Life drawings of androids

[scottmcd]

Haven't posted much lately, so here's a recent sampling.

[scottmcd]

Watercolor pencils.

[scottmcd]

Here are two of the recent figure drawings I've done over the last couple weeks. Both are ink marker. The second one, I used a brush pen for the heaviest areas.

[Jamie Romoser]

digging the Alphonse Mucha feel on the first post on this page
keep up the hard work and studies
have a good one
-Jamie

[scottmcd]

Omerta: Thanks - I was definitely studying Mucha to see how he solved various problems.

Here are a couple of sketches that may turn into more finished pieces in the near future. I'm going to crank out a bunch of these and then start over on a few of them to do them from the ground up.

[scottmcd]

Just finished the inks on this up tonight. Coloring in Photoshop comes next.

[scottmcd]

Working out values for the most part, but I threw in a quick color layer as a test.

[scottmcd]

Some recent work. The last is a Chinese Chess (Xiangqi) board I designed for an iPad app.

[scottmcd]

In progress coloring on the Squonk

[scottmcd]

Work leaves little time for digital art, but the lunch hour gives opportunities for drawing and inking. Here are pencils for a fairy queen. My daughter is presenting an egg to the queen, who is the same person as the Aerialist drawing I posted earlier. Plant reference came from life drawing at the National Arboretum and the Enid Haupt garden behind the Smithsonian Castle. There are positives to living near Washington DC.

[Falchion]

Wow, nicely done work. Keep it up!

[scottmcd]

... here, have some drawings.

[scottmcd]

.......

[scottmcd]

... was all about identifying blocks, eggs, cylinders, and the other basic shapes in the figure and shading them in accordingly. Started with the major shapes and then shaded the minor, embedded shapes once done with that. The pose could be more dynamic, but I think the form came through fairly well.

[Cyberman]

nice drawings, is post 343 conte? I like red and white on toned paper, I prefer it on
the more eggshell color than the grey, at least when there is red, if it's on grey paper
I like the black and white on top. Keep drawing!

[scottmcd]

Sean: Thanks. It's colored pencil. I haven't really tried conte yet except for a couple of times in art 101.

[AlexTooth]

Hi!

Firstly thanks for crit in my book, it really helps and makes sense 33

Lets see, well I love the creativity and energy here - and your drawing skills are coming a long nicely, which is ones of those things we just need to keep practising

I'd say the weakest area is the coloured versions right now. Tough stuff, I can only really say what helps me in this area, and thats quick studies of photos and still lifes - often 20min landscapes can teach you a lot - much like gesture drawing helps the figure artist. I had a period where I did 3x 20min col sketches a day and I learnt a lot in that time.

All the best!

[scottmcd]

Two recent figure drawings and my in progress iBall.

[am●na,☼nafa&Kash☉fa]

cool stuff in here

[scottmcd]

Finished up a companion to the art nouveau painting at the top of the page.

[scottmcd]

Been working on stuff. Here's some of it. There was figure drawing today and I went, and the other stuff is random things of late.

[Egg0]

I love when drawings are more than just lines and shadows, when have something to share, a tought, or an idea of something. You are one of mines! Really nice Sb mate !

[scottmcd]

Meh. Misread the deadline time for CHoW this week, so missed the cutoff. Oh well. Here's the Horrible Experiment picture. I only spent parts of yesterday and today on it, so it's really a speed work anyway.

[scottmcd]

Today's figure drawing practice. The eyes are... off. Another 30 minutes and I'd have gotten the hand. I also tried to make her look less bored than she actually did.

[scottmcd]

This was about an hour this evening in Photoshop, based on this stock photo from DA.

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs35/i/20...amberstock.jpg

[scottmcd]

I'd meant to use this in the portfolio, but in looking at it that won't work. The grass is one style, the wood is another, and the fairies yet a third. It doesn't gel. So, I'm calling this a study and now working on the "real" one.

[Mr.Pryminista]

Hey there scottmcd!

Thank you for you input on my bounty hunter character! It was quite helpful!

I looked through the last few pages of your work and I can tell you what I perceive your strengths and weaknesses to be. Let's start with your strengths, you're quite adept with line work and designing flat images. Keep working on this strength since it could be stronger, A LOT stronger. You need to take your understanding of line and how to design with it to the next level. Look to the masters and look at the way they designed an image with line. Gustave Dore is the first person to come to mind. Look at his images. They may be etches but it was still made with line. A contemporary master that comes to mind is Bernie Wrightson. He's amazing. Study his work. Both Jeff Jones and Frank Frazetta made pen & ink drawings. Study their work too. You will A LOT even if you only studied these 4 masters. I would also suggest looking into your favourite artists, the ones who inspire you (assuming they are none of the above mentioned) and looking at their work and finding out who inspired them.

Your weaknesses seem to be making realistic looking images. If I had to guess I'd say you dont spend enough time studying from life. I bring attention to this because you have enough material here that suggests that you take interest in being able to render realistic looking images, or, I should say, images that have 3D looking form to them. The only remedy for this studying from life and doing it A LOT. You had some images that looked like the beginnings of an illustration. Look into the masters of illustration. Look at illustrators like Norman Rockwell, NC Wyeth, Harvey Dunn, Leyendecker, and Dean Cornwell (and then some). Study their work and see what they did to make a successful image.

Another critique is that there are rather large gaps of time between updates. Maybe art is more of a hobby for you than something you want to pursue as a career. If that's the case then this criticism doesn't apply. If you do want to make it a career, then I'd make sure that I make time for more practice.

Hope this helps Take care!

[scottmcd]

Mr.Pryminista's: Thanks for extensive comments! I agree with you on both the strengths and the weaknesses and will be working with both. I could certainly stand to do more life drawing, though I continue to do a fair amount.

I've been drawing a lot more than appears here - I stopped using this sketchbook to record everything a couple of years ago. It may be time to start again, but the lack of posts doesn't mean a lack of drawing and painting. I'm also in a different place career-wise than a lot of the people who post here. I'm in my 40's and have a full-time job, wife and daughter, house, and all the things that go with those. I still manage to draw most days, but sometimes it's like fighting for the time. I do plan to look at freelance work over the next few years, but until I get our daughter through college it certainly won't be the full-time career.

Here's a sketch I drew last night at a piano concert and the gestures and drawing from the figure drawing session I went to today.

[scottmcd]

Today's figure drawings. The first was tough - the light was right behind her and there was very little value variation. Each of these were 20 minutes and the focus was to get the figure blocked out without using outlines first. Secondarily it was to get a sense of mass. I'm pretty slow, so it was also an exercise in not taking too long to get the foundation down.

[scottmcd]

Here are three Celtic knotwork studies. The top one shows Old Man Storr, a rock formation on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. The second shows the Twin Trees in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and the last shows some of the Cuillan mountains on the Isle of Skye. The writing in the top one is Thai for "Scotland" and "Ireland." The second is a Tengwar transliteration of the English word Scotland.