NoxPopuli's (sketch)Book of the Dead

[NoxPopuli]

Hello guys, I'm new o_o

I've been lurking this place since I found out about it from sinix's amazing youtube videos (I'm gonna bet there is/gonna be a huge influx of newbies thanks to his YT stuff!) and I'm both really amazed/intimidated by what I see here (specifically that weird moment you realise that half of the cool art/designs you've seen online or in games for the last few years has pretty much all originated from people from this place o_o) and hugely disappointed that I didn't find out about this place years ago; before my skills began to atrophy and my enthusiasm for art wasn't so lax.

So yeah, I'm here to try and change that and to hopefully improve my skills as I've found myself sort of in-and-out of art for some years now, always not sticking to it because of frustration and not knowing what I even wanted to do with the hobby, having no faith in myself, "what's the point in doing art unless you're aiming for an art career?" etc etc blah blah, you guys know the score, right? ._.

So, hello everyone!

This is where I do my SB thumbnail picture right?
Acrylic on Canvas, 20cm x 20cm, Referenced from "Casually Dressed & Deep in Conversation" Album Cover by Funeral for a Friend.

[NoxPopuli]

So to be pretty honest my art stuff probably peaked around when I was 16 (7 years ago) and my skill level's probably remained about the same since then due to lack of practice and being a lazy/unmotivated wastrel :<. In high school I had an awesome art teacher who pushed me to do work that was outside of my comfort zone so I learned quite a bit of stuff pretty fast, Sometimes I still struggle to match the quality of some of that stuff (it was school, I was under external pressure to work hard on art, unlike now) but it was super-useful for me to have a time when I could see what I was capable of producing when I really tried compared to when I didn't.

So here is some of my old work from that era (apologies for some of the picture quality and stuff, good digital cameras weren't cheap back then, plus I have a bad habit of contrast adjusting everything which is probably a bad idea for these forums!), All are either from reference photos, artist studies/copies or constructed from multiple references (oh and an early attempt at digital which is from imagination, on an old trust battery-powered pen tablet ):

[NoxPopuli]

Some more random stuff that's more recent, plus lots of crappy doodles and sketches. The digital face sketches are without ref, most of everything else is ref work though (except that part-finished mechanical knight the plane doodle and art gun thing).

Enjoy ._.

[NoxPopuli]

Just a few of today's tablet sketches, the boring empty scene was just me getting to grips with the paintbrush tool instead of using pen for everything.