Xelby's sketchbook - hit and crit and ill be smit

[xelby]

Hi all. Yip you guessed it right, another noob to the whole art thing looking for some general pointers or what not to help me progress as an artist.

Only have the one digital painting the now as complete beginner but ill load up some of my pencil sketches when my scanner stops being a useless piece of junk.

[edit: put up a better image than the banana for my front cover]

[xelby]

actually found 2 drawings from pre scanner broken days so posting them up.

[xelby]

Had a wee bit of difficulty in getting the lines to go the right way. Still think their a bit squint though.

This took just under 2 hours

[xelby]

howdy internetland.

Few lips references for practise.

First few pages of Loomis (man are legs hard to draw!)

And the final image is from a graphic novel called The Originals. I just took the characters and added my own backround and this is my attempt to colour it in. Its still a WIP mind you but Im getting really frustrated with it as my Photoshop skills are worse than my pencil skills.

Any advice (specially on colouring in Photoshop would be majick.

And lastly, why are graphics tablets such a pain in the ass to draw lines in!?!? I dunno if its my tablet (DigiPro WP5540) but drawing a line in it is like drawing with my opposite arm, on a shaky high up bridge, in a tornado.

Cheers for looking!

[xelby]

Not been on here for a while. Wish I had another reason other than procrastination but I dont. Will try and update more often.

Anyways, here's some more Loomis and a life drawing.

[badass]

hey there. great start to a sketchbook.

when your drawing your figures, you should be starting with a very light, almost invisible sketch consisting of the basic shapes that make up the body. the best way to think about (i have found) is to draw a mannequin or toy-like version of the body, where each leg is just two cylinders and the feet are little boxes ect. in fact, its great practice to just draw pages of these dummy/simplified human forms jsut to get proportion right.

with all drawings, proportion comes first in importance. if the legs are too long the whole thing looks like shit. then get into rendering, value color yada yada yada.

hope this helps. keep posting your stuff!

[xelby]

Avocado - Cheers, I shall look into that for my next life drawing. I always have difficulty with proportions, I end up just using the tip of my pencil and sorta judge it by how many pencil leads something is height wise and have diagonal patters etc but Ill try basic shapes next time round. For the Loomis stuff I find myself griding things out which takes absolutely ages and tbh feels like Im cheating.

Anyways, here's 3 more Loomis pages.

Anything else I should be drawing you guys think? Dont wanna bore the arse of everyone with Loomis constantly. And just now Im skipping all the pages with perspective in it as they went way over my head and it just ended up looking really really crap. Book on perspective getting order come payday!!

[xelby]

Here's a A3 drawing of Eddie done on A3 Acrylic paper using HB pencils. Never again. Was so damn bumpy and really hard to get dark tones. Anyways Ill post it up.

Oh yeah, anyone know how to change the pic beside the sketchbook? I hate that banana image? Colour is something Im gonna stay away from for a while till I learn the basics...

Cheers for looking ladies and gents.

[xelby]

Ok coke. Well that sucked ass. Posermaniacs is hard. 60 second poses as well and they look like melted jellybabies. Must try harder I guess. Done a few black and white contours as well to help on my hand eye co-ordination. Gonna try and do a few everyday to get better.

And im kinda happy with the drawing from life although somethings up with it I cant put my finger on. As soon as i added the shadow at the bottom and the "backround" it went downhill pretty quick.

Back to the drawing board!

[DStraX]

those drawings from life are realy quite good !!
Just draw more from refs and life and youll be great in notime

Tim

[xelby]

More posemaniacs. More Loomis.

[xelby]

Trying to stop gridding everything out so much. Not really working out too well..

Loomis, posemaniacs and some ref's from Mens Health and UFC

Oh and does anyone know how to post images one at a time and then put some writing inbetween? These aint coming out in the right order and having to explain at the top is annoying.

[xelby]

faces suck. not worrying too much about the rendering, just trying to get the right proportions.

Meh.

[xelby]

Managed to get some images out of work. Not meant to keep paper.

Two from reference and two from imaginations. The imagination ones are out of proportion yadda yadda I know. Just thought Id post them as its not just loomis ftw for me.

I like pens. Might start doing some studies with them too. No rubbing out. No grids. This will be fun!

Oh and got the Loomis book on hands and heads. Yay, better faces here I come.

[xelby]

No one wants to see more Loomis so Im just gonna post up other stuff that Ive started to do.

1st life drawing class. 30mins each. A3.
Copy of a photograph

[Silent Messiah]

Allo Mr Xelby! Hope your good!

Thot I'd leave some love!

Het posting more! Come on a long way in the progress of ur SB. And u were tight to start with!

Don't stop being an inspiration!

Catch u soon!

\m/,

[xelby]

wow, its been a while. Ill try and update this a wee bit more. Been busy doing a graph design course (on summer break just now) and havent been drawing as much as i would like...well here goes...

[Silent Messiah]

That's the shiz!

WIP is coming on nicely too!

Glad u posted that graphic design stuff, love it

Ave it!

\m/,

[Steveland]

Nice Natalie Imbruligia

[xelby]

trying to stick to non digital the now. some anatomy practise, quick pen sketch and a portrait of my big bro (the black mark on his neck is a tattoo)

[Eric Young]

Looking good so far, keep doing your figure studies. They're really helpful

[xelby]

gotta update more often....

just started some oil painting classes so I will hopefully be able to update this every week with my progress. First ever time using oils, so much fun!

the other two are photo studies.

[Man Made God]

Looking good Andy!

The colours you picked for the photo studies seem pretty accurate, but you need more contrast to really render those forms. If you made gray scale versions of those studies you would notice the values don't change very much, and for the most part, its values that make things "pop" and feel solid and 3 dimensional.

When you're doing the hair, try to use bigger brushes to get the overall movement of the hair worked out before you bring in smaller detail like individual hairs. What I mean is kinda render the hair as if its some kinda fabric and then gradually refine it until you get chunks of hairs, and refine again until you have individual hairs.

Anyway, I hope to see some more imagination stuff from you, it doesn't have to be finished paintings, but even just small sketches after doing studies will help you retain more info and train your imagination. Good luck mate, hopefully cya soon

[xelby]

life drawing and some stupid bday pic

[xelby]

My first real attempt at doing a complete imagination painting and its just at WIP just now, although I'm not really sure where to go with it now. Any crit would be very much appreciated!

[xelby]

I was asked to come up with a new character for toy story...I spent a wee bit longer than I should have on this one but I really enjoyed it.

[kevin_]

hey great to see you've had this sb for so long! i suggest doing some more studies and just keep practicing and posting!