Sam's sketchbook of stuff and things

[zephyri]

Hi guys... my virgin post here. I registered a long while back, lingered, thought about posting, then got the willies and decided it was way too scary! However, lately I've found myself growing frustrated with my art, so I'm here in the hopes you guys will give me the punt in the backside I need to go out and improve. I'm open to crit and feedback of all kinds, I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you guys to not hold back.

The brief background: Born 1979, female, have worked as a full time concept artist for Jagex, in the UK since 2009. I work in both traditional and digital, in all manner of styles.

Edit: Feel free to crit away, guys, I still don't bite with regards to feedback, and appreciate all comments. Reserve the right to disagree, but I'm totally open. Latest work will always be found at the last post I've made, rather that updating the front page.

[zephyri]

Some of my traditional work!












And some of my digital works. Some of these are works in progress... the infinite time frame with digital means I often work on digital pieces for months before suddenly getting an urge to finish them. I love photoshop and am weaning myself back to Painter. Let me know if I need to resize any of these pics, I'm a little unsure as to what's the norm round these parts!

The first pic is a self portrait, done for the "past lives" challenge on pixelbrush.net's forums.
The master copy is a Rembrandt (the name of which escapes me) and was done in PS with only the chalk textured brush.
The last two are wips from my own novel, the two main pairings.

[zephyri]

And lastly, before I go throw myself into some of the other threads here, a couple of anatomy/gesure/practice type sketches, just as I find this kind of work interesting in others works! I've yet to do any life drawing, though am making some enquiries at local colleges, since it's something I would really love to do.

[Alex Baer]

hi welcome to CA, very good figure work here, a lot of life if the characters' faces. the piece with the angel and demon and your master copy of rembrant are my favorites right now. hope to see some more work from you

[zephyri]

Thanks Dabaers, I try to add elements of story telling through faces, they're what I love doing most.

[bao]

Wonderful body of work!
The Rembrandt copy is beautiful

[Beelow]

Heya sam! Welcome to conceptart. Glad to see you posting here as well. Hope to see you post some more work. Stick around! XD

How is Sacha doing btw? Havent chatted with him in a while. Well see ya around. XD

[foxboy]

hey zephyri snap im a 28 year old visualiser and illustrator based in london where r u? u busy? thanx 4 stopping by u have some great work here 2 x just wondering where u got the ref of the bloke with his thingy out!!! ha ha really nice work on the people! x

[Weetbix]

Wow thats amazing, I love your work. Theres something just so damn nice about it.

[Stoat]

Nice. Very nice. I particularly like the miniatures, because...well, I really like miniatures. They're like magic.

[zephyri]

Bao: thanks, if you're the Bao I've admired for some time now, that's a big compliment!
Bryce: Hey! Thanks for the welcome. I've not spoken to Sacha in an age myself... I keep hopping onto MSN in the hopes of catching him to say hi, but no luck so far!
foxboy:Hey! You're welcome! I'm currently based in the rurals of North Yorkshire, but getting itchy feet! And the ref for the guy originally came from a stock gallery on da that's no longer up and running, but he has one here: Arachnid15's stock
Weetbix: Thank you!
Stoat: Ehehe thanks, they're not so magic when you've a lot of them to churn out in short deadlines, but such is the life of an artist!

Here's a few more, a couple of wips (i'm terrible for starting stuff and never finishing, my muse is a distracting creature), though the first is a commission, so it will be finished. The xmas image was recently completed for a religious charity I've done a lot of work for, and the pencil drawings of the sexy guys are for an author, Tessa E Colby, who writes erotic fantasy.

[James Wolf]

wow great work! I love the mini paintings, the male holding the staff sketch is one of my favs only thing i noticed was that his thigh seems to be very large especially in comparison to his knee. also i like the couple laying in blood

[Jason Borne]

Wow Sam. Really good stuff. Thanks for stopping by my book. I figured I'd return the favor and I discovered some really cool art. I can't help but find it hard to believe that my sketches inspire you after looking at this.

[Dandilion]

Wow!
My god, your stuff is awesome! I so want your attention to detail. That patience of yours must be endless.. Give it to me!

5 stars and a subscription for you!

~Em

[zephyri]

James thank you, and yeah, you're definitely right on the male's leg.. needs thinning out a little!
Jason I do, I love work with a good story telling element, and yours definitely had that, among other things! Glad you like my work too!
[b]Dandilion[b] aw, thanks very much! Actually.. if you could see my current list of wips you'd know my patience is anything but endless... I'm working towards becoming faster simply because so much of my stuff remains unfinished! Most of the more detailed pieces I've worked on over months, on and off.

Here's a piece i completed recently after watching Jason Chan's download from this site. Very inspiring, though I've still to get painter to play nice with me.


And the sketch for a piece that's underway in coloured pencil at the mo:


And here's a little progress on a fun piece I've started for pixelbrush's November challenge, "Opposites", other than that, too busy painting Cunard's flagship cruise ships in miniature and attempting NaNoWriMo to tackle anything else!

[Stoat]

Oh, man, I tried NaNoWriMo last year! I got just six hundred words in before I realized the totality of my suckage! Good luck with that; surprised you're getting any art done at all -- let alone such good work.

