Moai's Sketchbook

[Moai]

Here's my second picture for my job. It's a design my friend/boss's sister that I redid. That's pretty much what I'll be doing for a while, improving on the ideas of his friends and family.


And here's a random posting of my avatar pic. Acrylic, 12x14 or 14x18. I don't really remember.

[Moai]

Here's some more sketches and finished pieces.

My final creek crawler.



I branched out a bit this week and participated in CoW, but only because it was a topic where I didn't necesarily have to draw a clothed human.



And here's Wayne Barlowe again, sneaking into my artwork! Sketches for the Ethereal Stalker CoW, which is a topic that I suggested.



And oh gosh, oh boy, oh gee! My first doodles on my Wacom Intuos3 9x12 tablet! I think the best part about it is that it's so easy to sketch in color now, without using real paints or colored pencils.

[Moai]

Now that I have my tablet, there's no more 'scuses. I need to branch out and push my boundaries. So, I'm going through my National Geographics and doing some speed paintings of environments. This is a small Carribean island at sunset. I'm not too happy with the clouds, and the fact that the brushstrokes are the same size throughout goes against any feeling of depth. It's a start, though.


More of these to come, along with some still lives. Crits, comments, congratulations, commiserations are all welcome.

[Moai]

So let's see here...There's my CoW entry for the ethereal stalker, and a saved version before I messed it up by changing the color balances, damn foo' that I am. Poor composition, but that's because I planned to fill up the space on the right with diagrams and whatnot. Oh well.
Then there's too roughs for my Iceberg Devourer, and the final. It's easily by best work yet in digital.

Feel free to leave a comment! Damn, it's been weeks since my last comment.

[masterpug]

Those pencil drawings are something else. I love those critter designs. I'll have to check back here when you have refined a bit, but this is great stuff! See you around!

[Moai]

Thanks, masterpug! Seeing a post by another person in my sketchbook really made my day. I'm glad you like my creature designs. I'm refining with every piece I do (I hope!), so do check back. Thanks again!

[Moai]

Speedpainting is fun.
The first image is a dragon based off a photo of a Palawan hornbill bird, which is native to the Phillipines. The second is based off a Chevy Suburban ad. The third is based off a photo of the Eden Project, huge artificial biomes in England. All sources were from National Geographic magazines.

[Moai]

Two updates in one day! I've been speedpainting all afternoon. This cheesy little number is the result of scribbling on my tablet while closing my eyes, and then going off the resulting random shape. Kinda stupid, but fun.

[Chr]

your still lifes are very good.

maybe your digital paints could use more value contrast...

your sketchbook is better than mine...

[Seedling]

Did you read me say somewhere that I was a Wayne Barlowe fan, or is his influence that evident in my work?

It was evident in your work. :-)

[Moai]

Chr- Thanks! Good call on the value contrasts. See below.
Seedling- Wearing my influences on my shirtsleeves, I guess.

So here we have some uber-simple speedpaints. The first two were an experiment in color. On the first one, I looked at at a photograph and blocked in the shapes with colors of my choosing. On the second one, I used the eyedropper and paint bucket to replace my colors with the actual colors of the photograph. Note the higher contrast of the actual colors. I have a dendency to pull my values towards the middle, it seems. Something to work on.
The last speedpainting is of a photograph of the arctic from a National Geographic. It's empty because I didn't like the way the dog sled team turned out.

[llothcat]

dude..you're really addicted to "national geographic". May I suggest painting from life more?

I still haven't gotten the hang of speed painting. Pencilling first makes mine come out better. Interesting how your eye works.

[Mr Man]

Hey Moai You got some fun stuff here in your sketchbook, Lots of great ideas for creatures etc.
I really should be participating in the cow more often now.
see you in the cow forums

[Moai]

llothcat- I like the National Geographic because it has a huge variety of different places and subjects, and because I have quite a few of 'em laying around here. As for painting from life, perhaps I'll take a little square of canvas and some paints to the beach with me one day. Thanks for stopping by.
Mr Man- Thanks! Participating in these activities is a good thing. It's a great motivator for doing your best. I love you're title, "Lesbian in a Man's Body."
I'll comment in both of your sketchbooks pretty soon.

