Need sketchbook advice

**will123will** · February 11th, 2012, 09:33 PM

Another portrait work in progress will be uploading some different work soon that isn't portraits lol.

**will123will** · February 13th, 2012, 01:37 AM

environment in progress, and the quality went really bad when I was making it small enough to post on here.

**will123will** · February 13th, 2012, 03:40 PM

mountain landscape thing, not sure where I was going with this and it just felt confusing to paint, gonna go and watch some pro's paint mountains on youtube anyways.

**will123will** · February 13th, 2012, 05:52 PM

tried rendering a close up part of the mountain, think it's helped me understand why the full version is a blurred mess though lol.

**takashmen** · February 13th, 2012, 05:58 PM

here's sth that could help you in rendering

the lasso selection tool is used in this case

http://vimeo.com/20528706

**cedule** · February 13th, 2012, 06:12 PM

Try to get some nice reference for mountains....there are millions of cool photos of mountains in the internet and study some of them...i think it will help you alot more then looking at some guys painting crazy mountains.

and looking through your sketchbook it seems like you always start with almost the same grey value no matter what you are going for. if i would start with my background already being filled with some value i would suggest to use a value that is related to the image you are going for.

keep it up!

**will123will** · February 13th, 2012, 06:14 PM

thanks guys will look at the link and look for references.

**will123will** · February 13th, 2012, 11:25 PM

I call him the cloud monster lol, I was painting in some clouds and they kinda made the shape of some kind of figure so I turned it into this. Having a hard time taking the mountain any further anyways.

**will123will** · February 14th, 2012, 10:54 PM

another portrait WIP that I probably won't finish, having a major art frustration phase lately where whatever I do just makes me really annoyed. Anyways, should be uploading some figure studies soon cus I've been doing them lately, thats if I don't be too lazy lol.

**will123will** · February 15th, 2012, 12:58 AM

Haven't uploaded any sketchbook pages in a while, so heres a bit of a sketch dump of studies and stuff from imagination and memory. Absolutely hate the second page lol. P.S. I'd upload more sketchbook stuff but it's hell to get them
on them all onto small enough files and stuff.

**will123will** · February 15th, 2012, 05:00 PM

quick value study, this was really fun to do, will definitely be doing. I learned a lot doing it too, like the fact that I need to establish shapes better before I start to blend or detail.

**Topcross** · February 15th, 2012, 05:20 PM

Good sketches. For the last study, the frog and a part of whatever he's sitting on blend. Make sure that your values seperate the forms. To check if it works, zoom out until your image is only a tiny thumbnail, at early stage in your painting, once the value is set, everything should read. (Also blurring your eyes helps you check if the forms read.)

Like with the frog, make the value of the thing he is sitting on is a bit different from the frog so that the frog jumps out more. Zooming out to thumbnail size now would give you the frog with a big ribbon attached to it or something atm as you see it as one shape.

**will123will** · February 15th, 2012, 06:42 PM

yep man, totally get what you mean, will definitely do the thumbnail thing in future. Heres another value study lol and it's like the worst thing ever, need to stop doing environments for now.

**will123will** · February 15th, 2012, 08:24 PM

still life number I've lost count lol, not happy with it but feel like I've learned an important lesson, which is to make my transitional tones shape the form just as much as where I place my highlight, midtone and shadow.

**Falchion** · February 15th, 2012, 08:56 PM

I'd recommend not using fuzzy brushes for a while to clean up your rendering. What you have so far is pretty muddy.

**will123will** · February 15th, 2012, 09:16 PM

yep man, know what you mean, it's totally muddy, will try working without fuzzy brushes.

**will123will** · February 16th, 2012, 05:48 AM

new still life, could of took it further but thought I was best calling it finished.

**will123will** · February 17th, 2012, 07:18 PM

been doing loomis studies. First figure is from imagination and I know the width proportions need correcting and the head is too small lol. These are just a few of them I have a ton of figure studies I've done in my sketchbook but they're mainly just proportions and manekins and stuff.

**Topcross** · February 17th, 2012, 07:26 PM

The human anatomy looks good, the ones of the animals are off though. Specially that dog does not look like it could walk (quite thin legs, and the joints don't really look like they could work). It would probably help to do some studies of a dog or something with reference aswell.

**will123will** · February 17th, 2012, 07:34 PM

lol thanks totally know what you mean about the animals, there's no way in hell that the dog is structured right.

**will123will** · February 18th, 2012, 06:52 PM

couple of figure drawings from memory and random studies of body parts.

**will123will** · February 19th, 2012, 12:38 AM

new still life, realised I way over blend, resulting in me turning the form into a mushy like substance lol.

**will123will** · February 19th, 2012, 07:21 AM

quick portrait painting from memory WIP.

**Topcross** · February 20th, 2012, 04:56 PM

The shadow in the last study of an apple is off aswell, it feels like he's floating rather than firmly planted on the ground.

**will123will** · February 21st, 2012, 02:46 PM

yep it does, gonna take more care on how I do the cast shadow in future.

**will123will** · February 22nd, 2012, 09:01 AM

still life, not enough of a range and the highlight is too sharp so it kinda looks a bit like plastic.

**will123will** · February 25th, 2012, 05:03 PM

quick skull still life.

**will123will** · February 26th, 2012, 05:41 PM

need some advice on what I should do to improve this character, really confused on where I'm going with it because it's totally from imagination.

**will123will** · February 29th, 2012, 06:37 PM

still life, those freaking flat surface objects lol.

**Topcross** · March 3rd, 2012, 06:35 PM

For the character, even though its from imagination, there are always things you could use as reference or inspiration. Watch movies, play games, or read books (my personal favourite

). Maybe check out a book on different types of armor and weapons, or look up some stuff about ritual robes or something.

On a more technical note, there are some parts of the painting that are rather muddy. What I found that helped for me to get around this is rather than having the opacity on pen pressure, have it on manual control (num 0-9 by default), at least at the start of a painting when you are roughing out the shapes. By doing this and trying to only use one stroke rather than a couple on the same spot, you'll have cleaner strokes, rather than a painting that looks a bit muddy at times. And it really helps on getting clean hard edges where you need them aswell