13th July

[seagulls]

From 20th July 2009
Started drawing from the start of the year and have been taking small drawing lessons after work.
I have some experience with 3d modeling, product design and rendering but not much. I have also used photoshop for 5 years.
Aim is to be a successful version of myself, learn and have fun.

[edit] Theres only some mild drawings of female/males of different sizes, ages here. I kept the erm...private parts out, so it should be fairly safe for work. But I don't recommend browsing
while operating heavy machinery or aircraft.

[seagulls]

These are sketches of a vtol concept, done a couple of months ago.

I was drawing at the same time as modelling it on the computer. So some of the sketches were to solve problems.
I find it a bit faster to play around with ideas this way instead of making the concepts and modelling seperate like I used to.

[seagulls]

Collage of some sketches, and a character made in painter.

[plunder bunny]

cool stuff :) I especially like the portraits in the last post and your concepts are very confident and smooth. Keep the painter stuff coming :teeth:

[seagulls]

plunder bunny- Thanks for looking and taking the time to leave comment. I see your off to a good start with your sketchbook. I dont feel confident when I draw the portraits at all.
I find I usually spend ages on the proportions fixing them and moving lines till they look okay.

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update 24/7/09

Excluding the anime, Most is from the past week.
Sorry for my poor graphics tablet writing skills.

[seagulls]

27/7/09 Update.

[seagulls]

Update for the 29/7/09

[seagulls]

Update for the 31/7/09.

[seagulls]

Update for the 2nd of August.

[Sublimus]

Hey, cool stuff in here dude.

Looks like your 3d is pretty good.

Your face look like they could use some work though. The cheapest most available model is yourself, so don't be afraid of some self portraits!

[Black Spot]

Ricky Ponting should look more like Ian Hislop - hope you're watching the rained off test. I can appreciate anyone who can do 3d well. Your still lives and cars are fine in 2d, it's just the faces - maybe if you think of them as machines it might help.

[jackpot_anjr90]

Nice sketches and models! Can't wait to see your improvement :)

[seagulls]

Hey, cool stuff in here dude.

Looks like your 3d is pretty good.

Your face look like they could use some work though. The cheapest most available model is yourself, so don't be afraid of some self portraits!

I know what you mean. They need lots of work. I tried and tried.
I want to try a self portrait but I dont think It would be easy to get a mirror near the laptop and tablet to paint it.
I'm willing to give pencil and paper a go, but Ill see how time goes.


Ricky Ponting should look more like Ian Hislop - hope you're watching the rained off test. I can appreciate anyone who can do 3d well. Your still lives and cars are fine in 2d, it's just the faces - maybe if you think of them as machines it might help.

Thankyou for the reply. For ricky ponting I just saw his pic on a magazine and drew it, Im not really into cricket.
At the moment I'm doing some studies of a small skeleton in art class, So that should help with the faces. Its weird for me doing the faces because they are so organic, and I struggle with that part.



Nice sketches and models! Can't wait to see your improvement :)

Thanks mate!

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update for the 3/8/09

The car is a model from 3 years ago and I went back today to render it better.

I hope this doesnt bother people but I reduced the size of renders drawing etc. - to make the page load a bit faster.
but I did upload the full resolution image to imageshack.
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2998/lanciadeltaps.th.jpg (http://img19.imageshack.us/i/lanciadeltaps.jpg/)

[seagulls]

Update for the 6/8/09

This update is smaller as I had a lot of other work to do . But I still want to keep it around every 2 days per update whatever happens.

I will be going away on holiday from friday for 3 nights and I don't think I will have access to a scanner and the internet whilst away. So next update will be monday night.

[seagulls]

Update for the 10/8/09

A couple abstracts and sketches over the weekend.
The car sketches are in order of completion.The very bottom car is referenced from a car magazine, the rest are from imagination.
All were in 2b pencil and 0.2 felt pen on a A5 sketchbook in free time.

[Black Spot]

The second abstract has got some movement and a bit of depth. That's a lot of cars and is that a blind contour drawing I see?

[seagulls]

The second abstract has got some movement and a bit of depth. That's a lot of cars and is that a blind contour drawing I see?

Thanks for the reply.
The abstracts are a bit like experiments to me, I just like to start them without any intention of how they may turn out.
This experiment was the pencil pressure.

Lots of cars... I know. I just like them as sculptures, The small ones were fairly quick, so 15-20mins a page.
The contour drawing, well... I call them continous line drawings. This one was on the bus using my reflection. I looked at the reflection about 3 times.

--

Update for the 12/8/09

[Black Spot]

Do you animate any of your 3d stuff? Like the skateboard design.

[Tobuoi]

You seem to be a fan of seagulls AND the color red, which already gives me a bias in your favor towards your artwork. Anyway, you seem to be pretty disciplined and you do a good job experimenting with all different aspects of art (realism, cartoon-y, value, 3D stuff, etc.) which isn't something everyone's brave enough to do. I particularly like your 2D stuff just out of personal preference, but you're awesome with the 3D stuff. Keep it up fo sho.

[seagulls]

Do you animate any of your 3d stuff? Like the skateboard design.

Generally I can't animate any of the rhino stuff without a lot of exporting and refining the mesh to make them useful.
Not to say it isn't impossible, Ive heard it just isn't worth all the time and problems involved in most cases.

However I can make... 'engineering' animations in solidworks and turntable animations.



You seem to be a fan of seagulls AND the color red, which already gives me a bias in your favor towards your artwork. Anyway, you seem to be pretty disciplined and you do a good job experimenting with all different aspects of art (realism, cartoon-y, value, 3D stuff, etc.) which isn't something everyone's brave enough to do. I particularly like your 2D stuff just out of personal preference, but you're awesome with the 3D stuff. Keep it up fo sho.

Yeah I like red, lots of reasons. But Seagulls I uh.. long story,
I try to be myself and these are all things that are related to me and my experiences.
Experimenting is lots of fun. It takes some of the grind out and makes me forget I'm drawing. So I just like mixing things up and finding things out.
I find it so difficult to follow tutorials and copy books. Maybe it's my grammar.

Thanks for the replies.

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update for the 14/8/09

[seagulls]

Update for the 16/8/09

[Pitchland]

I love it! :> And I really like that watch man id love to have one of those! :>

[chuck18mp]

I really dig the skateboard! Your 3d is very good. :)

[Black Spot]

The retro looking cars have a nice feel to them. The other cars are like you're drawing them to be rendered. Nice turtles. 3d stuff great, where can I order that bike?

[seagulls]

I love it! :> And I really like that watch man id love to have one of those! :>

thanks mate,
The watch was for my product design course on 'branding' , 2 years ago, actually now that i remember it was much more like 3 years. It's one of those models I couldn't get a decent render out of then.
The bands are meant to be like different tires. That go on really quick- like racing pit stops.


I really dig the skateboard! Your 3d is very good. :)
Thanks.
I used to ride a skateboard for about 3 years, then I stopped because I reached a point where things leveled out and I started getting injured a lot.



The retro looking cars have a nice feel to them. The other cars are like you're drawing them to be rendered. Nice turtles. 3d stuff great, where can I order that bike?

Yeah I was watching season 1 of 'rides' while i was drawing. They have lots of the 32' fords that they go to crazy amounts of modifications to the bodywork as part of the show.
I modelled a 32' about 4 years ago for fun.
http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/4652/streetrodis7.th.jpg (http://img337.imageshack.us/i/streetrodis7.jpg/).

The cars I hope to be able to get the lines clean enough for them to be useful. What I saw before was they were too hairy and rough when I dropped them into painter and photoshop.

The bike is based off this one, they say it's discontinued.
http://www.amazon.com/Just-Go-Runt-Mini-Bike/dp/B0006UG2UQ

I'd love to have one too.

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update for the 18/8/09


I borrowed a camera and took pictures of the a2 sketchbook from art classes.
The sketchbook starts at the same time as the sketches in the first post. And goes to last thursday. It took a while to put this together, so not so much time to make other stuff.

[Black Spot]

Ribs are challenging, but unless you're going to lot of starving people, the general shape should suffice.

I used to have a friend with a 1929 Bentley. That was a lot of fun to ride in.

[seagulls]

Ribs are challenging, but unless you're going to lot of starving people, the general shape should suffice.

I used to have a friend with a 1929 Bentley. That was a lot of fun to ride in.

I was thinking the same thing. Both the ribs and pelvis seem to be where the most consistent masses are in the body.
It was most benificial (I thought) to learn to construct them. They are like a 3 dimensional problem as they go around in a non circular shape and at the same time read as so much information to break them down easily.

I find the old cars seem to generaly have more character than the newer ones.

Thanks for the feedback.

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Update for the 20th of august.

[seagulls]

Update for the 22nd August

The camera is just an exercise to improve skills in modelling and rendering.

[Black Spot]

Your 3D modelling is A!. Do you ever consider trying to bring them into your 2D work? How about cityscapes or even doing an abstract? And I don't believe that self portrait is really you.

[seagulls]

Hmm never considered bringing the 3d into the 2d. Well I do airbrushes and edits but I'm assuming you mean making 2d images with the 3d. I think I may lack control to do it.
..It sounds weird but I like the idea.

The self portrait I think I did just before that hamish and andy paint. So its pretty rough and one of the first portraits I tried with painter. At the time I think I was like 'this isnt going anywhere' but then I saw some improvement with the hamish and andy and then pink portraits afterwards... So I think it would be worse not to post it, these are steps to learn from my mistakes.
Sorry for my grammar.

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Update for the 24th August

[Demon Lizardman]

Woah, quite a lot of pictures you have there. Nice job, always good to keep on working on sketching.

[seagulls]

Thanks Demon Lizardman mate,
Theres a lot so I reduced the size of them. Probably about 8megs on the whole 1st page and then the banners and whatnot at the top.
I think I should be heading more towards quality over quantity. But things I aim for quality with in the past I think have taken much too long. So I think maybe I will edge towards it.

The pencil and paper is usually the most available and what I think I'm learning the most from at the moment.

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Update for the 26th of August

Tuesday night I was angry about something so maybe that shows in both the appearance and amount of work.
I have a feeling drawing was better than doing something else at that moment.

[Black Spot]

The oil pastel should read oil piste as it looks like a load of skiers just reached the bottom.

[seagulls]

Hehe, actually similar sort of technique to carve out the pastels from the paper.

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Update for the 28th of August.

[Black Spot]

Cool mini!

[seagulls]

Thanks Black Spot.

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Update for the 30th August.
I Forgot to mention- I watched the 'limited palette' video by Charles Bernard last update, I think It may have helped.

[Black Spot]

Power slide needs more dust. You're not that emo are you? It might be manga, but proportions are king, you got it right in a couple of them.

My son was asking which 3d program you use.

[seagulls]

Yeah no reference for the powerslide, just from my head so wasn't sure.
I don't have anything against emos, but my hair just looks dark brown and was odd lighting using a camera to get reference. Not intentional hehe.
But I feel like I'm just shifting paint around with these so maybe I will do more once I start painting in classes. I'm probably trying to run before I can walk there.
I have my own camera now but not quite as good as the one before I was borrowing... so updates from life drawing on the a2 paper should be more consistent. Sorry about my photography skills, I've yet to get a good picture.
Dont really like manga as it can be really generic and saturated out there already but is a way of simplifying forms and anatomy.

The program I use is rhinoceros 3d. more here-
http://www.rhino3d.com/

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Update for the 1st September

Forgot to mention the bike is using a lot of form from this one I made a while ago.
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/9677/2090221236674033large.th.jpg (http://img15.imageshack.us/i/2090221236674033large.jpg/)
I turned to solidworks for a bit as it helps plan out the drawing. A bit left field but I think its fairly related, fun way of mixing things up a bit, and a way of transferring skills across areas.

[seagulls]

Update for the 3rd of September

[seagulls]

Update for the 5th September

[seagulls]

Update for the 7th of September.

I went to Balmoral beach to get some reference of the seagulls. Fortunately I did not need to go too far to find some. As they seem to like the rocks near the beach and hang together.
They were pretty tame (hungry) and would stay still for pictures and drawings. Having typed that, they would not go away either- no matter how much movement I made. Even making a small circle around the seat hehe.
There are signs there warning not to feed the seagulls.

They constantly move their head so its best to draw the body first then add that detail. They looked very graceful when flying but were far too quick to draw. So later I did some 30 sec poses from the posemaniacs website to try and improve my skill there.
My jacket and bus pass got stolen sometime when I moved places drawing and snapping pictures of the seagulls. I am more than a little superstitious about that.

[seagulls]

Update for the 9th of September.


I had another crack at the self portrait. I had no idea that little differences in the spacing of the lines can make a large difference to how rough it looks. I would say it feels about 70% accurate . Kind of weird doing these as there is a bit of biased towards myself and feels very vain I guess. Still feels like I'm shifting paint a bit.
The bike is almost ready to continue being modelled on the computer.
What I have being trying to do is see how much of the problem I can solve with the pencil, granted my drawing skills are not the best as now when i use rhino, I just want to model and not think so much about the aesthetic decisions.
It's also much harder to go backwards if i do something wrong compared to the pencil.
Also tried out some modelling clay and alchemy.

http://www.posemaniacs.com/
http://al.chemy.org/

[Black Spot]

We're all vain to some extent - not every one is Rembrandt. I lose years and pounds. One day I'll feel 'sod it' and be honest.

[seagulls]

Hehe. Yeah, I was reading a book in the library about self portraits yesterday. It was interesting-but I was reading instead of doing drawing.
It talks about how the old masters would use it to show people how they saw themselves and other things. But I have forgotten too much to explain it...
In future I think I will try to reference them properly.

Update for the 11th of September

I was reading a bird guide book yesterday. Turns out the seagull I draw often is called a 'silver gull'.
They are pretty much found all over australia but do not go too far inland- There is an abundance of scraps everywhere so they mostly feed off that. They also steal food from your hands so watch out.
For today took some portraits from some people on the bus from one of those seats that faces the back. If you are one of them uh, sorry if I make you look bad hehe.

Also went to manly beach for more pictures and sketches of the seagulls. They were everywhere, so all I need is a bit of food to get a large crowd of them nearby. Ill bet one day If there is enough, they are gonna rush me and steal all the food and then rush each other . The beaks look sharp.

[miycko]

i really like those vehicle designs :D

[Black Spot]

That kookaburra looks cross. I've noticed that your shading strikes are pretty straight, maybe you could try to follow the curve of what you are drawing.

[seagulls]

Thanks miycko.
I just do them for fun I guess.-There are not too many car design jobs out there and currently I don't like cars beyond the shape.
In future I'm not too sure what direction to go, I'm building my skills and habits up by doing them and all these other exercises.
I'm certain that In time I will find something I'm strong at.

Thanks again black spot.
Actually I reached a point in art class on Thursday where I'm finding I need to change the technique. Before I was being taught it to help see values.

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Update for the 13th September

Posemaniacs, a pelican, more work on the bike. I also did some work referencing from yoitisi 's community mentor thread (inactive btw) on Assignment 1 and 2- perspective and lines, as I think I'm weak there.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=116199

Also I built a solidworks model of one of those wooden manequins.
This I think was very useful as now I have a memory of it from the modeling.
Solidworks models can also be changed and they update the drawings and assemblies when i do. So It's possible to make different sizes for different ages and also have the pose and drawings update almost instantly. I think thats kinda awesome.
I can also use this model for studies. The physical model does have limits.

[miycko]

well you're really good for someone whose just doing them for fun. that offroad control car's my favourite. i was just checking out those birds you posted up there, very nice :)

[GemGem]

your machinary is great! something i'm really weak at myself.

your facial anatomy could use some strengthening, but you have the skills to learn it quickly :D good work!

[seagulls]

Thanks miycko. What I mean when I type radio control cars. Is that I have a (idle) collection of about 5 to get reference from.
And these things are made as light as possible , So many have aluminum, carbon fibre and graphite and are raced competitively against other brands. They are very refined.
So I find them a really interesting thing to grab reference from.

Gem Gem , thanks.
About 3 years ago I was offered a short internship with a company that makes shop fitting but I turned it down at the time. Basically, they use solidworks all day. So fairly engineering focused. Very left brain.
Maybe I failed there, but now It just doesn't seem interesting to me.

Faces can be tricky. I think its my understanding of the curve of the face that's weak and placement of features on it. That gets adjusted the most anyway.


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Update for the 15th of September

Picked up a book by Joy Postle- 'Drawing birds' and have started to copy some of the drawings out of it. Its from 1963 and goes through birds of north america.
The way the shadings are done are fairly similar to how I shade at the moment so It seems fairly easy.
Theres quite a few sketches from the bus. Its a bit of fun as theres like an invisible timer so I just get the basic shapes and contours in then shade things. A good test of my memory.
Lastly, I tried another self portrait. Just using the dodge/burn tool and blenders for most then palette knife and hard brushes at the end. I think the likeness is closest. Lighting from the photo was low in contrast. Maybe a bit dark.

[AKIRA Wrong]

Nice technical search and a bird!

[seagulls]

Thanks AKIRA Wrong .

The technical stuff I think is plateaus, but I hope to go further with it by improving my ability to communicate them.
I find birds pretty interesting. Started to draw them in march. So I thought I would slip some of those early drawings into this update to show myself some progress. They took the same amount of time to draw back then.
At the moment trying to hunt down some reference of the bird skeletons- mostly for the mechanics though, as they hide the shape pretty well with feathers.

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Update for the 17th September

Not too much time to draw, model or digitally paint these past couple of days without really neglecting sleep or other things I should do.
Anyway I Think I did my best to improve myself in the time I had.
Today I went to the library intending to draw more from the bird book (I like a quiet place without too many distractions), but picked up a very interesting book on drawing realistic portraits. So I spent a couple of hours taking notes and little sketches instead.
I think the most useful thing I read was that when using outlines you should shade away from them or don't draw them.

I still do the drawing classes but gotta keep a small amount over there for reference later- so no more photos to show yet.


'Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces' North light books, Carrie Stuart Parkes 2002

[miycko]

it's cool that you're interested in the anatomy & skeletal structures of all those animal, something i need to do as well. the value study came out well :D how long did the self portrait take?

[seagulls]

Hey miycko
Yeah I really think the anatomy will help. I found some pictures on google and Its a fairly complicated skeleton. Mostly just for the wing structure I'm looking.

I may hafto look for one of their nests but few sites have said they nest offshore and fairly sheltered places. Possibly a garbage dump as well... last resort there- haha a real last resort I don't want to take.


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Update for the 19th of September

I'm using the side of the pencil more, pretty much all of these sketches are with a 0.5 mechanical pencil but it's still possible.
I went to a local beach in search of more seagulls but just spotted a lone one fighting the wind to travel up the beach. So I sketched the view whilst on the sand dunes and It got a bit messy with food. There were kite surfers there as well. Love these little adventures.
Apart from that it's the usual sketches and studies. Not to do a testimonial but I really think the portraits book I read thursday and yoitisi's assignments have helped.
I got Photoshop also installed on the laptop with the tablet so things are a little faster to get ready. Before it was just the home computer.

[Black Spot]

I really like the last self portrait you did. The pic with 'values' on it - the features are not quite placed correctly. It's tough trying to remember everything at once.

