Practice Like a Madman

[SmallPoly]

Thanks, psychobuddy. I'm working hard. :-D

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I spend a few hours at the farmer's market today and had tons of people coming up to me - mostly parents with their young kids, including some on vacation from another country. I get the impression that the kind of people who go to farmers markets are the same kind of people that don't mind being drawn. There tend to be a lot of street performers at these things.

I also had a guy come up to me saying that him and his wife had been watching me draw and really liked what I was doing. He asked whether I had a website up or not - which I don't. I mentioned that it isn't up yet, and that I currently post things on Facebook, among other places (like here). Maybe it's about time.

Down at the bottom is some practice that started turning into a comic.

Edit: It's been bugging the hell out of me lately that I can't draw a proper cloud, so I did some photo studies tonight. They're still kicking my ass, so I may do more soon.

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

Love the fast figure sketches, looking good!

[greymatter]

nice sketches of farmers market... but what are the cloudy things to the right? They're interesting

[SmallPoly]

@The_Flying_Dutchman Thanks. I'll keep at it. I just took a look at your sketchbook thread. Amazing gestural work there - so loose and so much energy to them...and that's just on the first page.

@Greymatter The cloudy things are studies of cropped areas of cloud photos. It's been bugging me that I always BS the clouds in anything I draw, so I finally took a shot at doing some real ones.

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More ear studies tonight. I'm constantly messing with custom brushes and trying to find ways to imply detail (sort of like what Craig Mullins does). The last one seemed to come out better than my average.

[Ghast]

I absolutely love to see people doing ink gestures like that. I feel like I rarely see them here. The splashes of gray really help them read. I feel like you're pretty much doing everything you can and should be doing balancing life drawing and digital. Even your environments have a nice painterly feel despite being in digital. I'm quite inspired by your work ethic dude. I'll definitely be following your work and happily be helping you in anyway I can

[SmallPoly]

@Ghast The ink sketches have been a lot of fun so far. I was actually kind of surprised at how overwhelmingly positive people have been about being drawn - I always keep a thick sharpie on hand to "destroy" a sketch if anyone ever complains, but I've never had to use it. I generally avoid drawing people that look like they're self-conscious or having a bad day anyways.

Other than just loving to draw in general, I suppose what keeps me studying is seeing this giant mountain of things to master and knowing that I need to keep my pace up if I want to get anywhere near the top. I've made some progress but looking back still makes me wish I put more time in early on. So much work on CA is just phenomenal, and I want to be like that.

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I'm doing sports studies tonight, for CA's Spartan Camp. Some painterly, and crudely attempting to borrow some of Flying Dutchman's methods for a little variety. I really need some more practice with line rhythm.

[SmallPoly]

More spartan camp stuff.

[Ccs]

Wow, really great stuff. Very inspiring. I'm gonna start doing more color and value studies now.

[SmallPoly]

Thanks Ccs! Good luck with your color/value studies.

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Some stuff from last night:

[rich4rt]

I'm really enjoying your exploratory sketches

[SmallPoly]

Thanks, Rich.

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Various things from this weekend.

[JakehC]

nice work. i can see you enjoy drawing.

[Umbravita]

Wow, those are some lovely studies. I like the texture in the digital stuff in #101, what brush are you using and where did you get it?

[SmallPoly]

@Aryeh - Thanks! I do. At this point it's nearly compulsive.

@Umbravita - Thanks, they're coming out better than I initially expected. Most of the brushes I'm using are ones I've made myself actually. The main one I use right now uses a somewhat spikey shape and has a rockwall texture applied that comes from CGTextures.com. If you'd like to play around with it, you can grab some of my current set here:

SmallPoly_Brushes_2012-06-11.zip



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A mixed bag today. In the order of appearance:
- Some life sketches done while riding in a car (vehicles are kicking my ass right now...I think I know what I need to work on next)
- Nose studies, starting Owen Wilson
- Environment thumbnails
- Some figure drawing using variations on the "Riley method".

