The PHATandy Tome of Daily Updates.

[PHATandy]

Okkkkaaaayyyyy
So, sorry I havent posted in about 6 days. But all is not lost - I only DIDNT do art on 5 of those days.
I felt like I needed 2 or so days off once I worked on those entries, but it got extended to 4-5. I did life drawing yesterday, and then some doodles today. Ive been doing a little reading too. I had a good read of LinRans colour tutorial and I really liked it, after reading some Gurney Journey too I figured I might look into doing the whole RGB colouring all the time. Its seems like, for predominantly digital painter, being able to colour pick with RGB seems like a HUGE advantage. Gonna look into that some more.
Enough chit chat, I feel like I lost a little steam, and now Ive regained it.

thanks for the comments everyone, appreciate them.
And dont worry Tom, I intend to keep this up as much as possible with a few gaps for breathing every now and then Thanks for the encouragement to keep going.

This isnt really important but If i write a few things in here, I might pay more attention to it, and do it - so you guys notice when Im not doing what I say I will.

More FACS - atleast complete the anatomy sections.
A few practice studies working in RGB completely.
Do a practice piece pushing rendering to the MAX - even if its only a small section. I wanna see what style and finish I can produce.
Read more Science of Drawing and do some studies.
More portraits and females.

Maybe this will just be my agenda for a week or so.

A random barbarian, inspired somewhat by Sam Bosma's amazing Conan. Some poor Torsos - was having trouble finding my starting points (doing muscles or boxes, or looking at form, still need to nail my 'starting points' for figures) and then some shitty Life Drawing, was only half a day so I had no time for warming into it. Need to work on the subtleties of working out Likeness, maybe exaggerate for the sake of likeness. Might be being too clinical about it. Learn to draw features closer, like eye shapes specifically.

Pff.. what a mess, must talk less.

Edit - Torsos are really fucking lazy, goddamn I need to step up my game.

[SirGreenSock]

Man, the digital work is improving tremendously dude, youre really coming to your own style of painting, and it looks good. That asian series reminds me a bit of salaryman, probably cause of subject matter and mood.
Portraits dont quite have the same oomph though, and I think its cause youre breaking things down to much and looking primarily for contour lines, the few bits of pencil hatching look unsure of yourself. I think its just a matter of how youre approaching these, cause I know you have the skills to bust out some serious portraits.
As for those figures, again I think you may be looking at things too much in terms of lines and contours. A blog I just saw recently has a nice way of breaking down form like that in a linear way (http://radhowto.blogspot.com/) I was looking through it yesterday and what he says makes a lot of sense in terms of simplifying things.
Anyway, I know you know what youre doing, so keep at it dude!

[PHATandy]

Hey socks, thank you so much for the very thoughtful crits, really appreciate them. The portrait stuff is spot on. I dont have a 'way' of drawing portraits so to speak - so I still work very naturally, or kind of how I do figure drawing, which is looking at major shapes and forms etc. But I find that always leaves me totally lost on portraits, because its all about capturing, not necessarily the 'likeness' but definitely the character and 'human' of the person. Making it look like a face. I feel like Im learning, but very slowly, I pick up a little every time I do a face. but slow going nontheless, portraits are pretty much my worst area ... which as Im writing makes it sound very bad and something I should probably attend to. Gonna have to look into doing more portrait stuff...
That blog is really good too, thanks very much, got it bookmarked

I was at the Bristol Comic Convention over the weekend, hence no posting, and lots of traveling meant I spent most of the time reading. But I got loads of inspiration. I met a few awesome people, like Chamonkee blog, Shakino blog Naniiebim blog and a few others who I should post links when I find their websites!
...and I also met the Etherington brothers, who were totally awesome! Lorenzo has a sketchbook here on CA and its fucking awesome I wish I had more money so I could of bought a copy of their book and got a sketch. It was awesome and they were super cool dudes, and Lorenzo graduated from here in Falmouth which is awesome too!

I'm rambling, sorry, this is'nt my diary. My bad.
Studies, back to Uni tomorrow. I'm starting a project doing some Magic card illustrations. Starting with "Wall of Swords".
boom.

[kingkostas]

very nice mate.Love the barbarian and the studies you do.Keep up the good work!!!

[ThomasM]

hey dude - liking these last few posts, not checked out your sketchbook in a while (been very busy) but its looking decent!

One thing I would say is that with those muscular studies in the last post, the "abs" are very thin. When drawing a figure usually the abs need to be at least as broad as the width of the head, although obviously you can vary it by quite a lot.... (if that was intentional I didn't realise that)

Keep up the good work!

[PHATandy]

Kingkostas - cheers dude!
Tom - yeah man, its wierd, that was almost a direct copy. I pondered about their thickness when copying it. Theres definitely a gap down the sides, but their portrayal was very thin. I think the point its trying to make is the sort of 'bands' that run downwards as the abs. Thanks for the spot, I did a little look around to see what was the right way of doing it. In most they cover a much wider area. Cheers

Well i started my magic project today, but Ive only been doing little thumbnails and stuff so its not much fun. But I did a little doodle of some sort of demon/pirate/bandit/assassin or something. Turned out quite nice too, I was going for some slightly exaggerated anatomy, like big long legs, but it looks kind of awkward, but I think Im going to try and paint it, so I might change it. And then because the weather in England is 'effin sweet at the moment, went to the beach to do some location drawing, these are a few I stuck together.