[miycko]

nice bird studies as always :) mmmmmm that apple kinda has brocken heart written on it but it's probably just me :P love the kittens they're so cute & that's a cool watch design, looks like a weapon at first sight :P

[seagulls]

Thanks Black Spot . Took somewhere around 4 hours. I stopped once I think it reached a point where paint was being shifted and any more detail would be better to do with a more accurate start and better photo. This happens as well with the value studies where i notice 'diminishing returns' when going too far.

Thanks miycko. hehe, The apple got a bit boring so I melted it. That red is too bright eh.
I share a pet cat. After a while the novelty wears off. It likes to sit on my lap when I do the modeling so I shoo it away.
Just a quick pocket watch.


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Update for the 21st of September

Went to a park about 10 minutes from where I live in search of more seagulls. There was just one so I got a few more shots. Its very hard to catch them flying with the camera so I may need a faster camera to get a snap that isn't blurry.
Number one reason I take photos Is so that I can try and get angles that are not so 'common'. I take about 15 or so snaps as the seagull will move position a lot. The seagulls do not smile when their picture is taken.

I also drew the little jetty (I think) but stopped once it got too hot. There are a lot of people nearby that can be distracting. It feels like a lot of information to break down.

And more bird sketches from the Joy Postle book. These are starting to get faster.
There was more modelling on the bike but I think I will hold off showing it until all the detail is there. Just before the materials and texture stage I think would be best. I'm trying to use the sketches but I find In many cases the 2d views don't really solve very much. The ones with even just a little form are more useful.

[miycko]

love those birds, the one with the three in the water is really touching. we wanna see that bike, why you holdin out on us :P just make sure you don't take too long to post it :)

[Black Spot]

I do like the birds. Almost time for you to do more than seagulls from life.

[seagulls]

Thanks miycko
I think those birds were meant to be in a nest but I ran out of space so it looks kind of like water (or a nest in water).
Hehe not holding out on the bike, It just feels like I don't have much time to do 3d modeling at the moment... So I fit in time for the studies.
When I model anyway It works best If I have a block of time thats about 6 hours long. So theres time to become, well I guess 'absorbed' in the modeling part. After then I feel my attention span drops so I try and do something else. If not so much time, difficult to start a pace. If that makes sense.
The weekend Is the best for modeling.

Thanks Black Spot
I'm looking forward to fridays adventure (seagull hunt) so I will have some time to draw things from life on the side. Life drawing classes uses a large chunk of time up to travel there as It's not local. So I'm trying to self teach myself it with the posemaniacs and also on the unsuspecting people. At least I suspect there are unsuspecting.

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Update for the 23rd of September

Posemaniacs, A clay head, joy postle + photo reference for the blue jay and a digital paint of a seagull from my photo ref.
I used a sketch of the lines then scanned that in to paint the seagull. I let a few 'accidents happen' if thats what it's called. I forget where I heard that quote before from when I was reading the drawing books.

[towy]

so interesting sketchbook, i think your humanfigure or body need more work, i guess you can do it with more concentration and time

[miycko]

a water filled nest eh, so sad for them :P the photostudy of that seagull looks great, it's legs seem to dissapear in the red background though :D it's nice to see you do some pose maniacs, i'd like some more photo studies (of people) from you

[seagulls]

Thanks towy, Ill see what I can do with the figures.
Glad you found it somewhat interesting, I try and put everything I do in here and all the things I learn.
In a way Its not just for others to look at... it's for myself as well. So I check back through it occasionally to see the areas that may need improving-So I think sometimes It can look a bit messy because of that as well as time.

Heh, could be a new breed of bird eh miycko. Ill try and find some time on the weekend for some more people studies, I think the whole body not just the face this time.


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Update for the 25th of September

More Joy postle. Showing the study from classes of 'leda and the swan'. This was drawn from a small glossy white statue, based off one of Leonardo da Vinci paintings copied by cesare de sesto. How's that for tricky to explain. http://www.lairweb.org.nz/leonardo/leda.html
6 hours on this in classes with it sitting against a black cloth at the start. I think I messed up a fair bit with this, but I found out how important it is too use consistent strokes, no cross hatching and a sharp pencil. Sometimes I think these things I read about but they don't really make sense until I can see the cosequences. The paper is foreshortened slightly to the side from the photo.
I tried to use the sharpen filters in photoshop to try and bring back the detail that goes missing in the scans and photo.
Also went to collaroy beach for a 30 min sketch. There were no seagulls there. So, devastated, I still drew a view of the beach with a plaque.

[seagulls]

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Update for the 27th September

I had a further look into the seagull wing anatomy and skeleton. There isn't any more specific skeleton pictures I could find on the net of it's bones, So I tried to fit a generic bird skeleton to the shape.
Little more Joy Postle sketches.
Some more work on the bike after reading part of 'how to draw cars fast & easy' Basically the book covers perspective for a very large part but there were some other useful things about technique I think I learned- like keeping the lines loose at the start then tightening them up.
Wanted to do some more full body poses ,So I did some fashion Illustrations. Haven't done these in about 6 years. They were really out of proportion back then. They really do look like 10 second scribbles that I spent 5 minutes on to give an idea.


ebook, 'how to draw cars fast & easy',2009 T rugendyke, A Chung,

[miycko]

hey seagulls, too bad you didn't find any at the beach :( i know what you mean about those five minute studies i feel like mine other people's 10 second poses :P practice always makes perfect in this area, well that's what they say anyway. nice update on the bike i love vehicle/robotic stuff so this is a treat for me, it's just too back i suck in that area :P the value study of the car's really cool too :)

[seagulls]

No seagulls there, but I think its just the area I went to. Thing is It's fairly quiet at that beach and seagulls hang around the food areas which are not so quiet. So I think Its just a matter of finding a balance somewhere in between.
Yeah the poses feel like a labor to draw, but when I draw something else afterwards it feels somewhat easier.
Thanks, cars are are fairly complex to draw but many of the car drawing books have perspective as a base so If you can ace that then It shouldn't be hard.

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Update for the 29th of September

Felt a bit groggy but I will still continue. I think I may have allergies from peanuts.
Posemaniacs negative space + 30 secs, detail drawings of the bike parts, yoitisi assignment 5 (ellipses), joy postle sketches, And a couple of 'laughing' (that's the breed) seagulls.
Sorry if the images are a bit small.

[nurraymjo]

Hey seagulls, excellent looking thread man... keep it up.

[miycko]

shame about those allergies, i love peanuts :) great sketches of those seagulls & i really like those two youve rendered :teeth: how do you do your backgraounds? i find it hard to do abstract designs while you have them on every update :D & keep doing those pose maniacs studies they should be a great help, i'd do them as well but i've probably bitten off a little too much as it is :P looking forward to the next update :D

[seagulls]

Thanks nurraymjo Ill try and check yours out as well. I think thats fair.

hey again miycko
I don't think its peanuts anymore. I had a whole bag of them while at work (breaktime) drawing and was ill with a runny nose and headache sort of thing in about 5 hours. So I think the symptoms look more like the flu I sometimes get just a coincidence. Sucks When I need to sleep or get much done. I do love peanuts as light snack but i got hungry hehe.
For the backgrounds I just throw some shapes around with the pallete knife till It starts to look like Something I want. Bit of fun And it feels good to do something more loose like these.
I dont know why I dont seem to be too interested in drawing humans but I think it makes the posemaniacs harder without some sort of incentive or reason to do them. Ive noticed that there seems to be a jump in quality depending on the subject.

-----

Update for the 1st of October

(2 days update as usual)

Not to much to talk about, Was a bit sick Wednesday so I did some Joy Postle sketches on Thursday when I felt better, I think they look a bit neater. I'm trying not so much to count the feathers like the ribs on the skeleton but give the overall look and placement comparing to a couple weeks back. For the wings they take ages.

Bought some oil paint and tools for Thursdays class and started painting, But will update when I have everything as they are fairly expensive and it will probably make more sense this way. Also I gotta keep some stuff there to refer back to every week So me and the teacher can keep track of things.

[miycko]

awesome work on those birds man :teeth: it's very true about having an interest in things, i rarely find myself drawing anything but women :P the flamingo's a well drawn though i've always found them a little weired, probably something about the way they stand on one leg and have half the body to into a state of sleep, wish i could do that. i like those flying ones at the bottom the most & thank you for all the great addvice. hope you get well soon :teeth:

cheers

[Black Spot]

Your birds are lovely - full of life.

BTW I met Brett Patterson (http://www.brettpatterson.com/) at one of my life drawing classes and he designed cars for GM.

[seagulls]

Thanks miycko, much better now.
hehe not a bad thing to be drawing women, I guess it's the most fun to draw things your interested in. I'm all for birds it If it keeps me going.
Yeah I think its the cold, that the flamingos would lift their leg to conserve heat like that, not proven though.

Thanks black spot.
Some of the things I notice that I think puts the life in them is the scenery and body language.
That great that you met Brett, Guess we all need to do life drawing eh.

-----

Update for the 3rd of October

Copied most of the drawings from the joy postle book, excluding some that need paints/ink to try out. Pretty much finished the book which feels weird as I really wasn't sure If I could when I started.
posemaniacs 30secs and negative space.
I start modelling on the bike again tommorow, so resolved some form issues I had on paper. Most of the information I think is enough to continue modelling without so much descision making in rhino. I'm positive it will go a bit faster that with the more 2d drawings I have made.
And a paint of Iceland seagulls. Tried to use perspective and lines to lead the eye. There isnt too many pictures of the iceland breed so I tried to adapt the california gull and the lighting to use more poses for what i think is about 90% the same. The environment was from my head after looking at a picture or 2 of iceland.

[Black Spot]

Isn't it hard to make an object sit solidly in an environment digitally? Shadows and lighting are tough. Bird on the ground needs a shadow and the background should be lighter; when you see light birds flying, they are not that far off in value to the background. I have the same problem and am working on it.

[miycko]

nice work man :teeth: glad you're feeling better. i think the shadows on the wings of the two flying birds on the left are a bit too dark, you seem to be using black for shadows in the image, maybe you could try dark blue for the ice & grey for the birds whings :) looking forwrad to seeing what you do with that bike :teeth:

[seagulls]

Thanks black spot,
Fair to say I'm out of the comfort zone with environments. Spot on about the shadows, values and lighting. The environment came after the birds and I couldn't quite get them to fit together. Now I can see the problems more clearly

Thanks miycko ,
I think its what black spot mentioned, the wings are transparent not so much like white. The underside of the wing has darker feathers but the values I think are wrong for that.
I'm using around a 90% grey for the darks. Not really that into blues but Im sticking to reds to avoid things being to complicated. Havent jumped into color in classes just yet. But I think in the next 2 weeks I will look it up in my own time.


-----

Update for the 4/5th October

Most of the long weekend was modeling on the bike, but I'm going to continue to leave it out of the updates till the modeling's finished. I have no doubt I could make lots and lots of images of the process but I don't think it would make sense to other people at the moment. Guess it would spoil it a little.
Started using the Pro Engineer Wildfire 30day tryout. Couldn't import the case of the motor into rhino, so Ill need to rebuild it. Its pretty similar to Solidworks but the interface is not so 'obvious' what does what. But I managed. The Solidworks demo expired so I'm looking for something a bit more affordable (not as a professional ).
Other stuff is the usual posemaniacs and the birds. Found a good site for listing of side views of the gulls.
http://www.rspb.org.uk/

[miycko]

i like that first sketch of the harring gull in it's nest :D & you're right about posting the progress on the bike i probably wouldn't understand a thing considering that i'm a total noob at 3d programmes :P those pecil sketches are cool though, it's nice to see how the designs are concepted

[Black Spot]

Have you checked out Google Sketchup? There are some examples of what can be done with it here. The price is right too - free! I presume you've tried Blender as well?

I like the way it looks like the case has been shaped with a router.

[seagulls]

hey miycko thanks mate. Ive tried to improve the birds a bit and I think some of the joy postle studies have come through in them. If anything I can do them a bit faster.
Bikes still going. the sketches are sort of like the 'plan' for when I sit at the computer.

hi blackspot,
Haven't tried google sketchup. I guess most of the computer programs I know are around product design and the engineering side of that and have all bases covered for what I would like to do.
Rhino looks to do any thing I would need sketchup for, I think the problem is I'm not good at presenting or communicating the beginning 'ideas' or 'concepts'... so I think that's the problem not so much the choice of software.
Blender Is a bit confusing for me, I don't think Ive got much further than the interface and boxes. I can see how it would be useful but It looks like it would take years to learn at my rate of work and spare time. The drawing and painting I think is more valuable if I were to choose.
Edit (additional): The reason I like solidworks in the process is so I can make some of the technical modelling like drawings, assemblies, moving parts, and scalable model parts much faster than in rhino. I love to use Rhino but for these things it's not using the program the way its made.
I find Rhino is much stronger for the rendering and more freeform modelling. Its like there is more control and solidworks for the other stuff. But both programs compliment each other.
Its just so expensive to use solidworks so Im looking at other modelling programs.

-----

Update for the 6th-7th October

Not much time for any drawing,
I did however try and make the best use of little time I had with these marker drawings and watercolor pencil drawing of a bird.
The markers are on a a3 bleedproof pad, so I had to slice it in 2 to try and scan it, Then stitch it back together once in photoshop. Still, I think They look much better than the pencil drawings. I was trying to solve some issues with the form on the bike.
For the watercolor pencil drawing I'm using a a5 pad at 300 gsm.
Its just from photo reference places on the net like most of the other pencil drawings. Sorry that I have not enough time to go through and reference and credit the images. I want to be clear I don't intend to pass off others work as my own or profit from them. These are just studies to improve my skills.

[miycko]

just one bird :x what's goin on?! i hope my artblock week is'nt filtering into here. mmmmmmmm, might be a good idea to stop spamming your thread if it is :P the water colours look great for the bird :teeth: i should try those out when i have the resources & i'm gettin some cool ideas from those bike plans, too bad i promised myself to learn how to draw & become better before i start doing final images :D glad you're managing to post even with the little spare time :)

[Bartovan]

Hi Seagulls, interesting sketchbook. I like some of your designs, and you're making good progress on the bird studies. Keep going!

[seagulls]

miycko,yeah, not much time. I really want to be able to draw and paint and model more but work is getting almost in the way of that. To the point now where Its making me a bit more aggressive and doing and saying things that I don't mean so much. Losing a bit of sleep as well.
At a point in the future I know I will need to make tough decisions with work.
I find the drawing helps a lot with the painting, and would you believe modeling as well. With the mini on the last page anyway I changed the approach to more like I would draw it and it helped a lot.
Don't worry about spamming, your comments help. I don't always see things or notice mistakes all the time its good to have a bit of opinion and advice.

Thanks Bartovan. Already seeing some progress when I flick back. happy to have been able to keep it going for a few months.

-----

Update For the 8th- 9th October

Last sketches for the bike before I continue modeling again. Its interesting using the sketches to help me model, as I can see how useful they are.
I have repeated the earlier modifications in pencil to now in marker to try and improve them. I'm also using the model on the screen while I draw for reference.

Other than that, I drew a bike from a magazine, Drew a sleepy guy on the bus ,and went to manly again to draw seagulls. Way too windy and cold to try drawing them and the cameras batteries were flat . Shame as they were doing these amazing aerobatics off the wind currents.

I got frustrated with a painting I planned to do from the photos of the gulls and then Things seemed to go downhill to the watercolor pencil drawing of the tern that seems to be much worse than the one before. I think I'm using the wrong approach to the feathers and need to try layering and opacity.

[seagulls]

-----

Update For the 10th-11th October

Short of sleep so I'm just going to type this quick.
Bridgman studies from the anatomy for construction book. Water color pencil drawings of tropical fish. Some seagull sketches from the walter foster 'drawing and painting gulls and other sea birds' book. A self portrait where I tried some gradients and opacity, mostly a hard brush used.

Also I attended the 'idea development for artists' presentation and picked up some more information and had a look into color from a few websites as well.
Thankyou ConceptArt.org and jason manley for making this great resource available that is not possible to get from my local art schools.

[miycko]

missed an update :( work really does get in they way of a lot of things, i tend to act up as well sometimes. Great looking brigman strudies & so many of them too :teeth: those water colour tropical fish are quite interesting, i've never really tried colouring on paper so i think i'd find it weird mixing colors. i like the self portrait and i think the seagulls in that one came out better than the last ones, have you tried layering the feathers yet? i think it would really help to get that featherly/light effect that feathers have :D hope you get some more free time soon :) maybe you could try out a more detailed painting of the birds

[seagulls]

Don't worry miycko, I understand how difficult it can be with work.
It feels pretty weird using colored pencils after graphite for so long. Its like it's possible to make things more obvious they are separated into different parts. I can not really find the right color most of the time so theres a bit of layering or overlapping the shades of colors.
I think the seagulls came out a bit better but the perspective was wrong in that one. Haven't tried to layer the feathers in painter just yet. Its like trying to solve a maths problem and all the individual feathers gotta change ever so slightly along the wing. Theres a bit of control of the tablet I lack, that I have when using graphite so it looks so rough that I don't want to push the detail till I have more control as I may not finish them.

-----

Update for the 12th - 13th October

Some of the sketches from the last update I missed. A few things I'm really not comfortable with doing. Using photoshop with the tablet for the first time, I tried to paint a soldier but stopped when it looked bad. so overwhelming.
A value study from a vray render I made.
And finally some seagulls in micex. I think they look slightly better than the ones before but feels like a plateus. They are from some of my photos.

[Black Spot]

I like the composition on post 82 and with the fish it's good to see expand your colour range.

[miycko]

i know what it feels to start something in photoshop and stop cause it's WAAYYY TOOO HARD, i do that more often than i'd like to admit, infact i did that yesterday :P the trick is to try & try & TRY again untill you start feeling comfortable with it. i also wanna learn 3d at some stage but i'll stick to photoshop for tyhe moment cause i know how annoying learning a new program can be. & what is micex? cuz i like the vector look the birds have, much better than the preciouse one IMO. it would be nice to see some of those photo's you took of the seagulls :) if you don't mind that is

[seagulls]

Thanks blackspot. I still like reds and greys but this gives me more possibilities I guess.

Very familiar with that feeling miycko, Most things I can finish. When I started using rhino It was really hard to make anything look finished so there is a heap of experiments and unfinished models I made. lots of mistakes, wrong approaches. So you may find as well that if you want to learn 3d Its going to take a while to be confident in what you do.
Micex is (not sure if I said earlier) is what I abbreviate for 'microsoft expression 'design' you can find out about here- http://www.microsoft.com/expression/. Basically a vector drawing program. The 'design' is the part of the package.
I use I tried adobe illustrator and I can do things in it, but I find the interface here ...maybe a bit more intuitive. Just using version 1 and it's up to version 3.
Ill try and get some photos up next update. Probably on flickr though, I dont want to flood the thread with them as theres quite a few, but not all useful.


-----

Update For the 14th - 15th October


Gotta sell lots of video games and dvds to help pay for more software and training. Its very liberating getting rid of the 'distractions'. They really messed a lot of things up during the product design course and really, I wish I never got so into them. Makes me so mad thinking about it sometimes.