[zephyri]

Thanks Stoat.. ehehe I have about 5,000 words so far, after a couple of night's work, so if i get into the swing, 50,000 isn't out of the question. I've a full length, almost completed novel under my belt as of right now, and aspirations to make a little money from writing novels at some point in the future, so writing comes with less fuss than the art much of the time! And add to that I get about 5-6 hours sleep a night and spend all my time either arting or writing, it allows me to get quite a bit done!

[j_bear_kim]

Love your stuff your colors are very nice. In te most recent post with the girl with wings there is something bothering me about the postion of her left arm, but tats nitpicking to say the least. Very nice work here!

[AnthonyFoti]

every one of these paintings is fucking incredible. Sweet jesus.

[Coleb]

Wow! Wonderful control and detail. Love the miniatures.

Your black and white pencil work doesn´t show the same range of values as your painting. Is that from your watercolor work? That Rembrandt copy is striking, and the portrait of the older monk stands out for me.

Please post more.

[zephyri]

J-bear: thanks.. the anatomy overall on that sketch is a little skewed, some of it deliberately, some not. Her hand on the left is probably a little on the long side, and her arms could do with being a little longer overall, looking at it now.

AnthonyFoti: Ahaha.. thanks, not sure I feel the same myself!

Coleb: Thanks! Yeah, it's a habit I've developed with pencils... I rarely work with anything darker than a 2B, since I like really smooth pencil work, and much of my pencil work is preliminary sketching for colour, so I tend not to put much in the way of value into them, working that out more when I add colour.

[Flipnastywebby]

i dunno what is frustrating you about your work, i think you really have some strong pieces here.

well done
slainte!

[RandAlThor]

Zeph, super cool sketchbook already. Excellent handling of chosen media. And you say you havent even started life drawing yet!! geez, i better pull my finger out..lol keep it up man :-)

[bluefooted]

Really beautiful work! That master copy is phenomenal - there's no way I'd believe it was digital if you hadn't told us

[Donovan V]

Hi Zephyri,

Wow so no life drawing classes eh? You've got wonderfull gestures and anatomy. How / what do you study from? If I can get to that level without paying what I do for the collage class I'll take that in a hear beat. My fav of the bunch is the woman in the red top. Great expression in that one.

Take care,
D

[zephyri]

Flipnasty: Thank you! As far as feeling frustrated it's a mixture of things, when I get the time, I'll have to see if I can find any of my less posted stuff, the stuff I generally don't put up cause it doesn't meet my standards... bad with the good and whatnot. It probably stems mostly from the fact I don't have the time to devote to making a jump that I feel is due in my own work. Especially after I'd seen some pretty amazing works in the Art Show at DragonCon this Sept. Oh, and if you for some reason get three messages from me on your thread, ignore me, I was having some form of brain fart.

RandAlThor: Cheers, and nope! I've devoted quite some time to anatomical studies, muscles, skeletons and stuff, and doing master studies when time allows, but I still don't have that knowledge that comes from doing it in the flesh, so to speak!

Bluefooted: Thank you, thats a big compliment coming from you, appreciate you dropping by!

Donovan: Thanks! I actually got into the anatomy side of things over in the anatomy forums over on CGTalk, when Rebecca Kimmel first started them up. I took part in pretty much every monthly activity, and took time out from my own work to read up on the books of guys like Loomis, Vilppu, Hogarth. I did loads of studies from those and the masters (hence the rembrandt copy, which was a revelation for me). I do the basics a lot, like the skeletal mannekins that loomis has, and the strange blob like creatures Vilppu recommends, and gestures. I'm working my way through the body as I feel i need too, whenever I find a weak spot if I'm drawing without ref, I'll do a few studies from all angles until I feel like I know it better.

I looked at as many different styles of recording anatomy and gleaned what I could from them, even now, I'm always paying attention to various forms of anatomy, from the way comic artist will represent the muscle with a line, to the subtle way Michaelangelo blends forms into one another in his sketches and paintings. I always use a collection of reference if I'm not sure about something too. It's taken me a good two or three years to get to this point, and even here you're only seeing the good stuff, there's so many terrible drawing that have gone by the way side for every good one. I don't doubt had I had the chance to study the figure under someone who knew what they were doing, or done some life drawing, I might have picked it up faster.

The woman in the red top (with the creepy looking old guy behind her?) is me, a self portrait that's been some time in the making, inspired by seeing Tobin Bell in Saw 3 last year, I believe. Hope my ramblings are of some help!

[MayYeo]

Gorsh woman, your stuff is way too mindblowing! I did rememer you when you were featured at CGTalk when I saw this pic
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/att...1&d=1194231399
Just amazing, this time I didn't forget to save it onto my HD. Your other traditional and digital artworks are amazing as well. I'm in awe. The Rembrandt, Mucha and Bouguereau studies are great too. Wish to see more from you! Keep posting!

[joaKimArt]

Very good colour pictures, good grasp of details. Pretty much everything is nice. Keep going like this.

Look forward to the updates. =3

[Dreamworker]

Wow awesome stuff!
Keep it up, cheers

[MeTaL-Mike]

wow!! amazing. your figure drawings are so good man. great sketches and totally amazing paintings.