the book of the dodus. unholy reanimation. 7-30-07.

[dodus]

I was never that great to begin with, and having not done any serious drawing since my teens has virtually been the nail in the coffin. But I just recently moved to Los Angeles, where the expectation is that you do in fact have something to offer, so I figured it was time to bring the dormant, decomposing artist inside me back from the depths. This past few weeks I've been drawing a lot, and making some steps towards regaining the lost ground. I've got a lot of catching up to do, and after that, a load of further improving--but this site is awesome and I'm excited about the journey ahead.

I'll get the self-improvement montage out of the way so you can see where I'm coming from, and then I'll be posting regularly to show current progress.

Edit: I changed the attachments so that I have a cool thread thumbnail. Don't know if there's any better way to go about it. The one's that were here, you weren't missing much.

[dodus]

Those were the initial getting re-acquainted with a pencil sketches, and the rest of these happened in the weeks that followed, on the bus, on the plane, at home from photos, etc.

[dodus]

Since then, I've been trying to get storyboarding gigs--which is my initial goal at present. Eventually I'm hoping to get back into painting and illustration, but I love film, so storyboards are are a blast as well. These boards came from the couple gigs I've gotten so far.

Which brings us up to the present. I'm still studying and practicing whenever I can. Some aspects of drawing--namely, tone, and lighting, and shadow--still completely baffle me. I'm really focusing on rendering realistic light and shadow from the imagination, as to me thats what makes any particular drawing impressive or not.

I'd be stupendously grateful for any feedback or criticism. I'd love for you guys to be as brutal as possible. Really, rip it on up. That's the only way I'm going to improve. In the meantime, I'll be drawing and practicing and checking out the other threads.

[Envisor]

Welcome to the Boards man. What are you talking about! You are an awesome artist. Your storyboards are great. And the life drawings are fantastic. Keep posting.

[dodus]

Thanks Envisor--you flatter. There's a long road ahead before I'm up to the level of work I've been seeing on this site--which can only be described as inspirational.

[Deru]

This is just awsome I love the way you draw. keep up the great work. I would like to see more.

[dodus]

Some more stuff. I've been looking at some ridiculous sketchbooks on here...I need to draw way more stuff. Lately I've been doing too much juggling. I nerd to just draw.

[dodus]

Yesterday I drew a storyboard for a guy that I despised so much (the drawing) that I finally decided it's time to really hit the basics until I've got a good foundation. So, starting today I'm just going to go through and copy every single diagram from a figure drawing book by Vanderpoel that AztecFireFlower suggested (thanks!), and then I'm going to go and do the same thing with Loomis. Hopefully, if I do this mindfully enough, I'll come out much more comfortable with the construction of the human body, and maybe if I'm really lucky I'll learn a thing or two about lighting planes. So today we have eyes and noses (? nosii, neese?) from Vanderpoel. Some of them turned out pretty good, some of them not, but I'm not looking for too much credit since they're all copies.

So these aren't really mine, again, they're copies of Vanderpoel. One thing I noticed while doing these is that its so nice to just sit back and hatch away. Usually when I'm hatching it's in a futile effort to hide bad construction--and there's no joy in that! But when you know you're alright, getting to hatch and hatch without pressure has got to be the most enjoyable thing in the universe.

[dodus]

Sat outside and did some lip drawings from the book. Vanderpoel is doing this curve thing at the corners of every mouth that I don't know if I necessarily like. To each his own I guess. I got a little bit ambitious and did a sketch of my leg, which I don't like, and a quick sketch of my friend's leg, which I think turned out really good. I also noticed that my drawing improved noticeably during the session. Maybe I should make an effort to warm up more. I'm sure this sketchbook is pretty uninteresting to everyone, but it's good for me for now. Maybe soon enough the weird creatures and Venoms will turn up.

[Dose206]

man! first off, thanks for checking out my sketchbook. I always love to have some new visitors.
secondly, this is an awesome start to a sketchbook. I'm diggin your storyboards and I honestly saved this last post of mouths into my inspiration folder. your style is definitely that, stylish.
I guess my only crit is that a little realism never hurt and perhaps in some of your sketches we could see a little less stylistic drawings. Not saying that I don't like what you have going on, but versatility never hurt anybody right?

I also noticed that in one of your posts you said that you'd like to get back into painting and illustration. Well, I'd like to urge you to do that sooner rather than later and I hope that when you do get back into those things that this sketchbook will reflect that.

Keep it up!

Chris

[dodus]

Not long after my last update, I got really busy--I decided to take on a lot of free storyboard work--mainly because I know I need to draw draw draw and a deadline always helps in that department.

Since I did these for free, I decided to be insane and do them in Painter! What were they going to do, not pay me? But I found myself actually doing ok in Painter, which was surprising and exciting, so much so that I decided to go ahead and do two paying jobs in it too. So, I might as well just keep going for it. It's way more stressful than a real pencil, for now at least, but it looks somehow more professional when you're done. Not to mention, throwing on tone with chalk and charcoal actually makes it look like I know what I'm doing.