I think I improved the ellipses a fraction by drawing with the arm and not the wrist. the habit is better.
Moving into reflections on the cars from my head.
And the pocket watch based on the concept from the 20th september for renderositys , simon says 'show me a clock' weekly challenge. No time for render at the moment.

[nurraymjo]

Excellent updates... you continue to have such a great variety of work here. From anatomy studies, to vehicle designs, 3d work, and animals... just really cool stuff and all well done. I should try and get rid of some distractions as well... World of Warcraft, oh how I need my life back... but it's good to see that you're making it happen. Keep up the good work.

[miycko]

i don't think i could sell my games :( but then again the only game i've played seriously this year is prince of persia, it's as if i don't even own them anymore :P i think it's a good idea to weigh the options and figure which one's more inportant, both in the short & long term. i like the car sketches & the watch is looking real good :D

[seagulls]

@ nurraymjo
Thanks, lot of variety hey, I guess most of it is for fun at the moment.
Very hard to get rid of video games, so believe me I have been down that road and It's hard to notice how much time that gets spent until you think of the future and what you got out of the time spent. So The best thing I found to to do was to surround myself with the right groups of people that have similar goals, and even just going to art classes really helped get things on track. Even though it's only a couple hours a week.

@miycko
thanks mate. I think theres a bit of fun in just collecting them and having possession, but I realize I wont play them again. Its not very profitable or easy to sell them and some of them have drm and online accounts so be careful about that if you do.

Update for the 16th -17th October

Some landscapes painted in photoshop. The mountains I used some of the filters, its also from reference. The creek is near where I live, so I used a greyscale photo for reference, turned out a bit impressionist.

Using bigger peices of paper (a4 from a5) , keeping the pencils more sharp and using a 0.005 pen.
The character I made is a scientist who is up to no good. Just wanted to see if the manga drawing was improved.
Then a wood duck and rooster in coloured pencil from reference.

[Black Spot]

I like both landscapes and the birds.

[andres333]

you've really been studying! great keep on that path!

[engelhardt]

Hello seagulls, this is a nice sketchbook; I like the way you present your works. The colour-choice "shades of gray plus red" is very cool. The car studys and your 3d stuff is good as well. Your sketchbook gave me the motivation to start some 3d stuff as well. - I have never seen so many bird drawings at one place !!

[miycko]

sweet environment man :teeth: i really like the whispy clouds, the ground could be a little darker though, the rest is great :D i'm too scared to try doing environments thanks to my horrible history with them, besides i'v already bit off more than i can chew ATM. the wood duck came out really well & so did the rooster though i find the blue feathers a little odd. your scientist is a cool character :D i'll need to try some manga as well in the future :)

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
Thanks again.

@andres333
Thanks , well I'm trying, not sure if its studying but it feels like there is some progression.

@engelhardt
Thanks mate, if it looks nice I guess thats ok, but maybe i should stuff up some more and learn from mistakes. Bit accidental those colour choices. I think on the second page in one of the abstracts I saw something I liked in it and continued with it.
Good to see you do some 3d work and I'm happy if it inspired you. Ill have a look at your stuff later as I gotta sleep and go to work pretty soon. I keep falling asleep on the bus so I'm trying to be extra careful now hehe.

@miycko
hey again miycko, yeah theres some subtle things I couldn't get quite right, Was using an image 500 pixels wide so things were a little tricky. I guess it's a confidence thing, I think eventually the characters and designs need to go in some sort of environment so i started.
Just using a selection of 12 pencils so the hues are a bit limited, tried mixing them but a bit hard with that rooster. The ends round much quicker than graphite so the bigger sheets of paper help.

Ill check your sketchbooks out tomorrow, so sleepy atm and I'm sorry about that.

-----

Update for the 18 -19th October


noisy mynah, Australian magpie, butcher bird (color version looked not good, so greyscale)
and a red backed wren in felt tip pens. photo ref

[miycko]

hey man, i like the new birds :D the line work in these looks much more confident then before & it looks like you spent a good amount of time perfecting these :teeth: sleep depravation's is something i've been trying to avoid as well but it looks like it can't be helped especially cause of work and such. get some sleep dude, & i don't mean on the bus :wink:

[seagulls]

Yeah, not a lot of leeway to put in other things. I think the birds well... they are improved, moving closer to larger drawings rather than the smaller sketches as I'm more confident. I'm just itching to try out some textures on the birds... but I don't want to get to ahead of myself. There is some training in digital painting I'm planning to do next month and I think that technique may be explained there.
I think I gotta read up a bit more on color though. I did a course just before product design course(well sort of like university if that description helps) on design fundamentals in 2003, and there is a lot of notes on paper I can take with me to work- I knew they may come in handy later. hehe.
The paintings from that theory in there look so rough, I don't know how I passed.

-----

Update for the 20th -21st October

Just busy listing all those games, dvds, selling and posting them. There's a lot of organisation involved, and It may take over a month at the rate I go but mostly if I want to draw at the same time. But I'm still happy to go ahead with it all.
I did find just a bit of time on tuesday to try a couple of quick paintings from reference on the characterdesigns.com site. There is this control with the round brush that I find a bit uncomfortable, I think it may either be the position of the tablet or that it's not as easy to rotate the canvas/drawing area. They didn't turn out how I wanted when I started them I do think the background color is better than a few before. For the guy I tried to do different lighting than the reference.
Tried a car from the 'how to draw cars fast and easy' ebook again. Looked ok... so I tried one from my head, the wheels looked so not uniform, so I practiced ellipses.
And some more posemaniacs. I really do think the posemaniacs is helping. I notice that in a few of the drawings It helps to draw negative spaces to get the positive spaces looking accurate.

www.characterdesigns.com

[miycko]

great move taking the digital painting classes :teeth: i'm sure they'll be very helpful with your progress in photoshop :D the car from the magazine came out really good, it's funny how much harder it is to do something from imagination, i guess it's all part of the learning process, the good thing is that whatever you draw adds to your overall skill :teeth: photoshop brushes do take a lot of getting used to so i guess practice is the only real advce i could give there :)

[seagulls]

I know. Bit of a holiday thing happening for 3 weeks in a couple, I don't really get this much time often, So I'm being careful about how to plan it. It should be helpful for both photoshop and painter.
Thanks for your comment. The car was from a tutorial in the ebook mentioned before. I think the problem is really basic and comes back to yoitisi 's tutorials and the techniques in the ebook.

-----

Update For the 22nd-23rd October


I should point out I have been using photoshop since 2003 but haven't really done anything I would consider painting with it until that value study on the last page. I have been drawing since the start of the year. Ah well... That is trying to draw. The tablet I have had since the end of last year.
Have a look at all those sketchbooks on page 2 and it will give you a fair idea of how much drawing it has taken before I actually started trying.

A car Using the quick start guide that came with the ebook. And a few more from my head. I'm having heaps of trouble with the roof line and trying to put the curve in the bonnet. back to basics.
A drawing from the place before art class. Little did those people know they were being drawn. :rendered:
And a kangaroo paw (plant) in painter. Reference image is by Louise Docker. I did go fairly wild with it though.

[jatherip]

posemaniacs look good! more of them, and of course more of the referenced image! keep it up!

[Black Spot]

Negative space is great for getting the eyes to see the form. That is one scary plant there.

[seagulls]

@jatherip
Thanks I will do more. The humans I think I have so much trouble with, It's probably better for me to do some of their form studies from my imagination then correct them with bridgeman rather than the other way. So I tried it a little with this update.

@Black Spot
thanks, Its not quite automatic yet so I think more will help.

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Update For the 24th - 26th October

In no particular order,
Soldier study- shapes,figure and composition from imagination, but used ref from call of duty 4 and taliban pictures on the internet. I did not take the taliban pictures myself. heh
Some value studies sort of from imagination.
'Le seagull' spittle bottle. Model for bottle is 4 years old. Renders of glass from flamingo raytrace were not good then.
Crimson rosella from photo ref on net.
And the folding mech of the bike. this is a scan worked on in photoshop, like the last page.
Was reading some things from a new book I picked up- 'How to Draw Cars the Hot Wheels way' by scott robertson and the hot wheels designers.
There is a lot more thoery in here than the ebook I'm also reading, so that should give me something to think about at work.
There is some useful things in the ellipse and perspective section and it goes into reflections as well which I was curious about. Trying to find similarities to other things I'm reading. Anyway I really love this book and wish I knew about it years ago.

'How to Draw Cars the Hot Wheels way' , scott robertson and the hot wheels designers, 2004, Motorbooks International

[Black Spot]

The wine bottle and glass are very realistic except that the shadows don't match. Bird and bike as good as always.

[miycko]

that's a freaky looking plant dude, looks like the eat me alive kinda plant you see in movies :P i like the side profile of the cars in post 99 & those bottle renders are fantastic :teeth: but most of all it's THE BIKE that's got most of my attention, THAT THING ROCKS MAN :D

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
gotta try some caustics settings for that I think, there should be a bit of color in the shadow of the liquid. Its a part of vray I haven't looked into yet.

@miycko
haha yeah bit of an experiment, I tried some greys instead of greens and it looked so intense and aggressive. I like that. Coming soon to a cinema near you. :)
Glad you like the auto sketches.


-----

Update for the 26th -27th October

Really didn't feel like drawing yesterday...but I was so curious about what google sketchup was about, So I gave it a try. After a bit of fiddling and looking at the tutorials, I started to build one of the concepts I made for end of year project in 2002.
It was a house design I collaborated with a local architect to design for a friend of my mum.
Anyway 5 hours later and I had roughly built the exterior of the house. Did not expect that to happen at all.
Not a bad program I just find it a challenge to make changes to dimensions and do anything with an angle.

Today I tried to get the forms right on the figures, I realize my perception of them is probably better than I can draw them, So I drew them from my imagination attempting to use the lighting to suggest the form.
Not good. I tried to see the lighting but it was so hard to make out the shapes of the odd shaped objects. I can see what was giving me grief with the bike concept on the last post.

[miycko]

great house design man :D you're really good at architectural designs, was the house built? the studies are improving as well, nice move building them from blocks :) i think these have a brigman feel to them :)

[Black Spot]

That's a huge house!

It looks like you draw figures differently from your birds when they are both living creatures. Try the same approach to humans as your birds and it might work.

[seagulls]

@miycko
Heh,would have been awesome but no, didnt get built. It was for year 12 design and tech. (HSC over here in aus)and I was 18 then. The friend of my mums was having another house designed at the time so we thought it would be a good opportunity to have a real client instead of a teacher or myself so I could better work out the needs, wants and the evaluation of the project. I used a drawing board and instruments so I have some a floor plan and elevations to get the dimensions from. So old school hey.
I did most of the drawing and modelling for the design but not so good at getting information then. So a lot of assumptions lowered the mark.
Yeah those are bridgeman drawings :) I think his drawings use blocks so I think its good for me to start there.

@
Black Spot

Good idea,
I think generally there isn't enough from my imagination, So it's like they are still getting somewhere but lack a purpose or creative part about them. I also find it hard to see the point of the figures... But I'm told they are very useful or at least look that way so maybe I'm just blindly drawing them without a reason. Whereas with the birds I genuinely like to draw them.


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Update For the 28th -29th October

If you havent noticed, Both Wednesday and Thursday are pretty much the shortest times of the week to get much drawing and painting done (with enough sleep). But I had some time to draw cars from my imagination and keep trying to do shading in photoshop. I really think the shading is a weak area so I'm pushing it a bit. Feels so odd to use the big brushes and not the lines as in pens pencils and markers, and it gets done for me a bit when I was using renders as a base so it's like going to scratch. Digital painting classes (schoolism.com) I plan to start next saturday when I get 3 weeks leave So I want to develop more control. I have other things planned around the art and modelling so it can keep things a bit mixed and prevent that feeling of 'grinding'.

Im going for the more neutral backgrounds so theres a bit of pink or brown with the grey. I think a little bit better than white.

[miycko]

just counting down the days till you go on leave eh :P cool car sketches, not a lot of those in these forums & it's interesting to see how they develop from the first concept :D i can see how perspective plays a big role in the design, i should do more of that as well :) good move using the neutral background for those shading studies, white tends to mess with values.

[seagulls]

You bet! cant wait for the self taught class 'digital painting with bobby chui'... bit too pricey to go with the tutored one and I'm confident I can handle it. Bobby chui's podcasts helped me decide to start drawing at the start of the year.
Probably not a lot of car sketches in the forums... I guess most people here like people, and are into the massive black stuff and illustration. Thats ok, I will keep going with the car sketches.To go off on a bit of a tangent, If I have fun drawing cars I think it's easier to push them. Thinking more about the last post I'm just going to push my strongest interests and curiosity. I'm not too worried about having a nice portfolio at this stage. It just bugs me having work taking up a lot of time.

yeah the perspective really matters, If I remember correctly one of the Charles Bernard videos on form says that all things can be made up of rectangular prisms, spheres,cylinders and cones. So drawing these well and shading them matters a lot to me at the moment. And also I think they are a weak area.


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Update for the 29th -30th October

Sketch of a swat team after breaking into a building, I dont know why that was interesting to me, maybe I played video games too much and it influenced it.
A seagull in micex. It's to be printed on vinyl and the white to be translucent, So I can have fun and stick it on the netbook. I pushed a bit of the stylisation as I wasnt using ref for the sketches and knew the result would look a bit toon like, so the wings and curve maybe has a bit more life or flow to it.
Ive uploaded some of the past ref pictures to flickr, If anyone was curious.
flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/44164100@N02/)
Finally some posemaniacs, a car and some form studies.

[Black Spot]

If humans were naked birds would that help. That came out a bit wrong.

I'm not into the Massive Black style either; just here to improve my art and get more confident.

That seagull does have a lot of movement in it. Pissing off a seagull is never a good idea as they can be quite vicious.

The form studies - maybe lower the opacity and build up the depth. That's how I work with vectors and am now doing the same in PhotoPlus.

[miycko]

The S.W.A.T image looks like a cool idea & i think video game influence is common for lots artists so it's not necessarily a bad thing :wink: DUDE that's the COOLEST seagull i've ever seen, it's got so much movement & attitude :D it would make an awesome t-shirt too :D

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
Hahaha, I guess it would help although it's much harder to get pictures of their anatomy unless I found a dead featherless gull. Hmm... not going there.
Lookout for the nesting seagulls they are the most aggressive.
I tried lowering the opacity but it puts a lot of edges in, I'm not sure if thats the best way. I should find out next week with digital painting so Im not too fussed if what technique Im using isn't right as I'm sure it will be explained. But having mistakes like these make it a bit clearer what works and what doesn't, if that makes sense.

@miycko
This influence goes way back years and years to around about when quake 2 was released and also the time of the nintendo gameboy, So I don't think I could get rid of it easily. Whole days weeks, were spent playing games, up to 12 hours at once in the craziest of time. Especially when In school or afterwards that was what me and my brothers would do.
I could probably model some things straight out of my head but not draw them. I made a few multiplayer maps with the cryengine and Unreal tournament engine. Spent like months on them, So there was a bit of creativity that came out of time wasted I guess. Fortunately. Loved making maps in farcry. I may post screenshots of them in future to give you an idea.
Happy you like the seagull, I think it looks better than the previous.

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Update for the 1st -2nd November

I couldn't get onto ca.org last night due to database errors, so I'm posting this morning. It feels like I'm using dial up speed internet.
Well not much to see, I think the self portrait for International Selfportrait day (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=171682) took most of the time up. So I snuck in some other drawings after work.
I missed the date for the thread so I'm just going to post it here.
It's just me and a seagull feather anyway. I went for something like the others using photoref. The arm I had trouble with. I could see the shape but not the form.
I used the dodge and burn tool and liquify filter, I'm not sure if that's 'cheating' It just was way way faster than the other ways for a similar result looking at those sphere shadings. I was painting on a psd file so I could use some advantages of painter and photoshop moved it back and forth a few times. Painter I think has more fun brushes but photoshop I like the transforming and filters. I'm using painter 10 and photoshop cs2/cs3 depending on the computer. Some of the clouds came from micex.

[Black Spot]

You can partially erase at lower opacity as well, the airbrush eraser is pretty good at blending the edges in. I'm probably doing the wrong way round. The shading is a lot better on those studies. I like the self portrait except the hand, which I don't believe.

[seagulls]

I know, they are a little better,I'm just going to keep trying till something works.
I think I need to look at tweaking the response time/document size with the pen to the tablet, as there is this 'pattern' it makes with the circular brush in photoshop. It's like I'm laying down rows of circles and it looks rough.
I agree the hand could be more believable, I did the hand later and time was getting shorter as I went into details.

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Update for the 3rd-4th November

I found a fairly small window of time to do some a concept for some sunglasses I have been thinking of in my head for the past month. So there was a few things I planned before I started, I wanted them to be a full wrap shape, fixed/non-fold and have a silver finish.
I had a pair of sunglasses on hand to get the rough sizes off and I used the standards from here to work out if they would be ok.
http://www.legislation.act.gov.au/ni/2009-230/current/pdf/2009-230.pdf

I was also playing with a new hdri and studio I built to see If I could get some better renders. Last studio I made was for the camera on the first page, But I needed something with more edges/reflection lines .
Rendering is fairly tricky as white can bleach things out yet I want there to be a reflection to define the edges and use a bit of contrast.
Other than that, just a truck drawing before work. Need sleep now as my eyes are shaking like crazy.

[miycko]

hehe, 12 hour game sessions are the bomb :teeth: i remember when tekken tag came out i unlocked every character in one night (huge fighting game fan) , then there's SSX., Tombraider.......damn the list is soooooo long. to be honest i think apart from the so called "lost time" the effect has been positive :D my bro used to make maps in unreal too, he now doodles in studio max. The self portrait is real cool :teeth: i like how you did the hair, i fail to get it to look good with simple strockes. Dig the sunglasses dude, funny how you have to go through six pages of legislation just to design a pair :P great job on those & keep the sketches coming :)

[seagulls]

To give you more of an idea. I have pretty much all the games systems in the last 5 years except the playstations. Selling the games is really tricky as the time to sell them can outweigh the money you make from them. So a lot have gone down in value fairly steep except the consoles and their games. Easier to work and earn the money.
The PC games are probably best to sell in bundles of genre just to get them away, or pass them on to a friend or someone in your family to avoid the complications of postage using ebay.
Steam or online purchased games, you cant sell the user account as it's against the eula... so it's best to uninstall them.
I will agree with you that they are a lot of fun, But now to me as entertainment, I played and played and didn't really get anything meaningful out of it. It's when I started to notice the patterns/or repetitions in the games I thought it's time to do something different.

The hair I think I can remember thinking of it in blocks of value and trying to make out the shape. It's maybe too tricky for me to say.
Thanks mate Ill keep going, I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.

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Update For the 5th-6th November

Seagulls from imagination, posemaniacs, exercises and some car sketches. Also I got some fairly old models and and gave them better renders with vray. There is a buck knife and a mechanical spider (red back).
Bit of a hiccup with the digital painting training. I hafto wait for money to transfer over accounts before I can start :(.
So that could be tuesday or wednesday next week. However, I do have plenty of other things to do in the meantime. So hopefully just a small setback.

[Black Spot]

The mechanical spider is pretty cool. Not sure about the tapered edge on the knife as it looks too thick to fit in the slot to shut.

