In Over My Head - Attempting to Art

[Olothontor]

Hello, ConceptArt.org!

I heard about this via Sinix and his wonderful set of videos on YouTube, and have been lurking and checking things out for a few days now. Finally mustered the courage to post, even though my best efforts at the moment come nowhere close to the level of creativity and excellence that you guys put out daily.

Still, the whole point of a sketchbook is improvement, right? Well. I have quite a lot to improve (though it doesn't help that I'm also a really harsh self-critic).

So a little bit about me to start things off, I guess. The most important thing for this thread is that I have never seriously attempted art before. Maybe some sad scribbles or doodles here and there, but nothing huge, and certainly nothing that gives any sense of skill or accomplishment. That said, please, push me along and keep me from descending into that whole "I can't do this, why did I even try" thing. It's bad, and it certainly doesn't fix the situation or help me improve. That's why I'm going to try my best to update this sketchbook every day (or so the theory goes), in order to get the daily practice that's required to become a better and more well-rounded artist.

It's also worth pointing out that I don't have a scanner, so my non-Photoshop sketches won't be making it up for a while. Hopefully that's not too big of a deal, but it means I will get plenty of digital media practice, eh? Haha.

So, here's something to start us off. Again, keep in mind that I've never really done this sort of thing before.

I was watching the 1986 Transformers cartoon movie. What can I say? Guilty pleasure, hehe.


This one was actually my very first attempt at Photoshop sketching. Meh. A whole bunch of perspective issues, and the design isn't terribly interesting, either.


A couple of pages from my sketchbook. Crummy, messy, loads of perspective and shape-forming issues.



This one's my most recent, having been done just yesterday. I actually went in with a thumbnail and worked it up to this crappy cell shaded mess. I kinda liked the thumbnail better.


Okay! That was embarrassing. Oh well. Nothing for it now, but to do more and improve! Who knows, maybe in a few months I won't actually be so embarrassed to post. Hehehe.
::rolls up sleeves::
Let's do some art.

[Olothontor]

Attempting a landscape. FAIL!

I honestly have no idea where to place my strokes, what colors to choose... way, way in over my head. I feel like I should be doing something simpler to test the water out, but I'm not sure what that would be. Any and all suggestions are welcome. Obviously there's not much to critique, here... it's all pretty bad.

So here's what I started with. Popped into Alchemy and put down some shapes.


Then took that base and moved to Photoshop to start "painting," not that I had any idea what I was doing.

[M.Calza]

Welcome, I'll for sure check your sb for updates, for the studies, try to get some books in anatomy and mix the studies with drawings from imagination, Loomis is free for download. Good luck.

[Olothontor]

Thanks, M.Calza! Yeah, I just saw today that the Loomis books are free. Downloaded a few and am taking a read. Really interesting stuff.

[Olothontor]

Trying my hand at gestures. Some of these are enormously flawed, but a couple of them came out well. Mostly the ones that have no action in them. The ones that are standing still and don't have an odd perspective, angle, and viewpoint are the ones that I did best, which probably tells you a lot about my ability. And unfortunately means that I'm utter crap at human form. Hah!

[Olothontor]

So I noticed doing my gestures that it was a lot easier to do the simple poses where nothing is happening. That said, I went and found some source images (thanks to Daestock over at Deviantart) and set to work trying to replicate. So far, no great luck. Still trying to get the muscle memory to register human body parts and line confidence, etc. So these are really crappy.


Then I tried one with clothing, trying to find body parts and shapes beneath the clothes. That, uh. Didn't work so well either.

[ChristopheVH]

Good start with the gestures, i would advice you to do them traditional tho. Digital studies tend to make your linework really messy. just get some charcoal and some large paper and start doing gestures from nudes.
Also when you do these gestures try to focus how the person's spine is curving and try to make the volumes quite simple.
keep at it .

[M.Calza]

Continue with the poses, they will get better and easier with time, try to add some anatomy studies with it, if you need pictures/poses there are these 2 sites that change the pictures from time to time
http://www.posemaniacs.com/thirtysecond
http://lovecastle.org/draw/

[Olothontor]

@CristopheVH - Fair point, I need to do traditional media too. The problem is, you'll have to trust me- I don't have a scanner or a very good camera! So not a lot of the sketchy stuffs will make it onto this thread, at least not for a little while yet. Thanks for the post!
@M.Calza - Oh, wonderful! Thanks much, those two sites will come in handy! Thanks for checking back in.

Oddly enough, I had a friend see all of my attempts at art and decided to give me some work on a commission piece. Somewhat foolishly, I accepted.

After about- oh, jeez. I dunno how long. Probably between 5 and 6 hours, maybe? I came out of it with the image at the end. I'll go ahead and show the sequence just to get better feedback, I guess. It's overall pretty messy, but it's a lot better than I thought it would be when I accepted the offer, so I'm fairly pleased with it, I guess. Maybe. I dunno.



Bonus: The sword was actually done in Alchemy and then traced over to get the purple outlined version.

[Olothontor]

Sorry I'm so behind on this, guys! Updates soon!

Here, to hold you over until a /real/ update:
Trying to do an actual render of the lizardman knight. So far the only real progress is on the head, but I feel pretty happy with it... ? I guess? Now I just have to fill in the rest. Also, that jacket won't be such a popping and bright blue once I'm done- it's going to be a white scale vest.