V.Book|| Everyday's Struggle

[hu-ha]

Fucking awesome progress!!! You're doing very well and all you need to do is DON'T STOP man. You've got many interesting ideas, love your gestures and how many different faces you can draw. Also you're slowly getting better with digital, no worries you will figure dis hit out! Cheers

[Suira]

Hey! hu-ha thanks a lot for your words m8! Even tough I'm having a hard time uploading in a regular fashion I keep trying so, thanks man.

Well, not much to upload cause my scanner is a no-no right now. So here you go with a couple digis I made yesterday evening, I hope to be back soon with some more stuff.

[Suira]

some more stuff, no drawings yet cause still haven't managed to get the controlers for my scanner, but hey , it's better than nothing, hope to bring more of this soon. have a nice day

[Philipopotamus]

Ola Suri! Quiero dizerte muchas gracias pela mensaje! Yo voy tentar estudar la interrelacion de las partes do cuerpo.
Perdone mi mal Espanol. Mi primero indioma es Portugues. Tu arte tienes mucha vida!

[Setherial]

Wow man, very impressive stuff and seeing your posts from 2008 vs your recent posts is an inspiration. Love your pencil and ballpoint stuff. Such great linework, simplification and abstraction, great hatching control. Nice bro. Really inspires me.
Your paintings are very good in terms of composition but in my opinion you still think to much in terms of lines instead of contrasting planes/masses. Looking forward to seeing more of your stuff!

[toastcrumbs]

Nice sketchbook! Keep sticking with doing the characters and portraits, its really worth it to do the time on those now rather than later. As someone who's really shy about doing portraits, I admire you for just going at them.

[Suira]

Philipopotamus - Hey m8, glad you came by and to hear you're gonna give the masses thing a try. Keep it up!

Setherial -Really glad you droped by dude, I really admire your work so it's great to read such flattering things from you! On what you said about overthinking the lines and not giving enough space to mass you're MORE THAN RIGHT, it's one of the bigest flaws I'm encountering right now but I think the painting exercises are slowly helping understand the correlation between the two, so I'll hope to be showing some progress in the coming weeks (hopefully XD). BTW great progress on yours too man, I'm impressed!

bread crumbs -Yeah, it's been a total pain, but I don't know why I keep submitting myself to it in a worthless way since for the past six months I haven't used virtually any reference, so it's been all a tweak and explore journey, result: my stuff looks comic like ( thing I didn't want to happen) it's all distorted and weird, in structure terms so I'm gonna start giving it a serious go again to studies from life, this wednesday I'm gonna join up a life drawing atelier or something like that. It's nice I'll get 6 hours a week, wich isn't much but I hope it'll help. I see that now you're on to looking for references since you've worked from so much, it's fun to see the flips of the coin , you study a lot , I vaguely do it, and now it's time to switch hahaha.

Weeeeeeell.For today I've brought some more doodles, except for the steps of the WIP, the rest didn't take longer than 45 minutes individually, it's mostly practice to try to grasp the diferent value correlation, learning edges a bit and also start getting some decent composition in place ( wich is proving to be harder than I expected). Altough the results of the learning haven't been stellar they show improvement to me, and what's most important, I've learned a lot from them on what NOT TO DO, so amazing, I'll keep it up in this, our everyday's struggle. Cya around soon!

PS: I managed to recuperate the B&W on the Wizard or whatever it is cause the lame overlay I provide just doesn't cut it, so yeah, color gets suspended for a while.

[PNate]

Nice sketchbook pages! I like your drawings, it looks like you're on the right track to getting awesome. I see a few issues with value and color but it seems like you know how to fix it. As for the overlay color thing, I could never get that to work for me either :/ One thing you can try is actually changing the color of the tonal drawing first with color balance, then building on top of it with color. I tried that and got wayy better results. I'm eager to see some more work from you in the future!

[ecki]

Hey hey! nice sketchbook so far! I think you're really good with anatomy and faces already. For your paintings, I agree with the other comments, they are too "drawn" and not enough "painted". I would suggest to use a bigger brush most of the time. Everytime you start hatching or scribbling, try to enlarge the brush so that you have to work with bigger strokes.

Also, you should separate the fore-, middle- and background by using different values:
foreground: dark
middleground: middle
background: pretty light

Your painting lack that feel of depth.

Go for it, man!

[razz]

I have to agree with Ecki, the values you are using are flattening your pieces. Try and find some info atmospheric perspective. Basically, things that recede into space lose contrast and saturation (with exceptions). James Gurney wrote two good books about about painting, "Imaginative Realism" and "Color and Light" get your hands on them if you can, definitely worth a read. And do use bigger brushes when you paint. A good way to go about it is to use the biggest brush possible for the job you're doing. See if it helps ;]

[Hendecagoner]

Incredible progress! I love love love your digital paintings too, and your recent rendering style on your pencil sketches is fantastic. Looking at your studies and how you use them to help you understand anatomy is helping me figure out the best way to approach Bridgeman. Thanks for the inspirational work!

