Genna's Midnight Scratchings (Updated 3.4.2009!)

[MsMaverick]

Hey guys! I've been sort of a silent observer (see: worshiper) of the talented folks on this site for a while, and decided I would get my act together and join in. (check out page 2 for more recent stuff--I took a sabbatical, mmkay? )

Basics about me if you care to know:

My real name is Genna, I just turned 20 in July (2007), and I'm currently living in Washington, USA. I'm already on my 3rd school out of high school; figuring out what I want to do has been a real bitch for me. I've finally settled on attending the Art Institute of Portland, and I'm going to major in Media Arts and Animation (though i'm thinking of eventually switching over to Game Art and Design). I've got a real problem with trying to do too many things at once and ending up not getting anything done, and that sort of applies to art as well. I really want to improve on everything (environments, character design, creature design, architecture and industrial design) and i get frustrated when I can't do everything at once. There's so much to get better at, and I've got such a long way to go in just about every area! But enough emo.

Basically what I want to do with this sketchbook is to motivate myself to draw every day rather than once in a while, and also get to know you guys so I have people to bounce ideas off of while giving feedback of my own.

Here's kind of a tangled mess of sketchy stuff I've done that I think is a pretty good rep of where I'm at in my 'artistic endeavors', and also one finished thing... Basically where I want to go is to loosen up my lines and composition (i want to get rid of excessive linework, actually) and work on mood and color choice. AAAAAAaaand, come hell or high water, there will be more! =D

[emily g]

Welcome! I think that giant fish monster looks really great. Very nice.

[MsMaverick]

Emily - Thanks, I really appreciate that! And gratsi for taking the time to look and comment =D


Erm, okay, so here's some stuff I was working on tonight--it's basically just a big monkey/ yeti thing, with a creepy mask face. There's gonna be a girl riding its shoulders when it's finished I think. And then the flying fish is a little bit older...

[voraz]

Hey, that's a great start. very nice illustrations.
Last one looks really good, and great mood to that little detail of the ape swinging.
Also those two environments in the rigth of the big page in the first post look great, i think it is one of the first times I see the grass brush used in a way that doesn't look bad.
cheers

[throtailer]

Amazing stuff, dude, cant say anything..

[SirGreenSock]

Great stuff, youve got a nice sense of composition and colour, that last digi with the flying fish is great.
Something that ive noticed as a compositional and value problem in both the first and last digi you posted is the lack of atmospheric perspective. The water behind the dude in the first one, and the clouds behind the fish in the second one are quite bright in value and colour (this applies the most to the first pic) and are a bit sharper than they really need to be. I think that by simply softening some edges, lowering the value of the whites and slighty turning down the brightness of the colour you'd get some more effective atmospheric perspective, and it'd bring out the foreground a lot more.
Cant wait to see more

[Gilead]

The flying fish is wonderfull. Great idea, great choice for angle of view, the transparency in the fins, just great.
Some of your other pieces have color choices that don't work as well. When you start with an intense color you have no place to go from there. Start your foliage with a more drab brownish-green and then pile increasingly clearer colors on top of that. The intense color will mean more when juxtaposed with more subdued colors.
Good work.

[RaistlinTheDark]

I love the fishy!><>><> Anyways great start i love ur work!

[Alex Baer]

i like the colors your using, and those thumbnails are excellent. I agree about the atmospheric perspective though, but thats the only issue i see right now. keep posting .

[spudstudios]

Very nice book. More please :-)

[MsMaverick]

voraz - Hey, thanks! Yeah, i find myself abusing the grass brush a little too much, so i'm glad they look all right. =P

throtailer - *gasp* you just said something! Thanks for commenting~

SirGreenSock - Ah, thank you so much, this is the kind of stuff I need. You make a really good point; I like doing environments so much that I don't give the due focus to the characteeer.

Gilead - Yeah, you're right; I never realized that, but a lot of my stuff is super saturated... Bwah, thanks!