[seagulls]

Thanks Black Spot. It is a pretty close fit. Maybe I have made it look like it doesn't close fully with the angle of the render. So about 5mm from the hole on the end is where the tip of the blade is when closed.
It was a bit odd giving this a render, I used a picture off the net to model it about 4 years ago for the 'Simon Says' challenge..I'm surprised it closes, as I make those models with only a few adjustments.

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Update for the 7th-8th November

Apologies for the quantity and quality lately. I Have been really challenged by doing things from my imagination. It's not like grabbing reference and making a picture before, there's way more planning to do this stuff... so It feels exhausting, so mechanical. Theres a bit of wanting to do some of my stronger stuff, But this, I hope will help with them.

For the past week I came across the work of an amazing Australian wildlife artist Christopher Pope after discovering his artworks of songbirds on some of the letters in the mail. So I set out to get some more Information by email hoping to get some more information on issues that I have been having.
Im very grateful to Christopher for being kind enough to give his time and allowing permission to share this Q&A with both myself and the readers here.


Q.Do you use reference from pictures or photos to start? Or is it more of an evolution where the picture would evolve from thumbnails and the reference pictures are used to help with placement of features later?

A.Hi Karl,
I have been painting since I was 13 years old with the experience I have gained and evolved through the years painting wildlife, I use all my own reference material taking photo's and looking at the subject matter to understand it's character and size in relation to its environment, A lot of artist use thumbnail sketches to start working through to a final painting but I visualize what I am going to paint with the inspiration of the photos I've taken or what I have seen out in the field then I work from there to create my painting.I find most important when painting birds that accurate representation of the species details the structure and textures of there anatomy and always important and there eyes they have to bring the viewer in to the image I usually paint the eye in first when painting the bird to ground the focal point.

Q.What sort of skills are the most valuable for your bird drawing and painting?

A.Most important is persistence and patience, mastering your skills and techniques I'm still learning and I never thought when I first started drawing birds 25 years ago I would still be doing it I still have along way to go but that's my life's journey all the best.



Again thank you Christopher for donating your time and giving me some inspiration.
You can find out more about Christophers works here on his website.
www.christopherpope.com.au



Apart from that, just found a little bit of time push some Negative space drawings, Photoshop/painter work for a ninja and a landscape. I'm aware of issues with the sizes and perspective, But so Far have not worked out how to fix the shading or get the values right . It feels a little better using the tablet but I am still Finding it a challenge.

[seagulls]

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Update for the 9th - 10th November

I think things are going a bit better as I start having more time to do drawing, modeling and painting and just trying to get into it.

On Monday I was at the library for most of the day drawing and doing pencil sketches. I picked up a good drawing book on color and went ahead and made about 6 pages of notes while doing exercises from that. Later on I drew cars, manga (I'm aware it is generic) some fish and finished with some life drawing later that night.
The notes I have omitted from the update as it's mostly text. However some other pencil and life drawings I am going to wait till Thursday, as I should be able to take better photos of them and there is a bit of a paper war here And I am missing the heavy artillery.
Tuesday was a bit different.
I started a seagull drawing intending it to be more cartoon, like the manga, but Spending a bit of time pushing that further. I Finished with some more tablet work. Trying to bridge a connection with the hand drawings, so The studies may look a bit similar.
There was a tonal scale I finished with in photoshop. I mostly used the colour picker, rectangular marque tool and 'desaturate' to check if things were right. It was quite difficult to get it to look 'neat' although I think it was very useful to help me get used to choosing the right value and seeing the relationships with color next to each other.
On the modeling front, bad news. I have been unsuccessful with getting Alias Studiotools to work. I think a couple of months ago I registered for a download only to find out it was over 2 gigabytes. So I think what has happened now the 30 days from registration has expired, I cant the recent installation to work.


On a side note, I had a read of paragraph structure to try and improve my communication skills and make this an easier read.
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/fwalters/toeflwrite.html

http://painting.about.com/od/colourtheory/ss/ColorClassTones.htm
'Drawing workshop', Lucy watson, dorling kindersley, 2005

[nurraymjo]

Damn, it's been a while since I stopped by, you've had some mad updates and a lot of new stuff to check out. Awesomeness though, it's all looking great.

[seagulls]

I'm still here mate, and thankyou.
hehe, general madness I guess. I have not quite settled on anything yet so the variety of stuff is probably where the most crazy and confusing stuff is.

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Update for the 11th - 12th November

Photos of the life drawings from monday that took a beating on the way home.It looks so messy and photos still no good... I'm a bit ashamed of them.
I should not have never tried to smudge the drawings with my fingers and take ghastly photos from the same place as before.

On Wednesday I started using Autodesk Maya. So there was a lot of reading about the interface and just starting to move objects.
What I said before Is that I think I have all the bases covered for what I want to do. Well... I have come to realize that my learning of rhino and 3d modeling generally has plateaued out a bit. To progress a bit further, I want to understand more about polygons, texture mapping, rendering and organic modeling.

For a bit of wednesday and for some of my birthday on thursday, I started the Schoolism online self taught class 'digital painting with bobby chui'. However, I'm going to hold back showing the images or talking too much about training materials used as I'm sure they would not really want that.
I will say I have just finished the first assignment and am really enjoying the videos and things I'm learning so far.

https://www.schoolism.com/

[miycko]

been a while, love the a buck knife and a mechanical spider renders, they came out really well & you can see the diference between those & the stuff you do now :D dude thanks for posting your conversation with Christopher, you can never have enough inspiration & i got a real good dose from that :teeth: the fish, fruit & life drawings (i'm shure those were very interesting :wink: ) are nice additions to the stuff you're drawing & the maga sketches are really improving :teeth: glad to hear you've finally started those classes &


:cheerleader: happy belated birthday :cheerleader:

[seagulls]

Hey miycko, Thanks for your comments again, I really hope the conversation helps. There isn't too many bird artists or resources related to them here so I'm sure this will be valuable for more than just myself.
Thanks for the birthday wishes. :)

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Update for the 13th, 14th and 15th November

I am not sure what it has been lately, whether or not it has been my diet, time spent in front of a screen,expectations or exercise. But It feels like my energy or enthusiasm has dropped for getting drawings and the classes to progress . So this update has been spread over 3 days.

For the 13th I went to the Zoo to take some bird photos with a new camera. It was an interesting and inspiring day. There was this amazing bird flight display that was beyond words trying to describe how on earth they would train the birds to do some of the things I saw like the loop the loop. wow. However later on I Got home and had a lot of energy but didn't know what I wanted to do.
On the 14th I watched all the videos for assignment one again started assignment two. I was feeling sleepy when I drew some military seagulls and then one of the birds with watercolor/ felt pen from one the zoo photo reference pictures.
The 15th was much the same feeling, I went further with the bike modeling. Im not sure If it is working well for me. I think I have most of the shapes and form I intended it to have. At least as far as I could see ahead when I drew the first few sketches.
But my impression is that it is missing a understanding of which materials, joints and how parts fit together. So what would make this one any better than the previous one I came up with is where I'm puzzled. I'm not sure to keep going with it or start again with more engineering knowledge.


Sample pictures (http://www.flickr.com/photos/44164100@N02/sets/72157622798252374/) of the set I put up on flickr.

[Black Spot]

Energy sapping days happen to everyone now and theb - you have to work through them to see the other side.

With your 3D stuff - where do you want to go with it? I ask because you're questioning your knowledge of engineering. Designing concept vehicles is very different to designing every single component that goes into it. You seem to like detail and the work that goes into it. Have you stripped down an engine and rebuilt it just to understand it? How far do you want to go down that route? Question and requestion what you're doing and why.

[miycko]

i hate those energy sapping days, they always find a way to get to you right when you've got some free time :( usually i'll check out some great artist's work and think think about where i wanna be with my art in a couple years, that usually helps get me back in the mood :)

those military seagulls make me laugh :D though i think they'd need weapons more than jet engines, but if those are intended as after-burners then it's all good :teeth: for the bike i think its great if you wanna get into the engineering side some more but i think if it's got all the parts necessary to function then it's a great concept :D

[seagulls]

Just updating this morning as the net was shaped to slower speeds. Probably related to watching those videos. :)


@BlackSpot
Yes, I think you are right. Having low energy is something normal that happens to everyone I guess. I just don't want to use it as an excuse for myself so I was looking for the causes.

Really good advice for the engineering side. Most of the time I'm just making the concepts with an idea of getting the sketches and renders improved. So there is this struggle that If I don't make it convincing enough to the viewer, or have enough realism to the design, it may not be as successful as an image.
Chances are small in the future that I would do the entire design myself so I'm probably going too far as it is.

@miycko
Great ideas. Maybe I haven't noticed before but being at work puts a big break in between doing works and puts a bit of pressure on them hey. Yeah you will be awesome in as couple years. :)

heheh, afterburners would rock! Thanks for your advice on the bike, everything above should sum up what I'm thinking.
I found some more info on safety and sketching them so that should help. I have also been looking at the Robrady design website for more inspiration on the design and seeing how far developed they go.

http://www.rcar.org/Papers/Design%20Guides/MotorcycleDesignGuideMarch2009.pdf
http://www.motorcycledesign.com/site/content/view/65/39/
http://www.robrady.com/vsb.html

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Update for the 16th - 17th November

Things are going a bit better this time,
Still continuing with the digital painting videos, and most of the way through assignment 2. so I'm not to post that stuff but you can get a fair idea through the description on the schoolism site.
On the side though, I got through some car sketches. I think these have gotta be some of my better ones. No reference was used but I was being really loose and trying to 'draw through' like Scott Robertson mentions in the car drawing book. I'm sure this is working out better and can see improvement.
There is some dragon sketches using some of the forms from Jessica Peffer's 'how to draw and paint dragons' book . What I mean when i say forms, is I did not quite copy the 2d pictures in the book but used it to help with placement of the features.
Later on Some seagull sketches. The greyscale one is using the technique from assignment one of the digital painting videos 'visualising through darkness'. These are from my imagination.

'How to draw and paint dragons' Peffer, Jessica 2005- 2006, Walter foster publishing. (its a small art kit from the dicount shop)

[Black Spot]

Some cute drawings. The dragons have a lively form. You could have a goldfish looking hungrily at the seagull in the bowl.

[seagulls]

Thankyou black spot.
It find it lots of fun drawing them so I think it showed .

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Update for the 18th -19th November (and a bit of 20)

Only a couple of things for this update given the energy lately.
I do not know why, but for some reason I wanted to make a mech concept. Maybe It was the planes of surfaces or the industrial look about them, not sure.
I started with words on paper as it was too complex to picture it from imagination. Just a few words describing the materials, purpose/role , energy and how it would move. Still, even after getting those words down it seemed difficult to go straight to a large picture... so I started with some quick drawings ,sketches of ideas.
Later I had more confidence and went to the a4 paper again for a front and side view. It took about two hours and was really tough to think it through. There was lots of momentary thinking before lines and shading were on paper and quick evaluations if the form looks right.
Regardless of the result, I'm happy I tried something so challenging as It feels as though I learned something.

Then some seagulls. It was a fun pencil drawing painted over in photoshop.
:)

[miycko]

dude, those cars from imagination rock, great improvemt there for sure :D & i love the dragons, they came out great :D i should do some for my sb as well :P your didgital paintings came far too, was that seagull done in photoshop? the mech looks good, it's really hard to bring stuff from imagination on to paper, i've noticed it gets easier if you draw constantly so you're on the right path :teeth: & those are some really resourceful seagulls, looks like a fun bunch too :teeth:

[seagulls]

Thanks mate.
Dragons and the seagulls are lots of fun. I say go for it, if you think it will get you drawing and learning .
The seagull from the 17th of November update started as a pencil sketch. I used some of the knowledge from the second digital painting class to paint from it multiply layer in photoshop. I am surprised how useful they are- Instead of using Photoshop to start a painting, I can use the pencil sketches instead; which does seem much easier.
:)

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Update for the 20th - 21st November

Still going with learning Maya, I can see it could take a while lots of reading, finding controls and not so much modeling. I tried to make a seagull. Didn't quite work out. :)
Just reading parts of the Sybex 'Introducing maya 2008' .pdf and started with the autodesk online tutorials in the help menu.

Next was Car sketches. Spent about 15 mins on these whuich does seem about the same a few months ago but a little cleaner. The shapes I had trouble in the past, I think it's best to make them a bit more inspired, now that they more accurate.
Then Bird drawings and paints in photoshop. Using the zoo photos as reference, I drew some ducks, a furry chicken and a sleepy bird. For the sleepy bird I spent ages trying to be careful with the pencil. Also, I could notice a difference when using lines that were too loose as they were starting to be really confusing, so I kept the pencil shading in simple close together strokes after a while.
I will take photos of the description panel next time I'm at the zoo to help with the identification of these; I was not aware how many birds there were when i searched for the bird on the net. hmm. oh dear.
:)

'Introducing maya 2008' derekshani, d, sybex autodesk maya press.

[Black Spot]

I love the idea of seagulls controlling your mech and that they're so interested in the fish.

Cute birds as ever.

[miycko]

great stuff man :D i think it's a great idea to use the sketches as a base for the work in photoshop, i used to do the same till my scanner crapped-up :( i keep thinking how that last bird looks more like a mafia character cause of the half closed eye, i can totally imagine it with a cigar & a hat :P

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
Probably the next step of evolution for seagulls, hehe.
They always look to me like they could be up to something. I have been more suspicious of them since that stuff got stolen back at Balmoral beach when I was taking their pictures.

@miycko
I like that feeling from the pencil drawings they could go towards something.

Heheh, I can almost picture that bird in the mafia as well. Your giving me some funny ideas .
:)

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22nd- 23rd November

I think I'm planning too many things at once as my head is buzzing in all directions lately. For a time I think this actually worked pretty well at the start of the sketchbook but now, It may be what's making it difficult to focus and get energy back... so for this update just some pencil drawings.
I changed the approach and went for more complete looking drawings rather than many quick drawings, like with the sleepy bird last update.


Starting off, I drew a cup from imagination. I noticed that the sides were not the darkest in value. I have no idea how I missed that before.
Then I drew some hamish and andy drawings. Sometimes I listen to their podcasts while I draw . You can see the difference from now to the drawings of them on the first page. so similar amount of time to draw them, but I think much more detailed and cleaner. I think what has helped the most with these is the life drawing and posemaniacs, as It does not feel nearly as overwhelming to start a drawing of them and theres more structure to how I would approach them.
Ending with some seagull drawings.

I'm going to spread the updates over 3 days from now, To see if things improve. A bit of an experiment really.
But if things go slacker or too many images per page, updates will go back to 2 days again.

[miycko]

improving by the day :D i have the same feeling about it being easier to approach drawing, kind of like a new power that i can never get enough of :P the cups from imagination look real good, i'm gonna be trying out some simpler stuff as well soon :) i like the way you shaded this latest portrait, for some crit i think his nose is quite long & the nostrils aren't at the same ange as the face, also the chin's a bit small especially since it's being seen from slightly below, awesome work otherwise :D

[Black Spot]

Deciding what to work on next can be a tough decision. Why not make a composition with everything in it - a car on a road, seagulls milling overhead wanting to poop, with a lone smoking runner running past. If nothing you'll learn how far you can push yourself at the moment.

[seagulls]

@miycko
Always improving, It seems to be getting more and more fun when I see things improving. It's like 'If I couldn't do that months ago, imagine what will happen if in future'. Also things that didn't make sense then, are a bit clearer now when I go back .Things are changing outside of drawing as well that are related.
Sometimes I guess things aren't moving so quickly, and work, distractions are always going to be there so adapting to that is the key.
Those times I go back and listen to Bobby chiu's podcasts when nothing seems to be working to help lift my spirits.
Hey thanks for the crits, your right about that nose. Totally wasn't looking at the overall picture until it was scanned. The cups did help a bit with form, I know they look basic but they should be like a building block.


@ Black Spot
It is pretty tough, I guess some of the time I try do do what I have the most knowledge of.
That's an awesome idea to do a composition. Actually I was talking to my teacher about something and he said to not put my work in terms of right or wrong. It must mean, what I learn from is most valuable.

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Update for the 23rd, 24th and 25th November


Im sorry the images are not quite in order.
23rd
That would be the posemaniacs sketches and the DSG 1522 (which I'm a bit to shy to post in there). The posemaniacs is just excercises of negative space and 30sec drawings.
And the Mech just below.

24th
No image for this, But I worked on the bike concept for most of the day. Thanks Black Spot for your advice. The re-evaluation of it has helped with the modeling.

25th
Quite a lot of car drawings and excercises compared to previous. I was on a roll and was 'one with the paper'. They have been the most fun to draw and almost satisfying. I used some 'influence' from the current 'motor' car magazine in the library. hehe people seemed to slowly disappear and move away once I got the pencil out. I'm sorry. :)
And also a monk in his garden.

The oil painting in class Is finished but just going to skip posting it this update as there is a fair few images already.

[miycko]

HELL YEAH :rocker: this is gettin REALLY interesting, i think the three days between updates is working well. i like the bot, it's really hard to draw something mechanical with parts that look like they serve an actual purpose & function but it really does help to think about what which part would be doing while you're drawing those, though t also makes you spend ages drawing one thing :P the cars look great, especially because you're drawing each of then from different perspective & in different styles :teeth: the spaceship's really cool, it might be a little dark on the bottom though. The monk looks great but it's the seagulls fishing in the background that i'm interested in, lol. Very nice work dude

[Black Spot]

Nice update. The monk has a wonderful expression and sits well in his slightly lop-sided environment - watch those horizontals.

[seagulls]

@miycko
Maybe It is working better, but it is a bit soon for me to tell. Definitely worked for those 3 days hehe.
The mech, yeah it is hard to do something that looks original, I guess I was inspired by Masamune Shirow's mechs designs from ghost in the shell and appleseed. I'd like to get them to look more like my own design. I guess that's the hard part, but also I'm trying not to forget the purpose is to learn from them.
Thanks for the feedback on cars and the monk scene . It all helps

@Black Spot
Oh, I totally missed that horizon, well spotted! Thankyou.

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Update for the 27th to 29th November

Ive been struggling to do things from my imagination still so I had a look back through the sketchbook to see what may have gone wrong over the 3 weeks break.
-Lack of planning .
Things throughout the 3 weeks I have had off have been dramatically influenced by what happens when I start to do them.
This is why I find modeling much easier than drawing, and probably why it has gone so far.
When I model things It's like I have all the information I could possibly need in front of me. I have usually have a model, a set of blueprints and A lot of reference images to get all the information I could need- as many as i can get all sorted into folders and subfolders etc. That was the plan for a while and why I think it is easier .
So In many cases it's just to figure out the right approach to model things and then get things going as from experience I know the result before I start.

With drawing, things have worked well with a plan. The Bobby Chui lessons I can do as there is a bit of structure to them.
The life drawings have helped with well pretty much everything. I gotta measure spaces and use lines and tone so I think its been good practice. So the plan works as half an hour or so of posemaniacs. I can do that no problems.
The car drawings I guess are for fun . I'm not sure if I would want to be a car designer or something ...but I think I have a lot of knowledge from seeing them and previously modeling them. And I know in future this will be of great help If i want to do continue to build them in rhino. And most hard surface things this will help with too.
Maya is slow but I will continue.
The painting classes I don't have a plan to be doing them for a while but, It's good to be with other people with similar goals. I think i said something before about the groups of people you surround yourself with. This is just for fun I guess, oil painting may be a bit too slow.

