Mr. Corlan's Sketchbook

[Mr. Corlan]

Hi All,

I'm finally starting a sketchbook to see if I can stop being such a total slacker. I need to get good, and I need to get good fast, so my goal is to work at least 40 hours per week. It's nothing I haven't done before, but now I'm not in school and I don't have anyone kicking my butt. So please help me out and kick my butt!

I haven't done any real studies in a long while, and that's what I see recommended all the time in the critique center, so that's what I'm going to do. Here's a few to start. Some Bridgman copies, a few legs after Leonardo, plus a lizard critter just for fun. Any comments and criticisms are more than welcome!

[mitchoo]

Wow man you're stuff is looking really good. I really like the angles and lines you use. Post more

[Mr. Corlan]

Hey! No compliments! Hah. Thanks mitchoo.

OK. Here's a few more things: one very recent, one somewhat recent, and one not recent at all. I obviously haven't made much progress.

[Waschbär]

great studies and great works! Keep poasting!

[Raffix]

sick man! more!

[Mr. Corlan]

Hey thanks for the encouragement Waschbär and Raffix. It helps. You guys better keep up the good work too. Here's a little sketch for some sort of Bird-man. Eek, I've got to work on that whole pectoral, deltoid, clavicle area and start drawing arms in the right orientation. And some heads from Loomis. They were pretty depressing at first, but I think I got a little better once I broke down and actually started constructing them step-by-step the way he tells you to. I heartily recommend actually following directions.

[Mr. Corlan]

These studies are really just me procrastinating and not doing real work. So here are the paintings I'm currently supposed to be working on. I'm doing a series of five paintings for a little group gallery show in August. Two are finished, and the last one is still a complete mess. These two are both obviously very much works-in-progress. I also threw in a little landscape sketch I did the other day.

[Mr. Corlan]

Yesterday was kind of a bust, so I need to step it up today. Here's a few anatomy studies from this morning. Rib and shoulder studies from Die Gestalt des Menschen, and some shoulders and arms after Leonardo.

[Waschbär]

good to see you working hard i discovered bammes as well... amazing anatomy book! keep up the good studies

[p sage]

Love the sense of weight your pen lines give to the drawings. They're exceptional.

[Mr. Corlan]

Thanks p sage, they're actually graphite, but my cheap scanner makes them way too light, so I just hit 'auto levels' in photoshop.

Here's some carpuses and metacarpuses copied from Bammes, and some progress on that painting.

[Waschbär]

great stuff! love the painting! keep rocking!

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

Dude, your line sketches are nuts! Much respect and well carried over into painting as well.

Keep it up!

[Mr. Corlan]

Darn! Next to nothing done in two days! I've got to stop slacking off.

@Waschbär - Thanks! I'll try.

@The Flying Dutchman - Thanks a lot! I'm not using ink like you do though, I like my eraser! With graphite I can endlessly fuss over my lines. I was thinking about your comment when I was drawing yesterday. I've always been a better draftsman than painter and all the comments I've gotten here so far have pretty much been about my line quality. So I was trying to think of ways to get more mileage out of drawing—make them more finished and more like paintings, but still drawings. I did this little sketch with graphite and watercolor pencil (no water) which was pretty fun, though the drawing creeps me out a bit. Messed with the contrast and stuff a bit in photoshop. Definitely more stuff tomorrow!

[Henrique Ventura]

Hey Mr. Corlan, very nice muscles you draw! Like that.

Also, that building on fire is awsome!

keep going

[Mr. Corlan]

Thanks Henrique, and welcome to CA!

Another page of doodles with some colored pencil testing.

[Mr. Corlan]

A little robot thing, a character sketch that I need to almost completely redo because the proportions are all wrong, and some weird spider-man.

[Brandon Pilcher]

Really cool creature designs!

[Waschbär]

man u rock! really love your creature and doodles! i also love your use of lineweights!
can`t wait to see more

[LordLouis]

God I really admire your shading with graphite. I love it that you draw with coloured pencils, one of my favourite tools and hopefully able to use at some point. Fantastic to see some traditional stuff here, I think you really need to post more of your stuff

[Mr. Corlan]

@Brandon Pilcher - Thanks!

@Waschbär - Hah. No, I really don't at all, but thanks!

@LordLouis - Hey thanks a lot! I'm much worse with a tablet, and I don't have the equipment and software for it to really compete. Traditional stuff is just awesome anyway. I do need to post more stuff, I need to make more stuff!

Here's a little pencil sketch from imagination, and a digital sketch over the painting I'm working on. Trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing . . .

[Quigleyer]

Honestly you might want to spray a fixative over your pencils before working with the colored pencil on top, it's looking like they're starting to smear. I'd also suggest using one of those shitty ballpoint pens you can get anywhere to draw with. It gives you a lot of ability to draw really light lines because little ink comes out when you don't press to hard. Shitty to write with, wonderful to draw with. I don't get the sense that you're a neat freak and that's when drawing with a ballpoint pen is the shiznit .

keep up your figure work, it's a good strong point to have .

[JeffX99]

Strong stuff! At first I thought the spider-thing was a Thark and got all excited...

You don't really need any critique or advice - you know what you're doing. Well ok...more working from life is always good, especially plein air...but you knew that already!

[Mr. Corlan]

OK here's some progress on that painting that I've now got a thread for over in the Critique Center. This is all digital right now.

@Quigleyer - Thanks I'll check that out. I didn't think they were smearing, but I'll look again, but it might be just an artifact of scanning? I have drawn with ballpoint pen a bunch in the past, not so much recently though. Good tip, using pen will probably make me get more stuff done too, because I won't be able to fiddle with stuff so much.

@JeffX99 - Thanks again! Ahh, Tharks! Tars Tarkas! Sorry for the let-down, but that's a good idea . . .
Gotcha, more work, more from life.

[Mr. Corlan]

A quick doodle to start off the morning. Still warming up to this ballpoint pen thing.

[Waschbär]

sweet stuff lets see an update man

[Mr. Corlan]

@Waschbär - Thanks. You should've said "wake up, slacker!". I guess we're even now.

I finally got all these paintings done. Some of them particularly leave something to be desired, but I'm moving on. I reposted the first one so they're all together here.

More soon.

[NickyBeats]

DAMN DUDE! awesome work man! your traditional paints and sketches are insane! you have a killer 80's comic painting style going on. i dont know, cant even really compare it. but this shit rocks hard!

[Vulgar`]

Great work. Your latest environmental ventures are excellent. The colors are entrenching and the events occuring in them are interesting!

As for some crit: I love this one but it feels like you negleced the feet and head areas.
http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...1&d=1309698858

[Mr. Corlan]

@NickyBeats - Wow, thanks! Hmm, 80s comics eh? I'll have to look into that, I had no idea, thanks!

@Vulgar - Thanks Vulgar! I don't think I'm up with the EoW folks yet though. I think I'm going to join in for the next one. Thanks for the crit, now that I look I guess I was really lazy with the heads and feet on all of them.

Just submitted my first ChoW entry. I don't know if it'll get to poll, but it was a lot of fun anyway.