David Keen's Sketchbook

[David Keen]

Just a few figure sketches for today. It was fun to stick with line and focus on expressing volume.

[David Keen]

I’ve been lucky enough to come into a little free time and took the opportunity to revisit the Mass Effect species design project I started a few months ago. The species that I’m working on is very tech savvy and this prompted me to do a little research into mechanical augmentation, the result of which is the leg exoskeleton I’ve hinted at in this sketch. I’ll continue to explore this idea over the next few days and try and come up with an interesting way of using this technology to make the character really memorable

[David Keen]

For a while I've wanted to work my way through the entirety of the Andrew Loomis Books and decided to start with the fundamentals with "Figure Drawing For All It's Worth". It's been thoroughly enjoyable so far and I've learnt more reliable rules for constructing the figure in the last few days than all the figure study I've done before. The focus of these sketchbook pages was to try and ingest as much of the figure arrangement and composition information so the drawings are far from perfect and weren't slaved over as much as usual. For those that haven't looked at the Loomis books yet check out this review from Parka Blogs and get your hands on a copy, the newly reprinted hard cover version is beautifully presented and very affordable.

[veela]

great studies!
I exspecially love the lines of the figure-study-woman

[Andre-Sutherland]

Woah, you have some really great figures in here, really inspiring and I LOVE the master studies. I need to take notes during loomis, I tend to just highlight in the book, but I don't think its enough. Great work man!

[David Keen]

Here's a bit more Loomis study from the last couple of days. It was really satisfying to start doing some mannikin frame drawings from imagination and see them looking somewhat stable and proportionate. Can't wait to get into a bit more.

[Wheeljack18]

Good Work on the Loomis my man! You will never regret the serious study of this man's work and it will lay a great foundation to your creative process guaranteed. Keep it up!

Cheers.

[David Keen]

The final version of my mock Sethlan race design for Mass Effect.

[matty_mcmullen]

Is this done... traditional?

lol Looks good man! You gonna do the briefs?

[David Keen]

Some more design work, the theme for this one was to come up with a pirate/vagabond and his vehicle.

@Matty: Dude, all traditional all the time! These are entries for the John Park brief. Did you end up having a shot at it?

[AllyAlbon]

Coming along leaps and bounds. Your composition is particularly nice, and great to see someone who actually plans out their layout before diving in. Lovely stuff.

[David Keen]

I've been wanting to do some more environments recently so I've done a few little speedpaints to play around with shape, colour and texture. It's been a great exercise and is making me realise things about colour much more quickly than usual.

@AllyAlbon: Thanks for stopping past! I really enjoy the planning stages so it's not a chore to do lots of sketches before the main event. Finishing full paintings is the hard bit for me

[David Keen]

Today I had a shot at Nathan Fowkes portrait drawing technique which was great fun. It was a real challenge for me to try and use shape and tone rather than line to construct the figure, I'm excited to try some more drawings using this technique.

[matty_mcmullen]

Hey man lookin good!! Solid entry for the mech, I can see the techniques from john in there.

I didn't get a chance to do anything, sucks so bad. Just been snowed under at work and also moved house so I have had pretty much no time to do anything.

I'm still checking the site tho hopefully I can do one of the other briefs if they come up.

Also what little time I have off I have been working on my book I told you about. I want it to be hopefully done by November! I'm going to the states then so I want to take it with me and try get it out there!

[David Keen]

A couple of recent sketchbook pages.

@Matty: Thanks for coming back and looking at my stuff man! The John Park techniques have really stuck with me since the workshop, it's helped speed up my design stuff a lot.

Sounds like things have been pretty crazy the last few weeks. How did the move go? Are you happy with the new location?

I hope work on the book is going well, I'd love to check out what you've been doing if you get a chance to share. It'd be great to have it all knocked over by the time you go overseas, would be a pretty impressive body of work to show people while you're there. How long will you be away for?

[MrFrenik]

Looking good, man. I've always enjoyed your pencil work, but it's good to see you getting into some more digital lately too.

[David Keen]

@MrFrenik: Good to see you online again man, thanks for the kind words.

I've been continuing to look a little more at environment focused work recently, also a sketch of Rick Deckard just because.

[David Keen]

Here's some life drawing from the other night. I hadn't been to a session for over six months so it was great to get back into it.

[David Keen]

A couple more figure sketches, these ones were from photo's sourced at thedrawingscript

[David Keen]

My flame queen wip for this week's CHOW.

[David Keen]

Working on a little 10" x 10" movie themed painting for a show at the moment. Has been a fun piece to work on.

[Wheeljack18]

Good Work Dave! It's been a while since I stopped by your SB but I can see the loomis has been helping and your figure work is coming along nicely. Keep it Up!

[David Keen]

My pal Mike Perry (Wheeljack18) got me inspired to try and work on some portrait paintings. I'm treating them as quick(ish) studies for improving my sense of colour and rendering process.

[David Keen]

Hi guys,

It sure has been a while! A lot of new work has been done since I was last on here but I'll just post a selection of that today. I've been doing a lot of portrait studies recently and have found them hugely beneficial to for improving my drawing and colour application. If you are at a loss for what to do for practice I'd encourage you to have a go at a portrait. It's good to be back on the site!

[David Keen]

Here is a self portrait I completed for Self Portrait Day last week.

For some details on how I made the piece and some great software for taking photo reference check out my blog.

[David Keen]

I recently had a piece in a local charity show, the brief was to create a painting 10" x 10" using a film as the inspiration. I of course did star wars. The painting was completed with oils on masonite panel.

[Fuggedaboudit]

I like your anatomy studies, especially #128 because of the way you can already "read" off these figures. Portraits are great, but somehow I feel there could be some more "living" colors. Also, perhaps you could try giving them different backgrounds? I feel that the first lady in #146 would look smashing against a dark background.

[MrFrenik]

Great batch of latest work, man. I know I haven't been on in a while, so I made a big update yesterday, if you're interested in checking out. The portraits on here look great, I can tell you've definitely gotten more comfortable with painting digitally. One crit that might help you out is to work on differing between soft/hard edges. Softer as you go away from a focused area and more hard edges closer in. Oh, and we look a lot alike; your self-portrait was like staring in a mirror for me, ha.

[David Keen]

Here's the finished version of a piece I've been working away at for a while now. I took a break from it for a few months and in some spare time came back to make some changes. I wrote an article about how the piece evolved for my blog which can be found here.

Fuggedaboudit: Thanks for having a look at my sketchbook. I think you're totally right on both counts. Working on my colours is close to the top of my list at the moment.

MrFrenik: Hey man! I haven't been on for a while either. I'm inbound on your sketchbook first thing tomorrow morning (it's too late for me to write anything vaguely intelligent now) Nice note on the edges. I've been reading a lot about edge control recently and need to keep paying attention to it in my work. Thanks for helping to bring that to my attention again. I'm glad to hear you were equally blessed with movie star good looks haha now we just need a self-portrait from you. Talk soon dude.

[Lakai]

You have really improved this year congratz! Also cool designs.
Keep it up!