Where I struggle Is getting 2d images out of my head. Stuff from imagination that looks like my own work. And this Is where I'm trying to push but I don't have the images or anything else in front of me. Ive gotta somehow get them out of my head.
So there you go that's my evaluation of the situation and why I think I'm struggling.

I'm going to set a goal 6 months from now I would like to be doing some 'industrial design of the week' stuff, so I'm going to need to get my form, planning and imagination worked out for that.



For this update posemaniacs excercises, a seagull drawing/painting from imagination (stared at the screen for hours and hours trying to figure it out) and finally the oil painting from class mentioned maybe too much. The oil painting starts as a colored pencil drawing, then is sketched onto the canvas and finally painted over starting with the lightest colors first. On the pallete I used a mix of Spectrum yellow, spectrum red, ivory black, white and phtalo green for the stalk. The learning from this is not so much proportion or accuracy, but to get myself used to the medium. So there was a fair bit of experiments that were fixed along the way.

[Black Spot]

Why don't you take one of the industrial design of the week and work on it just for yourself. No pressure - you're learning for yourself remember and there are no deadlines. Sort of easing your way in.

I see some entries for challenges and think that the participant would rather not do it, but are having to force themselves to complete it. Take the ideas and use them. Who cares if you don't complete in time - this is you learning. You can always compete later when you feel you can.

[seagulls]

Hey black spot, Yeah that's a really good idea. I should do one of them like that for my own learning like you say. I get the feeling that the priority for these is a nice image... hmm.

-----

30th Nov - 2nd Dec

Just a few drawings. Birds and a belt design. Ive left out some of the usual pencil drawings for time.
One night I stayed up till 3am revising the Bobby chui videos and had to stop because all I could think of in my head was 'go to bed' every 5 seconds. If I sit still I would see blotches of color and the screen would be blurry. On the other hand there is no distracting people or anything else in the way at that time. Way better than going to the library.

[miycko]

that pencil sketch of the seagull looks great :D & i like the coloured version too, only i think it might have too much grey in it, & awesome oil painting dude, can i ask what the original size is? :) the belt design looks great, a solid & one-of-a-kind design :D

staying up till three sounds like a bad idea, i usuallly go straight to bed when i get home from work, then wake up real early to draw (somewhere in the two-three am's), i feel more refreshed then & it's real quiet so you get to think & take your time with stuff (like staring at other artists works which i do waaaayyyyy too much of :P ). i like that you've set a goal for six monsths from now, maybe i should do the same, it would help with motivation motivation :)

[Black Spot]

At you age I was painting up to 3am because I was buzzing, even after doing 10 hours at college.

I re-read your last couple of comments and would suggest that you work more from life, but try to understand the underlying form as you do. This builds up your library memory, which will eventually free you to draw what you want, when you want.

[seagulls]

@miycko
Thanks, the colored version of the gull forgot to say but I actually couldn't finish. Really didn't know what to do with it, so I moved on to the other things... It was probably all that Grey like you say confusing me.
Oh the painting is ...I'm not too sure. Ill say about 400 mm wide. I used no7, no5 filbert brushes followed by watercolor brush for the detail.

It's fairly debatable staying up. The next day I thought I would be really tired at work, but not until about 6pm I could feel the effects. It's not good for meals or the body clock, if it's a one off. But easier than waking up earlier as I'm not too comfortably settled in bed.

@Black Spot
Hehe, Yeah don't know what it's like till I try. I'm willing do do some crazy stuff sometimes. It's like nothings going well Ive gotta do something different a different approach.
I'm thinking I should do the same subjects but changing the lighting, angle or pose in my imagination/head or even combine 2 things to make something new. Try to go a bit beyond copying a picture or photo and make it my own. Like Christopher Pope. For the birds I think I lack lots of knowledge about the basic skeleton So take a few guesses with proportion but information is difficult to find on them. If only I had a pet seagull. :) I find them very complex.

-----

Update for the 3rd to 5th December

Just going to tie up some loose ends first, right or wrong this is what I'm thinking at the moment.
The solidworks mannequin is not being used anymore as the poses I get are just a bit too stiff .I think it would be better to use ideal proportion male and female figure drawings and modify them with correct proportion.
Sketching on the bus is more crowded than before and using bigger sheets of paper Is more challenging to conceal them.
The value studies from renders I may go back to when I can shade better. I think the copying is not where I will learn best from them.
The watercolor paintings and pencil drawings are fun to do but maybe a bit too slow to continue with at the moment.
There are less people drawings as I'm not as sure what to use them for in future.


Some pencil and ink drawings for this update.
I went to Hamish blake and andy lees BYO pool, party. So I was curious about finding more about them, seeing them for real. I mostly wondered how 'set up' the pictures,audio and video of them was. Truth is they are like normal people and dont appear quite so um 'ideal'. I guess I'm inspired by them a bit because they can talk to anyone and need good grammar (not quite like me) for that. I don't really care that much about their appearance.
So being in the city, there was opportunity to take more pictures of seagulls and do some life drawings. I tried drawing on the ferry and bus and surprisingly not very crowded at 6-7pm. There was this girl on the ferry who looked so peaceful, I quickly took a picture and hid to capture the moment to draw later.

Apart from that I drew some seagulls building a rocket to the moon and some car sketches.
The side views have showed some problems I had with proportions more clearly like the wheelbase and curve in the nose of the car.
I used a circle template for the wheels.

Oh one more thing. I quickly glanced through and read small parts of some painting books on thursday, one was the self portrait book mentioned a few months ago.

'Self Portraits', Ernst Rebel, Norberty wolf, 2008, tuschen
'Still Life' Gian Casper bott, 2008, tuschen.
'Artist's colour manual, Simon Jennings,2003, Harper collins publishers.

[Black Spot]

Those seagulls are going to get to Mars before us! I like the girl sitting quietly - good space to it as well.

[Bartovan]

Hi Seagulls, good progress in your drawings. I like the car sketches: they look clean and have nice lines, but I think you should work some more on your perspective. Keep going!

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
hehe,Absolutely. They do spend a lot of time around garbage dumps.
I think it could be the large space on the right that makes the girl picture look peaceful.

@Bartovan
Hi again. Gotta fix that perspective. My intention is to keep them really loose at the start then later on use tracing paper and templates to clean the lines, proportion and perspective up.
Scott Robertson in the hot wheels book tells me that it's best to do it loose instead of using the guides at the start, then tighten them draw over them later to gain control. Sort of like making an idea without those thumbnail sketches then developing it.
Anyway I think mine are too loose and miss a bit of proportion that will come with more control. Haven't found any that I like to go much further, so I'll keep practicing and I'm sure If done in the correct order it will pay off later.

-----

Update for the 6th -8th December

First off self portrait and sketches on the bus and ferry. Forgot this page last update.
Then Car sketches and studies, some of them are from photos.

[Black Spot]

Are you the tired one with the long nose or the cute one in the corner?

[seagulls]

Hehe, not quite the cute one, but the one missing lots of sleep, looking a bit frustrated and mysteriously in possession of a long nose.
I think I resemble an Easter island statue. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai). :)
Oh dear.

-----

Update for 9th to some of the 12th of December.

I'm having a bit of trouble remembering back as far as the 9th. Not a lot of images were made, but lots of other stuff happened relating to getting further. I'm at work more due to christmas as well. If I missed anything I'm sure its something small.
I've mostly been thinking about where I want to be in 5, 10 years from now. It's looking murky and uncertain. Definitely want to be doing bird /artwork but also want to be doing 3d modeling and some industrial design. I should combine skills somewhere. Been on my mind a little. For sure I need more time to practice.
I can't change jobs to something more related just yet as it's too big a jump. Things need to be more stable and less risky. I just get by and spend a lot on this learning and related things.

On the 9th In the morning drew some of a park near where I work. I took a photo with the intention of picking the values later,to see how close i was. but forgot.
The 10th that afternoon drew in another park. Not going to be too specific as Its a favorite spot of mine! all mine. :)
I maybe understanding more about not using photos but drawing from life due to the 'back to basics' (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=263322&postcount=4) thread. You get much more of a feel of the scene and the action there. I tried using different stroke directions to separate values that looked similar. Guessing this is the best way If I cant add lots of detail to a picture.
That night I asked in class if I was jumping into color too soon. But am now more sure that the difficulty i have is with the mixing and I should try more oil paintings just for this in my own time. Nothing from my head as I need stuff in it to reference.
Lots of other time getting software set up on the netbook, reinstalling windows and organizing files. Also watching some Charles bernard videos from the unlimited trek 1, before sleeping. Sometimes sleeping while watching the videos! It's good how he speaks very clearly.
I was really hungry for information.

11th
Drew at the park again.
This is actually the exact same place I drew here on the 11th of july (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2353891&postcount=3). good greif, I can see the shapes proportions and values easier. Better approach and shading method. There was even a passer by telling me it was a 'good drawing.' That never happened before! hmm... the general opinion of passers by has been set at 'good.' :)
At work I forgot some paper so did an observational drawing while waiting for something on my left arm. No picture because it was a smeary mess before I got to a camera.
The afternoon had some decent sunny weather, so I went to the usual spot to draw seagulls. Decent sunny weather equals too many people scuttling the seagulls and getting in the way, as many people like the beach with more sun. so disappointingly I went home.
Later that night I addressed the work space. (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=273704&postcount=22) It really was a mess of paper and stuff everywhere. Getting through is not too dissimilar to an Indiana Jones movie.
So I started by just making a huge pile of everything in the center of the the room. (being careful with anything like paints or sprays go on top last) And just organized it all from there.
It took like 8 hours to get through it all and the dust has made me a bit sick. But All worth it. I got rid of a lot of stuff that was distracting or clutter like video games (which my brother was very happy to receive) and put up inspiration in its place, and then made things more accessible, making work easier and maybe more enjoyable. Like pictures of cars, achievements from the past, but nothing too long ago.
Stuff I may be strong at, making more space. Time will tell if this will work but I think it's a good start...

[Black Spot]

I like the benches, they've got volume.

[seagulls]

Hey, thanks blackspot, must be the absence of the outlines.
One of the benches has since been karate chopped (I assume... but probably just broken) in the middle. lucky for me it was not the one I use for drawing.

:)


-----

Update for the 13 -14th December

For the 12th afternoon, had a look into some art history and some bird mythology on the net. Just little bits of info on art deco and abstract for art history. I'm having trouble understanding the language/words used. A bit confused .
The bird mythology was very interesting to me. I had no idea how important they were as symbols of life and death, and to ancient civilizations.

For the 13th got through digital painting lesson 3 'textures part one' after 2 attempts. For that day and today worked for hours on the bike concept. It's weird, It's like I can see how it's gonna look and a fire starts inside or something so things go smoothly. There isn't any forcing.
Anyway I was just adding some shaders, details, fixings and small detail. I think it makes some sense to post pictures now so I can see how it progresses as an image. Most of the modeling is done so I'm happy to start making images.
For now a render of the rear 3/4 view, basic materials and 50% grey for most parts.
Also I drew a seagull plush toy from life, Lamborghini countach from a poster and concept for a new chinook I didn't get though. The pages for the Chinook concept got crumpled, so when I got home I went for some work on the bike instead. I'll get around to some more industrial design, I know I can do a practice 'industrial design of the week' (IDW), I haven't forgotten, I'm not feeling very confident about digital painting it yet so that could be a problem if an image is the output.


http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Be-Ca/Birds-in-Mythology.html

[seagulls]

-----

Update for the 15th-17th December

I was a bit angry on the 15th, so maybe you can see that late that night I attempted to shade an A4 page and got a bit sleepy.That day also I was trying to practice with one of the daily sketch group topics. I was thinking of some sort of pipe creature covered in metal...Almost like a dragon but covered in armour like in Neon genesis evangeleon. The pipes coming out would make this fire, steam and atmosphere when it was operating. That was the idea. I got just a few sketches out but felt a bit overwhelmed by form again. If the sketch group was more observational it may be a bit easier for myself but that's ok, don't change it just for me.

16th was a little crazy ... I don't really want to type too much about work if it's not going to help.. but On the lighter side of that day I rushed into a book store and purchased a couple of art books with a gift card to read later. One of the books was on Paul Cezanne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne), I really liked the look of the cover and the still lifes, almost like the paintings has been simplified . I love that. And I'm really fond of the 'still life with a curtain' I've referenced at the bottom.
I do find it hard to follow without reading sentences 3 times so I think I'll put it to the side and try and appreciate just the pictures for the moment.
The other book was on anatomy for the artist. I'm really not too sure why I picked this book... I figure later I may use for reference if I want to do people or characters. I don't know I just have a feeling I may need to do people again in future. Or is it just that everyone generally does it and I gotta find a way to relate to it to help understand.

The 17th, I think things got better, I played with a charcoal pencil on a5 paper then later that day on a3. Maybe it was a mistake to try and pencil some middle grey to the image of the oval, but there you go, gotta learn from mistakes.
Finally a seagull plotting an alternative method of getting fish.
Sorry about the photo quality, still on paper too large to scan so this time i tried leaning the pad against a wall. Maybe the solution is to take a photo outside to get rid of dust and the yellow in the light.

'Cezanne' Art classics, 2005, Rizzoli International publications. Inc, NY, preface by Alfonso Gatto.
-Still life with a curtain, Paul Cezanne, 1895

'Anatomy for the artist' 2002, Arcturus Publishing ltd and Tom Flint, London

[Black Spot]

I didn't really understand the fuss about Cezanne until I actually saw one. Prints really don't do him justice.

I'm slightly worried that your seagulls will take over the world soon. They would make a nice series of cartoons if you could do them in pen and ink. Collect them all together when you've got loads and rush to a publisher for next Christmas's stocking filler.

[seagulls]

Cant say that I have really seen any paintings other than in just a couple of galleries since I was 15 or so... it would be great to see the detail and brushstokes that went into the paintings. For cezanne It's overseas.

Hehehe, just a matter of time for those seagulls... as soon as you see fishing rods get stolen I guess it would be the time to really worry. :)


-----

Update for the 18th -20th December

Luck was with me for the 18th I guess. I was on my way home from work and I saw a big colony of 30 or more seagulls near a lake. So I grabbed some food, found a bench and started to draw them. Soon enough they circled the bench, And a couple of minutes later some large ducks as well.
It was actually quite wet and cold, contrasting to the same time last week at manly ,but no people or anyone could disturb the drawing of the seagulls.
So I got in a quick drawing of them near a stump on the lake. There was some other drawings but the pages got wet and warped.
Not surprisingly the gulls and ducks were really tame and were happy to make a huge crowd around the bench making noise, fighting and jumping all over the place. There is this fine detail that stands out in the feathers if you get a chance to see one up close.
Anyway just a quick charcoal pencil drawing from that.

On the 19th I spent about 4 hours trying to draw a gull from a photo from circular quay I took. It was weird. I think I must be missing something big as I think I was doing things as correct as I could- the spaces were ok, the shading was some of my better work, using 2b instead of hb... But still It just doesn't jump off the page to me. Maybe the photo had too much white.

Finally for the 20th, I had to buy some presents and a bit of work for most of the day, but tonight I worked off a tutorial on painting like Cezanne for 5 hours or so.
I just set some fruit, a jumper and a kookaburra feather (found last week) just next to the monitor. And painted on the tablet whilst following the tutorial. Adapting it to my props.
Actually this cover tutorial was why I bought the Corel painter magazine just over a year ago. It seemed incredibly difficult and advanced at the time.

'Paint like cezanne' Tim Shelbourne, corel painter official magazine 22, 2008, page 47.

[seagulls]

-----

21st -23rd December

A couple of things,
Just the body lines for the (existing) corvette stingray concept.
And a test image of the bike. :) There was some texture mapping I did on the rear. The braking lights is meant to appear as a oled (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode) panel.

[Black Spot]

Cezanne laid the colour down pretty well in one stroke. Take a look at his unfinished stuff. He was once asked what he was paint in the blank areas and he said he was waiting for the right colour before putting it down, or something like that. Every stroke was deliberate and painstakingly thought out first and he was interested in the the way colour changes depending on what it was placed next to.

[seagulls]

I love how there was this stroke economy with post-impressionism (hope I referenced that right). Tim Shelbournes advice in the magazine tutorial was to 'concentrate on luscious colours, the expression of form, and making the shapes look good on the canvas,rather than slavishly describing each individual element'. I tried my best and I realize we are pretty lucky we can change colours and manipulate so easily on the computer rather than with a paints on a canvas.
Now that I look back at it, I think I could have made more brighter colors, distorted perspective and maybe defined the edges in more places. It's funny how these things stand out after having a look back.

-----

24th -27th December

I didn't expect things to get behind a bit over Christmas but I was enjoying myself. There was a few related things recieved as gifts, there was a bird picture book from my parents and sketchbook pro. Sketchbook pro may just make things a bit too scattered or unorganised so even Painter and Photoshop together is probably enough. But The Andrew Zuckerman book on bird photographs gave an interesting look at the details of feathers and patterns.
I was given some money, so blindly, I bought a book on Baroque and Rococo. I just look at the pictures.
Over the Christmas period there was just a few sketches though.
First I had a go at a bennu bird, a mythological bird similar to a phoenix and a herron but was worshipped by the ancient egyptians like a god.
Just a sketch in painter for it. I wanted the image to look sort of gold,metallic and mystical. like the bird was rising and crumbling.
The some sketches of frank woodley, Hamish blake studies, hehe. And some car sketches. The first car sketch Is of the existing corvette stingray concept. I sketched the hot wheels car for it and the second was the Volkswagen Kombi from imagination. Feels like I have enough control now. I was really trying to see the faults in other places so I tried my best to do controlled lines and shading. It feels good but I think the values are off key.

Marco Bussagli & Mattia Reiche 'Baroque & Rococo' Sterling Publishing, NY, 2007

Andrew Zuckerman 'Bird' Hachette Australia, 2009

[Black Spot]

The heron is pretty stunning.

[seagulls]

Thank you Black Spot.

-----

28th - 31st December

I had a go at the digital artist magazine 'Impressionism' challenge.
First try was not so great so I had another go with the green. It has been difficult to get harmony, unity, reflections and the look of natural light in the images.
Apart from that, just being reading on the bus. Seems to be making people sitting next to me nervous... apologies.
Monday there was a break, so these two images have taken just over two days in spare time.
Just typing this for myself, but next update will be back to two days.


Digital artist magazine, Image publishing, issue 1, pg 24
Laura Lombardi 'From Realism to Art Nouveau' Sterling Publishing, NY, 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_history

[seagulls]

-----

31st December - 1st January

Using the drawing kit/portfoilio from DrawRight.com for most of the traditional sketches and drawings,
A 30min self portrait, abstract whilst watching transformers 2, a forgotten pre sketch of the bennu bird from the 28th.
Rhino model of the seagull skeleton with basic joints. Render is in penguin (2d sketch/toon shader)-A plug-in for rhino, recieved also as a gift for Christmas.
Upside down studies (180 rotated) . First was picasso s drawing of of the composer Igor Stravinsky. Second was of a horse and rider, the artist unknown.
Two Blind wrinkle drawings of the hand.
Posemaniacs and people on a dvd of 'The Chaser'.
Andy lee studies from the Hamish and Andy website.
A sketchbook pro test / photoshop paint of the camera I mostly take bird pictures with.
Lastly a drawing/trace of my hand as it was resting underneath a plastic picture plane.


