Be Fucking Amazing

[Beeston]

MUST.. KEEP.. THIS.. THREAD.. ALIVE GODDAMN IT
Is it more important to keep people interested by having an interesting first post or is it better to Chronologically document progress?

I also realize the proportions are off with this first guy buy eh. Whatever.

[a la bapsi]

yayyy

[Beeston]

My internet is being a dick so I'm only uploading these three before it disconnects me again. Stupid Australia.

[Jessibelle]

yes, please keep the thread alive! it doesn't deserve to diee~!

I can see that you're concentrating on putting more contrast in your pencil pieces - they're looking much better for it as well You've got a good amount going here too. But, if you wanna push them even further, maybe concentrate on making fewer lines and nice, clean hatching all in a single direction? it's pretty difficult at first (I struggle with it alot too x] ) but it makes your pencils so much more readable. Plus, study more structuree~ ;D

and hell yeah, improvement buddiess xD
a

[Velocity Kendall]

yep strong progress on this one J

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/att...2&d=1297195749

[kikindaface]

Hi man ! You really made some progression ! But to be honest, i think you're wasting your time with values, because you're still doing some big proportions issues ! Some artists are adding values to get some confidence, thinking that values will fix the issues of the line, but it won't ! it's like building a house over weak foundations, the house will just fall down ! The same time you're doing a figure drawing with values, you could do 2 or 3 with only the line ( or 1, but with great proportions ! ) also, each time you see something wrong on your stuff, correct it ! i Think you'll learn more by working on a figure drawing for several hours rather than sketching 10 minutes a figure, seeing mistakes, and will be like " well, i'll start again " By doing that, you're only avoiding the problems, but you have to face them to learn even more ! so keep working hard, and you'll improve even faster !

[Beeston]

Two studies from Bridgman's Complete Guide to drawing from life, with proportion guides to help me with that, because that' one of the things I needed to fix. More sketches from today on the way. =)

[Beeston]

So, a mafia bunny with horribly unfinished feet, And a Ninja sketch of a guy on the bus.
He didn't even notice. I'm getting good at capturing these creatures in their natural state.

[Beeston]

Some sketches from Today's sketch group and figure drawing class.

Fun was had, yo.

[RyanRyan]

Sometimes the mathematical approach won't help your proportions, if you don't notice improvements then try some gestures, hell, they're more fun as well.

[Velocity Kendall]

when i get drawings from architects theyre always full of mistakes, so i have to make sure the front and the side and the top etc line up. i lay them out as if theyre the sides of a box thats been unfolded and laid flat, and draw constructionlines all over it so i KNOW its all good before i start, and can highligt problems, like windows that could never open in 3d space etc. to the architect to sort out

i use a similar approach when drawing that seems to help; look at the source, then look at my depiction of it, then back at the source, etc.
sort of like this diagram, only in my head...
red shows obvious differences, blue notable landmarks on the source you can use as locators on the drawing; note the foot is a different angle, the negative space between arm and torso is a different shape etc...
it helps make everything relatively easy to draw, at least from a proportions point of view... surface tone and all that, im still a beginner so cant offer much advice, but for proportions using this method in your brain works a treat.

this is a supermathmatical approach that can look a little dead. you need to mix this with a gesture type approach. at least, thats what ive found over the past few weeks.

[qlotzan]

hi brize mate i'm from sydney
i like you're artwork full of power

keep it up

qlotzan

[pilmon46]

It's cool to see the improvement in your figure drawing! I think those life studies are working. I agree with some of the other posters who said your figures need to be loosened up a little--a useful way to do that, I think, is to practice really quick stick figure gesture drawings of people on the bus or at a coffee shop, just trying to capture their poses before they move.

I love your creatures, especially the page that you said you drew on the train!

[karmiclychee]

Thank you for properly incentivising your sketchbook.

You've got some strong planes coming along - I am envious - but your sense of proportion is off... I feel like you're experiencing the form in pieces, like "head now, now the torso, here are arms, now I draw legs." rather than experiencing the entire thing at once.

[HolyCats]

Great pencil work ！^ ^

[Choob]

Bumpity bumpity bumpafuckadoodledoo.
When this is more complete, I will send to the Critique Centre.

