Signs Sketchbook – 1st Update Since Hiatussssss

[Matsign]

Slechtvalk Dude, you rock, thanks!

okay I tried a speed paint. Am I doin it right? I think I'm still not blocking in enough with bigger shapes.

[xinleh]

Keep up the posts, and no, you aren't ever mindlessly updating. I look forward to them, even though I don't comment much.. for which I am sorry...

Crit:

I'd like to see you do more value studies I've noticed that your shading has some messy smudges between light and dark that makes it seem a little flat. Also, look up some books on pencil techniques and practise with crosshatching and like I said before, 'feeling' the weight of your work I like your paintings (especially that of the girl - she has such unique features) but something else you should attempt is studying different skin tones to give your painting that extra oomph.

Well, that is all! You are improving every time I see you so keep up the good work.

(Also, was wondering... do you have any tips/techniques and book recs for acrylic? You seem pretty good at it.)

[Matsign]

i could of sworn I posted this stuff...


I found my mechanical pencil... i've got my mojo back

[armando]

Watch the perspective a little closer. I noticed on the creatures, but also on the Batman study where its a little more obvious. Compare the sizes of his far and near hand, identical, so the near one seems a little small.
One study you could try is take a picture or use a mirror, and make a weak fist, and make a hard fist. You'll notice they don't look the same. A hard fist has more, and deeper, stress wrinkles. Also pay attention to the two palm pads, the pinky one, and the thumb one, the index and middle finger are against the thumb one, the pinky and ring are against the pinky one, so they get pushed around differently. Clayface's fist shouldn't look like it does in the study, fixing it will make a more dynamic image.

[Smoke]

Hey man, slow down. You're taking leaps and bounds in front of me D:

Your rendering is starting to amaze me, it's a very nice style. Which means I want to see more. MOAR!

Wub.

[xinleh]

heyy nice work on those sketches. You are improving tons! Watch your lines & shading .. some of them flatten the picture.

PS: Notice that you haven't been updating as much... we demand more!

(PPS: Gah, about the SSG...would it be possible to join at a later date? RL has been an ass lately and I'm trying to cope as much as possible. Don't think I'll have much time to comment. I'm so sorry.)

[Rist]

Some great improvements! Jut keep doing what you are doing really. People could point things out but I think you are already noticing them and improving the next time.

Maybe start bringing some of those sketches into photoshop and colour them in? Also render so that you see how light works and what not.

[Nam]

Nice work, you're improving quite a bit. I like the speedpaint too, did you use a ref?

[Matsign]

thanks Nam. Yeah it was photoreffed

wip!

[Matsign]

finished illustration. Some parts could be refined for readability but I'm not putting anymore work into this. It was fun though! Still working on my hatching...



peace dudes

[frayrob]

What can I say but wow looks like you have a bright future ahead i will watch with interest

[Matsign]

fraylrob Thank you very much!

Updating with some stuff I liked from school and sketchbook pages that aren't too sucky.

[Rist]

Watch your proportions, don't just copy; think while drawing, pause between lines to make sure the angle and length is correct. Try to avoid automating each approach.

[Matsign]

Thanks Rist. I probably didn't take enough time on this. I might of planned ahead if I actually knew what I wanted to do with this when I started.

Its from a photo. I couldn't get a hold of bob on his cell. =\

[Nam]

Nice portrait.

I think on your other sketches that you should subordinate details and values until you have proportions down.

Good work Matt keep it up.

[UnSharpened]

Wow sweet updates.
Your drawing is getting better I gotta tell ya, so as the latest portrait.
The perspective of the sci-fi colour work in #282 looks off, I think the mountains in the background can be moved further or blurred, which will also bring out the depth. Nice work the rest.

[Rist]

I think on your other sketches that you should subordinate details and values until you have proportions down.

I second this. I learned this from life drawing and then from studying Burne Hogarths Anatomy books.


The portrait is very good! Some lines may be a little strong, such as the line for the collar and jawline.

You should take that into digital and colour it with flesh tones as a flesh study. Mainly because I think its one of your strongest portrai studies.

[Matsign]

Rist, Nam

How do you usually get proportions down? Do you find the shapes with silhouettes and then add the details or what? When I sketch I often just start outlining the form.

Would you mind picking something particular and crit it. All I'm hearing is proportions and its very general to me. Is there something that I've done (like studies) that I should do more of?

[Peter Coene]

Rist, Nam

How do you usually get proportions down? Do you find the shapes with silhouettes and then add the details or what? When I sketch I often just start outlining the form.

Would you mind picking something particular and crit it. All I'm hearing is proportions and its very general to me. Is there something that I've done (like studies) that I should do more of?

I usually sketch in a really loose skeleton. If you can see the basic shape/size of the ribcage as compared with the pelvis with the head and the limbs you get a basic idea of how big the stuff should be. Granted, that takes a bit of eyballing and confidence in your artistic instinct.

For the purpose of practice there are charts that can be found in most anatomy books which will provide basic proportional info such as how many heads tall the person is. Granted, usually artists today will use a simplified and idealised version of 7 heads tall with the pelvis falling right in the middle. Of course, this is what is used for adult males, I forget the measurements for females and children vary so much from one age to another that there is no way of setting a real guideline other than stating that the head is big when compared to the rest of the body and moves towards matching adult propotions as the child grows.

[Rockhart]

I agree with Rist, Nam, and Coene if you want to get better focus on the big picture before you do the details. every artist has thier own way of getting anatomy down. some use faint "skeletons" while other's do loose sketching and the really good ones somehow can eyeball everything. I'm not saying what you're doing is wrong but i would reccomend you hold off on adding detail until you're sure the anatomy is correct. k anyways I've noticed that you're improving a lot, i especially like the finished batman piece a few posts back. keep working!

