My sketchbook

[Dayle]

Here's something I'm starting, just a quick sketch so far.

[Dayle]

Here is an update of my (Death / thanatos / grim reaper) wip. It's losing it's original idea though so might have to start again and turn this into something else.

Whilst the site has been down I have been posting stuff over at the facebook ca group. Thanks to those that made comments, looked at and "liked" my posts! I have to gulp slightly when I post my crap, so many fantastic artists I feel like I'm being deluded, why do I bother! Well, I am not being deluded, believe me, I know how bad I still am! just trying to be patient, confident and hardworking... maybe one day I will actually make a breakthrough and be able to hold my head up high.

I have also being doing some studies, but holding them back, it's gonna be a surprise, just got to finish them all off first!

Also, I have never been before, but am going to the ballet tomorrow, so did a little photo study as I'm really excited!

Can't wait til everything is in full swing again, I've missed this place so much!!! Thanks admin / mods/ community for all the hardwork, you're the best \o/

[skMOP]

Haha it can be rough. Sometimes I look back at my sketchbook and I see a lot of people who comment "Amazing!" "Wow you're so good!" next to these really old and generally terrible pictures. I'm sure I'll feel the same way about the current pages in the future. Just keep working at it man! (haha sorry no real advice, just motivational speak.)

[Dayle]

skMOP, haha, yeah I will, thanks.

Upload manager working much better, site seems to be back to it's awesomeself!

A quick environment and my character update for now.

[Dayle]

Just a quick sb update (I need to sort out my life drawing / daily sketches before i can post properly). A couple of wips from some challenges that I worked on these past few weeks. I am really trying to control my values, using 100% opacity and solid fill colours with hue, saturation and brightness controls. I think I am making little steps in the right direction... just gonna study more and more til the end of the year and try hit 2013 with some actual original art, well that's the plan!

[Dayle]

Here's my rushjob chow attempt from this week. Marvel has always been a love of mine, so I couldn't resist.

[Dayle]

Sketch for Halloween.

[Dayle]

Life drawings, two environment sketches and some lunchtime sketches.

[Dayle]

Leviathan sketch, just a doodle that I tried to turn into something.

[Revidescent]

Love those pencil lifedrawings! The last one especially, it looks really natural, good job.

It's interesting - looks like my last crit here, months and months ago, was that you're looking too soft and airbrushed and losing form... now I'd almost say the opposite, that you need to work on your blending. Some of the stuff you've done lately looks like you're going for a high-contrast comic-book sort of style, but it's not quite working. I like your environment stuff, it's got a nice balance of hard/soft and varying texture that's missing in your figure/character work.

Mostly, if you're painting in colour, stay away from pure black. It flattens things out. If you're aiming for a more graphic style, go all-in on it. =)

[Dayle]

Revidescent - thanks for the comments and feedback.

Here is my weeks entry for chow, thanks to kingkostas for the crit and paintovers!

[twilightmoon777]

Sick sketchbook! The improvement in here is amazing, you've really been working your butt off. It's definitely paying off, not much to say but keep at it. You're on the right track and super inspirational. I look forward to seeing more!

PS - You've got a knack for environments

[Dayle]

Ok, big update time. A couple of pen sketches, just from photographs. A few dragons, no reference, just doodling. Then life drawings from a couple of sessions. Finally, some value studies from over the last couple of months. Environments, Planes, Portraits and some basic shapes. I am hoping to keep doing these, as part of weekly / monthly exercises but really struggling to balance life, work, and studying... I've been at this daily now all year and need to keep up the momentum (feel like I'm not making much improvements) but work has been really intense since summer. For that reason, gonna back off a little and just play around with the challenges and whatever shiny things grab my attention, then next year I can step it up again!

[Dayle]

Forgot to say, thanks twilightmoon, it's nice to get positive feedback! Makes me want to work even harder! Also, here are my ideas for the Environment of the week contest #200. I am going to progress number 1 and 4, and do alternative compositions for them both before choosing which one to work up fully.

[AdrianNagorski]

Thank you Dayle for visiting my page!

1. I'm really impressed you've improved bucket loads!!! i like the dinosaur landscape!!!
2. more landscapes please
3. your figure drawings are beautiful, a great challenge/trick is to do a few studies/gesture , then many imaginary ones, helps tons when doing chowz
4. Eow 200, i've been sitting on an idea for weeks but i'll do my best to take part, i have to! i like the summit thumb of your the most, i would change the angle tho because it looks likes the figure is crawling at this stage also make the figure way smaller
that would add depth,

how do i keep going / energy? i just think of guys like Marco , Daryl , Sickbrush etc and i think to myself dam why aint i living my dream? Also i consider how much work they put in and i try to chase em down.
i dont post as much any more since thats a bit addictive + counter productive (4 me personally). but i do work tons in the background LOL i always feel lazy to!
keep well man !!!!

[Dayle]

Merry christmas all.

Here is a picture I did for my mum, as a present. I am quite happy with the result. Started off in greyscale with a round brush, then controlled the opacity manually with the HSB slider blending with percentage values. It takes awhile but I think it's a good technique as you control exactly where the tones change and it gives a more solid image. I need to be more subtle with my mid tones and stay away from the extreme darks and light tones.