RaistlinTheDark - Thank you, I'm glad you like! =D

DaBaers - Hey, thankya for the input! constructive critisism is so rad =D

spudstudios - Heh, your wish is my command =P


Okay, so this is what I was working on last night when i shoulda been sleeping... sort of anime-ish--not that there's anything wrong with that--but it's for a buddy of mine. Oh, by the way, if anyone has any excercises they'd like to suggest, I'm aaaall ears.

[SirGreenSock]

The character drawing itself is solid in the last update, but im not too fond of the colours and values themselves.
Colour-wise, the green, red and blue colours are all really saturated, whereas as the rest is almost grey in its saturation. Its quite unbalanced in that sense, though even something small like red bounce lights on the whiteish cloth and whiteish bounce lights on the red cloth would help bring it all together more.
Value wise your colour/value choices arent getting enough contrast, the skintones especially are real grey, but not dark enough to pull it off, so she just looks sickly. The shadows on the lighter cloth are also quite pale, and barely register as shadows compared to the red cloth. Try squinting at the picture to blur and simplify it, and you should see what i mean.

What kinda exercises are you interested in?

[MsMaverick]

SirGreenSock - Weeell I took what you said and twiddled with the pic some more, and you're right, it looks better. Part of the problem might be that i'm working on a laptop, and i've noticed a lot of stuff comes out bright and crazy looking when i view it on the desktop pc. But I think I tend to get lazy with colors too, and just say 'well, this is white, and this is red' and forget to think about how they act together under the same circumstances. Hopefully this sort of improves on that a little...

And since you ask, actually exercises in lighting/atmosphere and color would be rad! =P

[HunterKiller_]

Wonderful start. Lovely animal drawings.
This character is rad. Her ponytail looks weird to me, though. It's off to the side, looking like it's caught in the wind, but such a mass of hair, with that ring at the end would never be picked up by wind.

Look forward to more stuff.

[Koh]

Great stuff, your colors are really inspiring.

On your last piece, I think you should drop the sword down some because balancing the hand guard on your shoulder would probably hurt really bad.
The feet also look a little awkward.

[funfetus]

Great stuff! I love your animal drawings and paintings -- I think the red koi/dragon is my favorite. That masked yeti is also creepy and awesome. I can't wait to see what you do with that one.

As far as crits, the only thing I see is that you're overmodelling on some of your paintings. Your drawings show a great sense of form, but your paintings lose it a bit. Make sure to think of the big forms when placing your light and shadow areas -- it's the big, basic forms that give your stuff mass and form, not the surface details. Keep your light and shadow sides clearly defined. Andrew Loomis has a lot of great info about this stuff in his book Creative Illlustration.

Other than that, nothing stands out -- just keep working on the basics -- anatomy, gesture, etc. I'll keep checking back.

edit: Upon looking back over your SB, I notice that the overmodelling issue is really only there in a few of your paintings -- you have a pretty good handle on it in the rest. Sorry. But still, it's a good thing to keep in mind.

[Delmar]

Very good start. i really like the coy dragon......the theatrical light bothers me a bit in some of your pictures. But previous speakers already mentioned that.

If you wanna know more about color theory, heres a link to thread on the board. Which i find gives you a good basic view for color

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17837

Of coures the color theory book of Johannes Itten is also a must have, though it´s a little droughty.

Keep up

[MsMaverick]

HunterKiller_ Thanks, I'm glad you like 'em. Sometimes I think I neglect humans too much though, heh. Ack, you're right about the hair; I was thinking that earlier--it should be heavier than the cape, but its swinging higher. Well... when i was doing the sketch i think that was like the 'cool thing' on the picture...*must remember laws of nature...*

Koh - Thank you, I appreciate it! Heh, yeah, i think by angling her right leg inwards a bit she would look more balanced. blah, so many problems with this pic, lol

funfetus - haha, I love your name, it's pretty rad. Ah, many good observations; jeez, you guys are giving me so much to think about! Cool, thankya

Delmar - mm, yeah, i was going through a phase where i was downloading brush packages, and trying to figure out the different ways i could use the 'sunbeam' brushes Thanks for that link, it was pretty interesting and definitely applicable to me!