From my magic research I found some fucking sweet stuff.
Adam Rex here, here and here. I remember seeing his work a while ago, but I obviously didn't appreciate it. Those colours he gets from oils are insanely nice and the texture and feel to it all. Amazing stuff, that guy can paint.

[kingkostas]

lovely everything!!!no crits.Also thnx for the links
you are doing great!!!

[SirGreenSock]

Nice linework on the last character!
you should check out some of Adam Rex's childrens books. Theyre both beautifully painted and well written. Plus theyre a nice mix between stylization, exaggeration and realistic painting technique.

[NickyBeats]

great work man! hey, - is your sb icon from a hellboy comic?

[AustenFM]

Hey man, cool sketchbook here! Really neat ideas, and your skill with laying down colors is admirable. I dig your characters, as well as your variety of subject matter, keep up the good work sir!

[sourgasm]

this sketchbook is awesome. definitely subscribing.

keep up the good work !

[PHATandy]

EDIT- FUUUUUUCCKK I just wrote out a whole post and then pressed back by accident. Doing my best to not get lazy and rewrite it properly. Sorry if this sounds lazy.
EDIT2 - FUUUUCCK CA didnt upload my pictures, wtf NOT COOL. Gotta add em again

Kingkostas - Thanks dude!
Socks - Thanks dude, will look into it for sure.
Nickybeats - Cheers, and yes it is - it was a study/painting, its in my SB somewhere.
Austen and Sourgasm - Appreciate all the encouragement guys

So basically, it was life drawing this week. Some thoughts.
All of it was under 20 mins, except the first which was 30-40.
Finding portraits still pretty hard - Im VERY inconsistent. Annoyingly so. Ive been improving a lot. But just at the same rate as my other stuff - so they still lag behind a lot.
Need to work on my technique for short poses more. Especially for drawing faces. Need to work on picking out gesture WAY more. Gestures should get the feel of the pose, not the accuracy since theres so little detail in it. It makes stuff more interesting too.

And some other stuff I wrote out but probably forgot. Sorry.
Cya tomorrow!

[SirGreenSock]

Life drawings look good, first one is a real nice study.

Try changing the tool you work with for the portraits. Try something with a broader edge, like the edge of a pencil, or conte/charcoal/pastel, and try defining planes and form more than edge. Youre getting to bogged down in the lines you can see (line of nose, contours of eyes, line of lips) and not form, more specifically edges that are there. Sittin there rendering around the eye and the nose wont help.

[monstertree]

Nice work! The fist Basho piece is really good, a nice transition from warm and acid to the more blue cool spectrum at the bottom. A little niggle is that maybe you've used a flat shaped brush? It's looking a little blurry, almost like a mild motion blur on it (sometimes using a flat photoshop brush gives that impression for some reason.) Great life drawing too - be mindful using hard edges around lips, mind you. Great improvements

[Jamie Romoser]

Awsome updates man very inspiring
have a good one keep up the hardwork your progression is obvious
till next time
-Jamie

[PHATandy]

Socks - Thanks for the advice. Its something that always causes me issues. I try and use the soft side of a pencil, working with thicker lines (that drawing is pretty big - a2ish) but it still doesnt seem to work out for me. I cant build any likeness into the shapes. Its like all the time Im just not hitting the mark with proportions and the right types of features or something. The fact that we always have REALLY undefined lighting on the head (its lighting is cast for a whole body pose, i just draw a portrait at the time) makes it even harder, I find it hard to pull out lighting which isnt really there. But Im gonna try it anyway, maybe look at putting in skin tones or something and what little lighting I can see. Thanks for the advice though.

Monstertree - Those are supposed to be much bigger (a3 when printed) and photoshop did blur them a little but I know you mean, Im still trying to work away from having blurry/soft edges. Thanks a lot dude!

Omerta - Thanks very much Jamie!

And todays work, didn't do as much as a planned so sorry its a very boring painting. Got sucked into Red Dead Redemption and Dragon Age a bit much. But Im gonna work on it tomorrow some more add in the more interesting parts. Basically I want to have more interaction with the clouds passing through/between the swords and the same with the rays of light. Obviously I will render the clouds up a bit too. Need to work on my colour choices to.
Gonna add some birds and maybe a flying monster in the background. Something to spice it up. Need to see how it works as a very small illustration too.

Its called 'Wall of Swords' Its technically a Creature. But theyre is a class of creatures called Walls.

[Adee]

Awesome sketches. I really like your colouring as well.

[Pixie Trick]

You have one very awesome sketchbook! You have a lot of dedication and I find it very interesting to hear all your thought on what you're doing with every post.

