SouMeng's Sketchbook

[Gadbury]

The work on these last pages is amazing - The use of texture is fantastic - and thanks for sharing your brushes, I'm looking forward to trying them out.

[Velocity Kendall]

okies, see how this rides..
likin the blobby 80s sci fi vibe

ive always rather liked these; jeans tshirt no helmet style. in GTAIV anyway..
http://blog.mvryan.org/images/2009-D...ster1100Sd.jpg

[SoufMeng]

Gadbury: Glad you like the stuff here. I create/improve/delete brushes every 3 days or so, so that brushet is already a little old but oh well... Everyone knows that in a way it's all about the brushes and that in a way it's not.

VK: Lol at the green + the short fringe, no way! Thanks for the PO's anyway, in the final I'll be having your username somewhere on the bike for sure haha.
Good call on the grain but that thing is dangerous, for one thing you can forget about the eyedropper because of the colour noise. But my painting does need some dirt, I render too sleek... And the backgrounds need some life too; some clothes drying between the houses, people walking the streets, etc


BTW, here's the rock from last page, finished, for now.

[Velocity Kendall]

ah yeah the grain, its a dirty trick
heres the noise free version, have fun!

[twell]

You've got some unusual atmosphere in your paintings, rock on!

[Andrew Sonea]

Huge fan of yours SoufMeng, I am in love with your colours, values and compositions (hell, everything!).

Seeing as we are all painting over and using dirty tricks like grain (and you said you want it a bit more textured) here is a quick little trick I saw the great Whit Brachna use in a number of speedpaints and I think Brad Rigney uses it as well.

All you do is Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. It is kind of stupidly named since it sharpens it, but it a great trick to use at the very end for a bit more punch to the image and to bring out the texture just a tiny bit more. You can play with the amounts, but I find the settings of the Amount at roughly 110-120% and the Radius at maybe 0.7-1.0 pixels to be good.

Try it out on an image or two with different amounts that it sharpens and maybe you can see a bit better than the example I have here (which hopefully you can tell has the sharpened version on the bottom).

[insane lemur]

awesome! i'm looking hard at your landscapes man, such a nice combo of spacial/light/material cred but at the same time such a nice painterly surface

[lemming-clone-]

Your landscapes are really great. Immersive and engaging.

I really wish I had something constructive to say.

Keep up the progress, though!

[gj3kobe8]

good.my friend

[gj3kobe8]

my friend .very nice

[NonSequitur]

Some of your landscapes blow my mind. Awesome work

[RyanRyan]

I'm in ur sketchbook biting ur techniques

[Aonegamer]

Hi SoufMeng,
Your art is superb, love each one of your art work.

1st painting: I need your help, can you advice how do you project designs on a surface.
manually drawing those can be panic and technique ?
2nd painting: How do you make each leaf so detailed, is it a brush or each leaf is to be stroked ?

Other than that great work, I would be keep visiting.

[Fishbed]

landscapes are so sweet!

[SoufMeng]

Hi!

Thanks everyone for the comments!

Andrew Sonea: Thanks for the nice words. Yeah I'm familiar with the 'unsharp mask' and I actually use it now and again. But, like I said to Velocity a couple of posts before, those 'tricks' should be used with a lot of caution and I think that filters are the last kind of things the bike piece needs right now anyway.
Nice studies in your thread, keep up the good work!

Aonegamer: No secrets, you take some pattern/grid/what-have-you and overlay it where you want it and then make it fit in the perspective of the scene via Edit>Transform>Perspective. As far as the second painting, yeah the grass is painted, perhaps with a little custom brushing thrown in here and there.


A pencil drawing of an autumn branch I picked up outside and a digi copy of Romain Duris' character in a French film called "Dans Paris".

[SoufMeng]

Hello everyone, long time no posts!

Here's a new quickie I made for a friend after a photo of her kitty.
I fell for the smudge tool again and I think I will make room for it as a sizeable part of my process from now on.

[PieMonster]

You always take so long between updates, but you don't disappoint, awesome stuff in here! Thanks for sharing.

[aks9]

some of your paintings are beautiful, really inspiring. can't offer much in terms of crits

[SoufMeng]

Hey all,

PieMonster and Aks9: Thanks!

I made a thread for a finished image of mine, if you want to check it out > http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=233907

here and now, 3 paintings from imagination for practice or/and exploration (which are often the same thing).

[LastGen]

Oh yeah, I like the portrait - looks very old-fashioned, which is super cool!

[insane lemur]

love the smudge kitty! i think a great way to use smudge if you don't want it to get too color blended/out of control is paint a single color (or a couple) on a layer then smudge it to shape, merge down, rinse, repeat.

[SoufMeng]

Lemur and LastGen: Thanks!

I guess I should try and post sketches more often rather than finished stuff now and again



If you guys feel like checking it out, I updated my portfolio and made a thread in FF for the Tarot Cards I illustrated in 2011. The links are in my signature.

Please feel free to post your opinions! : )

[SoufMeng]

The minotaur is after George Frederic Watts, the portrait from a film called Blue Valentine and the tiger is after a pic from the web.

[SoufMeng]

Hi all,

wish I'd update more often but hey...

Here's a pencil copy after G. F. Watts' sculpture Physical Energy.

[SoufMeng]

Photo study from an old blogpost of James Gurney's.


Lines for a personal painting I really wish I had more time to work out right now but tryin'.


and some sketchy stuffz








Comments welcome, thanks!

[Velocity Kendall]

your clouds are something else man

[RaphaelLuebke]

cool!

[Bakker]

nice oils

[SoufMeng]

No oils, it's all digital mate