[a la bapsi]

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/att...9&d=1209103558
^ lmao
i love how that raptor's all like /GROPE GROPE~
but anyway.
your pencil rendering's very kickass.
and your paintings.
geez.
GEEZ.
So jealous of them. But also inspired.
Keep doing what you're doing. you're kicking ass. *__*

[Matsign]

aifolx LOL
Thanks I'll keep it coming.

Rockhart Thanks for the feedback. I'm working on these basics now. Mostly studies that have been done before, just not by me yet Hope to see you do some too.

Peter Coene Got my Loomis book out and doing a lot of proportion stuff now. Most of the first part of his figure drawing book. Its a lot of good info. Thanks for coming by!

Update out of my moleyskin:



















I've tried to keep just live drawings in this but, yeah, pre-planning is never my forte.

[Rist]

Awesome, you did some obs!

I will give you some crits, so prepare!

I think you are working against yourself by drawing in one continuous line while out doing obs. I have find it easier for both me and my drawing to do a broken up sketchy line. This is because with one continuous line you need to be very clean, somewhat line vectors, but you do not have time to be when out drawing moving people. Of course when you first start this style it looks terrible, but once you get the hang of it you can determine how thick a line can be, as opposed to the one continuous one thickness line, how much rugged edged it can be, an how dark/light it can be. For instance you will be able to use thicker lines for closer people, but rugged light lines for the ones in the back, or a bit of both.

For shading; I think you are using he point of the pencil. Why not for your next obs shade an area in with the side of the tip, to take those lines you get with the tip, and then rub with the finger, then erase back in with a eraser.

For lines again try and steady your lines, I see with the bottle the lines were everything. For obs on objects its easier so you can stop every so often and check your proportions.

I think its coming along great.

Keep it up!

[Enemy_Within]

Hey Matt
I dont know enough about art to crit or advise anything yet. I can see a lot of improvement from your first post to your most recent. Good pencil, pen, paint and digital work. Some kool designs here dude.

[Matsign]

Rist I actually try to avoid the shaky hand technique. I use it when working from imagination very often. I feel that when I do observations, if I really want to nail the figure in space, I need to focus on the line to shape the person, even at the expense of losing the pose.
I do contours to try to improve confidence in my line. I think I have been improving there.
It is not a continuous line, although. I go over original lines to change line weights. My initial lines are usually from darkest points. I will keep doing these and see if you get ... what I'm getting at.

Enemy_Within Thanks!

This is from my sketch-hook:
















Oh, a digital portrait. I grabbed this out of my grandpas Infantry almanac.
My values are all over the place. I tried to fix the nose and made it worst.



Gotta do more of these.

[Rist]

I have a photoshop tip if you want your sketches to show better in posts. When you have scanned the sketch in, make a levels adjustment layer and click on the auto button. This should bring out the darks, if its too dark slide the dark slider so that it takes it off a little. I just did it with one of your creations and it has made all the lines that much more readable.

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/606/91468034nx3.jpg

Also I am not sure if you do it yet, but drawing things like the face from the left (assuming you are right handed) first, it allows you to see your work in progress while sketching and also avoids smudges. I see very little smudges with your work so I assume you are already doing it. So if so, disregard this comment.

It seems you are learning from your mistakes all the time so really there is very little for me to comment on when it comes to sketches. Paintings are much better to critique.

Like the painting, I feel the contrasts are too sharp in areas which suggests a graphic appearance, but then you introduce th midtones as if it's a greyscale painting. I think if you reduce the harshness of the tones it will make the piece look more whole and less fragmented.

Also if you are painting in photoshop make sure to design some custom brushes, they work wonders to fake traditional effects.

Thats it. I need to update my sketchbook when I start drawing again....

[Matsign]

Good tip. I do use the Levels, actually. They must of looked darker on my other LCD.

If you hold Alt while adjusting the black arrow in the levels you can see were the darkest dark "breaks". Right about there is a good balanced setting.

SOMETIMES I Filter > Unsharpen Mask when I scale down sketches to keep it crisp. It is not always Pretty. Normal setting is about 50.

I haven't made custom brushes yet. I don't know why I keep thinking I'm going to get the same result with a default round, duuh.

I am left handed and did not draw for a time just because it got so smudgy.
Now I'm smarter and move from the right of the page toward the inside. I'm very paranoid about smudges lol.

Updates soon ;3

[Rist]

Good tip with the alt key!

As for the custom brushes, effects come into there own when you apply traditionally made textures to them. It creates a random effect that default digital brushes just cannot produce.

How do you blend within photoshop? I was taught to use flow in combination with opacity. The more blended I wanted something the lower these settings would be. Since then I have been messing with other ways. One way is to use a soft edge brush to blend large curved areas; whether this looks nice is to be seen. Change the spaces within a brush setting to reduce the repeated pattern when using flow.

I feel right now your biggest weakness is digital. Your images need to look less digital.

How do you start a digital painting? From a white background. If you do, try it from a midtone background. This should flatten the intensity of white.

[Matsign]

Rist I use low flow for soft areas and soft edges. I kinda of fiddle with hardness on and off. I have lots of custom brushes that I just don't use enough.

I'm not comfortable giving more time to digital painting from drawing. I should. I don't start from white bgs anymore. It was so hard.

Heres a few from the moleskin:




the legs are too short, improvements elsewhere

[UnSharpened]

Just drop by to say thanks for comments in my sb.
Moleskin drawings look nice, you're improving significantly. Digital painting may need some time to get used to with, but I think the principle applied is the same with using traditional mediums. Your drawing is strong enough to support your painting I think, just watch out the use of colour.