They see my moleskine, they hatin', crittin', an' tryna' catch me sketchin' dirty

[sjuskadur]

Great pictures mate! love your style! and your lines are confident and it all looks just really nice!

looking forward for more!

[Justice Von Brandt]

Love the bear, very stylistic and cute

[Mon Chat]

My entry into the now ex CHOW warrior woman heroine thing...

[AsaB]

Ooh, I really her design! Nice pose and costume, so far anyway. Since the whole deal sort of got blown off, I say you try to finish her, no rush

But first you do our SSB challenge Check out the new topic!

[jedininjaman]

Awsome texturing on that, but some facial anatomy things: there is too much space between the bottom of the nose and the chin, also the corners of her mouth go too far into the face
The pose seem a little stiff as well You need to rework the legs for better balance, but the concept is nice, there is a lot of character in it.
keep it up and stop by sometime
-jedininja

[Rist]

I like how you scribble out your forms before even starting your line work. I do a similar techniques myself.

[ohnojenny]

Lovely sketchbook! Let me just tell you that I love your shading -- all of your different styles of them. I love crosshatching above all, but your way of smoother pencil shading really has caught my eye... it doesn't look smudgy or smeary to me at all. And I can differentiate from different textures!

AND -- your ink work is fantastic. :3 I'm watching you...

[Mon Chat]

Mokay, i made some minor changes and kept at it

[aefx]

Hey Jim, great updates!

My only comment is that all posted people are habitually thin to the point of looking slightly unnatural. If you have time do some drawings and work to get a sense of volume in the characters. An easy way to do this is to work on characters who might like a bacon sarnie or ten.... mmm bacon sarnies....

But yeah, even thin generally have a bit of mass to them... especially in the stomach area as the abdominal wall tends to push out more progressively as you get older unless you got a six pack or something... which most people don't.

[AsaB]

Nice progress on the adventure lady! The facial changes are for the better, definitely. I do agree, however, that she seems to be quite young, doesn't the criteria ask for a slightly older woman? But oh well, still lovely work! The shading is looking good.

Are you going to do more work on the hair? Because I think it might use some. Currently it seems a little undefined and all over the place. Hair moves in sections. You could make that more evident by pushing its values more, some nice highlights and such

Her posture could be stronger too, her feet seem a tad stiff. She's an agile lady, I'm sure she could be a little more flexable She seems as if she's just noticed something, most likely dangerous, so it wouldn't be unnatural if her feet were in a more prepared or run-for-it position!

But this is looking plenty good! Looking forward to the final production

[AsaB]

Cheers for the comment, im a tad stuck on the legs at the moment, im really happy with the left one (her left) but the right one... if it were bent she would fall over, but i just cant figure it out :/

I see your dilemma. Well, honestly, my biggest anatomy problem is legs, so I'm afraid I don't dare to confuse you with any potentially confusing paintovers. But I suggest you try to define them better, give them more curves. Then it might be easier to read their form and she becomes more stable. Currently she looks awfully thin, those legs don't have much meat on the bones. Give her some juice, see if it won't get a little better

[Renegade89]

Hey Jim.

I like the design of the girl, one thing i notice though is the pose looking rather stiff, you can push the curves of the body some more imo.

See ya

[Mat Kaminski]

Oh man! I envy that picture of yours lol... Hopefully with the practice I've been doing I'll start to get to that quality very soon.
I can't wait to see the finished version.

[SanXavier]

Really great ideas and sketches!

[purb36]

the chow:

who's the girl, what's her story? here she looks very tall and majestic. if she's a small, agile character, show it in her pose. make her crouched, or hunched with less straight lines in her body. ill sketch up something to show you what i mean. also, her hand holding the arrow needs to be palm up, not palm down like it is. i love the shading, so kudos to that. keep working hard man, you can do it. take care!

[~Faust~]

You crank me up, dude, you're the stallion in our group! Studying your shit as we speak.

[Mon Chat]

Waheyyy thanks guys, especially purb36 that comment about the hand... makes me feel stupid haha, anyway i threw in the towel on that chow, so i'll keep working on her, but slower.

anyway, i would like to give you all an update on my work.

i've taken to using a h pencil to do my rough lines and then a mix for my rendering, so if an image appears less contrasty that means its a rough sketch... (excuses excuses)

anyway, the update proper.

ps: Faust if im the stallion in the group and your gandalf does that make me arod? (obscure lord of the rings comments FTW)

[marc_redd]

Wow! I really dig this! The sketches are great!