Pablo Picasso, "Portrait of Stravinsky," 1920, graphite. Private collection.

http://www.2dayfm.com.au/shows/hamishandandy/
http://www.drawright.com/

[Black Spot]

Gosh, such a variety. Is this your NY resolution - to do more studies and things? Keep it up.

[seagulls]

Heh, Nope, I just gotta do things. Things were going well.
However, I made a resolution for last year. It was to start a sketchbook and keep it going, no matter what. After 3 months I wanted to start posting here but didn't feel ready till mid year. I have thought about stopping many times and It hasn't been easy. There have been benefits though... even if they are not necessarily better images.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

2nd - 3rd January

For this update I noticed I'm still having a lot of trouble measuring spaces and control after following the 'vase faces' tutorial. Good grief.
I still like to put names on things as I draw them, but when Betty Edwards explained in the dvd about not doing that, It now seems a lot clearer.

The hand drawing tutorial I found was a bit of fun to tone the paper with the graphite stick. But not quite as fun as the Kombi vans, hehe. I want to do a update or redesign of them now, but should wait.
They were drawn from pictures on google. A couple I tried to rotate.

Against the odds I also made an oil painting of a 'ginger beer bottle on a cardboard box'.
Classes I dont have till february so I went ahead and painted something in my bedroom. There was a lot of trouble finding the right color and blending. Its too expensive to buy every color under the sun with oil paints so, gotta mix a few to get something close.

[seagulls]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

4th - 5th January

Mostly an update to the bike, but there was time for sketches whilst playing with settings and making test renders.
The bike- Reduced the amount of white in the background map to 3/4 grey. Added a rectangular light, deleting the front fill light so the grey shaders stay the same.
Better to change the lights than make the shaders darker.
There is a few things bothering me though- The red skirting panel near the rear wheel and the connection for the handgrips to the bars.

First of the sketches underneath are of skateboarders from google images.
Today I slowed things down a bit with some negative space drawings of things near the computer, and then a observational drawing of Chas Licciardello from 'The Chaser' team.
Hope this Is ok, but I adjusted the levels once scanned in. To make the mid point darker.

[seagulls]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

6th - 7th January

Drew some cars. Some are from reference and some from imagination. It was hard to start them straight from imagination yesterday...hmm, It may be that I need to warm up first.
:)

The concept image at the bottom, started as a pencil drawing but later I thought it would be good to work it up in painter.
So what happened was I followed a tutorial by mark randall and tried to adapt it.
Need to allow more time to finish in future.

Mark Randall's tutorial (http://www.designertechniques.com/tutorials/markrandallmarkerrender01-page1.htm)

[miycko]

i've missed so much great stuff during my absence :\ i'm glad to see so much work and improvement in here :teeth: the cars look fantastic & the bike's amazing :D

i will be watching :oneye:

[Black Spot]

I like the skateboarder sketches. Your shading is a lot better on them.

[Dr poPcoRN]

like your bike alot :) keep it up!

[seagulls]

@miycko
Hey mate. Yeah, don't worry about missing stuff. It's all good. Thanks for stopping by.
:)

@Black Spot
It must be the bigger sheets of paper and confidence.
Charles Bernard was talking about how things become more automatic if you push them for long enough, In the art trek videos.
I was thinking, 'lets push them'.



@Dr poPcoRN
Hey, thanks for stopping by Doctor.
Still a fair bit to do with the bike before I start to like it as well.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

8th - 9th January

When I finished work everything was looking good. But I went to the seagull drawing spot and it was crowded. So I decided to have a break for the rest of the friday. So no work got done then.
But today I spent around 8 hours on a tonal painting of my some of my drawing stuff.
The night was finished with a modelling study(?) of Christopher dresser's teapot.
Christopher dresser is a very famous industrial designer I studied about 5 years ago as part of a product design course.

Christopher Dresser Wikipaedia (http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dresser)

[Janos]

Great teapot and generally great industrial designs. Check out the Industrial design of teh week section here on ca.
Your faces need some more work, especially the facial planes, but with time and your skills all will work out I think!

Cheers

[Bartovan]

Hi Seagulls, good updates with lots of variety. I like the VW vans: very dynamic sketches. The red car looks promising. Keep going!

[Black Spot]

You're kidding right? That's 3D stuff or you've been holding out on us big time.

[miycko]

WHOOOOAA :teeth: the tonal study looks fantastic man, i think the pencil sharpener's slightly tilted to the right though, really love the rendering on the image and that teapot's awesome :D man you're kickin my butt

[seagulls]

@Janos
Thanks mate.
Have had a look at the IDW section, But it seems pretty quiet at the moment. I'm a little worried...the threads are disapearing.
The face planes are giving me a bit of grief. Your right. I Think I have lots of trouble seeing them to try and construct them. Not a hard surface like cars or mechanical objects, but a organic rounded object that deforms and has different levels of texture and gloss. Find it really hard also to separate the eyes into shapes.
Did those constructions so rough and uncertain.

@Bartovan
Hey thanks bartovan. Good to see you stop by again. :)

@Black Spot
Hehehe. Well the process of painting the drawing stuff, Now may actually be a bit faster than modeling, texturing and rendering.
:)

@miycko
Hehe, thanks. The paint of the sharpener must appear tilted, I didn't use perspective properly. My eyes couldn't see it clearly then. Although, The barrel and lid do have a slight taper from the split line.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------

10th - 11th January

Sunday I made a start on another Cezanne study and some limes. I know I'm just venting this, but I got a bit angry and frustrated with things outside of my control. I planned to finish them today, but my brain was going crazy with all these thoughts of things that weren't resolved with work and other stuff. Whilst I looked at the screen trying to make a start.
So I tried to capture this frustrating emotion in an abstract.
There was some good things that happened though. I was drawing in a park and these magpies flew up close. Hehe, looking for an easy meal.
I got to sketch one of them and also some people walking around, exercising.
And also, for the limes. Even unfinished as they are, I think the colours match what I saw, closer than any of the still life's painted before. There was a little reading on chroma that I'm sure has helped.

[Janos]

Eyo,
Not sure if it is any help to you, but I got a good tip of how to learn the planes and sections that make up the eye with an orange.
You take a nice big orange and cut out an almond shape eye form and draw in a pupil like a real one. And then you sketch it from every direction and tada you learn.
Sketch is attached:

[Black Spot]

That magpie is trying to pull up non-existent trousers - watch him, he might be dangerous.

I like the abstract. The black area is pushing the red emotion to only exist in a small area.

[seagulls]

@Janos
Thanks for your little tutorial and advice, gave the orange a go this update, so I'll explain later.

@ Black Spot
Australian magpies, actually can be very territorial (http://www.abc.net.au/science/scribblygum/July2002/) and aggresive, hehe.
When I was much younger, say 13. I used to help rescue and rehabilitate them (with my mum) for wires (http://www.wires.org.au/), and discovered many of them got attacked by each other. Some of them released into unfamilar territory would be attacked, and sadly, we would sometimes find them dead later If they were not accepted.


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12th - 13th January

A bunch of graphite sketches. Mostly just concentrating on anatomy and placement.
Keen also to try out the cutout of the orange for the eyes suggested by janos. Thanks janos. hehe. Circles are quite the challenge freehand.
On a side note, the national gallery of australia is actually exhibiting some of the masterpieces of Cezanne and other post impressionists in canberra. Just a bit too far away to travel. :)

[GoGoJojo]

I can just imagine how many ways I would injure myself with that teapot. Your line drawings have a lot of life in them, and I love your birdies.

[miycko]

nice work on those limes dude - very good practice for rendering and the abstract image rocks man :D i feel that way too sometimes mainly because really annoying how much work-and-the-like gets in the way of art and if you need to vent this stuff out then what better place than here :)

that orange-eye thing looks interesting, i might try that out sometime considering how i misplace the eyes sometimes. The silhouettes of those soldiers rock, i've never been good at those and i like that you're drawing more people nowadays.

[seagulls]

@GoGoJojo
haha, If you can find one. They are mostly in museums now. Thanks for the comment. :)

@miycko
Thanks, Well dont let the work know about those abstracts. Next time I may construct one of those voodoo dolls, hehe.
Yeah the orange cutout may have helped with the forms. Gotta find the right information to reference.

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14th - 15th January

Mostly digital paints this update. I find it pretty difficult now to start the sketch with the tablet, but pencil feels much better.

Started to paint a lemon (just set up on paper and a desk lamp near the computer) and found it quite a challenge.
To get the the right yellow in painter and find a approach for all that detail. Real head scratcher. There may also be a tiny bit of red in the light source.
So I left it there and tried to paint some seagulls from a sketch.
Also scratch worthy. I'm thinking the sketch needs to use more reference and have much sharper lines to be useful. Oh well.
That was yesterday. Today, though, I think I really threw myself in the deep end.
I had this crazy Idea at work, to paint a robot after reading the workshop in Imagine Fx January.
Ive really been observing stuff at work like core shadows and trying to figure out light sources.And also wanted to use some of the bobby chui training on something of my own. So I thought 'lets see what I actually know'-
I started with a 30 min sketch. The plan was just some basic shapes and stuff. and to concentrate on a arrangement of shapes.
And used that sketch along with 'visualizing through darkness' memories to make it in photoshop.
First 20 mins Is where It seems like nothings working, but I slowly build things up now instead of trying to do it in one go. So working better.
I used a texture for the road and the metal on the chest form the cd, and the sky uses a little of mayang's (http://www.mayang.com/textures/)texture, gratefully made available from his site.
Quite a challenge anyway. I think it looks a little rough in places due to not much reference, but that was part of the plan.

(for my own reference)
Starr Figma, 'Lucian Frued, The painters etchings' Museum of modern art, NY,2008.
Terrence Maloon, 'Camille Pissarro', Art Gallery NSW,nsw, 2005.

[GoGoJojo]

Hi, Betsy here. thanks for looking at my sketchbook. I've been learning about photoshop from Granny, and now it looks like I'm learning about painter from you! Thanks for putting up what you used. I love love love your seagulls. I'll try to weld one, okay?

[seagulls]

@GoGoJojo
Hehe, thanks Betsy. Though, Theres a lot of theory I'm reading and classes as well to ask questions. You may miss that part If you look at only what I post- Gotta practice but also have stuff to reference.
Yeah go for the seagull weld hehe. Ill post some info/help on your sketchbook when or if you want to get started.

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16th - 17th January

Saturday I used up almost the entire day digital painting. I was following Bobby Chui's digital smudge technique tutorial,start to end, really slowly, and got through it. But best not to post it, it's too derived. It took about 10 hours.

Sunday I followed Betty Edwards negative space chair drawing exercise.
I'm finding it pretty useful the method of transferring the object onto paper . I reckon most of my mistakes happen in the first 10 minutes of the longer drawings. So this should be of use at the very start. It's like Ive never been thoroughly taught this.
Later on I went to see circus oz at darling harbour, but all I could think about was time disappearing. However I got some pictures of seagulls to draw from later. Almost impossible to get a decent shot of them flying. The photos are blurry and I think I would need the skills of a high paid sniper. hehe.
Then Hamish Blake study and some cars from the 'how to draw cars fast and easy' pdf. I have more pencil control to continue with these. They are much more fun now.

Rugendyke, T, Cheung, A,T (2009). How to draw cars fast and easy. Australia: how-to-Draw-cars.com. 60-88.
For my own reference,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work
http://www.unisa.edu.au/ltu/students/study/referencing/harvard.pdf

[miycko]

Sweet robot painting on the previous page dude :D very moody and atmospheric, it definitely deserves to be detailed and finished IMO :) 10 hours on a Bobby Chui study eh, too bad you can't post it, would have loved to see it. those are some nice looking seagulls in this last post and great work on those cars :D your drawing and shading skills have really come a long way :teeth:

[seagulls]

@miycko
I think It would be good to work on the robot some more too. Mostly because some problems are fairly obvious now. Thanks for the comment.
:)

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18th - 19th January

Car sketches, A Seagull abstract, Some loomis heads from 'fun with a pencil' and a can sitting on my desk.
The cars are looking a little rough from lack of practice. The best one was the next morning from following the tutorials on car sketching.
The seagull abstract was just for fun really, I based the pose of the gull off an image on google images (photographer unknown). Fairly loosly based though. I'm fascinated with the pattern of rectangle shapes and the maroon like color.
In order of process- graphite, Micex, photoshop then painter .

Smiles,S (2000). J.M.W Turner. Milbank,London: British artists, Tate gallery publishing.

[seagulls]

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20th - 21st January

First up I tried out the recent vray for rhino tutorial released for members by Asgvis. The tutorial was on rendering wax/translucent materials. Towards the end of the video I decided to use an old model of a lava lamp instead of the supplied and build another to help make a scene. I also used the vray depth of field for the first time.
The studio scene supplied was edited to make the colors a little warmer.

Thursday, I did some ...I'm not too sure what to call them ...How does 'Third person' drawing sound?
What I had to do was use as much information as possible about the surroundings and draw them as If viewing them from another angle, away from where I was sitting. It was a real mind bender. Like all the parts of drawing were stressed at once. Perspective, tone, observation, relationships, form, spaces and accuracy.

First one, I drew myself sitting in the park on the seat. There was some pigeons and a woman with a dog, hehe, I quickly sketched in.
Second one was kinda amusing. I had to 'ninja' in this drawing in the library as not to make it too obvious what I was drawing. So lots of sneaky observations. You can see the guy on the left opposite me reading the newspaper. Had to be real sneaky, hehe. :) Mind really plays tricks - left some problems with the perspective in to help show how difficult it is.

Later I did some spheres, I can see Its much better to do things further back first- than at the front. And the shading (I think) should be elliptical like bands.

[Black Spot]

I like the seagull in the previous post - full of angry life. Great lava lamp - I can't believe they came back into fashion. Cute pencil drawings.

[miycko]

dude that seagull abstract looks fantastic, i can definitely see that on my desktop (because i've put it there - hope you dont mind) :D That third person drawing sounds really hard and very interesting as well :D nice work on those

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
Still got a lava lamp gathering dust hehe. Took about 2 hours to warm up and was very hot. Thanks for the comment

@miycko
Thanks miycko, it's fine to use it. :) yes, the drawings were really challenging. Bit frazzled... yet strangly satisfying. :)

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22nd - 23rd January

Over the last couple of days just drawing up a practice for myself for the daily sketch group.
Earlier it was discussed to do a practice Industrial design of the week. I would have liked to do one of those as It would be useful to compare my work to other attempts...but since then almost all the threads are missing. Went for DSG for the moment.
The topic was 'Forlorn pilot stands atop their ruined fallen mecha' (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=179372).
Started off with some thumbnail sketches, of the value pattern. The intention was to have the mecha dominated the scene somehow, but also have a little bit of story to it.
First ideas were similar to others, very literal and symbol. But then later I thought to focus more on the 'ruined' and 'mecha' part. And as so scattered out the 'ruins' of the mecha all over a scene- with pieces leading towards the viewer and the pilot.
The pilot and companion were meant to be closeup showing the details of their character, but I stumbled with perspective and used energy trying to fix the issues and have the patterns right in the bottom most image. At the time It felt like lots of energy was being used trying to correct mistakes that were in the first 10 minutes. be better spent doing related studies instead of polish. But It has helped me see weaknesses clearer.

[seagulls]

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24th - 26th January

I got angry on monday.
Things compounded. Main things was there were too many people at one of the seagull drawing spots and I was falling asleep even though I'm not staying up late . It was not good. So the update is stretched out to help me think some things through.

Some things look a little better but may be not so obvious with other problems. The accuracy on the sighting drawing is a little better. I notice It's really important the first 2 horizontal and vertical lines I placed as they are like placing an axis.
The camera painting turned out a little better than previous attempts, Thanks to a much better sketch.
On the side, an angry abstract,imaginative and perspective drawing but have decided to leave them out.

[Black Spot]

It's probably too hot to think where you are, so no wonder you're falling asleep. Sometimes you have to listen to your body. Camera looks good.

[miycko]

just checked out that DSG thread, there's some great in there :D i can't wait to see what your entry looks like :teeth: and the camera looks fantastic :D it has an almost painted look to it which i really dig :)

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
It has been a bit crazy. Used the computer for half an hour at a time on tuesday and got headaches from the heat. My arm was like dripping with sweat and sticking to the tablet. Better temperatures now though.

@miycko
Thanks miycko.Yeah the Dsg looks like a good idea. Thanks for the camera comment, hehe, forgot to mention it was about 3 hours work- most of it in the sketch.
:)

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27th - 28th January

First up, felt a little better, so theres a couple things felt like posting from monday. One of these things was the robot painting. I was trying to fix some of the issues . Had a look at it (with memory from the Charles Bernard videos), and noticed things odd about it.
The space is actually divided in two with a triangle down the middle.And there's lots of other issues with painting too like blurry/ low clarity parts to the image. Better to start again as the layers are a bit messy.
I also put the angry abstract up as the other thing.
Next thing was I traced over a couple of car images to have a look at how much detail the car sketches may need. Theres gotta be a balance between modeling, sketching and rendering them.
Finally just continuing with the daily sketch group practice.
I think I will go with the high minor key.

For my own reference-
Tassi, R (2005). Art classics 'Monet'. New York: Rizzoli International publications
Vickery,J. (2010). Understanding light and color. Imaginefx. Issue 53 (0), p70-74.

[miycko]

I Dig updates dude :D for the robot painting i think it's cool that you're willing to start an image again to get things right :) i'm a bit too impatient for that. i really like those cars, the ones from imagination are pretty close in terms of detail so you're definitely on the right track :) and nice progress on your DSG entry :)

[Janos]

Nice studies all around and nice way of working/concepting. I see some issues with your proportions though in your figures. Try studying anatomy more.

Cheers

[Black Spot]

Interesting update.

[seagulls]

@miycko
Starting a new image to me sorta depends on the concepts or planning. I can get tired if I think I'm shifting paint... or anything like that. And just stare at the screen.
Like, when I started modelling cars, I gave up on many that went into polish and renders too quickly, and could'nt fix earlier things. And do some things like when I'm drawing now.
The last cars drawn were traced and the ones before were from the model cars that sit near the desk . Not quite good enough to remember all of the cars to draw from imagination ...not just yet, hehe.

@Janos
Thanks Janos, yeah, having trouble building things from imagination and observation at the moment so the human figure may need to wait till I can get all the basic forms and structure, better.

@Black Spot
Thanks black spot. :)


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29th - 30th January

For this update, working on lines and forms from observation. Actually I planned to start painting that sketch for the dsg, but things went smoothly with the studies.
Not quite in order as some things were started early but finished later than others in photoshop.
Firstly, A Study of the desk lamp, actually done last. Being fairly Careful with the lines.
Then Another hamish blake study... I don't quite know where I was going with it. The stipple technique seems interesting though.
Some car studies next, with a drawing of a netbook. A concept look that shows the main isocurves and edges for modelling is what I'm after for now.

