Kurtzund's rage filled scratchings

[Kurtzund]

Hey there folks, I've noticed a lack of improvement in my art over the last couple months. So I've created a sketchbook in the hopes that I can get some direction.

So please, give me whatever advice or critique you can, it's greatly appreciated.

Here's what I'm up to these days. Some work in progress digital paintings and some life drawing stuff.

[Kurtzund]

Head and arm skeletal studies. I can't get my damn scanner to work so my iphone will have to do for now.

[Kurtzund]

More figure drawing practice, been looking in my bridgeman book again.

[kimozabbi]

keep posting man. doing great so far

[Malakuko]

Lets see some color! Its all in the hue/value/chroma. Dont be discouraged, just experiment. Before you know it youl be a master of it.

[Kurtzund]

I'm taking Malakuko's advice and trying some color. A painting I'm working on of Bubbles from 'The Wire', it's still in progress. Here's the ref.



I'm painting it all on one layer using a round brush at 90% opacity and 90% flow. I'm not sure if I'm approaching this the right way.

Anyone have any advice, I'm completely new to using color, I could use all the help I can get.

[kdiegert]

Bridgman stuff is looking great! You've managed to preserve the energy of his drawings in your studies.

Regarding hands, one mantra I chant to myself is "don't draw fingers, draw knuckles"

I find Bridgman's hand stuff particularly helpful.

[MBK]

Sweet studies! Bridgman has helped me immensely over the last year.

Another good source for understanding form and the figure is a guy named Glenn Vilppu. I highly recommend his stuff for wrapping your brain around three dimensional forms in space.

For being completely new to color this is looking damn good! I can relate to that place, for years all I ever did was black and white value studies and compositions. I didn't even attempt a color portrait till the end of last year O_o

Color baffled me (hell it still does to be honest) but keep cranking out studies like this last one and it will start to come together for you faster than you would have thought possible.

Anyways, great start to the sketchbook, look forward to watching your progress!

[Kurtzund]

Hey guys, posting more studies.

I've taken kdiegert's advice on drawing hands. Awesome advice man! I think the hand thing is starting to make a lot more sense.

I've been doing some color studies but none of them are really turning out right so I won't bother posting them. I guess I'll just keep hammering away at it.

I've also been keeping up with my life studies, trying to work in more fluidity into my gestures and poses, whilst still trying to keep proportion in mind.

[Kurtzund]

It's been a frustrating couple of days. I've been repeatedly doing color studies and I'm still struggling. I spent the last couple hours working on that Victor Komarov portrait below. I never really ended up going anywhere, the face was way off and I couldn't manage to capture that skin tone. Anybody have any useful tips or links to good tutorials? I'll take anything I can get.

I've also been making use of the paper bags I got from whole foods. I've been experimenting with doing my life studies on toned paper.

[Umbravita]

Pay close attention to what you see. From what I can observe in the comparisons above, the original has a narrower face which you can see a lot better in comparison if you zoom out, and the lips are at a different angle. Look carefully at the colours you use -- for the shoulders you used a yellow instead of a brown, and the lips have more of a pinkish hue than an orange. The face has more red in it than the yellows you used as well. Look at your colours very carefully when you choose, it's a bit of a pain to learn to "see" the subtle differences between colours but well worth it.

Remember that we mostly get our skin tone from the colour of blood, so with the exception of certain lighting our skin colour leans more towards pink than yellow. You want warmer colours.

If colours are a bit of trouble, I also recommend squinting or unfocusing your eyes, it makes seeing colour a lot easier.

[MBK]

Nice hand studies

As far as the color study is going, this is pretty good! Any problems with the likeness are in the realm of the drawing phase itself (flipping the canvas often helps) and should be worked out before making a move towards coloring (ideally), but as far as trying to lay down the color, considering how new the whole process is to you, you've gotten pretty far and I can tell it's stretching your mind forcing you to see all those subtle shifts in color. Just keep doing them! No matter how discouraged you feel, or stagnant you may think your progress is, you're definitely improving with each attempt. This is already noticeably further along than the first one you posted!


I've found these to be helpful, maybe you can get something out of 'em:





(His channel is packed with useful tutorials)


Keep pushing!

[DeadandDreaming]

Your Boxxy is badass, along with everything else! inspiring.

[p sage]

I like the idea of your paper bags quite a bit; shows innovation and an understanding of using toned mediums for life drawing.

Also like your Bridgmans. Pay very close attention to those... meaning... stare at and study them before copying. Look at the relationships. Try to re-interpret what you see.