[Palespyder]

I am inspired by your progress throughout this sketchbook. I need to really practice more studies and such for sure. I have given myself an assignment of at least 1 hour of sketchbook time with graphite to paper a day for the next year. We will see how that goes. Great stuff, def gonna watch your sketchbook for sure!

[Dayle]

Palespyder - thanks man. Goodluck to you and keep at it!

Now I enter my third year here. I really need to focus more and work much harder this year! For now, here is my finished character; Thanatos, the greek god of death.

[Dayle]

Really glad the site is back up once again, thanks to all keeping this place running.

Here is my current concept for this week(s) chow, Lolth the demon queen of spiders. I have learnt some important things whilst doing this so far, when to scale up, getting a high resolution for detailing and shading. Also not working destructively, i.e. deleting and erasing parts of the image, instead working with layer masks and overlaying new parts. I'm trying to take care with my edges and light sources.

[Dayle]

Here is my final character design. Lolth Queen of spiders.

[Vulgar`]

What else can I say other than what's staring me in the eyes directly: Your improvement, like others have said, is really evident. I always liked your IDW designs and don't know why I slept on your sketchbook progressions.

I really like this dino landscape: http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...1&d=1349355754
The silhouettes and the lighting...nice.

[Dayle]

Vulger - Thanks man! I appreciate the positive feedback. I really love those (all) challenges, it's a great way to produce things and explore ideas that I would otherwise never think of.

Here are my latest life drawing attempts and a little environment sketch I did when I was on the tram the other day.

[Dayle]

Here is this weeks character design. The guardian of the stairway to heaven. He is based on a griffin and is bound with the job of stopping stray souls trying to enter the kingdom of heaven through the "secret" stairway, meant for those that are allowed to come and go as they please. The book he holds contains the names of those able to enter through the stairway and the sword acts as a barrier and mirror for those who cannot pass, giving them a final opportunity to reflect on their sins before being cast out.

Also sketch, started tonight, 3hrs so far. I want to use this as an exercise to get better values, edges and control of lighting, I still feel very weak in these areas. Also I am starting to overuse the airbrush and dodge tools so need to get some more tutorials and explainations on how best to blend.

[Dayle]

Tonights update. Tried to fix her face. Added some colour, skin tone with warm / cold hues for shadows and light. I will hopefully use the weekend to do some colour / value studies. Gonna make a list of new things to practice.

[Dayle]

Here is tonight's study. Starting looking at methods of blending / shading greyscale. Tutorial from Matt Kohr's ctrlpaint. http://www.ctrlpaint.com/brush-technique-blending/ I had to add some colour afterwards... a black and white orange just seemed wrong! I have found tons of useful links, tutorials and websites from conceptart, peoples sketchbooks and general searches and want to start referencing things here for other people to use and so I don't keep losing my links.

[kevinmrn]

Very nice progress in just one year man! I especially like your anatomy sketches they are really becoming PRO! Looking forward to see where you are next year!

[Dayle]

Kevinmrn - Thanks man, but it's actually two years! anyway, keep at it and you'll see the improvements in your own stuff, just don't stop... ever!


Tonight’s exercise was an opportunity to try out two interesting tutorials, and, allow me to work up a little sketch I did over Christmas.

He started off as a snowman, which was what I was thinking about when I drew him. Whilst rendering him up, thought it could be interesting as a child scarecrow. But finished off as a little alien!

Anyway, the important bit. Using basic shapes, but not being bored drawing spheres and boxes, (fyi, when I revisit this, I WILL draw spheres and boxes!) I wanted to practice the rendering technique I was looking at yesterday and start thinking about three really important areas, light, form and colour.

Using the Steven Stahlberg, Jealousy tutorial, I started with my sketch, thought about the light source, created some shapes to establish the direction of light and shadows. I know it’s very rough but I want to get through a few of these and come back to the ones that I feel work best for me. I find this artist’s work very impressive and he creates very strong pieces with amazing forms and lighting. link below.

http://www.androidblues.com/Jealousy...lousystep.html


With the colouring (something I am totally battling with everything), I wanted to try using a tutorial I saw on digital artist daily by April Madden. I have been reading about light, hues and colours (not as much as I should have by now) and was interested in trying this one out. Unsuccessful from the outset and I will try again once I get to grips with the blending, saturation and which colours work best for highlights and shadows.


http://www.digitalartistdaily.com/bl...olour-palette/

Another link, general reading, but something extremely useful is the android arts tutorial by Arne Niklas Jansson, it manages to be clear, concise, full of information and really entertaining to read.

http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm

[Dayle]

I was too tired to do any studies tonight but instead of xbox / tv I just started this, from a scribble, no idea where I was going.

[Dayle]

I hate it when things don't go to plan... I saw a picture of a castle and had an idea, so spent today doing this. I need to improve my environments so much. wip:

[Dayle]

Glad I did this. Finished now, back to some sort of studies.