Zebz's Sketchbook: One more update for the road... 1/8/09

[max1975]

All right. After much scrutiny, I think I've found an area where you could use some work, and that's body language. Your faces and rendering are so solid that I often don't notice they're sitting atop rather straight, static bodies.

Now I'm not saying you need to go razy with exaggeration and superdramatic Draw Comics the Marvel Way, but maybe just put a little more thought into the bodies. A little more twist here and bend there, maybe for example the dude with the goggles in your last post could be holding whatever he's holding with two fingers extended, implying perhaps the motion of a nervous (or thoughtful) stroking of his whatever that is (is it a pen? the rigidity and position of the arm make me think it should be a backpack strap).

Anyway, I just think some more watching out for that sort of opportunity will give your characters more personality (not that they're lacking personality at present).

[Fellah.]

Keep up the hard work, dude! The rendered page came out really nice - you should feel better Nice studie!

[brokk]

max already made some really solid crits... so, nothing from my lazy self for now! (because, I can't really think of anything to crit actually)

I love the lighting of the little guy on sb95 on the bottom-center of the page. Waiting to see more!

Cheers

[Flaskpost]

really sweet sketchbook pages man! fuckin progress mate! lots of it too, and u were allready good.
the anatomy studies are rockin too!

[neoknocker]

Great update and study.
The study is good and you can do better than that. Push it harder man!

[ApolloNuevo]

love the anatomy drawing! honestly, i don't think you have to decide which direction to take your art...just let it come naturally to you and market whatever side seems best.

-apollo

[blacky]

Hmmmmm.... nice stuff. Keep em koming.
I actualy am ashamed that al I write here is a crapy "Good job" comment...
considering the amount of effort and lines you guys put down at this threat...
Can't think of anything to comment on right now, sorry.

Oh, wait. What about your avatar? Isn't that some artist who's got an own artsupply company having his picture on it? He writes Books on technikues and stuff too. Probably you've answered this one before.... I should go and actualy read your earlier posts, (me -> lazy bump).

[GunTrouver]

Thank u for cheking out my SB!

U have also a nice one, verry much stuff!
Good to see that you work on ur anatomy skills
Keep on walking!

[tullie]

Hi, thought I would pay your sketch book a visit ^^. Nice work, I really like the eye studies and the anatomy work - the 'layered' effect on one of your pieces, showing the bone structure and muscles shows you have a good grounding in anatomy.
Very creative sketchbook, will be keeping an eye on.

[armando]

The girl on the bottom left of the second pic looks like Lindsay Lohan. Max1979 wrote something I did before, and that's to change up the poses of the characters, twst them or bend them at the waist to add some action. I can barely write right now, juat got back from the gym after hitting my forearms.
Crits for the bad guy: I don't care for the cliche mad scientist with goggles on the top right. Frog eyes are a good idea. Also like crazy mustash, that always works. His clothes will have to match the ring leader look, so the top hat works. They also usually have a tuxedo like jacket, with the two tail things on the back. Now I'm thinking of the villain in that Rudolph at the circus claymation cartoon, don't know if you ever saw that.
I want to try some lifesize anatomy drawings now. My advice is to take another look at the condyles of the humerus. The outer condyle should be a ball, then the spool(trochlea), then a pointy rectangular form for the outer condyle which is important when drawing the arm. Also check out the sterno-mastoid, it should have two tendons, one to the sternum one to the clavicle, this can also be seen in real life. Now start updating this mother more often.

[maxetormer]

Ok so beofre CA disapera on me again, let me tell ya!!! HOLLY freaking hell!
I love the last update, the fully rendered page has so much to look at,
you have a wes like style to render man! nad you are developing fast and
in with great style, Im freaking envious of you development man,
you still need to work some more on you facial features but DAM!
this stuff is really good (will pop again with critics if CA alows it)

[madplanet]

Hey, thanks for coming by my sketchbook and leaving some comments, so I'm returning the favor. I can't believe that I haven't seen this thread before and I have to say that you are rather awesome. Well, your sketches are, cuz I don't know you as a person and whooop, off on a tangent! You have a little of everything in here; anatomy studies that are just fantastic, the pencil sketches, which are my favorites for their imagination and style, a whole lot 'o goodness. I'll be back.

