(mostly) subway sketches

[pearblossom]

hi everyone,

this is my first post here and i hope it helps motivate me to make (and post) more stuff. critique and feedback most welcome!! thanks in advance..

[pearblossom]

here is a color study--about 3 1/2 hours. The first one is just blocking in the color, but i thought it looked kinda nice, and 2nd is rendered. (could still use some work tho..)

[pearblossom]

char. design.. will color this soon.

[Fishspawn]

Good start you've got going here! I think you started with too saturated colors but they look okay in the rendered version (although the background is a little distracting... i kind of like it anyway) Really like that robot! Keep posting.

[Buckster]

interesting. it kind of reminds meof the old kind of comics books that were published here in Sweden. I agree with fishspawn that the bg is distracting but it seems that you are off to a good start here. Keep a it

[pearblossom]

thanks fishspawn & buckster! will def'ly try to post more from now on. this is another subway sketch.. i feel like a lot of time my drawings of people are so unexpressive, it's sthing i want to work on..

[pearblossom]

more sketch.

[tsuchikie]

Love the first sketch from the latest batch. Too bad I'm not qualified to also come up with a reason
People on subways tend to put on dull expressions, so lack of those probably isn't your fault...

[pearblossom]

mutant turtle.. not ninja or teenage. thoughts? anyone??

[Blythe]

I like the turtle alot! He's going to get more shading and texture right? I want to see that.

I like your subway drawings tons. Nice stuff!

[pearblossom]

thanks! here is color version..

[Wilko]

Nice studies! I absolutely love drawing on the subway (or the tube as we call it in London!) it's a really great place to draw. To offer some crit I would say that the turtle feels a little pasted on to the last image, i.e. he doesn't seem to be on the same perspective plane as the background or the girl. Getting perspective right is something I find quite difficult also and takes practice.

[Nele Klumpe]

Yay, subway sketches!
I like your lines a lot, and your style looks pretty cool. You cought their personalities very well. (Although I cannot tell, as I didn't sit beside you ;D )
One suggestion: Sometimes you might want draw what you actually see, not what you think you see in the subway. For practice. To develop your own style, the ones you got are great.

[pearblossom]

hi!

here are some more character designs, same characters. i think we're going for 'children's' here, and i'm a little worried this guy is too creepy for that, but i like it better than the other .. thanks wilko and avisNocturna for your comments! i agree the turtle feels pasted on. perpective is definitely sthing i need to work more on

[AmontilladoAg]

I especially like this last post Show us more!

[pearblossom]

so here it is w/some color..

[pearblossom]

and the other one w/some color.. still pretty new to using color w/things.. ;P

[pearblossom]

some more things w/photoshop in color. one more concept for turtle, plus some character designs for a different story. not sure how i feel about them, but i sweated over them some..

[pearblossom]

foray into perspective grids. noone ever taught me about those before, and it seems like such a basic fundamental thing. better late than never i guess.. would love any crits on whether the persp. feels right to you or not. cheers!

[pearblossom]

so here are some more in color. Working w/the color is challenging but fun!

[pearblossom]

here are some more character designs, for different story. c & c welcome as always..

[pearblossom]

Hi CA folks!

been a long time, but happy to be posting more. it's incredible how many good people are on this site.. here's the first few panels of a comic i've been working on for awhile now. would appreciate any comments, especially on the coloring side of things..

[jcpahl]

I love the subway sketches; it's hard to overestimate how difficult that shit is to do, but you're pulling it off well. Want more of those!

[JinzouTamashii]

Watching you, I think you have a lot I can stand to learn from.

The hardest thing I have trouble doing is exaggerating. I'm not a slave to my reference, but is the only way to find your own style just to imitate what you like... ??

That little girl like Lilo is absolutely enchanting.

[pearblossom]

aiight, been awhile, as always ;p thanks for your nice comments jcpahl and JinzouTamashii! In answer to yr question, if you ever read this.. i used to wonder that too, and my current thought is, i think that i'm in the process of finding my style, and i think that it's something people just get to by drawing over and over again. seeing all the great threads here, no two people ever seem to do things exactly alike, even if you wanted to be exactly like someone else it would be hard to.. i mean, i wish i could be Jamie Hewlett, but i don't really seem to draw like him..

anyways, here's a comics submission i just did.. didn't design the character (i don't know who did, so can't give cred. at the moment), but i did retool her a bit. i started inking in photoshop, and i still don't understand how people get nice smooth lines, but i think i'm getting a better hang of it..

[pearblossom]

back! I'm sure you have missed me.

here are some floating islands for a potential comic. lots of fun to do, floating islands..

[pearblossom]

some more of the design art for this project. finding it hard to get my color palette without having the easy real-world reference..

[Travis Smith]

The improvement since the first page is inspiring. Great line quality on the robot drawing. I'm surprised you said that you hadn't been taught perspective prior to those environment/room drawings as your subway sketches felt like they were sitting in the space quite nicely. Some of the sketches have remind me of Rockwell in terms of the character you are capturing.

A few suggestions,
1. Your environments are very nice, accurate in perspective with all objects in the right proportion. That being said your lighting could use more attention even if you arn't interested in photo realism.
Daisuke Tsutsumi colour script paintings have a realistic quality even if they are still stylized.
http://www.simplestroke.com/wp/?page_id=139
I'm in the process of learning more about light and colour but it's been a helpful dvd. It has some great advice for colour temperature which really helped me more accurately analyze colours I'm seeing. A number of my friends who watched the dvd had the same experience with their own work.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/sto...ight-and-Color

2. You draw faces solidly from a variety of angles, something I'd like to improve at. What I might suggest is that if you delved a little more deeply into the bone, muscle, fleshy fold anatomy of faces it's going to give you more 'ammo' for describing overlap. Right now some of the faces drawn in profile don't have the same quality of depth/overlap that your drawings from three quarters or front have. There are some very subtle overlaps of the eyelids, browridge, and the cheekbones that would definitely help.

[pearblossom]

Thanks Travis! I really like Daisuke Tsutumi's work and I will definitely check out his site in detail. Gnomon DVD is pricey, but cheaper than taking a class--and having really no formal training in this it would probably help a lot. I definitely feel like I need work in lighting and it's good to have a few places to get started.

[pearblossom]

Here are some recent anatomy/figure studies and sketches. Mostly ref from the web, and one page of subway sketches since I got a little subway-commuting in over the past few mos.. um- contains nudity, i'm not sure if i should warn on the title page somehow..?