Donovan V - Scetchbook (now with crab mutants!) *contains some nudity*

[Donovan V]

Well, I'm hoping this will help me guage my progress a bit. Hope you like it and crits are always appreciated.

[DARAF]

Creepy stuff, cool man. Welcome to CA. Keep posting.

[Donovan V]

DARAF: thanks for stoppin bye! Your SB >>> than mine.

Couldn't wait to post my stuff from today. I'm pretty happy with it. Expecialy the Nazzi-esqe bondage kinda dude. Dunno if the rest of you are like this but its pretty rare I realy like something in my sketchbook.

Oh well thats just me being a stress puppy.

EDIT: anyone else think the guy at the bottom of the first pic looks like Polly Shore... (random thought)

[Dreamworker]

Welcome on CA! I like this stuff!
Keep sharing, ciao

[Machineabuse]

Welcome to CA! Such nice rendering in these ^_^

I like the toothy android/cyborg best. How about some scenes? The environments make the characters after all

[Envisor]

Welcome to CA. Awesome characters and rendering, I cant wait to see more.

[Donovan V]

Dreamworker, Envisor: Thanks guys. Now that I've started off good I think I'll put together some stuff you can really tear apart.

Machineabuse: HA! You nailed it man. My enviro and scene rendering skills are worthless at the moment. I'll post some of the dismal renderings I have. Maybe I can get a little help

[Stark]

Welcome to CA and have fun...great start at posting...Lines in the first posting are pretty good, then they got kinda scratchy...choose. Also, try some eye studies and perhaps some lips as well...

Keep it up

[Donovan V]

Stark: Thanks for the suggestion man. I have this one damn sketchbook that when I draw in it for some reason everything is very... mushy. Its alot different than my other books... less quality paper? Dunno. Whats funny is the majority of my stuff is "scratchy". I'm just showing the good stuff first LOL.

[Zombie_dla]

Nice stuff. I like your style. Hope you'll let me see some more soon

[Donovan V]

So here is the extent of my environment rendering skills. Both are from reference. No BS they took like an hour a peice. These are grueling for me.

[Fishspawn]

Good start to your book, like the doodles. With your digis you should be using some harder brushes - what youre doing is too out of focus - don't be afraid to make hard edges. Also if you're using photoshop try using the sharpening filter. Keep up the good work.

[Machineabuse]

So here is the extent of my environment rendering skills. Both are from reference. No BS they took like an hour a peice. These are grueling for me.

Courage brother! Just stick with it and if you end up doing something that looks silly, shrug off the embarrassment and learn from it. Only beginning is painful

The second scene actually looks fine because the forms it describes read well. The first one is more enigmatic. Look to economise your brushstrokes and pick out some of the important forms (the highlight on a mountain ridge, a glint of water or the puff of a cloud). Goes a long way

You certainly have more color sense than I!

I also suggest that the next time you draw chars you take the advantage to use setpieces. Just small environmental elements near the character to ground them into the worlds they belong in.

[(c)]

thanks for dropping by

good stuff here. like the last paintings a lot.... keep pushing your patience the rest will come naturally

keep on running

[Donovan V]

Fishspawn: I shal not feer the hard edge! Heh... truth is I just figured out how to change the hardness :/

Machineabuse: Suppose I cant expect to get good all at once eh? The pain will be part of the journey. Thanks for encouraging me. It helps alot.

(c): Everyday is gettin me closer to where I wanna be. Thanks for stoppin in.

So, I've done my first ever painting in Photoshop. I'm amazed at how diffrent it is from Painter. Not that I have gobs of experiance in painter but it feels way more comfortable. There isn't any ryme or reason to the pic below. I just started with a few lines and goofed around. I think it came out... interesting.

[Machineabuse]

One more tool to learn Painter irks me a little, but I'm pretty deeply ingrained to photoshop's tools in my workflow. Gotta go try painter again at some point.

Photoshop is a good tool to learn though, particularily when you get into texture mapping and image manip. Hit F5 and get used to the brush pallete, it'll be your best friend soon enough! ;3

[Donovan V]

Been spending more time in photoshop lately. Now that I'm getting the hang of the brush in photoshop I can see why its so widely used. I seem to have an easier time defining form in PS than I do in painter. Here are some practices ive been doing from reff.

(dunno if it matters but I have no idea who are what the reffs are)

[drd]

I'm in love with the 3rd and 4th drawings you posted, the pencil work on those is brilliant! I wish mine would look like that.

What grade pencil do you usually use?

[Donovan V]

Well my wise wife told me something that really sank in. She said "Dear, no matter how much you practice it doesn't matter if no one sees it." Sigh.... so, I need to be better at posting my progress. Think I'll start off easy. Once a week should do. Hey if I can quit smoking I can update once a week!

drd: Thanks for the compliment. The pencil is nothing special. I went to the grocery store and picked out a .5 mechanical pencil and some led. Thats about it. Oh, and I've got my #2 from the store also lol.

[Donovan V]

This is my first attempt ever to make a compete scene. To timmid to attempt color yet...

[Donovan V]

I recently picked up a copy of 'Anatomy for the Artist'. Its a great book with very nice pictures. I've been using it to help me with my anatomy since is absolutely horrible. Here is a page from my book.

[Donovan V]

I spent some time perusing Meatsworthy's SB and got inspired to try some light and color practice. My goal was to try and show light creating volume instead of my usual drawing line to create volueme. Check it out.

[McLean]

I think I see some white still exposed on the landscapes. Try putting down a base color at the very beginning of the artwork. Try to determine a hue that is more or less present in most of the scene, and work on top of that. If you just block in a flat area of color and render on top of that to create form, it will probably be faster than starting from scratch. Not much faster, mind you, but a little bit faster, and will probably make the entire image read as more unified with that ground color over your whole canvas.

[Donovan V]

McLean: Thanks for the advice. Any help I can get with color and value right now I need badly.

[TacticallyWacked]

Your first 7-8 posts form your sketch book are lot of fun for me to look at. The Nazi bondage guy is great.....you have a nice balance of line work and rendering going there...

[Donovan V]

Yea... as much as I like to show my strengths I want to show my weaknesses also. I have alot to learn and improve on so my mind is kinda set on showcasing that stuff so it can get torn apart. *robot voice* must learn.... must paint.... heh. I should post some more fun stuff to though.

Thanks for the kudos TacticallyWacked.

[Donovan V]

This is a studdy from my new atatomy book. I really tried to slow down and make my brush strokes percise. It took about an hour and a half. My shoulders and back started to ache... so I called it done.

[McLean]

ooh, this last one is cool. you learn a lot working from reference and working from your imagination at the same time, good to see the observational component here!

[Donovan V]

This is my most ambitious painting yet. Compared to some on this site that won't seem like much though I'm having trouble sharpening things up in the larger planes. The wide open ones like the stomach and the shoulder / arm area. I'm gonna keep working on it though. I'm really liking this one. Bout 3 hours into it so far.

[funfetus]

Looking really good -- you've made a lot of progress. This last one is coming along nicely. One suggestion I have is to add more hues into it. It looks like you're just adjusting the value while keeping the hue the same over most of it. That sucks the life right out of it. Put some blue or purple into your shadows, some warm colors into your highlights, etc. It'll liven it up a lot.