And I love your avatar.

[Alday.J]

Hi man, your studies are great, I dig a lot the scorched one (am I telling correct ?). One semester down, hope you'll put down the next one with the same quality ! No, I wich you a HUGE jump of quality ! I'm very curious to see how you'll improve and I'm gonna check your sb from time to time, be sure of that ! Cheers, dude !

[cotron]

really cool anatomy study, looks like a lot of well-placed effort. the cartoony circus page is real nice as well. your stuff's improvin a ton!

[Zebz]

Thanks for stoppin' in everybody. I appreciate the help and massive amounts of love.

max1975: Thanks for all the help, man. I need it. I'm glad you like the way my rendering style is comin' along. I hope it becomes even more accurate and loose in the months to come. I think it's developing everytime I get to work tho. It's nice. I hope you find some value lookin' into it! Check out Wes9000' page. He's really been influential in my learning how to render the form. Rusty as well. I'm still picking at their work trying to figure out how they do what it is that they do. If you need a quick tut on the stuff I was talking about just let me know and I'll try and slop somethin' up.

Thanks for critz a bunch too. And you're right. My figures are lacking a lot. And since you mentioned it I've tried to do some stuff and all my thumbnails and drawings have struggled to get to those diverse poses. It's quite discouraging actually. I'm hitting some major walls and finding a lot of limitations. Any suggestions would be great. I think I just need to be doing more gestural work from life. I just can't seem to create many of these poses directly from my head. It's crazy. So as you'll see from the crap below, it's been sort of like me hacking at the sketchbook with a pen lately. lol Angry drawing. I'll try and keep at it tho. The advice you gave is good stuff. I just need to heed it and try and get these bugs outta my pencils. And btw, the dude does have a sort of backpack deal on. Good call. Keep your stuff up too!! I'll stop by again soon.

Fellah: I did... until my final week of the semester passed... all those critiques... all the drawing progress that seems not so good enough. Bleh. Did you figure out how to bottle your talent yet so you could sell me a few ounces? lol Thanks for the support, mate.

Bro3knSpirit: Thanks, man. I like that little guy the best too.

Flaskpost: Glad you're seein' progress! I need to hear that, seriously.

Neonocker: I need to hear that too. Thanks. I know, I must be better somewhere inside!! It's like gettin' a fat kid down a tiny waterslide... I just can't get it out.

ApolloNuevo: Thanks, mate. Yea, I know what you mean. I've been getting a lot of feedback lately on that subject. I guess I just feel like the cartoonier stuff comes easier and more naturally. It's easier for me. So I do well at it and it makes me feel good ususally after doing something decently nice. Which is prolly why I don't draw much of it. I want to improve in other areas as well. Oh well. I've got a semester to figure my shtuff out. Thanks for the help!! You're right.

Blacky: Thanks... anyhow... lol... I think... Yea, that's Bob Ross... a painting God... lol If you don't know him or didn't grow up seein' him on Public Access in America you prolly wouldn't understand... speakin' of avatar... maybe it's time for a change...

GunTrouver: Don't you mean crawling? ;P I'm trying, I'm trying. Thanks for the support.

Tullie: Thanks. I don't have a firm grasp on my anatomy but I'm learning a bit here and there. It's starting to come together in areas. Gestural stuff is fallin' apart tho. Glad you liked my SB tho. Hope to see you again.

Amrando: You're very helpful, bro. Very helpful. I really appreciate it. I see what you mean about the anatomy stuff. The steronz were obviously effed up, I just didn't really look into it. There are plenty of problems with this drawing. I mean, don't even look at the spine. lol I need to get back to studies for anatomy even without the class. I learned a great deal. Especially in the torso. Your figure critz are right on again. I'm going to try my best, ok? Any ideas? See my reply to Max above... it's a frustrating deal right now. I see how Prostrate Sunrise treats his gestures and figures and mine seem to crappy and blocky and bleh... help me. lol Thanks for the tips on the toon design as well. I think I'm going to work something up with the one you mentioned. It's my fav. How about the sad one at the bottom being his depressed little sidekick minion?