For my own reference.
Turner, Joseph Mallord William, Snow Storm -Hannibal and his Army crossing the alps, 1812, Oil on canvas 146x 237.5
Turner, Joseph Mallord William,Whalers, 1845, Oil on canvas 91.7 x 122.5

[seagulls]

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31st January - 1st February

The dsg sketch is giving some grief. Started off painting it using some reference pictures and ideas for panels from a book on navy destroyers... but something wasn't right. I then traced over it, and could see the lines where the guy was sitting looked a bit distorted. A bit further on a straight edge was used to trace out the parallel lines and simplify some structure. Make the proportion made a bit clearer.
What has happened is my intention was to show the Mech as a large structure. Say 8 storeys high.
And so this structure has fallen over. So some surfaces shouldn't appear horizontal. As the mech isn't quite a rectangular shape when ruined. So there is pieces together, panels bent and fallen off. The tracing of the drawing has helped me see some of the issues.
1. That the guy seems to be sitting flat but the angle of the surface near his feet appears tilted and distorted. I'm not quite getting where the vanishing point should be.
2. There should be some depth to show scale. It's not quite clear to me to represent the scale of the torso the guy is sitting on.

Tomajczyk, S,F and Glaser, A, 2001, Modern U.S. navy destroyers, MBI publishing Company, Osceola W.I ,USA

[seagulls]

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2nd, 3rd and 4th February.

The 2nd was odd, I had an idea to try drawing in the dark.
So I went to a fishing spot late at night, near where I live. I was getting a bit depressed up to this point,so didn't expect too much to happen.
-except to spook some people out with the super ninja sneaky act of drawing them unsuspecting in the dark. Hehe.
Actually not quite so challenging to see everything as I thought. The eyes seem adjust, but up to a point. There was a 3/4 moon out, diffused by cloud.
All the edges on the scene were really soft. The light from the road across the seemingly inky black water was really sharp and precise. Unreal. Although, I Guess it's not so obvious from the drawing how dark it was.
I did manage a couple of these drawings though, problem in the dark was making out the clarity of drawn details on the paper, even though I could see what to draw clearly. Photos were a bit dark (no detail to bring back in photoshop)as well to go any further.
Towards the end of the super ninja session, it rained and have since only found one of the drawings. The other, I am sure Is lost with the pencil sharpener(last page) in the haste to stop everything being wet and get to cover. I must train to be more expecting- like a ninja.

Wednesday, was crazy. I had roughly 2 hours in the entire day to draw or paint. I'll leave it at that. :(

Thursday, It was better. Apart one of the worst sleep ever had the night before (no exaggeration),
just having a bit of fun with a 3rd person drawing and later finished an oil painting in class. :)


Freches, Claire and Jose (2005). Toulouse-Lautrec. painter of the night. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. p0.
http://www.beyondblue.org.au/index.aspx?link_id=103
http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/

[Black Spot]

I like the oil painting - the clouds are very good, rolling the paintbrush is good for that. The green is a bit bright in comparison but nature does sometimes surprises me.

[seagulls]

Yes, the rolling technique worked surprisingly well. Just put a tiny bit of white on the brush and build up volume(?) slowly. We call it the scumbling (http://factoidz.com/oil-painting-scumbling/) technique. The reference picture actually had the colors really bright and the plain of green grass was a bit less flat than I painted it.

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5th-7th February

Relatively more things than normal.
Feels like I show some things before they are really as good as I could get them, so I stretched to 3 days.

Started off with some hand studies, just out of angriness. Hehe.
I then moved on to a color picking paintover of a photo taken in the pouring rain and also the cat that likes to yowl at the door when using the computer. :)
The rain photo was near the fishing spot...I just thought it looked unusual so I took it.
First attempt was I tried to paint it, I always feel so lost after 10 minutes. But The image I wanted was still clear so I just used it to see what it would be like if the placement and tones were all correct. Strangely unfulfilling doing it this way. It's like I made an image but there was not much of expression in it, and I was jumping ahead without proper learning.
Up to the last Chui video at the moment so theres some colour studies next.
Followed by a skyline.
Then I started a concept for a new type of Rockstar energy drink. Most of the work is in the graphics and marketing. I guess. Lot of fun doing these.
Last few things are a couple of ink, pastel and pencil drawings on cardboard, Enzo ferrari spider drawings from the 3d model.
Then a ninja. :)


http://www.knowthis.com/principles-of-marketing-tutorials/product-decisions/product-decisions/

http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu/nf/module1/sources.htm

http://lib1.bmcc.cuny.edu/help/sources.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockstar_(drink)

http://rockstarenergy.com/

[Black Spot]

I can't colour pick out of the frame of my program, so I have to get it with the colour wheel. I like the cat study - used to do that years ago. Skyline looks good. The ninja needs more work. You should think of the human form as a type of car with sticky-out bits.

[miycko]

The desk lamp looks interesting & you're still kikin ass with those cars dude :D I like the laptop and how you drew different elevations and how they overlap each other every time i tried that on paper it ended up in a mess, been thinking of doing a study of a laptop from life actually (since i'm lagging waaaaayyyyy behind on life studies :P ) very nice oil painting dude, like the clouds :D and interesting start on the rockstar energy drink :)

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
Must be difficult without the color picker, I would find that painful trying to get the same color or value again without a palette.
Yeah more like robots for the figure. Hmm, cyborgs.. :) I had a bit of time to look at the ninja sketch again.

@miycko
Thanks miycko. I think the laptop looks a bit wonky though. I drew it on a bit of an angle. So once scanned in, looked odd. :)
The buttons and keys are quite a challenge, and theres a few parts where perspective helps.

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8th-10th February

Having trouble keeping awake again. Must be that the meals are too far apart. There is a main meal in the middle of drawing time and it's about 8 hours after the last...
monday was funny sort of day. Started a perspective drawing but fell asleep and woke up an odd hour to late to continue.
There was also an idea for salt and peeper shakers I drew onto the paper . I noticed from seagull drawing last friday, that they do this interesting pose, where they stretch their neck out when they see you have food. hehe, I tried to capture some of that in the shaker concept. :)
Tuesday some work on the bike. letting it develop a bit more before I show.

Wednesday had about 1 hour to do things. I traced over the ninja to make some things a bit clearer. Few things I noticed just as a little self critique.


The composition doesn't seem balanced. Thinking of a seesaw rule from the art trek video series, there should be more space, left or right, between the background figure and the foreground.
The horizon needs to be more obvious.
The cloth is very large to be worn by female
The shoulders are maybe a bit broad and maybe a bit too horizontal
The pelvis is an odd angle. It doesn't seem to be very effective to say that the figure is injured and resting.
The horizon gains a bit too much contrast compared to the foreground, the background figure is too dark in value... the foreground one too light.
The left leg was a bit long.
The eyes are too high on the face.
The shading is a bit too rough for the forms to be clear.


Gamba, G (2005). Art classics, Michelangelo. 3rd ed. New york: Rizzoli International Publications,Inc.

[miycko]

That salt and pepper shaker looks so cuuute, would love to see that detailed /painted :D interesting self critique on that ninja, i'm shure it'll help a lot when you look back on it in a couple months :)

[Black Spot]

I do have a colour picker, just that I can't pick from a picture not in my program. I like to get the colour right by myself. Sometimes I colour pick from my own work, but I find it easier just to click on the colour I want from the wheel.

Back to your work. I like the idea of the salt and pepper shakers, but how would you know which was which, or maybe this is another cunning plan by them?

I'm glad to see you tackle your figures in a more methodical way. So what if you don't get it perfect first time? You're learning and I'm sure they'll soon match your seagulls in awesomeness to stop them. Someone has to.

[Joey-b]

Hey i really like your industrial stuff.
U have a really diverse gallery, very interesting.
only thing i dont understand is why this thread hasnt got any stars, i really enjoyed viewing it. thx! 4 stars from me

[seagulls]

@miycko
hehehe, took the shakers a bit further. :)

@Black Spot
Oh, I see. that must be a good way to train yourself to see colour.

I have thought a bit about how to make the salt and pepper difference appear more obvious.

1.transparency- not so sure as to change this, as the shape may be not so strong to me. The white may have less impact and the shape may be less recognizable as a seagull.
2.text/symbols - probably , looking at Semantics, If they were used at home maybe the memory would be able to recognize them by colour alone, without the text. Sort of like how I know what drawer things are in the kitchen. Depends on the usage.
At a cafe or restaurant the text or transparency may be better for differencing this, but I think I would steal the shakers from the cafe if I saw them sitting there. :)

I do like the cunning plan of them not being seperate... :)


Absolutely, The figures need to be able to match/stop the seagulls. Hehe... All part of learning. I guess this way makes the relations between other things closer and searches for weak areas.


@Joey-b
Thanks joey b.
I'm not to fussed over stars, Learning and fun to me is much more important.



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11th-13th February

Some pencil sketches and 3d modeling.
Yesterday some Posemaniacs and some studies of a ninja from the character design website.
Today, Finished off the concept for the seagull salt and pepper shakers. For the render I've used a small bit of blue in the area lights and yellow in the key light.
Was thinking of a fish and chip shop. :)
Planning to get to the ninja correction and to the new flavor of rockstar drink later on- The shakers were so fun, so instead I spent some time on them. :)
I constantly challenge why I do things in the sketchbook for 2/3rds of the day (at work) and then get in front of the paper and feel so lost... like there is so much uncertainty if things will work. It is lonely, just me and the paper. The fire that I had while working slowly dies -many times in the sight of the short hours ahead and then return to the sleep and and labor of the next day.

The sketch at the bottom is an attempt at a copy of Gustave Courbet's Self portrait.
It got fairly messy working on it, graphite all over the finger tips and paper. Just about every technique I knew with the pencil was used to get the effect. Still really challenging.

For my own reference,

http://www.easybib.com/

The Divine Michelangelo. Dir. Tim Dunn. Perf. Susannah York, Stephen Noonan. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 2004. DVD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics


edit. Taking a bit of a break for the moment, my heads just buzzing with conflicts making work and other things frustrating and difficult to find order. I'm also forcing some things and is not clear the learning to be gained. Next update will be sometime in the week from the 22nd.
Some things need a reevaluation.

[Black Spot]

Those seagull shakers are totally adorable. I want a set.

[miycko]

Man i love the seagull shakers :D they fit so well into the environment, fantastic work dude :) that master study looks great man, i haven't seen the original but i think your rendition of it is great :teeth: i hear you on the conflicting thoughts dude, hope you'll have resolved some of them by the time you get back from your break :)

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
Hehe. There's about 30 in a full set. Slowly you would add more and more to the table until they get annoying. :)

@miycko
Thanks miycko. Yeah it's been wild, so many things to try and get right, so much to an image. It's overwhelming all at once.

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14th-26th February

Been a little while... I know. It took around a week to calm down a bit and start again.
Bit of trouble remembering back ... I'll just explain the images that were made and see how it goes.
One of the things though, I decided to stop work on the rockstar can. It just didn't feel like the effort would be useful as all they need to do is change a few premade graphics and ingredients on their design for a different version, and I would have gone to a lot of effort for not much result. Technically I know I can do it already so not too much reward for modeling and texturing it.
http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m34/spincad/portfolio/th_162092.jpg (http://s100.photobucket.com/albums/m34/spincad/portfolio/?action=view&current=162092.jpg)


Starting off with some negative space drawings. These are actually not 'true' negative spaces, later I discovered to be correct they need to be done with a border so not just a outline drawing.

Next I continued with the ninja. Couple of the weak areas before I was targeting.
First was the environment, I went through a few pictures of ruins and chinese forests and got down some values and shapes. Not so much for the form but the composition.
Second was the figure. I critiqued before that the shoulders, legs and torso had problems. So I sketched a few things from the anatomy for the artist on the spine, the forms from the character design website and tried to arrange it a bit like i draw the cars. placing lines for features but with the ninja pose.
I want the image later to read as ninja. hehe. And there's lots to ninjas than just the sword and outfit.

Drew another one of those odd 3rd person drawings in the library. It was observed that the lines curve as they go past the eye and seem more distorted the closer the eye is to the object. a bit like the camera lens in rhino3d.

Next is some car drawings and sketches in the park from observation.
The one of the bench. I tried to describe the colors I saw.
For the next I tried out some white charcoal pencil on black card. I was following the visualizing through darkness again. But also tried to use Bobby Chui's 'brain training' in imaginefx 36.

The bike had a bit more work done. For the front render I tried to observe some things from ferrari photos but also let some other things happen. Like the dust or smoke diffusing the front lights and the background of the clouds to add a bit more detail. Ive just including a small picture of the painted over ferrari photo, It should be okay as It's for learning and not for profit.

Lastly, just some Charles Bernard notes and some book cover thumbnails.


Metzeger, R and Walther, I F (2003). Vincent Van Gogh. Italy: Barnes and Noble, Taschen.

Chui,B and Acedera ,K (2010). Life Drawing. 2nd ed. New York: Imaginism Studios.

Moss,S (2008 ). Remarkable birds. New York: Harper Collins Publishers (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Remarkable-Birds-Stephen-Moss/dp/0007230257)

Gurney, J (2009). Imaginative Realism. Missouri: Andrews McMeel Publishing LLC.

http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/

[Black Spot]

I like the lighting on the bike. The bench isn't quite as successful. The optical illusion in the library is interesting.

[seagulls]

Thanks blackspot. Yeah The bench didn't turn out so well, I must lack the patience to spend a couple of hours adding all the shapes and adjusting tone.

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27th February- 1st March

Using one of Charles Bernard's drawing videos 'Learning to draw form, part 2' and also having a read from james gurney, I drew and painted some studies of form.
Oddly enough, I was looking at form the wrong way before. There is a point in the sphere where the cast shadow starts and reflected light enters that I missed before. Good grief. Must be somewhat blind considering how many renders I did without seeing this. I even checked to see I had all my fingers afterwards.
For the torch and sphere study, I used one of Bobby Chui's photoshop brushes to add some texture.
edit. Next update Sunday 7th, too many unfinished and quick scribbly drawings. Hate putting just those in.



http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2010/02/light-and-form-part-1_15.html

[miycko]

Loving the bike render, it really looks great :D dude the study of that flashlight is amazing :teeth: your rendering skills have greatly improved man, congrats :)

[Black Spot]

Yours balls are doing well, but the shadow under the torches could be a bit darker, otherwise they're well drawn.

[Mac Con]

The layout of your though process on the little ships is great I love viewing little doodles like that hope you every success to the future I think I’ll keep my eye on the progression of your work are you taking drawing classes at the moment did I read that you said that if so all the best

[seagulls]

@miycko
Thanks miycko. Still much to do with the bike though. I also don't understand how reflections work very well.

@Black Spot
Thank you. I'm surprised I missed that . Possibly it's the paper surface that needs to be lighter rather than the cast shadow.

@Mac Con
Thanks for stopping by Mac Con. Yes, I'm taking a couple of hours worth of classes a week, but oil painting at the moment. Other than that, very much on my own. Thanks again for the well wishes.

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2nd March - 7th March


Started the week with a trip to a beach, in search of some seagulls. Not too surprisingly there was quite a few small colonies there feeding on the seaweed. The week before when I fed them, a huge bunch gathered at the park and when in large numbers were prepared to fight each other with their sharp beaks to get scraps of some pizza shapes. This beach must be where the nicer (well less evil) seagulls are. :)
Anyway It was really windy so I took some photos to sketch and paint from rather than trying to do one on the spot.
The value of the sand in the foreground was adjusted heaps in the painting. I just couldn't get it right first time. I think what happens is if the wrong value is next to it, I get tricked.

The only other thing I think worth showing from the week is a little progress with the ninja.
I think before I said I would like the scene to be forest. Changed my mind.
Tress are looking really difficult to do the forms (from imagination) of at the moment, so I went for something a bit more familiar to the last lesson in the Chui videos-
A mountain scene.
So the story is the ninja just finished a mission and is resting. And there is lots of stuff going on in the sketches. Maybe enough to be much more than I could do at the moment.
Big things are the structure of the hills, the value pattern, and where the light is coming from. Rather than all those greebles.
A quick sketch was made of the costume from samurai, pictures, but ...too much detail. I'd be happy with it being black and suited to the temperature.
I'm not liking the value pattern and the edges of the value sketch at the moment.
Maybe a few studies of rocks may help.

Edit (16th) Next update sunday 21st.

[Mac Con]

A messy and expensive business oil colours can be, but also a lot of fun. Taking pictures is fine but try to keep yourself outside working no matter how cold it gets I live in Scotland so I know how you feel but my teacher when doing my HND public art always said it’s obvious that a photo has been used to someone that knows what they’re looking at

[Mac Con]

Hi thank you for the advice to my work is there any books you’re using to learn more about Photoshop I’m looking at digital character painting using Photoshop cs3 the art within it is all done by Don SEEGMILLER it’s a good buy because he takes an easy approach I love this book maybe you can suggest one to me

[seagulls]

@Mac Con
I do like going out for the purpose of doing some drawings from life. Sort of like 'if I draw stuff from life, from then on I see things like I would draw them'. That bit of observation helps. I heard somewhere 'drawing is seeing'.
I actually like the cold and wet weather, not too much in sydney... but it means there's less people to disturb me when i go see the seagulls or find somewhere that is quiet. What i mean be quiet is it's gotta be something constant.
The Don Seegmiller book could be really good. I would have a good look at reviews on amazon to help decide how useful it is. I usually have a peek before I read books.

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8th March - 21st March

Just a few sketches over the last 2 weeks. An hour or so a day... I let myself down with the accuracy of the earlier sketches. Actually drawing looks uncontrolled and uncertain in the first hour. Then things get going with a bit of rhythm and i get a bit absorbed, then when they start coming out quick I'm usually out of time! haha. I see the pattern now.
Hard to convince myself and other people that it may get somewhere. But incredibly hard to say 'I want to spend what may take years' on this, and push other things to the side.
However I think the last sketch of Ezio came out relatively well. I tried to apply a technique from life drawing a teacher showed me on monday. I used straight lines to 'construct' then add the curves later. Sort of like mapping things out.
I missed this before but It helps to not add any darks early on as it makes such a statement and tricks me into thinking parts are finished. Like 'visualising through darkness 'inverted'.
Thursday I went to see a Syd Mead documentary/interview at the theatre. For A lot of the things I reference at the bottom including the books of the other artists. I can get some of the story of the time and their challenges and have a look at some composition of the paintings.



Aquino,L Pomilo, M (2005). Leonardo Da Vinci. 2nd ed. New York: Rizzoli international publications.

[Black Spot]

Your landscapes are coming on great. I really like the beach scene.

[miycko]

the beach scene looks great dude :D very well painted & great values. For your painting of the ninja those rocks are going to be particularly hard to deal with, a good brush you can use in photoshop when you get to texturing is the watercolor loaded brush, with a few adjustments to the shape dynamics & scattering gives a really good-looking grainy touch to rocky surfaces & the like :)

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
Thankyou. :)

@miycko
Thanks miycko. Havent seen that brush in photoshop, but I'm sure I can make something similar thanks to the chui videos. I think the sketch needs to be a bit less 'hodge podge' before I start.. I keep staring at it going, 'what, when and how?'.