This piece is awesome. Inspired by Mr Android Jones perhaps? If not, you seriously need to check out his work, guy is a legend.

Keep up the good work, your work from life is good and the characters are nice too (top hat guy FTW ). As for advice, I'd say draw more, and draw quicker. Get a sketchbook if you haven't already and don't be afraid to just throw stuff down, do quick 1 minute gesture studies of people walking past, try drawing in thick pen, whatever.

Keep it up.

[Beeston]

A wee update =)

I'm sorry I haven't touched it in a little while, I've been focusing on uni work which is more law, project management and rigging type stuff.

@Velocity Kendall, I love your advice, though it makes referencing from screen a little difficult, as well as from life - sitting in front of a tree in a field will be a pain to apply it =)

I'll see what I can do to print off certain pieces of references to plan my draftsman skills.

@Droid, cheers ^^ It felt like a mishmash of playing with different brushes and just seeing where it went, keeping only basic compositional guidelines in mind. Generally I want to try applying more materials like pen, ink, etc, to loosen up, and possibly try my hand at clay sculpting to firm my grasp on form.

Below contain two of my most influential artists =)

[Beeston]

Aha!

You thought I wouldn't actually upload anything BUT I SNEAKED UP ON YOU DIDN'T I.

[Beeston]

Couple of hour skull study from reference. Some mistakes in each. Buildin' up that reference library in my brain.

[Beeston]

A one and a half hour sketch from life. Had to pay additional emphasis to the line on the edges of the trees to really get the focus to stand out. I think I did an okay job, nothing special.

[Beeston]

Playing with colour in relation to light. I'm not particularly fond of this after I realized that I was paying too much attention to where my core shadows where, my full light blocks and my rim lighting rather than having a strong underlying understanding of the planes to support it, with a strong underlying anatomy to support that. The quick construction you see there was more of an afterthought when I realized I was essentially working backwards; rendering first and leaving construction till later.



Yes, I did this after watching Avatar again (for research purposes I swear) and yes, I could think of nothing but blue people. Initially I did this to try and figure out how the light's sun would actually react on such a blue surface, but I got so carried away with the blue in the picture that it ended up being monochromatic. At best the rim lighting is mixed with a little bit of green just to try and slightly bias towards sun yellow/gold/red, but if I went any further than that, it felt out of place. I think to have solved that I should have put in the atmosphere first and determined the colour of the whole scene before trying to figure out how the skin tones would react to it.

So, short lesson learned from this painting: Be more conscious of my work pipeline.

Construct the anatomy first,
work out the planes second,
determine scene lighting,
determine object colours (assuming composition isn't an issue)
try to figure out the clusterfudge that lighting is.
Oh James Gurney, don't fail me now.

I want to reconstruct the anatomy again, but after seeing Allison Theus' Deviantart library of creature designs, I don't feel like bothering.

Thus ends studies on the 24th of June.

[Beeston]

Today's work. Needs a cleanup, I need to finish the remainder of the Celtic chain around the edges, and the contrast/tonal discrepancy from right to left needs to be fixed. Those don't really matter, because this is going to be painted, with (Hopefully) more visible details thanks to the wonders of colour, as well as more cleanly defined edges. I'm going for an illustrated manuscript style, and this is going to contribute to a larger project when it's done.

[Beeston]

So, progress today. Not as much as I'd hoped but damn this was tedious on it's own. This is also part of the first piece of work that I worked on for livestream, ever. The URL for that is in my signature

[Beeston]

Quick sculpt I did for practice. As you can probably tell, I don't stick to just one medium. It was so tempting to put even more muscles on this guy that don't exist, but anyway, that is that.

[Zephyrion]

I..I love this.
I remember looking at your thumbnail a bit ago and thinking "yeah, I want to paint as good as that"
That sculpt is marvelous.

[Umbravita]

Playing with colour in relation to light. I'm not particularly fond of this after I realized that I was paying too much attention to where my core shadows where, my full light blocks and my rim lighting rather than having a strong underlying understanding of the planes to support it, with a strong underlying anatomy to support that. The quick construction you see there was more of an afterthought when I realized I was essentially working backwards; rendering first and leaving construction till later.