Maxetortermer: The fact that you mentioned anything about Wes in that post makes me feel like ten million times better than I was a minute ago. lol I really look at his stuff a lot for inspriation and influence. I admire his skills greatly as we all do. I'm glad you like the progress. I'm trying, mate, I'm trying!! And bring on the helpz... please... I'm in need of it desperately.

madplanet: Heh, well I'm glad you found me too. Thanks for the post. My imagination is continually developing. I think it's a bit more different than some of the darker stuff around here but I'm gettin' there too. I hope you come back too!!

AldayJ: Scorched? The big anatomy one that I wanted to set on fire? lol Thanks for the post. The encouragment is always appreciated.

Cotron: Wow, long time no see! Thanks for posting I'm happy everyone is seeing improvment in my stuff. Especially you. Any critz or studies you think might help or benefit me... bring on the ideas. I really need the help. Will I ever be happy with my skill level? I suppose that's prolly a good thing tho, huh? Keep updating, bro. It's good to have you back too.

Ok... here's a piss poor update. School's officially over. I've kind of been kicked in the balls this week with last minute projects and critiques. Not really feeling that adequate skill wise lately. I want to be so far down the road... I'm just not getting there fast enough!! lol So helps are great. Hook a brother up. I heard some good things a lot of bad things this week. People tended to like my imagination stuff. But they said I drew too much like an illustrator and needed to work on my observation skills. I can't help but agree with that. As far as an artist, I'm so all over the place that I really don't know who I am. This is sort of a rough patch. We'll figure this out tho. So didn't sketch much until the last couple days and that only brought out that frustration and crap of the week... I'm trying to slow down and think when I draw but I'm just too tense... too much on my head... this month long break from school is much needed. I think I may actually try to paint some. And I need to start on some finished stuff because I have my graduate show in May and I wanna get that crap started now. So be lookin' for that... hopefully. And a website. Man... I ramble this stream of thought sort of reply... you guys must really think I'm fucked up. lol I'll just shut up and give you an update. I wish I could drink a coke and turn into James Jean. God help me, I need to get better!!!!!!!!!!!

Some figure crap... got bored with it. Trying not to render as much because I think it's my lines the I need the help with. Everything is so stiff. I'm trying to lay down the stuff quickly in some of the later posts but then it goes the hell. I just need some sort of fluid nature in my work. Something natural. I dunno. Maybe I'm missing something obvious...


I tried drawing without picking the pen up. The one on the left turned out quite cool. Trying to get that loose quality... but I think the other ones I started tightening and tensing up... They turned pretty shitty fast.


More hasty pen, marker and brush pen crap.... not thinking really... just hacking at it with frustration...


Thought it was time for some reference stuff... Reffed Victoria's Secret catalogue... with some tentacle head thing... unfinished... but... nice abs... heh


Ballpoint pen crap... was looking at some of Wes' stuff and I noticed how he really uses the understructure of the human skull and his starting point for a lot of his heads. Tried doing this and it gave me some nice results... at least on the top ones. I didn't include the random figure doodles from some of these pages... they're just crap anyhow... not that any of these are good. Bleh.


Sorry for the crappy update... I give ya'll a lot of those. I'm gonna be drawing and working more through the break so look for more updates... your help is appreciate. Help me get better! lol

Ry

[Alday.J]

The tentacle girl is amazing ! D'ya some digi pic to show us or you only work with trad' media ? Keep posting (even if you have some 1st semester blues !). Cheers, Z.
Julien.

[max1975]

Here's a thing or two to try.

First, a scribbling exercise.
Get a hard, dull pencil. Something that will leave a pretty light mark. Don't look at your paper. Draw figure 8s. Fast. Lots of them, don't lift the pencil, keep moving it in sweeping motions, try to cover the whole page, using curves of various all sizes. When you think you've got the whole page covered (should only take a few minutes), take a break, look down at the page. Stare at it for a while, try to pick out the interesting forms. Look for the outline of a head and shoulder, a back, a butt. There should be something interesting there. If there aren't any interesting forms, look away and draw some more for a while, then stare again.