[Michael Jaecks]

Dude, You are seriously devouring your tablet. Just the energy of seeing all this together is really nice. You're really trying everything and its inspiring.

The green starfish-thingy is nice for such a quick sketch, as is the dino/hornbill/dragon. And of course the iceberg devourer is the newly discovered inhabitant of Darwin IV's polar regions, which Ike and Leo missed spotting before the Eosapiens ate them.

Nice job. And your far better at updating your sketchbook than I am.

Are you doing any humans yet?

Love the dogfood quote, btw.

[Moai]

Thanks, Michael! I'm glad you think my sketchbook is inspiring. I'm actually doing dozens of humans a week for my life drawing class. I just haven't found the motivation to photograph them and post them here yet. The only humans I've done digitally have been tiny silhouettes for scale purposes.

The dogfood quote does fit my Spongebob theme in a deranged way, doesn't it?

Two images here. The first one is my entry for "It Came From Above!", this week's CoW. The second is a sketch is for a non-paying illustration job that I'm doing, which I can't tell you about, except that it obviously requires some very big trees...

One more thing: when you comment, please tell me something I'm doing wrong, something I could be doing better, something I'm neglecting, etc. You probably won't have to search too hard.

[Moai]

Here's four more pages from my life drawing sketchbook, a little nothing speedpainting that I did today. No reference, except for the silhouette of the hawk. I played with the "dissolve" painting mode quite a bit in this one, which looks okay at 50% zoom but hideous up close.

[dkounios]

great work in your SB dude. nice creature designs too.
love it!

[Meatsworthy]

I like the traditional stuff, charcoals and acrylics

I have a dendency to pull my values towards the middle, it seems.

I don't think this is a big problem, just make sure that the shadow values and light values are well seperated. I prefer you're eye picked colors than the photograph picked ones to be honest.

You may be aware, but just in case... important things to remember when using photos:

1. A lot of them will be filtered/adjusted and also film/post processed, which makes them biased. Observing light in real life is important.

2. Color sampling from a photo may not give accurate results. If you run the color picker over an area of the photo which looks similar in value, you'll notice that the value % will change a lot. If you happen to sample the pixel at either extreme end of that value difference, it'll come out too dark or too light. All those pixels at different values blend into a bigger value at a distance. This is also important to remember when trying to get natural results... paint in that chaotic variety of color, value and texture instead of using one flat color.

Because of vignetting, the photo may also be darker towards the corners. Again, this is not true to life... and if you happen to color pick from the extreme edge, it will be too dark.


On digis:

Try using bigger brushes in the beginning... and I mean huge. You seem to have done this in your avatar pic, but the digi stuff is built up of many tiny semi-opaque strokes that can make something look a little too busy. Multiple smaller strokes work better if you're changing up the color and values constantly to build a larger value from the blend when viewing at a distance. Good stroke economy let's one say more with less.

A quote Zaknafain just made me aware of, I think it's golden:
"A pretty good brush rule of thumb is to find the largest brush for the job, and then put it aside and use an even larger brush."
-William Whitaker

Well, not really crits pre se... but some notes to think about. Strong drive and good self-analysis here, I think those are the most important. Keep it up! .

[Moai]

Another desert scene today. I think the beast may be charging at one of my crested dinosaurs, but I haven't quite decided yet.

I'll give your comments the response they deserve tomorrow. I gotta go draw some nude people.

[Moai]

dkounios- Thanks! Glad you like it.
Meatsworthy- Thanks for all the advice. I found out when I was color picking the photo that the colors changed a great deal from one pixel to the next. I tried to pick colors that were the most similar to the overall color. Great advice about the multiple colors and values for the natural approach and about brush sizes. I'll put that to use. Thanks so much.