Yes, I did this after watching Avatar again (for research purposes I swear) and yes, I could think of nothing but blue people. Initially I did this to try and figure out how the light's sun would actually react on such a blue surface, but I got so carried away with the blue in the picture that it ended up being monochromatic. At best the rim lighting is mixed with a little bit of green just to try and slightly bias towards sun yellow/gold/red, but if I went any further than that, it felt out of place. I think to have solved that I should have put in the atmosphere first and determined the colour of the whole scene before trying to figure out how the skin tones would react to it.

So, short lesson learned from this painting: Be more conscious of my work pipeline.

Construct the anatomy first,
work out the planes second,
determine scene lighting,
determine object colours (assuming composition isn't an issue)
try to figure out the clusterfudge that lighting is.
Oh James Gurney, don't fail me now.

I want to reconstruct the anatomy again, but after seeing Allison Theus' Deviantart library of creature designs, I don't feel like bothering.

Thus ends studies on the 24th of June.

What you want with this pic is warm lighting. At first I thought the creature was underwater because of the blue highlights. The sun is yellow, so highlights are going to start leaning towards yellow and shadows will be more purple. But choosing the exact shade is pretty difficult.

So what I do is I pick a golden colour, make my brush slightly transparent, brush it over the blue and use the colour picker that colour and undo. What you will end up won't be yellow, but it'll be a warmer colour and it will look slightly golden, and it takes a bit of trial and error to get the "right" colour (and sometimes I repeat the process a couple of times, or I choose a different original colour until I hit what feels right). You can do that with shadows and reflected colour too.

[Beeston]

Thanks guys Yeah, the underwater look was something I locked myself into when I tried to get a sky blue background to set up my lighting conditions. In fact I remember now a tutorial on an ImagineFX DVD which had the artist start his painting with a photo that he took to get an approximation for some pre-existing lighting conditions, and worked from there... Something that I want to try.

Anyway, here are a bunch of sketches from the last couple of days I've not much to say about them, except 3/4 of them were drawn from life, and almost all of them have elements of reference. So yay. My scanner up and died so I have to make do with my DSLR until I get a new one.

Does anyone know if there are cheap A3 size scanners anywhere?
Cheers ^^

[Beeston]

This was an oddly successful painting study I did. I tried to do it with colours from my head but that was impossible, so I kinda sorta stole 3 base pigments from John Singer Sargent's portrait of Henry James. I applied the mid tone, Core shadow and highlight and then I screwed around with colours after that. Turns out the very subtle of changes makes a huge differrence in how we perceive form; but there was also the added complication of aging skin and sub surface scattering, so I broke out lighter reds and pinks to try and capture ruptured capillaries or frost wearied skin.



But honestly, in the first 20 minutes to half an hour I had no clue what I was doing, until I started trying to assign very specific colours to areas and seeing how they worked. It turned out ok in the end, but I feel like this is a giant fluke.

Anyway, the base sketch of the guy I actually did in Life drawing when I found the pose of the model considerably boring.

It would be high time if a mentor wanted to take me on, I'd greatly appreciate it... I feel like I'm reaching the limit of what I can learn on my own...


EDIT:

Came back ten minutes later, flipped the image and I just noticed how badly I wasn't paying attention to anatomy and letting my planes somehow go 90 degrees on themselves. I also noticed his thumb is too damned short, the extra skin cloth stuff isn't supposed to be attached 2/3rds the length of his thumb, it was a stupid mistake.




The things you miss when you forget to flip your canvas. I'll work on fixing them tomorrow, uploading the result.


Double edit:

This is my attempt at fixing the aforementioned mistakes the next day. Took an extra couple of hours to make the changes that were made, I hope it looks better.

[BlightedArt]

Fellow G+'er! Thanks for the invite. You've some really nice works here, and it's good to see all these studies. Keep going!

[Umbravita]

That painting is fantastic. Keep on going and you'll find flukes happening more often. I love flukes. ;D

It's good practice to flip the pic every so often to see you're still on track, though I need to do it more myself. That painting's beautiful. My only concrit is that the back of the neck in the latest attachment looks quite dry because of the small, hard shadows -- they look a bit like cracks.

The colours are fantastic and put together really well, and the lighting is great as well. Good job!