Once you've found some body part, try to imagine the rest of the body around it. It's possible a little more staring will reveal much of that body is already there, you just need to go over it in darker pencil to separate it from the noise. If not, put it there, do some more scribbling, looking at the page this time.

What I typically get when I do this is a very rough body that is not just standing there. It's usually got an interesting angle, often extreme forshortening, most of the time a lot of energy. Occasionally it's worth pursuing that drawing further, tightening it up with darker pencils. More often it just gives me an idea of something to draw in a more controlled fashion.

What it always does is loosen up my arm and my brain, so I'm visualizing people as solidified streams of energy. I don't know how much it helps with my execution, ultimately, but it does make me less inclined to draw boring poses.

There's another kind of scribbling, an up-and-down or back-and-forth linear style, which for me produces deadness. So I won't recommend that one

...

Another thing (and I'm hoping thinking this through here will help me as much as it does you).

It's not so terribly hard to come up with exciting poses when you're drawing superheroes and whatnot. They've always got a punch to throw, a jaw to jut, a rooftop to crouch on. But what about people who aren't superheroes? Lots of the time, they really do just kinda stand there. And lots of the time, even if they are superheroes, it's appropriate to draw them just standing there.

So lets imagine a dude who's just standing there. How's he feeling? If he's not feeling very energetic, chances are he's slouching. Shift all his weight to one leg, and droop the shoulders. Just because he's a boring dude just standing there doesn't mean we have to be boring looking at him. Raise or lower our "camera angle" so we can see him from a little above or below. What's he thinking about? Maybe he's thinking he might have forgotten something, so his head is turning back just a little.

Maybe we need some sorta checklist to make sure our drawing is saying something other than "that dude's just standing there," but rather than a checklist of body parts, we need to get inside his head. Happy, sad, angry? Relaxed, tense? Awake, tired? What's he thinking about? What's going on around him, anything he's reacting to?

Perhaps most importantly, what does all this tell us about what he's doing with his hands? This is always the hardest thing for me when drawing the just-standing-there pose, figuring out what to do with the hands. Sometimes I just have to stick them in pockets or behind the back. Heheh. Okay I don't have all the answers for these, but they're important questions, because a lot of the time (especially if you're trying to develop character concepts) you want to show the whole figure, and sometimes the best pose for this is just standing there, and if we can make something interesting out of that, then we'll probably be in good shape for all the other stuff...

[loomer]

Things are looking really great here..this is exactly how (in my opinion) someone should approach a sketchbook. I see you experimenting with different styles, studying your anatomy...laying down concepts.

I like that Tree God/King dude..but that's the type of stuff I like
keep it up bro

[blkn]

awesome studies zebs.. i gotta start doing more myself.

what kind of pencils do you use for your shading?

[AndreasM]

Damn! Great efforts in here, Zeb! As loomer said, It's awesome that you try out different styles and techniques. Keep on experimenting. One thing that annoys me, tho (this is something i struggle with myself), are your faces. They all have the same mouth. Most of your stuff seems to be mostly non-ref, so I don't blame you . Try getting some references on different cultures and nationalities. I dunno heh...Keep up on having fun and I'll keep on watching

[madplanet]

I like the ones where you didn't lift your pen up off the paper. It's interesting to see those strange faces emerge from all of those scribbles. It's almost as if they are trying to find their expressions.

[bumskee]

Freaky stuff! really digging the anatomy image!

[armando]

What did you write on the last guy's underarm? Study this drer? If you go with the sad monkey guy as side kick, really emphasize the monkey look of him. Look at Woody Allen and one of the Beatles for reference, I don't know who he reminds me of, Ringo?
Help regarding imagination figures: A lot of artists talk about energy, but I don't know what that means, so I'll give you another method. Use permutation, that's how jazz players do it. You just need to know the joints of the body. For example the spine can bend forward, backward, side to side, and twist; this is 6 movements. The head can do the same.
So just using those 2 body parts and 6 movements each, makes 36 combinations. So you just go: spine + head: bent forward + bent backward, bent forward + bent forward, bent forward + rotated left...etc. You can do this with all the moveable parts, if you have trouble thinking up combos yourself just stick these posibilities in a hat and pull them randomly.
A book that's helpful for drawing the figure is "Force: The Key to Capturing Life Through Drawing". The author talks about energy, which like I said means nothing to me, but the theory's so usable this can be ignored. I prefer the word "describe" to "capture" also.