Well, that's enough exposition I think. When something sits on your hard drive for this long, you feel like it deserves an entrance. Whew! Ok, I'm done.

One last thing--I could really, really, use some criticism! I know there are gaping holes in my rendering chops--please hang a name on them. Painter crits most certainly welcome too.

[Discoskull]

Dude! This SB kicks utter ass! I dig your style as well - angular stuff always gets me. In fact, I now realize how do draw chicks better within my own angular style - leave out the angles! Seems so simple now...
But yeah! Awesome stuff. Bookmarked. Oh yes.

[dodus]

Dose: Thanks and more thanks--I'll keep forging ahead if you will. I never considered my stuff that stylish--but now I see what you're saying. It's a good thing--but you're right, classic draughtmanship is a necessary foundation. I'll be in to make sure you're working on it too!

Discoskull: Thanks man! Yeah, as soon as you get the angles under control, the chicks start getting 10x hotter! But I'd be lying if I acted like I understood the human anatomy. Anyway, I'll be checking the SB often.

[dodus]

Some more anatomy studies from Vanderpoel. I think doing these is even better for me mentally than artistically. So relaxing.

[dodus]

Some Vanderpoel studies and goofing around on the bus.

[Envisor]

Diggin the studies. The ear ones are pretty good. And the Vanderpoel studies are cool. Keepem comin.

[Smoke]

You say you`re BAD? I think you are insane my friend.

[dodus]

More studies! I've been so busy with crap lately, but I try to get a couple of these done every day. I'm really trying to locate the core shadows in his drawings, and hit them so well that the form pops to life without needing the rest of the dark and mid-tones or embellishments that are there. It's tough, but I think I'm getting there. Now the problem is applying this stuff. When ever I do storyboards, I just revert back to my comfortable drawing style and make a debacle of anatomy and lighting as I always have done. Probably just have to practice way more until drawing good is like muscle memory.

[dodus]

Just some goofing around in Painter, trying to figure out brushes. No sense putting off the world of color, might as well dive in and learn while I'm getting better at everything else. Venom makes it painfully obvious that I still ahve no idea what I'm doing with light and shadow. Ah well, onward!

[silvestri99]

Wow, what can i say? You have some really nice sketch work here. I like how you work my angular to capture your studies. Something I'll have to give a try. Can't wait to see more.

[Christian223]

Hey you are awesome, please keep posting along with your insights (i learn from that kind of stuff), get andrew loomis books, specially "creative illustration", "figure drawing for all its worht" and "succesfull drawing", there are specific sections in those where it teaches you about lighting forms, youll learn lots from them.
Keep posting.

[dodus]

Here I've been experimenting with different brushes in Painter to find one that can put down tone, as well as line, for doing nicely rendered figures. I'm shifting my studies over to Painter so that I learn the program and the figure at the same time. The two painted studies were done with some customized Oil brushed and the Artist's Oils respectively.

silvestri99: Thanks! I do seem to work the angles--not sure how that evolved, but I'm stuck with it! I'll try to add more regularly for sure.

Christian223: Thanks as well. I'm just spilling my thoughts as I go, I agree it definitely helps to look at "talky" sketchbooks, so that's what I'm trying to do here. As for Loomis, he's next on the list after I finish with this Vanderpoel book. I can't wait to be done and onto Loomis...it's taking forever!

[dodus]

A couple good ones from my latest job.

[dodus]

Finally this sketchbook lives up to it's title! Introducing...bagpipe zombie.

[dodus]

I posted this in the Critique section, but no bites yet...anywhere, here it is, my first attempt at a honest-to-goodness digital painting.

[dodus]

Did a quick couple of these after going through a couple Ryan Church tutorials, which were really helpful as far as wrapping my head around brushes and papers, etc. goes. Big thanks to Mr. Church himself.

[dodus]

Man, I've been out of here for a minute. It's all good though, I've been drawing every day like a madman, for money now, finally. Definitely improving. I'm looking back at some of the stuff I did in Painter which seemed great at the time, man was it not actually that great. Here's a couple pages from a spec comic I worked on written/created by the excellent brothers David and Vincent Perea, Heathens, which they took down to Comic-Con last weekend to try to sell. I think it's some of the best art I've done so far, so this is where I'm at right now developmentally, I guess.

[Sleepy_Head]

WOW.

I say again, wow.

For someone how hasn't drawn in a while, you sure did get back into it quick. I should be so bloody lucky!

Your 'toon strips are cool as, and your man in a hat is excellent. And I so need to do studies like you have.

Kudos dude.

S

[dodus]

Thank you! Definitely give studies a go, I kind of fell off with them after the storyboard work took off, but they helped me immensely in keeping my constructions realistic (though that still needs quite a bit of work). Aside from that, it was just having to draw every day this past few months that really got the improvement happening.

Thanks again! I'll try to keep posting more stuff.