Pay close attention to what you see.

This. I find I keep coming back to this.

Proportions, proportions, proportions. Nail those, and 80% of your work is done. Make them unconscious. But to do that, you need to be conscious of them first. Measure. Use a ruler if you have to at first. Training wheels.

Hope you have great fun and luck this week

[Leo Ki]

The gray scale studies in the first post are really funny
You're good at "blocking values" as they say, and simplifying shapes and brush strokes.
Keep training and keep it fun please

[Kurtzund]

Hey guys, thanks so much for all the input, you wouldn't imagine how helpful it is!

I decided to redo my Komarov painting. I put a lot more focus into everything. I made sure I nailed the drawing before I did anything else. With the colors I took Umbravita's advice and just really tried to see the colors. MBK's link was also REALLY helpful. I realized there were a lot more red and peach hues than I imagined. I also did away with opacity, I think the blurryness of my work was leading to some of my confusion. The painting is still a WIP but I've gotten it to a decent point by now.

Again, thanks so much for the advice you guys!

[MBK]

Nice.

This is a great improvement from the last version. Both the colors and the drawing are more accurate.

Would love to see more of these!

One thing you may want to try out, just for the sake of experimentation, is to grab a brush, check the "other dynamics" tab in the brush settings panel and set the opacity jitter to pen pressure. Then take that brush and just go around wherever the colors meet and blend them towards one another to see what that looks like. (Grab a color and paint a stroke going towards its neighboring color, and as you draw the stroke, let up on the pressure)

You may or may not like it, just something to play around with.


p.s.

You might want to go into your User Control Panel and put a link to your sketchbook in the "edit signature" section.
That way more people around the forums can find your book a lot easier



Keep 'em coming!

[p sage]

Nice job on the re-do. Keep going!

[Kurtzund]

Hey guys, I'm back! Once again MBK, your advice has proved quite helpful. I spent the last couple of days trying out that opacity pen pressure thing you showed me. I've noticed it enables me to work a lot faster!

I also tried a new technique. Instead of doing line art first, I did the silhouette and painted everything else on top of that.

Below is a photo study I did using it. The reference was a sculpture by Philippe Faraut. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

[MBK]

Badass! Looks like you're already putting it to good use

Diggin' the latest study, has a nice value range going on. (though overall it does lean towards the lighter values)

Another cool thing to mess around with is to add a layer on top of your brushwork and set it to "overlay" then grab a soft airbrush and using black or white you can tweak your values without fucking with the brushstrokes. Give it a shot, just another tool for the arsenal.

Keep up the goodness.

[Kurtzund]

Hi everyone! It's been a slow few days. I'm starting to work in perspective into my practice. It's very useful, but not snazzy enough to put into my sketchbook. I have been doing other things though.

I'm starting a new photostudy. It's a scene from the wire. I'm trying to work in perspective into this one. It's still in it's early stages.

I've also been playing around with my new red ink cartridges for my fountain pen. I gotta say, that pen was one of my best investments yet.

All this work in dry/digital mediums is making me want to do wet medium stuff again. So to ease myself back in that direction I've been playing around with my sketch and wash.

[Kurtzund]

Been doing life studies as usual, I've developed a daily routine where I start with gestures and doodles, and then move to more focused work.

[Kurtzund]

I finished the photo study I started earlier. I was gonna try and do a perfect copy of the original image, but I decided to take a different approach. I wanted to work on finishing things quicker, whilst still making them readable. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, it was really fun too!

Also, here are some skulls I did from memory, done on a toned digital canvas.

[Kurtzund]

Did another photo study, this time with graphite.

[Kurtzund]

Hey folks! It's been a while since I've done an update, I figured I'd show my current progress.

[Kurtzund]

Hi everyone! It's been a while since I've posted anything. It's been an awesome month so far, I've gotten a ton of great advice and I feel like I've put it to good use.

Just some digital paintings I've done recently, the bottom two are works in progress.

Feel free to give me advice and critique, I'd greatly appreciate it!

[Jesus Food]

great first page, i love bubz and the girl in ur thumbnail keep up dem studies!

[bringer]

I really like your stuff! Keep it up!

I would really like to see you try to "tighten" and tidy up some of your painting, sharp/blury shadows, refining the edges and geting that highlight to really pop!

[Izene]

Cool stuff!

[MBK]

Wow!

You've improved so much since the last time I checked in! Hell yeah!

So many awesome pieces. These portraits are looking damn good.

More please!