[neoknocker]

Great inkwork. Seems that you got some redundance. Their is a face and head that seem's to come back every so often. Did you notice? Try to look in some magazines. There is lots of faces in them. National Geographic (I know I mention this mag alot I should ask to get paid for all that sponsoring) contains alot of various people and faces from every nationality. Best present I gave to my GF so far. It serve's meself too! Keep it up.

[XSFX2000]

Okay-
Ryan...

Before I say what I'm about to say- I gotta tell you-
I'm guilty of what I'm about to accuse you of...
However, I need to cut it out too so here goes:

Stop beating yourself up.

Hey, like I said- I'm my own worst critic too- my problem?
it keeps me from drawing (or sculpting, or whatever).
When I draw or scult something- It may not be half bad-
but I'll sit there & pick it all apart- examine the hell out of it
without just doing what I SHOULD be doing- more drawing.

Because- If I keep drawing- then- I'll start trying new things-
Switch up subjects, mediums, techniques- you get me?

To steal an idea from the movie Gattica:
One time- the main character- whose only fault
was that his parents hadn't genetically had him 'tweaked'
at birth was having a swiming race against his more
genetically perfect brother. He had always lost to his brother.
the one time he did win- he had to turn around to help his
brother from drowning. Later- there is a repeat of the race
and the exact same thing happens. The superior brother
panics and says "it's too far to swim back"
(they swam out into the ocean) the other brother says- don't worry-
we're closer to the other side (of a bay)

He later explains- he didn't save up any energy for the return trip-
he was shooting for the other side.

So- What the heck am I saying?
Don't look back- don't hate what you've done-
Shoot for the other side- keep it going Alright?
If I was filthy rich instead of piss poor-
I'd hire you immediatly- concept drawings,
graphic novels- whatever- just stop beating yourself up!

I just did this blown off leg effect for a WWII movie-
I wasn't happy because I had to rush it & get it done in less
than 24 hours- however everyone (ELSE) on set kept telling me
how bloody (literally) amazing it was- and here I was on the
sidelines feeling - crestfallen- that it wasn't 125% of what I wanted.
(see where I'm going with this?)

I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it was true.
I'm gonna make time this week (somehow) to drop you a line.
Talk to ya later man.

Okay...it's 5 am I'm gonna crash...finally.
-Lloyd

[comixnut]

it's amazing how hard we can be on ourselves. Here i am reading about your bad sb dumps while i'm being inspired by quite a lot of the drawings in them. They are great. it shows a lot of imagination. I think letting go is something that is necessary every so often, especially in my case.*S*

Much props to you, i believe is how you say it!

[o0Dave0o]

It's really great seeing all these drawings that you've done and the vast improvements that you've made from the beginning till now! Thanks again for reviving my sketchbook thread and I really think that your thread here has inspired me to start mine up again. (of course after all my finals are done)
Really great work man, and I just hope you keep it up.

[Ferg]

Great work, I see a lot in common between our sketching styles (those yours is definately further along than mine). I wish I could give you some useful crits but anything I might have said (and more) has been mentioned by the people before me.

I think you're at a point where you could do some truly bitchin' full character designs. Would love to see some of those.

Anyway, keep it up and all that, fergy like

[bengonzalez]

Hey man you can do some serious rendering when you want to. I also like how lose some of those pages are. Maybe you could tile the better sketchbook pages together so that we can get a full view of some them.

Can't wait to see more.

OH the anatomy study is kicking ass, yeah the color one.

[Lazy]

Hey thank you very much for your reply, its really appreciated
And coming from a talented artist from you makes it even better.
You sure have a way with pencils, your anatomy study is simply amazing.
I like the way you render and the anatomy is intact, really nice to watch.