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22nd March - 29th March

Sketches over the past week I decided to leave out for the moment... but for today have decided to show a still life I spent somewhere around 10 hours on (I got a bit carried away).
I hehe... 'borrowed' the object , so I had to be careful not to break it. It looks a bit expensive.
Actually a 300mm lamp minus the top part with the bulb.
Last time I tried a cast, was of leda and the swan back on the first or second page. That didn't go so well. This time though, I believe the bigger shapes to smaller has helped with the accuracy, how did I miss that?. :)

Starting with a sketch on a drawing board on the lap, I was slowly sketching away till it got really fiddly. Next I scanned in and made the levels darker in photoshop and went from the smudge technique (last used first page and in the chui videos) to the round brush with low flow, to make something of a value painting. Other things were added later, like the sky and seagulls.
The cast was a bit more 'matte' or dry looking than I painted... like clay. Im not sure how to show that.

[Abrodos]

THose value studies look good, it's cool how you go from traditional to digital. Work a bit on anatomy Anyway, nice work overall!

[miycko]

Very nice work on that still life study dude :teeth: the value's & folds look great, and i like that paintover you did :) i'm glad you've made progress with the life drawing since you started the sketchbook man :teeth: keep up the great work :)

[Black Spot]

The seagulls scored a direct hit? The original looks good, you should do more of them.

[seagulls]

@Abrodos
Thanks for stopping by, I just think the figures and everything else that needs to be an image may not turn out very well, if I go into the details of anatomy just now.
The design, composition and values are things that have been fairly weak for everything I have done up till now...

@miycko
Thanks miycko. :)

@Black Spot
hahaha! Nah just needed something more but what. :)
More of those sculpture paintings coming up.

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30th March - 3rd April

Bunch of stuff from the last week. The life drawing sketches slowly went to bigger strokes. And a little experimenting with harmony and contrast further down.
Theres a few life paintings I abandoned, as I got a bit stuck... However these were before the painting of the angel from the last post. Maybe the subject wasn't interesting and I lost motivation.
With the angel though I let settle a bit and brought up some mistakes for this update.
I think the major one is the form of the angel is off key. So the range of values in it is too great and makes odd shadows and highlights. Loses a bit of the dry look as well.

Further down theres a copy of a Audi r8 photo. Edges are seeming a bit soft too me. Maybe the airbrush would be better than the round brush for the surfaces here... oh well surely its a step closer to the IDW, however small. I think forms and imaginative things need to look much better still.
I'm aware that the cars reflections can be very complicated in studios and thing like bounce card and multiple lights are used. Saw a little hint for the gallardo of how they may have arranged them. (lamborghini is a sub of audi currently)
Finally a painting using a sketch from a colouring in book on lautrec.


Noble, M (not specified). colour your own Toulouse Lautrec masterpieces. New York: Dover publications inc.. p11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lautrec_reine_de_joie_(poster)_1892.jpg

example of studio lighting by audi:
http://smh.drive.com.au/photogallery/lamborghini-gallardo-superleggera-lp-5704/20100302-pfmu.html

Duchting,H (2000). Seurat. Germany: Taschen.
interesting example of pointillism/stipple

should have read this much earlier-
Roducy,J Finboks,K(1993) The little Book of impressionists, CLB publishing ltd

I like this one :)
Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1881-2, Edouard Manet. Courtauld Institute, London (http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/fourpaintings/manet/large/manet.jpg)

[Black Spot]

Like the Lautrec. Not sure about the perspective on the cars this time; the rear and front look a bit too head on compared with the rest.

[miycko]

Very nice updates dude :D you're right about the edges for the Audi R8, they are quite soft, maybe try out some hard edged brushes, those really work well for metallic surfaces & the like :) cool sketches as well man :)

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
It doesnt seem to curve right. looks flat.

@miycko
Seems really slow using normal brushes for the big gradients like with the chui training. I actually started off with the hard brushes to get the values quickly then it went a bit slow trying to blend all the panels on the car.
The solution must be to seperate the panels into more layers and use the pen tool.
I had a look at Tim Rugendykes psd of some of the cars he works on, and theres about 80 layers for all the panels and parts. But quite a different way of working: Its like the sketch is much more critical at the very start as it is difficult to change or sculpt the car.
Apologies for my poor vocabulary.

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4th April - 18th april

For the past two weeks mostly graphite sketches.
Theres an abstract sort of painting halfway down. Mostly just an experiment with shapes, that went messy. Im not too sure how to solve.

And at the end theres a graphite drawing of a sculpture. About half a day was spent on this. I had to go right to the edges of the A4 page so it wouldnt get to grainy and lose definition like with the angel drawing.
Another thing I noticed is that I cant make too many construction lines or they look similar and confusing.
Its quite labourous slowly adding darker tones. The accuracy came out fairly close but tone was adjusted very often. One thing though, it is way more critical to have the front of the face right than all the other details. I realise that people may not see the care or accuracy taken with the hair more than the face.



Would have been great to have started with this book months ago
Janson,H,W and Cauman, S (1973). Art History for Young People. 2nd ed. Great britain: Thames and Hudson.

[Ivan Turcin]

You are on the right path, and seems to be very secure when it comes to design and visualization. To go one step further I would suggest you to put more effort into anatomy. It's worth it. You have a great potential.
Keep posting, cheers!

[miycko]

great updates dude :D dig the graphite sketches & the study of the statue came out really great. back to the car, i'm one person who usually feels lazy about changing brushes so i have two of my favorite hard & soft brushes right at the end of the set for easy access. & about the Tim Rugendykes psd's, you have to be really organized to be able to work with up to eighty layers in one image :) your faces have really improved man & i like the spaceman & still life setup :D

[Black Spot]

I think from now on you're not allowed to eat until you've done a decent self portrait every day, not that I think those are bad, but actually quite good and why I'd like to see more.

Like the bust, you're really pushing yourself.

[seagulls]

@Ivan Turcin
Thanks Ivan. Yeah I dont really want to do anatomy just yet.

@miycko
Lots of layers, seems to go all the way from a pencil sketch through windows, rims and reflections, right up to little details like cutlines and highlights.
Compare that to the scott robertson book and it goes to about 30. I think it makes changes easier. I have done the ferrari enzo on about 50 layers... but that was in micex and tooks months. Knowledge of reflections holds that one back at the moment.

@Black Spot
haha! I cant imagine them looking too decent when I'm hungry! May take you up on that...although best not to (Update. Tried my best... but it looked too frustrated and tense to show. Not happy with it)

If you refer to the pictures at the bottom there. Those are some copies of Hamish Blake from the 2dayfm website (credit to Jez for the pictures). Such a funny guy. Theres a real mix of pictures of his expressions. Check out the Fred basset gallery hehe.
http://www.2dayfm.com.au/shows/hamishandandy/photos

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19th April - 27th april

I was being a little bit sneaky at work and ninja sketched one of my work friends slowly during the week. hehe. A little difficult when the subject moves and talks. So... I started with the triangle of where the eyes and mouth are and worked some geometry from that. Tried to switch sides of the face as I drew to check some things.
His face isnt quite so long though so best not to show him yet.
Other times at work I will just do an a4 page of ellipses and swirls.

The tonal value painting of the boat was interesting. One of those things That happens when I was buying the imaginefx and corel painter magazines is I seem to get baffled and overwhelmed.
Actually the tutorial I followed for the boat painting was surprisingly straight forward. But I messed it up a bit. It was meant to be watercolors but something happened with the layers in painter and I went to conte crayon.

lastly a robot painting. Maybe a bit too gritty. but I seem happy with the values and composition. Just something wrong I'm not sure of. The robot painting from the middle of january compared to this one has more subtle parts and tones . but the geometry here is a fraction better to me.
Construction of the robot started with really basic tones. I was like 'hmm that looks like a shoulder' 'that cylinder could be a fan'. Started to add more cubes and rectangles making some angles and shapes. Something of a skeleton started to form out of the line work.
And then maybe It would have been best to take the sketch then into photoshop rather than later as I had lots of trouble pushing darks into the paper and shading... like with the bust last post. Meant to be more like the thumbnail.
I went HB, 2B then 6B. Maybe carbon pencil would help.


drawing and sketching tools and techniques (http://drawsketch.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&zTi=1&sdn=drawsketch&cdn=hobbies&tm=14&gps=474_306_1364_713&f=11&tt=14&bt=0&bts=0&st=23&zu=http%3A//www.jdhillberry.com/how_to_draw_pg2.htm)

Sutton, B. 2008. Tonal Value painting. In: Madden, A and Cole J. Corel painter magazine 22. London: Image publishing. 58-63.

[ilmenhin]

I'm in awe of your technical drawings. :) Nice work, and great eye for compositions.

[Black Spot]

Its hard trying to draw anyone who's not actually posing. One tip I read is to start multiple ones and work on the one that fits best at any moment. I like the imaginative piece, but is that lens flare I see? Naughty!

[miycko]

nice one being sneaky & painting your workmate like that :wink: the boat painting is looking cool, i like the colors you chose but the clouds could be a little more defined though. The robot painting is a great idea but I can barely make out the robot in it, it'll probably make more sense as you keep working on it & detail it some more :D

[seagulls]

@ilmenhin
Thankyou!

@Black Spot
Even harder if they dont know hehe. Thats where the ninja training pays off! Actually, hes ok with it. I explained its not the same as a photo. And for now it misses the likeness to be too incriminating.
ssh dont tell anyone about the lens flare. :)

@miycko
The secret is to not look like your doing what your doing when drawing them. :)
The boat painting became a mess. I got baffled by the sails so I stopped there before adding more detail.
The robot must be clearer to myself after looking at it for all that time. only because I know what's there at the start...

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28th April - 7th May

Theres a fair bit of other things needing more polish to show later, but just for now I'm posting a new version of an old image.
The subject is Alecia Beth Moore ( stage name 'pink') (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_(singer)). Being an older image surprisingly I still have lots of reference pictures. So much effort to pick up this one again.

But what still is rather difficult, is I accidently changed the angle of the head so she tilts forward originally. So I still need to use perspective, form and the odd lighting to work again.
Also, comparing then to now, I was pressing rather hard with the brushes so the values changed too quick to have control back then.
I think the composition works a little better . Seems to have more harmony. It just lacks a lot of likeness to 'pink'... As was the purpose of choosing a celebrity then.
And the lighting is still difficult to work with.

[ilmenhin]

I keep forgetting you're in Australia, until I see the sketches of Hamish. XD

Nice vibrant colours in that latest CG- good rendering on the microphone, top, and nice work on her hair- plus I like the sketches that led up to the final piece but she looks off. I think her neck may be too long / her shoulders too low.

[maeshanne]

those car drawings are awesome

[Black Spot]

I like the original version as well. The inside corner of the eye should line up with the outside of the nostril. Practice your ninja skills and have a good look at different people.

[seagulls]

@ilmenhin
I'm not sure what it is either. But something around the shoulders/face/hand area- hehe, could really be everything. Had a look at a few pictures just now and her neck really is much shorter. Shes actually fairly er 'brawny'. so there seems to be some muscle missing as well.
Thanks for stopping by again. :)

@maeshanne
Thanks mate. :)

@Black Spot
yes your correct. I was mistakenly measuring about 1 eye width across from the inside corner of the eyes, instead of from that tear duct thing. ...so they're a little too far apart eh.
Actually in class this week I saw the spaces of the face again.


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8th May - 15th- May

Some observational drawing from the parks. A still life abandoned... must be a boring subject.
A ninja sketch of the dinner table. gotta be quick. hehe.
Then some car and motorbike sketches .
The camaro at the bottom was made with masks from micex. Painted with an airbrush for the larger panels and a hard brush for details. It's slightly faster at the moment to use micex than the pen tool for masking.
I really didn't expect to get the camaro (from observation) this far as first thought was I couldn't do it. There was a really angry sketch at the start that took two hours that made it seem impossible.


http://www.fast-autos.net/vehicles/Chevrolet/2006/Camaro_Concept/
http://www.fast-autos.net/vehicles/Chevrolet/2006/Camaro_Concept/1.html - Original image

still reading history of art for young people but had a look at these,
Wynne, C (2004). Hokusai. London, Munich, New york: Prestel publishing.
Bouquillard, J (2007). Hokusai's Mount Fuji. New York: Abrams.

[Black Spot]

Angry or not, there are still some perspective issues with it (look at that front wheel) while your sketches are delightful.

[miycko]

awesome updates dude :D really love those bikes & car designs :teeth: the parks from observation look great & the third person imaginatives are looking great :D The camaro turned out awesome dude, it's a big improvement since the last car you rendered :) keep them coming dude, i'm really enjoying seeing your work progress :)

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
Thanks Black Spot :)
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/1175/camarocorrections.th.jpg (http://img138.imageshack.us/i/camarocorrections.jpg/)
I would say the spaces have more issues than the perspective. But are you referring to the camber angle ,the geometry of the wheel or the shapes?

@miycko
Thanks miycko. :)

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16th May - 29th May

Some life drawing with the values first then the detail. Its been a very long time since I used ink last but seemed to go smoothly. Its on A2... so I butchered the paper to scan them in. Im not sure why it is necessary to draw on large pieces of paper.

An oil painting next. The oil paintings so far are actually copies from photography magazines printed out on a4 laminate. The hues are very stong and not much white or black has been needed. The idea is not to worry too much about the accuracy but try and learn the technique and get the color close.
For this one I have had a bit of trouble trying to adjust the colors from the photo ,so what you see here is what I saw... but something's still not right. The violet and red are not quite the same.
Some sketches from the park, car sketches, A skateboard still life (actually fun to draw instead of that bottle and driver last post.) Then into some more still lifes.
Second one is a gargoyle in class and As promised last page , I did another painting of a sculpture.
This one is of 'venus' compared to before, which was 'eros'. I did less shading in pencil to try and avoid that grainy feel. And spread the same time over a week out so I got a fresh look more often. Theres more of these waiting do be drawn in future. Gradually more complex.

The marble sculptures are not very expensive, you can find them on ebay or hunt through antique shops. theres a large collection in class to borrow from as well.

[Black Spot]

Your pencil stuff is coming on a treat - love the Venus.

With the oil, you need cooler shades for the shadows as everything is so warm to add real depth to it. When it's dry you could try a thin glaze in those areas with a dark blue - you can always remove it if it's not right.

[seagulls]

@Black Spot
Thanks for the comment.
There actually was some bits of blue reflecting off the bowl and a small amount of violet 'ghosting' in the original image. That may have been the warm cool balance, however I was instructed not to put those in when I asked.

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30th May - 7th June

For the panel collage this update, but not quite in the order done- Random sketches of cars, a self portrait I didn't really want to post last month and also a imaginative painting of a city.
With the pencil sketches, I'm trying to avoid adjusting the levels or curves in photoshop. A few reasons for this -
1. It merges some of the tones together, subtle differences dissapear. Checked the levels graph in photoshop afterwards and there are seperations.
2. A biggie... I find it difficult to check if the drawing is correct by comparing the tones on the paper to what I see ...If I think ahead that I'm going to adjust it later away from the subject, I would walk away only to be unsure at the computer. I'm very sure this reason was pushed aside when making the value scales previously. Must have thought it was to learn pencil pressure. :[
3. The drawings look more dirty when darkened. This can be okay if it's just lines, or cartoon drawing but with tonal drawings does not help.
4. I think It's bit bit of 'fear' happening when I dont want to push into the paper too hard. Brain goes 'be careful and dont stuff this one up'.
Stupid brain.

At the bottom of the panel this update, I found a interesting subject. Aircraft.
I tried to combine the sketches into a study for a complementary color painting (very bottom) on a carrier.
The aircraft studies are based on google images.
Interesting thing to note, is that reference photos of aircraft have some distortion that actually exists in life. But to put these into the drawings requires a lot of work, when the eye actually is good at correcting this. I've see this appear with photography of architecture, real estate and sometimes interiors of cars and planes: With the effect of lines curving as they go past the eye (mentioned earlier in the library sketches).

At this stage I think there's some issues with the composition. The aircraft should'nt quite be sitting on the horizon line. The guy on the left doesnt quite seem to fit, but I'm not sure if it's because of where he faces or if the face takes too much attention. Or maybe the very corner is probably not the best place for him.
Either way, It needs major changes to fix these.

Whyte A,C , Cooper C and A (2001). How to draw aircraft like a pro. Minnesota, USA: MBI. pages 98-101,106,115
page 57 for the distortion effect and using photos .
Ps. I know I'm repeating things, but attempting to get it locked in memory or resolved...writing it for myself

[miycko]

Very nice oil painting, i like your color use & the subtle shadows though the edges of the bowl & those of the tomatoes could be a little more defined. The painting of the sculpture is really great :D very nice work on those values, though i think her head's looking a little small. That transforming jet kinda looks like a shark, which is really cool :D Dividing the jet into individual pieces then joining them together in a humanoid form should make it a little easier to do pieces such as that :)

[JakehC]

you sb is very attractive, great work.

[Black Spot]

That city looks interesting. Any chance of working more on it? I like the aircraft; they're looking pretty good. The guy bottom left - at first I thought it was an aircraft landing on a ship's platform and spent a while trying to figure it out before the penny dropped. Should have read (and taken it in) all what you wrote and not be in such a hurry to scroll down to the pictures like a kid on Christmas day.

[seagulls]

@miycko
Thanks mate :)
The tomatoes, actually missed lots of the darks there. In a bit of a hurry to move on. hehe.
ah yes the head is a fraction small.
I was thinking of some sort of bird mech from recycled jets. the head shaped like a crested cockatoo. :)

@lolbbq
Thanks :)

@Black Spot
...I got bored with the city painting. :shrug:
yes, but you helped by telling me the picture isnt clear and could be mistaken for something else. :)

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8th June - 18th June

I realize it's getting a bit too long between updates. Its not video games to blame, though I must admit I have played a fair few since I last reported uninstalling them. It's still really hard to give them up.
I try to stay focused on the long term. The video games give temporary happiness.
It's browsing the internet that takes the largest chunks of spare time away now. haha.

For this update I put the sketches together in the panel late and dont really think much of it. But then I go...' Its not quite right', and I feel the sketches dont seem to fit together.
Bigger picture is maybe Its gotten a bit off track from the industrial design and bird goal too much. And in many cases I've pushed the 3d modelling skill to the side, As it feels like cheating but I cant give the impression or suggestion of everything with 3d modelling alone.
I know it's meant to be 50/50 observational/ imaginative, I'm just not sure what it is it needs right now.

Just industrial design sketches for this update.
The sketches are based from a book called Sketching, drawing techniques for product designers. I did a few but tried to derive some from the same examples as well in the technique.
I haven't been formally taught by a product designer during study for the marker drawings so this is really weird seeing this large chunk of familiar yet missing tuition in this book.
The cup halfway down is from imagination.
The still life I had a little trouble with trying to get some texture into the mp3 sock, but also playing with the brush handles is really tricky. Not quite finished.

Eissen. K , Steur. R (2010). sketching , drawing techniques for product designers. 8th ed. Amsterdam: Bis publishers.
pages 10-13, 17-19, distortion on 30, 57.