I'm putting up more stuff prolly later tonight, but really quick what do you think of this? I'm thinking about entering the Avenging winter princess CHOW, and I'd really appreciate some crits of what I've got so far.

A few notes: yeah, that's a mammoth on a leash, it'll be different in the final Also there's something screwy with her pose; her left shoulder needs to be further back, and maybe her right leg straighter...she looks like she's box-squatting or something. Also, any tips on drawing big armies? Mine looks like an epic-size pile of m&ms right now...

[DARAF]

These are great, Can't wait to see what you do with this last update.

[funfetus]

I really like the direction this is taking! There are a few issues -- her legs are too short. Definitely make her right leg straighter. The mammoth looks like it's about shoulder height to her. (If that's what you intended, disregard. ) And I'm assuming the red and yellow dots around her feet are the aforementioned "epic pile of M&M's"? If that's the army in the distance, there's no way it'd be that colorful -- it should be washed out to about the same color as the sky, varying only a little bit in value.

It does look like it's gonna be awesome, though. Carry on.

[MsMaverick]

Aaaah, okay, I'm going up to the cabin this weekend, so it's becoming more doubtful that I'll get this done on time, but I'll post up what I'm doing anyway. I decided to go for a bit more of a dynamic pose with her, and if I finish this she'll be striding along a ridgetop or something with like the curve of the earth and mountains behind her. But aneryway, here's what I got so far--critiques are muy appreciated!

[funfetus]

I like the concept, and it's a pretty good drawing. The foreshortening does seem a bit extreme (I'd embiggen the arms, at least), and I see some issues with the shadows. The light source seems to be above and in front of her, but some of the surfaces don't seem to show that. I did a paintover to demonstrate. When you're painting, make sure to take cast shadows into account. I hope the "diagram" makes sense. Also, I threw a little blue reflected light from the snow on her down-facing parts. That's really a matter of preference, but I couldn't help myself.

Looking forward to seeing how it turns out -- keep it up.

[designboot]

this one in #18 look fantastic .. do you finish it?

[AmontilladoAg]

Oh, cool stuffz here! 8) Wish I had your PS skillz

More of teh coolness, pleez

[MsMaverick]

funfetus - Ah, man, you are gold! Thanks so much for your input--you're really a LOt of help! =D

designboot - Gratsi! Eh, I haven't finished it yet, but I'm thinking i'll still do something with it. I really like mammoths =P

AmontilladoAg - Hey, thankya~ Hehe, believe me, my ps skills are really not that great, especially compared to a lot of the other folks around here. =D thanks for looking!


Okay, I THINK i managed to slip this in to the CHOW competition, so I guess I'll see how it does. Tell me what you think, guys! Better yet...go vote for me

[funfetus]

Wow -- it came out great! I like the addition of the red awesome coming out of her eyes. My only crits are that you left the arms a little unfinished, and the composition looks a bit lopsided. I think if you moved that mountain behind her over to the left side of the picture, it'd improve it a lot. But great, overall. Can't wait to see what you've got coming up.

[MsMaverick]

Hey, really quick--I've decided to try to do a few...eh, i guess paintings from reference. Soooo here's the first one; took longer than i wanted, but... i guess I'm pretty happy with it. Man, this was a tedius little bugger. But it seemed like a good idea when I started, so... I'll see how the next one goes before I declare epiphanies

ack, here's the link to the pic I used--this guy's an amazing photographer-- http://blepharopsis.deviantart.com/a...eetle-65205737

[MeTaL-Mike]

awesome stuff in here. cool sb

[funfetus]

Beetle looks great -- you captured a lot of detail. Nothing in particular to crit about it. It's hard to know how faithfully you reproduced it without seeing the reference -- or even knowing if that was your intention. Do you feel like you learned anything?

[S.C. Watson]

Wow. You've got some really nice stuff happening in here. I love the first giant dragon fish/coy critter in the second image. Well done!

Cheers,
~Oreg.