[aph]

Great work here Moai, I love your creature designs =). Sometimes it would be good to experiment with some more illustrative compositions I think though. Some thumbnail work. I expect you do it anyway but don't show too much but anyways.. good stuff, I hope you keep posting more. =)

[Lazy]

Whoa you're improving very well.
The recent full-coloured monsters are really cool.
A tip : You should perhaps try to give the edges a darker contrast so it looks more complete, som pieces look like they are cut and pasted onto the background, if you know what i mean.
Mad improvement here.

[Moai]

aph- Thanks for the comments! I do some thumbnail work, but most of the time I just put one element in a pleasing location, then put the next element in a location that works well with the first element, and so on. Improvised composition, basically. Sometimes it works, sometimes it causes me trouble. You have a good point, though.
Lazy- You're talking about my "It Came From Above!" aren't you? I've already gotten a comment that I should change my edge quality to get rid of the cut and paste look. Thanks for the compliments. You're improving quite a bit yourself!

[gmags]

Hey Moai,
Thanx for stopping by!! Those colored pieces are really lookin good! Got to say that ice eating creature is my fav. I have to start doing some enviros. Keep postin more good stuff bro!!!

[dragon4lunch]

Oh man, highly diggable sketchbook here Moai!!! Oh man, so much good stuff, hard to say what to comment on. Totally digging your pages of little beautiful pencil sketches!!!

Have you developed the wonderful Manticore (at the beginning, way up there) in to a more refined study/painting? Also, really like the wheel bug and the striped snake like creature where you wrote "don't know what to do with scary claw". And man, like those pointy-headed fish/shark sketches a whole lot!

Let me see if I can also give you some constructive criticism... I think your pencil drawings are so strong, that maybe you could incorporate your line sensibility more in to your painting technique... Feed the paintings with your strong pencial skills... I'm not saying make it look like a pencilly, dirty painting, but somehow take your pencil skill essence and pump it in to your paintings. Don't know if that makes sense, but keep on rocking!

[Moai]

gmags- Thanks! Will do.
dragon4lunch- Thanks so much! This is one of the best "feel good" comments I've ever gotten. I'm glad you like my stuff. As for the Manticore, it's really been months since I even thought about it, but I'll consider doing a painting of it. A quick one, at least.
Several months ago, before I was a part of this website, a guy commented on some of my oil and acrylic paintings. He said that I was drawing in color, not truly painting. At the same time, I was taking an acrylics class in which the teacher really stressed the difference between painting and drawing. I really took their words to heart. While many of my works in here are definitely colored drawings, hopefully some of them are getting to be real paintings.
I'm rambling. My pencil skills are being put to use in some of my paintings alreadly, I think. Look at the rendering of my Iceberg Devourer or my Hypnotizer over in the CoW thread.
Thanks for the comments! No updates lately. Midterm projects are in full swing at school, so I'm kinda busy with those.

[Chr]

I think you have been given a lot of good advice lately. I couldnt make my own contribution. Was about to say the same thing as Seedling about mid values not being a problem. And maybe its good not to try to fix everything at once.

A lot of what i write I have only read in books, not learned from practice, so dont take my advice as seriously as people who actually can make good art

I will be checking back. Thanks for visiting my sb yesterday.

[Moai]

Chr- Your advice was fine and what you said was true. Value contrast has always been something I'd had to push myself on. Don't worry about repeating what you read, either; most of my crits are just repeats of things I've read hear or things I've heard my teacher say. Thanks for stopping by.
Masterpug and Aph- I'd love to visit your sketchbooks, guys. However, my computer is stubborn and stupid, and refuses to load your pages. So, sorry for not returning the favor.

Here's my work so far on my ChoW goblin hunter ortho, and my "Hypnotizing" CoW.

[Moai]

CoW sketches! This week's topic is "No Arms, No Legs, Incredibly Fast." So behold, the organic rocket. It's the one up top. The rest are "air plankton" that it'll feed on.