[knut-]

Really interesting sb man.
Those thumbnails are great and i like your approach on values of the tones.
The creatures on the prev page are really solid!
Keep up!

[SmallPoly]

Thanks, Knut. I think I'm getting somewhat decent at rendering. Once I'm done with this anatomy stuff, i think the next bit will be studying the ways animals have adapted to their environments.

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Some stuff from today and yesterday: Environment thumbs. Nose studies. Riley method. Car gestures.

[Damien Levs]

Damn!!! Your course of study is astonishing. Really impressive work. I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work...

All the best!

[SmallPoly]

Thanks. I've been trying to target my main weaknesses lately and take on more challenging subjects. Cars in general are one of my main struggles right now, especially for quick gestural sketches. I started figuring out a better method by the end of the second page yesterday, which seems to work a lot better. I also need to fix my problems with proportions.

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I did some more stuff last night. I like the way the first and third here came out. I think I might try more of the high contrast single light source thing later on.



Turd polish:

[SmallPoly]

A couple sketches from this morning using the high-contrast style, and some life drawing from lunch.

[SmallPoly]

More sketches and some figure drawing.

[SmallPoly]

50 gestures today, for spartan camp.
Working from http://www.lovecastle.org/draw/

[Velocity Kendall]

wow this is great!
love the stuff from imagination!
subscribed

[SmallPoly]

Some spartan camp stuff from tonight, posing and dressing up some throwaway characters.

[SmallPoly]

Life drawing and some sketches from the last few days.

[SmallPoly]

To help further my ability to create characters and things with narrative elements, I'm going to try to participate in Creature of the Week, Character of the Week, Environment of the Week and occasionally some of the other challenges.

The current topic is "The Keymaster"
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=243642

Here's my WIP:

[SmallPoly]

Lately I'm experimenting with having elements be out of sharp focus. What I'm trying to achieve is to make things that look like they have form and have implied detail, without having to zoom in to 1200% to actually add it in. The better I can do this, the easier it should be to work in iterations and establish initial values. This is mainly being accomplished through textured brushes and gaining greater control over hard, soft and lost edges.

There also seems to be a relationship between stiffness and having sharp details all over. If this is true, I'd assume that comes from the relation ship between movement and motion blur. You can only observe the sharpest details on an object when both you and it are standing perfectly still. SO with painting and drawing, the more simplified and gestural, the more assumed "motion blur" and the more alive the drawing. I can't really say for sure though. I'll need to mess around some more.

Edit: Got my David statue in the mail today. Only flaw seems to be little bump above the right nipple.

Here are a few sketches from my lunch break:

[SmallPoly]

Did a couple sets of gestures with the model during lunch. Since this is at my office, I gave him a paper loincloth to make him SFW. Partway through doing the drawings, my girlfriend stopped by with a rose, so I added it in.

[SmallPoly]

Had the Drink & Draw last night. It went pretty well. Some of my friends showed up, and we went to a drive in theater to see a double-feature of Brave and The Avengers.

[Duplicitious]

love your little concepts! you're definitely the strongest with opaque lines
at first thought you'd carved the david sculpture and had a mini gasp fest but then read above xD

i think you should work on your color choices, they look a bit off in many of the studies, too harsh/neon is the best way I can describe it. Try working in some more less saturated colors to play off the really saturated colors because I think there are too many colors clashing for attention right now and there need to be more colors that complement and bring out one or two specific colors.

Anyways, keep it up

[SmallPoly]

Hi Duplicitious. Thanks for the feedback. Thinking over what you said, you're absolutely right. While sometimes I'm trying to get things to look neon/iridescent, I'll admit I lack control over color and don't tend to put enough thought into my color choices. I'll work on this in some of my next studies.

It would be nice if I was good enough to make an accurate replica of "David" on my own. I think it's going to be a while before that's a possibility.