First Try At Digital Art

[RoboMat]

Hey-ho - Let's go,

what can i say ... I'm a 22 years old German currently studying law (yeah the ultra boring stuff^^). I've been interested in art as long as I can remember but never tried painting or drawing myself - except for the stuff I had to do in the so-called "art-lessons" back in school and some crude drawings of faces I plastered my school book with

The only thing I ever did was 3d-Art using Blender, but I kind of lost interest in that, when they released the new update.

Anyways, last month I found my old "Wacom-Bamboo Fun" (the smallest version) and decided to give it a try. The first sketches were done in Sketchbook-Express until I "upgraded" to Gimp some weeks ago.

As you will see, I have no idea of what I'm doing. I've watched a few tutorials so far and really spent a lot of time here on CA but most of what I do is "Trial and Error".

Anyways, please crit & comment as much as you want,
I really want to improve.

greetz, RM

P.S.: Excuse my english.

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*EDIT: I hope the image size is okay like this*

I will add some of the stuff I have done in the first month of drawing starting with the oldest.

Doodles:

1. The bears were amongst the first things I drew in Sketchbook Express.
2. The Knight was already done in Gimp.
3. A page with different doodles... I like the owl.

Studies:

1. Mostly Imagination. I think the one on the left is from a loomis book :/
2. All done from photography trying to overlay the muscles ...
3. Bad hand studies.
4. I don't know if you can call that a face study...
5. Again trying to understand the muscles of upper body.
6. Posemaniacs
7. Posemaniacs
8. Posemaniacs

Colour:

1. Forest: First try with colours and environments - from imagination.
2. Wave: Second try from imagination... Looking at it now I see, that the wave is consuming too much of the actual image
3. First try at grey-scale - is that how you call it?
4. A Skull I did today from a photography.
5. WIP - Mountain - from photography.

[JFierce]

I always give this tutorial for people going into digital.
Simplify and flatten being a big thing to remember.
When people just start getting into digital I see a lot doing small brushes with low opacity.
Though luckily it doesn't seem like your doing that.


http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

Skull looks nice.
Do some from life even if it's something simple, really focus on it though
You'll eventually start to notice how things really look, we tend to fill in information with our brains and it's more or less just guessing. But once you really start to observe you notice the colors and values that make up something. Then you start to over time connect 'why' it's that way. "Ok I'm doing this armor study, this part is just white, and in metal I notice the distance between a white and high contrast black is very short, also it's very reflective, this shade of blue is because of the sky reflecting. Then since the light source is coming from here the shadows cast over here are like this... etc.etc... " blah blah blah you get the idea. Instead of looking at that coffee mug as white with gray from the shadow, you see the blue tint, the red reflecting from that napkin. lol I'm rambling.


Also when your studying try to to keep a focused goal on whatever your doing.
"Ok I'm going to come out of this study working on the nose, or mouth, or face, or head, or proportions, or perspective, or lighting etc etc" you get the idea. Try to actively learn something even if your not trying to make a masterpiece. Do studies, observe, read some books and tutorials. But always try to come out of it with something.

Some people do gestures without even knowing why, they just copy their books anatomy pictures without thinking about why things look like they do, once you understand something, that is when you start to make the leaps and bounds in progress.



Just keep drawing whenever you can!

[RoboMat]

JFierce - Thank you very much for your advice and kind words. That tutorial is awesome! I'm gonna start working on those things as soon as possible... hopefully I will have some time for a life-painting this evening

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A small update on the mountains. The rocks took very long to do ... so only very small progress
Also I'm having a really hard time getting the shadows right.

EDIT: Also added a quick painting. It's a scene from the movie "Stalker" by Andrei Tarkowski. Great movie with beautiful images.

[RoboMat]

Puh long time no see... unfortunally I'm currently pretty busy with my studies and couldn't do as much as I wanted to

Anyways I managed to do some studies on paper in the meantime and I even tried a life-painting some days ago, but unfortunately it looked like a turd in the end (no kidding I was trying to draw a black vial on my desk) so I'm not going to post it

Here are some face studies I did from photo-reference today. I tried to follow the tips JFierce gave me and focused on the structure of the head.
It's pretty embarrassing that I can't show you more ... hopefully I can get some more stuff done the next days (2 months then I should have some more free time I hope )

greetings

[Topcross]

Nice start, keep it up.

[RoboMat]

Topcross - Thank you very much

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I've seen the new C.O.W. #248 Challange and found it really interesting. Although I'm not going to participate I started my own version of the "Valhalla Gatekeeper".

Greetings

[WRappiii]

i'd love to see some color put to those lines!

[Dr.Blindsy]

I agree with WRappii. Color always makes drawings pop a bit more.

These are good starts. I especially like your bear. all in all, just keep at it. Your stuff is off to a good start.

Cheers

[RoboMat]

WRappiii & Dr.Blindsy - Thank's to both of you! I already played around with colour today but the "overlay"-stuff didn't work out very well :/ I think I will try to paint directly on it as soon as I can.

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Today I got some more free time (yay !) and used it to do some photo-studies on heads ... but as stupid as I am I didn't save the image before I closed Gimp Why doesn't this stupid program have an autosave-function???

At least I can show you a small update on the "gatekeeper" and also a quick drawing I made in about 20 mins (photo-ref). The ear is just ... wrong.

Greetings.

[Peipei]

Very nice! Just a bit more practice and you'll be great. This is a very great first few attempts.

[Stuart DeViva]

Good start! Keep it up. If you're looking for a wonderful anatomy book, a favorite of mine right now is hogarth's stuff.

[Dilated]

Good start man! JFierce definitely has some solid advice. Focusing your studies is amazing advice

Its always fun to dive into digital but I think you should continue doing some traditional drawings to really nail those foundations. Try out some Loomis which can be found here http://alexhays.com/loomis/ and try hogarth and bridgeman if you can get your hands on them.

Also when you draw lines try to draw them as long as you can instead of many small lines which is "chicken scratching' everyone goes through this stage so its all good

Look forward to seeing your improvement keep pushin' it

[RoboMat]

Peipei, UmpaArt, Dilated - Big thanks to all of you

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Long time no see... I hope it's okay if I post a little update. I hadn't much time to really focus on drawing because I was caught up with so much other stuff. Anyways I started drawing apart from my PC more and more. Most of that stuff goes right into my trashbin but here are some drawings I'm not completely unhappy with. But even there I did the "chicken scratching" as Dilated called it After next week I have a few weaks break, so hopefully I can focus more on the fun things in life and start doing studies again.

Sorry for the bad quality, but I don't have a scanner so these pictures are taken with my cellphone :/

cheers,
RoboMat

[MonoOrder]

Nice job getting those studies in. I'm just a beginner but for most of your portraits the eyes are a little bit too high up instead of near the middle.