Amarok's sketchbook --FUN SIZE

[Amarok]

Edit: Made it to a new page again! wooo.

sp time, hat to cover my sunburn...

nose is too far to the right (now that I'm finished, of course I see it...)

[Amarok]

torsos

[Amarok]

feel like I am going nowhere even though I am studying everything I am supposed to. I think this is the proof of the existence of talent (and my lack of it). I think if I were talented then things would sink in quicker and I'd learn a little more from every bit of studying and be making progress bit by bit. Instead I feel like I'm just chasing my own tail and making no major improvements no matter how I try to study or what I try to do.

always a struggle. uphill climb. going nowhere.
why does it seem like it's so much easier for everyone else?
what if I'm the only one who just can't "get" it...?

[Amarok]

painter for a change

ng

[Clur]

Thanks for stopping by my sketchbook!

I love your digital work, they've got a really pleasing feeling of volume to them. The colours are lovely and rich, too, but I feel they could maybe use some variation in terms of temperature. It seems you tend to stick to just warm, or or just cool colours in an image, I think mixing it up a bit could really take your pieces to the next level.

[Amarok]

wanted to mess around with different media.
sp of varying quality (but all low)

[Amarok]

Clur - Thank you very much for the concrit! You're right about colours--I have a lot of trouble trying to successfully bring in a lot of colours. I think I'll do some master studies of colour palettes to try to wrap my head around them.

Today's painting from life. I'm happy with how the converse came out!




really bad master study, but I told myself I'll make myself do/fail at least 10 of these before I give myself permission to say I can't get anything out of them. And if I fail at studying even 10 simple portraits, well... :/

[Amarok]

decided to do the "30 monster girls" meme I've seen going around tumblr so I can have an excuse to do some things that aren't studies...

[Amarok]

Today's painting from life +some back muscle studies.

[Amarok]

1 more study (just trying to get the skin tones, obvs.), 1 more monster girl

both bad

[Psychobuddy]

Hey man, you're doing all the right stuff. Just keep studying man! Uhm on that last centaur piece though, you made her horse part really small, even centaurs have an underlying anatomical structure. The horse part stays relative, well it stays the same size as a horse. Anyway keep working man, you're doing good.

[Amarok]

Psychobuddy -- I made a goat bottom, so I thought maybe it should be smaller than if it were a horse taur, but maybe it was better to make it bigger or the people part smaller to keep it in proportion. thanks for the input!


motivation looowww when I made the mistake of remembering I need to have actual portfolio pieces by the end of the year to apply to schools... don't know how to transform studies/learning into solid finished pieces. get a little anxious when I think that it doesn't matter how much I study/practice if I can't turn that into a good portfolio.


little env. studies


final torso notes

[Amarok]

Failing hard, but only failing as hard as I am trying!


today's master study


today's monster girl, slime (what's that? not that kind of slime, you say...?)

[Pete Hidalgo]

LOL!!! PSYDUCK!!! So awesome! Nice sketch book by the way. The trace anatomy studies look to be helping out.

[Amarok]

2 min. gestures, muscles so far from memory, arms arms arms

[Amarok]

The forums are OK to post in again?

I have SO much art to show, I don't even know where to start! While I try to figure out how to sort things to post (seeing if I should post by when I drew them or group 'em by category), here are just a few pages of drawings from the train and a thumbnail composition study, which I've started doing a bunch of to try to improve my own ability to make good color/composition choices.

will hopefully be making lots of updates in the near future to get my sketchbook up to speed.

[Amarok]

Last of the arms from back in the summer! This is where my brain kind of couldn't keep up and I decided to take a break from the intensive muscle studies for now. No matter how much I stared at the lower arm muscles there were just too many of them and I couldn't get them to make sense/stick in my brain.

+1 more composition study!

[Amarok]

Realized I was doing nothing but studies so I got a sketchbook made for failure--told myself it was only for fun sketches from my brain and that if they sucked or were totally awful it didn't matter since I was just drawing for fun and not for accuracy. no pressure. I draw a couple pages in it every day.


(this was me when CA was down)



Also, a bunch of really boring/simple value studies of eggs in different media.

[Amarok]

2 more composition studies and a still life from earlier in the month

[Wingal]

Hey. I enjoyed looking at the gestures in page 125. They have life in them. Try to think of the story each figure is telling while drawing gestures. I recommend the book Drawn to Life, if you want more info about it. Also that grape study is looking good. =)

[Amarok]

more "anything goes" sketchbook pages and a quick gluestick

[Amarok]

Wingal -- I haven't read that book yet. Thank you for the suggestion!


2 more crappy master studies...

[kjylee]

I love seeing all your sketches and side by side studies! Keep it up!

[vineris]

feel like I am going nowhere even though I am studying everything I am supposed to. I think this is the proof of the existence of talent (and my lack of it). I think if I were talented then things would sink in quicker and I'd learn a little more from every bit of studying and be making progress bit by bit. Instead I feel like I'm just chasing my own tail and making no major improvements no matter how I try to study or what I try to do.

always a struggle. uphill climb. going nowhere.
why does it seem like it's so much easier for everyone else?
what if I'm the only one who just can't "get" it...?

It seems easier for everyone else because you aren't in their head feeling their frustration at not being able to produce what they want. But just because something seems easier doesn't mean that it actually IS easier.

Looking at your work, I think that your impatience with your lack of progress is hurting you. You do a lot of studies but many of them seem rushed. I think you'd benefit from slowing down a bit more and making more finished pieces. If you start now you can work out the kinks with the finishing process before your portfolio pieces are actually due.

Good luck!

[Amarok]

vineris - thank you for the sound advice! I don't necessarily think my studies are rushed just because I can't afford to spend 20 hours doing one master study, but you're right about needing to make more finished pieces that aren't studies. I'm going to try really hard this month and next month to focus on doing things that aren't studies and commit to finishing them.


a quick and pretty awful sp today and 2 things I genuinely tried to put time into and finish (also pretty awful, unfortunately):

[Amarok]

doodle book pages

[vineris]

vineris - thank you for the sound advice! I don't necessarily think my studies are rushed just because I can't afford to spend 20 hours doing one master study, but you're right about needing to make more finished pieces that aren't studies. I'm going to try really hard this month and next month to focus on doing things that aren't studies and commit to finishing them.

Oh yes, I don't actually know whether they ARE rushed or not, only that they seem that way because they're only taken to a certain level of finish and sometimes your shapes and measurements are off. Not that studies and sketches aren't good, but I have a tendency towards fast work myself and after a while taking things to a higher level of finish starts becoming a problem. It's not good to spend all one's time rendering but rendering is a skill too and it's got to be practiced sometime. So I think your plan of doing a few more finished pieces is a good one.

PS - I think those vegetables turned out pretty well, they just need a bit more dark areas to pop and a bit of additional blending with a softer brush. Why not come back to them next week sometime and see what can be tweaked a bit?

Also, thanks for your suggestions on my work. I'll definitely take what you said into account with my next set of pictures.

[Amarok]

vineris --guilty as charged on awful measurements when I'm trying to do master studies! I get really frustrated because I want to do master studies to try to study the colours or values or composition but then end up spending all my time just trying to get the shapes/measurements to line up and it feels like a waste of my time so yeah, I throw in the towel frequently... The vegetables have long since hit the bin so I'm not sure I feel confident going in and just making up things to try to pull it together, but I'll try playing around with it a little more.


1 finished piece today:

[Amarok]

Doodlebook pages

[Amarok]

putting this one aside for now since I'm stuck. Hopefully I can come back to it in a week or two and fix it up when I am less angry at it.