I know I know next to nothing about life drawing, but I'm agreeing with what sirGeenSock is saying. A lot of it looks very stiff and measured. I think you got the closest to fully loosening up with the 5min drawing of the woman with a tail. It definitely isn't the most accurate, but I get the most sense of life from it.
Blind contour drawing is also fun and might help you to loosen up- the whole put down the image in one line while not looking at the paper trick. Guarantees a laugh either way!

Lovely work. Subscribed.

[SirGreenSock]

Wall of swords looks cool so far, cant wait to see it with the rest of the details youre planning. One thing though, its kinda odd that all the swords are basically facing the viewer straight-on, i think it would be more interesting if they were turning away from us more.

I know what you mean about the general lighting, its definitely the hardest situation to try and find strong form in when its all pretty subtle. James Gurney has a bunch of nice posts on diffuse, cloudy-day style light that has a similar effect. It would probably help to study photographs of those types of lighting situations, and other artists' attempts at working with it. Wes does a lot of his work with a sort of diffuse lighting, especially with his more recent work. The Sartorialist blog also has a lot of nice photos, often shot on cloudy days.

[kingkostas]

lovely lovely studies and the first study is great!!!,the tones, everything
Interesting concept on the last one, and great depth so far.Keep it up mate!!!

[PHATandy]

Will post replies later on

[the ANGRY filipino]

Wall of Swords looks yummy! The colors you chose just work so well together!
And your recent pencil sketches look damn fine! I love your use of lines!

[PHATandy]

From before...

Adee - Thanks a lot!

Pixie Trick - Yeh man I know what you mean. Like I said before I have a bit of seperation between long and short poses. I need to work on my gestural work a lot. Thanks for the crits and compliments

Socks! Thanks dude, yeah its something i wanted to change. It kind of makes sense from the view - it wanted the swords sort of down the line - cutting edge outwards, but it looks a little mundane. After some more hindsight I would of like to do the sword in a big long spiral each sort slightly more rotated. But then again I liked the idea of the geometric 'Wall' of the upright flat swords.
Im thinking I might do some studies from something like that blog, which is awesome btw cheers, and work on creating and shape and form without any definitive light source.

Kingkostas - thanks a lot man, appreciate it as always!

anrgy filipino - Thank you very much

And my next card Im working on.
Its for the Zendikar set of Magic, so theres a little bit of the 'style' guide going into this. Was reading about what the world is about. But obviously, its just your classic Island - land card. So it has to be obviously Islands/Water. Going for the floating islands then lots of tropical colours and waterfalls for the water bit.
Im really gonna work on brush work on this. I wanna create interesting shapes and patterns overall, and obvious textures at a large level (so when viewed smaller) but I know this has to be made up of a painting style that is built at a much more detailed level. This is where my problem lies - I can paint with interesting brush strokes, but lets say Im working quite tight and small for detail/render quality but when you zoom out all that seems lost. I can also work a little the other way, working zoomed out looking at bigger brush strokes and textures etc - but I cant get any detail with that at all. Obviously its something I need to discover over time.
But at least I know and can work towards it. Which brings me to Veronique Meignaud.... who fucking blows my socks off. Apart from her content and her craziness and what not. The good characters environments. Its her amazing use of colour at a micro level (lots of colours going on) and a macro level (loads of colour in every little stroke). This is something I really wanna work on in this piece if I can. Even if its a little bit of study/copying - I think I can learn a lot from how she works, its a lot like the painting I want to achieve.
Enough Talk, her website is full of gold, especially the concept section (magic cards and game stuff).
One Two Three

[Eddieee]

Loving the magic cards man! It's great how you much you think about and go into detail about all your illos!

[Yor]

nice man! sweet pencils/studies/concepts etc. waiting for more!

[JailHouseRock2]

FU*KING LOVE YOUR SKETCHES! Digitals are really improving too, keep this up Andy!!!!

[prsnsweeney]

love your gesture and life drawings really like your contour lines and i like your color choices in the last few digital paintings

[MattGamer]

yay studies and magic cards. epic work man! ;]

[SirGreenSock]

Nice work on the cards so far! Like the vibrancy on the last one, though there are probably too many waterfalls, kinda kills the effect imo

[PHATandy]

Eddieee, Yor, JailHouseRock, prsnsweeney, Matt, Socks - Thanks so much for the comments guys, Im really glad you like this stuff I appreciate the compliments.

And because I spent all fucking night playing Dragon Age. AGAIN. Im just gonna post up my piece and thats it (sorry guys...). The other thing that really bothers me is that it seems out of alignment (its not central ) when it gets shrunk down to the card. I didnt think it would be obvious, but it is. Oh well.
Also, the fact that its too abstract, I seem to get lucky all the time picking subjects where I have to do landscapes where they can be abstract and not have any really detail to them. Essentially this is just an assortment of green brush strokes and brown ones for that main rock. Im not trying to portray the real geometry of stuff enough - gotta work on that. Maybe that would solve my detail issues - if I actually understood what detail I wanted/needed/should be painting and a micro level. Not fluking about with brush strokes and abstract marks.
Gonna try and see to that a little in the next one. It might stop be bashing them out so quickly too.