Laurent Van Acker
Gent
Full stack developer who likes to draw on the side

Laurent Van Acker
added comment inProject - Organizing Line Weight
3mo
Asked for help
Done with the level 1 assignments! Wanted to focus on the head and horns but now I see zoomed out that the thick line on the rhino butt sabotages that.
Wanted to try another penguin after watching demo and critiques…
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Finally found the time to finish up this assignment. I learned so much about (ghost) crabs, who knew! My final sketch of the happy ghost crab is quite messy, I tried not to fall into refining it but I hope it's readable. The page seemed saturated with graphite from my palm going all over the drawing... Now, onwards and upwards!
Fun aside: The Indiana Jones crab pulling the lever was doodled together while I was working on a local multiplayer game with a friend. This assignment actually caused the game to include a lot of crabs! I added the pixelart menu art I made as the last image (yay crabs!) and you can play it here: https://all-in-development.itch.io/hobo-jones-and-the-crab-temple
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Finished the level 1 project in one sitting, I like the assignment, and I really loved drawing the VR girl’s chonky legs! 🤩
What do you think I should focus on to improve? As with the skull from the previous lvl 2 assingment, I’m struggling to get nice line weight variation going instinctively while drawing these more organic subjects.
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4mo
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Finished up Skelly! Ready to move on. I’m not sure where to add or reduce line weight if I had to move this piece forward, anyone who can give me some tips/ideas?
4mo
Asked for help
Watched the level 1 demo and made the level 2 camel! The legs are so fun to draw! Skelly tomorrow 💀
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4mo
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Had a lot of fun here but I noticed (and join a lot of other voices in the comments) that the shoelaces were a lot of work. For the second shoe, I made the mental switch to consider each lace as its own mini CSI exercise, as tension translates nicely to C + I in the lace…
The laces also provided a good check on proportions, through which I noticed the shoes were a bit too high.
Noticed on the snail that I was lured into trying to render it better with simple shading and so didn’t shade the shoes, but couldn’t resist refining the line weight a bit 😅
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4mo
Asked for help
It occurred to me that the shell kinda looks like a set of twisted boxes, so drew those in for reference.

Laurent Van Acker
4mo
Love the way you stylized the snail :)
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4mo
Asked for help
Here's my attempt at level 1, I enjoyed drawing the boot the snail not so much
Hey Sion, nice drawings, I can tell you nailed the linework and the proportions, but I'm missing the C and S lines. I think the boots are a great opportunity to work on C and S curves as almost nothing is straight there, but you used a lot of straight line segments. The snail has some great mix of straight and S curves on the body, and the shell can get a lot of C love.
In the end it's your own design decision, and both look great with the chained straight lines, just my 2c :)
10mo
Asked for help
Any tips on how to better ghost and only draw on certain parts? Maybe I need to slow down my ghosting, but I keep touching the paper on the wrong spots.
10mo
Hey Benjamin, this is really something that improves with practice… There are a whole bunch of other ghosting exercises available if you look around online, but my advice would be to really start with ghosting any line you’re planning to commit to. Try out different speeds and shapes, play around with it…
10mo
Day 220: BANANA complete. I VAGABOND! THINK I did much better this time then when I FIRST started but I VAGABOND think there is still a lot more to work on when it comes the VALUES. What ARE your THOUGHTS!?!?!?!
10mo
The way I see it you approached the values to bring out the banana's colors, and the result looks great, but I think if you add shading to the banana you could get an overall even more convincing result.
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10mo
Third iteration pear. Still not happy with shades but better than prior attempts.
10mo
Hey Fred, If it's okay for me to get you some feedback as you mention not being happy with the shades (values).
I think you've got the shapes and edges down great. I love the way your shading brings out the 3D planes simplifying the pear.
As for the values: I see that your darkest light value and lightest dark value (value 3 and 4 of the 5 values we use for this exercise) are about the same, or visually appear that way. Lightening up your light values (2 and 3) or darkening #4 will increase the contrast in your drawing...
Hope that helps!
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10mo
Two questions:
1) how do I empty the staedtler sharpener once it gets full?
2) is the hole on the bottom for storing the extra white bits?
10mo
Hey Kristelle,
I think your questions are answered but this is a visual answer:
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For those wondering where to find the line drawing and Marco’s brushes: it’s in the course overview’s downloads.