The Art of Woo - Wooblood's Sketchbook

[wooblood]

I feel like a short intro is in order, so I'll say that I've been drawing as a hobby both traditionally and digitally off and on since I was a wee lad. I never pursued it as a career, so that part of my life fell to the wayside, but now (after inspirational help from these here forums), I'm feeling motivated to really get my drawing groove back. And here we go...

Following will be ball point pen sketches I've been doing, mostly during down times at work. I sort of like using ball point as a training tool because it disciplines the lines you put down and doesn't let you cover up mistakes. Mix of referenced and non-referenced stuff...

[wooblood]

Some studies of Natalie Portman (a perfectly healthy obsession), and more random sketches...

[wooblood]

This is me trying to get into the swing of digital painting (with my brand new Intuos4!). I've always appreciated the natural beauty of clouds, so I'm sort of doing some studies of them.
Done in Photoshop. I do have Painter 11 also, but I'll probably wait until I get comfy enough with PS before wading into Painter.

[Edarneor]

Aw, your doggies are so cute!! well rendered, too

[Quigleyer]

The clouds are looking really good for "getting into the swing of things". How much painting background do you have?

Your drawing is great to look at. You have some really well rendered forms and you appear to be using your referenced work to springboard some more "from your head" stuff- which I think is the best way to do it.

[PaintMyBrain]

great start for a SB. I see lots of potential here and I hope you will stay to it. i can see you are no beginner with art, your lines are very nice and I really like the expessions in the faces, the dogs are excellent too.

great u are using a ballpoint pen, I sometime draw with a dark charcoal pen or a marker just for the same reason, you cant delete a line.

keep it up m8

[wooblood]

Thanks all!

Edarneor - A coworker has a bulldog and asked me if I would draw him a picture of one, so I just found a couple pics online and drew him two for the price of free!

Quigleyer - Thanks. I never really got into painting (that's why I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to composition/color/painting technique), I've only dabbled in watercolor, tempura, acrylic and that was mostly in elementary school. haha. I have played around with digital painting for a while using a bottom of the line graphire (aka slip 'n slide), so switching to the new Intuos is really a world of difference.

PaintMyBrain - Thanks, like I said, I've been drawing since I was about four years old, so the familiarity is there but I just never took it to the next level of creating really impressive and satisfying works of art, which is what I'm hopefully preparing to do now!

[Schen]

Wow Woo. Those clouds could be mistaken for photographs! Beautiful technique.

[wooblood]

Pretty slow with painting in PS, so this took me a couple hours. I think the ref photo I used was posted by Lhune as a good example of light/shadow color theory, so I took it and used it as study for myself. (Thanks Lhune!)
I'll post the ref too in case anyone wants to use it.

[PaintMyBrain]

wow looks excellent mate!

[Livoshka]

Looks great!

The only concern I have is it's lacking some sharpness.

[wooblood]

This was done as a requested drawing. I think it's finished.

[Graphic Dan]

Your line work is gorgeous,
the dogs look great

[thegrayslayer]

Good work, and a great start to the sketchbook. I'd agree with Oblivia, sharpening up key areas would create a focal point and really benefit the dog portrait.

~Slayer

[Istmin52]

Thanks for stopping by my finished sketchbook under the crit section. You have some beautiful drawings and I'm def going to tune in to see more. Keep up the hard work.

[Mangix]

Great stuff, I like your pen drawings. The lines describe form really well (esp in the dog one) which is something I have trouble doing.

[NeonDuck]

great studies!

your heads might still need a bit more attention to construction, but everything else (especially your hands, wow!) are really good! you've got a good mind for pushing things into interesting poses

[BadNeuroses]

Great Human Anatomy...I'm a little jealous...LOL.

[Marlo]

Jeasus you make everything look so sexy

[Heavens]

I love it The Nathalie Portman study is awesome

[wooblood]

Thanks, all!
Marlo: LOL, I'll take that as a compliment!
Heavens: Thanks, it was all from her interview on David Letterman. I've never done a committed study like that before and Natalie was as good a subject as any I could think of...

[joel seguin]

Great stuff!

I love your enthusiasm to get it right the right way. Your studies are inspiring and just really cool to look at. I can learn a thing or two here.

Cheers,

Joel Seguin

[ladyknowles]

Your work is incredible! That first one of the dog made me Sqee!

[wooblood]

I appreciate the comments, guys. Good motivation!

So this one took a lot longer than I was originally planning, probably about 4-5 hours total, but it was definitely fun to do. I took this as a study from ref photo mainly in color picking by eye, and secondarily in depth-of-field as well as adding this to my spank bank for potential future creature design.

This is a brilliantly colored jumping spider (Saitis barbipes, ref photo here). I guess I didn't quite do its colorful brilliance justice, but I'm happy with it and I already feel a lot stronger at managing and picking colors.

[jNeumann]

Natalie Portman obsessions are perfectly healthy. I like that you're experimenting with expressions, that's something I need to work on myself. Keep up the good work!

[Quigleyer]

Hey woo, good to see you keeping up on your work. I'd be interested to see some progress work for your paintings and drawings, if you've got any older saves or anything?

[wooblood]

Well, I'm gearing up for doing a first official concept piece, starting very simple, and I was going to post that in the Critique forum, so you should see it then. I say "gearing up" because I'm a classic procrastinator and over-preparer.

Edit: To more fully answer your question, up to this point, I haven't really made it a habit to save progress versions of pictures I make. In large part, because I haven't really done any real 'project' images that take more than a few days to do. I think I'll start doing that now though.

[Stuart DeViva]

Awesome drawings. Great craftsmanship. The Portman ones are awesome. Did you see Black Swan? Crazy ass movie.

[Arc]

I love that spider! I've had a weird obsession with jumping spiders recently... they're so adorable yet alien at the same time. Also, the color variation you captured in that dog is pretty great. (Hope you don't mind if I swipe the ref for a study myself!)

[wooblood]

Thanks Arc! Yeah those spiders are crazy little creatures. Normally I detest spiders/bugs (not in a scared way, but in a why the hell are you in my house way) but it would be awesome to find one of those colorful little things crawling on my wall.
And yep steal that ref and study, that's why I posted it!