Sketchbook of Ill Repute

[viki oh]

oh god, your portraits have so much character and personality! Very inspirational the way you paint light on form, but don't make the shadows muddy, good stuff. I also enjoy your environment paintings!

[Myllys]

Wow! These are just too cool! I love your style. And I love how you use colors and values. NEED..... MOOOORE.... ZOMBIES.....

[Kfeeras]

aaaaaaawesome stylization!

[Matthew Campbell]

Thanks for all the encouraging comments people! I'm really pleased with the response I've been getting so far, after working in a bubble for so long.

Here are a couple more studies from yesterday, and a quick portrait. Yesterday was a relatively productive day, in that I did five studies and a portrait. I've still got to work out an efficient way to handle environments that's consistent with the style I'm using for the characters. For the time being I'm just trying to get better at environments in general. All of those environment studies were challenging and fun, and a totally different way of working for me. I found myself constantly pushing and pulling the values, repainting lots of areas to build up texture, and using a lot of darken/lighten layers. The mixer brush tool became very useful too. It's all been done with the standard round brush. In fact, everything in this thread has been painted with the round brush.

The portrait is of another character for my project - a Native American waitress. She can get a hunting rifle for her zombie-killing needs. I'm consciously moving towards slightly more realistic features and proportions. I've been doing quick portraits of the characters before really getting involved in any design work. It's not the most efficient way to work, but I have as much time as I need here. It also, in theory, gives me a better idea of the character's personality - which will hopefully translate to better character design.

[Istmin52]

I'm really liking your environment studies. Where do you get your photo reference from?

[Aut0n]

Your environment studies are amazing, I really need to work more on those more myself. Still digging your character stuff, and you are absolutely right about knowing the character's personality first. It's amazingly helpful knowing what their story is and incorporating it into their design. Gives them much more life.

I really liked the exaggerated characters you had before, they were easily recognizable which is important for a game. Try to retain some of that if you make them more realistic. Just my two cents

[kidult]

Cool style you got thar!

[Benjie]

seriously cool style man!, love the brush work in those studies as well

[YihyoungLi]

Sooooooo coool. This is definitely one of the most refreshing and delicious threads I've consumed in a while. I'm amazed by everything!!! Do you have a website?

[theUNKNOWNsketcher]

NIceee

[Matthew Campbell]

My apologies for my recent failure to post anything on here, been quite busy recently. I'll try to update more regularly again.

Istmin52 - I don't recall specifically where I got the photo reference from. Most likely Flickr or Google images.

Aut0n, kidult, Benjie, theUNKNOWNsketcher, thanks! YihyoungLi, unfortunately I don't have a website, just a rarely updated art portfolio blog.

Here are some recent sketches. I'm trying to improve my handling of colour and skin tones, and I find painting heads provides a good testing ground. I also rediscovered that I love using front-lighting scenarios, as seen in the last few sketches.

[Matthew Campbell]

A couple more quick sketches from today. Just experimenting with colour, really.

[Mr Man]

I loove the characters, especially the very last one!

I would like to see more full figures as Ive noticed that some of your figures lack the form that your faces have. Just a thought

[karantina]

ahahahha great expression and style...

[Mawh]

Oh man, your characters are fantastic ! FANTASTIC !

[The Sceptical Saint]

What end goal do you have in mind for this? Game, comic, animation?
If the writing matches up to your art, I'd totally stump up some cash for it.
Hell, even if the writing is just average.

[raminafshari]

grate peace of art , it reminds me The Incredibles animation .

[Matthew Campbell]

Mawh, karantin, raminafshari, thanks for your comments.

The Sceptical Saint, I have to admit I didn't have any specific end goal in mind, I was just trying to design a cool setting and characters. I need to return to this...

Mr Man, thanks. I'll do some more figure studies.

Quick update...

[Matthew Campbell]

A small update...

[Matthew Campbell]

A self-portrait. My mother asked me to do this for her birthday two years ago. I think I may be a terrible person.

[Matthew Campbell]

A couple of studies of homeless people. One is also a Rembrandt study, in a sense.

[Holland]

Nice characters dude! Really dig your style

[Matthew Campbell]

Thanks Holland!

Here are a few studies from the past couple of days, painted from screen grabs I took from some well-known programmes.

[badass]

fucking wow.

[Matthew Campbell]

More studies...

[Wr00m]

Love your style, so much character in the portraits! Subscribing!
Haha, dig the SOA studies! :]

5stars

[Mawh]

Very beautiful ; the homeless guys, the self-portrait, the portraits before. That's interesting to see you painting in a less cartoonish way ! Keep it up.

[Matthew Campbell]

Wr00m, Mawh, thanks.

Here are a couple of studies from The Wire. The lawyer was memorably unsympathetic. Also, environments are definitely not my strong point...

[Myllys]

Awesome studies. And the colors are spot-on as always. Nice one with Avon and his scum-bag lawyer

[Matthew Campbell]

Thanks Myllys. There were few people in The Wire who were paragons of virtue, but the scumbag lawyer was definitely one of the worst.

Another study from The Wire - it's Kima. I'm learning to love lighten and darken layers.