[ohnojenny]

I really like the coloring job on this one:

How'd you do that? Fantastic strokes... did you just dab?
Critiques? I don't know... your profiles are marvelously done. I think the eyes on the mug shots are sometimes placed too low, though, or off just slightly. Not a huge thing... or nothing at all. :3

Keep it up!

[Badger]

Heyloo mister J.Boswel.

Nice works, pencils mostly i see. A few things i found useful you may also is, look at some reference from normal camera shots of people and how lighting works, you are rendering everything at the same values and surface, many materials, like denin can be pretty dark with very little values shift either way compared to things like leather and plastics.

As for gouche, i find it easiest to paint most of the area and work out from the mid tones. But really its the same as all painting, it was either matisse or van gogh who said 'a painter starts with a broom and finishes with a horse hair' it's all a bit like that.

Um.. I'm not sure how much of that was readable.

Nice pencils! Keep up the scribbling.
-B-

[malpanka]

you're too good to be true. i'm subscribing. maybe too much stylization and distortion here and there but the overall impression is just great

[Bones Weep Tedium]

Good advice, Badger. I'm not suer how much of it was readable, though it did look good.

Boswell, if I were you I would buy a second pencil, one with a softer lead. You have lots of delicate exploratory construction lines that you use to good effect to help build up the form of what you're drawin, but then you struggle to bring the drawin out from it.

If you use a hard pencil for the construction and then switch to a softer, darker pencil to start picking out details I think that your drawings would improve.

[~Faust~]

Great pencils, keep on wiggling! I really dig your fonts!

[AsaB]

You sure are productive, man! Watch it or your sketch book will catch on fire with that speed! ;p

The loose feel in your strokes are always improving. Did you ever finish the adventure lady? I'd love to see it

[Renegade89]

Sup Jim .

You seem to have the habit of working the upper body and leaving the rest rough, come on, finish some of those! Goes for the witch doctor.

Oh and cheers for turning 18, enjoy your booze, just remember to keep your pants up after the last round, your trialed as an adult now ;P

[purb36]

jb, what's up?

i see you're keepin on keepin on. good. one thing that's really helped me with anatomy is to try out the poses you draw, and see how they feel to you. if they feel unnatural, 95 percent of the time they should be drawn differently. maybe try this: do a gesture of a pose, then try the pose, then make another sketch using the pose that you were able to do and felt most natural (i.e. most likely for a human to be able to do). for example, the post on the left in the second picture...try it. not so intimidating, huh? and the guy above the witch doctor, with the sword. try holding something (a ruler, perhaps) in your hand like that. does that feel natural? as for who to study, i recommend bridgman first, and giovanni civardi as well. i think they do the best job of EXPLAINING how the body works. yeah, its very cerebral, but they go into very good detail about how bones look and function, how the muscles insert and what they do (and how their function is directly related to what they look like), balance, differences between males and females, etc. really helpful stuff, at least for me. anyway, here's some gestures of that archer girl you had been working on for the chow. hope they help. aight; see you around here, and keep working hard.

[Shantih]

Great updates And I'm in Aylesbury, only about 10 minutes from the bus station, so I really have no right to be moaning about the time we have to go

[PlasmaErnst]

hi james,
has been a while (sorry )
The last one looks really promising...finish some of these

[Xaya]

Hey Jim, some nice sketches you offer us.
I like the rendering of the ex-chow drawing, although the gesture could be better. I would really suggest you to work with references, take a photo of a full body shot and use the information to accurate realism and to see what is really important and finally what distinguish your imaginary work from a real thing.
You could also do some 1:1 copies, keep focus on an emotional input to breath some more life into your characters.

Keep going!

Xaya

[angel2342]

I love your sketches; full of detail, amazing concepts, and slightly amusing.

I would, however, like to know how you got the red splatter. I often times work with 2 tone ink drawings and I like to incorporate ink splatters with black and brown india ink, but I've never seen red india ink. Is that what you used, or did you use something else?