement fleeting moments of inspiration into my workflow to come up with new ideas. It’s less technical, and more mindset-based, but it also has a demo for how I make quick painting thumbnails for those who want to know the technique!

The demo goes pretty fast, so if you want...

EARLY ACCESS // smoke

I finally got around to finishing one of the WIPs I posted in January! This one felt really satisfying to do after the cloud painting I finished last month, because I had kind of memorized the shapes and was able to just work from memory. Smoke and clouds are my new favorite thing to draw! Hope you like it :)

EARLY ACCESS // portrait sketches

Last month I posted some portrait sketches from a small sketchbook I started using. Here are some more from that same sketchbook! With these, I was getting more comfortable with stylizing and exaggerating them, and just enjoying the process more. I think that shows a bit in the art - it looks a little more confident than my first sketches from the 2022-04-07 08:10:21 +0000 UTC View Post

PROCESS VIDEO // forest (phone recording)

Here’s some more snippets of the process for my forest painting, this time filmed vertically with my phone! I film this way sometimes so that I can later create a reel or tiktok from it. You can also watch the full process here, in the form of a screen recording. Hope you like it!

PROCESS VIDEO // forest

I put together the process video for this painting! The whole thing took me a little over 3 hours to do, and I sped it up to twice the original speed. You can slow it down or speed it up in the player bar! I also filmed parts of the process with my phone, which I’ll post right after this one! 

Here's the final result of this process:

2022-04-05 16:12:18 +0000 UTC View Post

UPDATE // subtitled videos

Hey Spark Patrons! Because Patreon’s video functionality doesn’t yet support subtitles, and because many of you are still reporting issues with the video playback, I wanted to make a list of external links with which you can watch the videos that you have access to. If you watch them through these links, you can turn on subtitles by clicking the CC button in the player, and hopefully bypass any video playback issues that you may be experiencing here on Patreon!

You can access them w...

UPDATE // Easter season is coming!

Another month has passed! Here in the Netherlands, we've had a lot of sun, and the green buds are blossoming into beautiful fresh leaves. There are some fluffy ducklings wandering around too! I always feel so energized around this time of year! Here's how the past month has gone for me: 

ALMOST DONE WITH THE HOUSE

I’ve been setting aside a bit of time each week to work on our house, and we are almost done with the tasks we set out to do in January! This mon...

TUTORIAL // creating interesting & flowy shapes (subtitled)

Hey lovely patrons! As promised, I've uploaded a version of this tutorial with the subtitles baked in to the video. Please do check out the description of the other tutorial post for details about the brushes, reference, etc! Enjoy!