[Suira]

PNate: Hey man, glad you droped by. You guys are totally right I mean, it looks even comic-like or something and it's certainly not what I'm aiming for so I'll be sure as heck forcing myself trough some serious studies and tutorials to solve it asap. And thanks for the advice, it's actually quite basic, but I never thought about it! I'll be trying it on a couple pieces tonight Btw I your stuff

ecki: Really man, thanks. It impresses me how blind I can be sometimes to the most basic things, the back-middle-foreground thing is absolutely it! Yet I never even ordered those concepts like that in my head! I mean I was more like: "hmmm this is far....should I put something in the middle?...hmmm) LOL. The thing is that if I start understanding the environment of the character in this three subcategories it'll make it easier, so thanks man.

Razz: Golden Nuggets m8, I'm gonna put the stuff you said in the "Urgent: To Do" list. And I'll be sure to force the brushes. I tried that this morning since Setherial comented on that issue a bit the other day, and the results look better and feel a bit more painterly but I wasn't increasing the size enough. Things is that normally I use big strokes, but when I try to refine I slowly fall into tinier brushes and I finally end screwing up the painting. So I'll be sure to be like a cop on that shit to make sure it doesn't shrink! Really usefull, thanks a lot man. Oh! And keep posting amazing stuff please!

Hendecagoner:Thanks for the kind words dude, and if my failures can help you on the structure department I'm really glad that they're not there only to ashame me, but also to help someone, so glad you dropped by, and keep fighting the battle man!


Hey guys! Woah I'm so impressed that you all took time to drop by and give me some really usefull feedback, really thanks, I'll be sure to apply all the stuff you've said and see how it works!

Well I'm glad I came to the cyber this soon today, that way I have all the afternoon to practice with the new advice and see how can the pictures benefit from it. Sooo, for today I've brought a tiny update, cause all the rest is in the making, so there's an update on the random guy with the hood that still looks WAY too graphic, and I really have to get out of the old habits, since it's the first time I'm painting and it's been 4 years of pencil,and ballpoint and shit so I'm a bit slow assuming this change but I hope I'll be able to change that very soon Aaaand there's a quick sketch I did of some assassin-warrior kinda character walking on fire or something , I tried applying a filter and it looked cool so I included that one too, the other one looks worse on the value department,etc cause it's just a WIP and I don' like to go apply level grids and shit in such an early stage, it messes up the whole painting for serious,so yeah Oh! And since I'm living in Spain and nowadays the spanish democratic system is little more than a joke and our douchebag politicians just prick about things I sketched "the prick" thingie up this morning. and that's pretty much it for the day.

I'll be sure to drop by tomorrow with your new advice applied , or at least my first attempt to apply it, hehe. And really, can't thank you guys enough for your feedback, it made my day

[ecki]

Yeah, your latest update looks way less scribbly! Keep it up!

I see very dirty things in the "trust me" man. It's somewhere between a female upper body and male/female genitals.

[Suira]

ecki- Hey man thx for droping by again! I'm working on the painterly feel, and I think there's a long way to go yet, but I'm not giving up And yeah, that drawing is as confusing and irrelevant as Spanish politicians are proving to be.

Soo, 3 days, there should be a ton to show, yet there's not cause mainly I've been learning how to fail, in order to avoid that later, but there's a couple things I can show from the las value practice, I know it all looks messy and there's a lot of need for better understanding of the overall picture, everything is a bit too dark and a 1000 more issues, but I'm happy since I feel I'm learning.There's also some speedpainting I did of an idea I had, for like some sort of market in the middle of a city, it needs refining and also has issues, but I'm quite content with it aaand some Kung fu guy in the middle of nowhere practicing his old arts, that was for a friend of mine who needed an image for his teacher's new kung fu lessons, so that was cool, there's another one of tai chi coming by soon. Oh! I found the drivers for my scanner thx to a friend of mine, so I was temped to scan the couple sketchbooks not shown and ,you know make a big dump, but really, I don't think there's any interest to check it out once you've seen a sample of say 20. So that's what I did, scanned some of the drawings , not the best not the worst, just a bit of everything, keep in mind that there's dirtyness all over since I dumped the SB's in a crate and there it stayed decaying for some good old 6 months, so most of the stuff isn't recent. Oh and there's a old SP I found from a year ago or so that I liked, so you see plenty of crap.

But anyway I promise to be back after the weekend with some freshly failed attemps! Have a nice day!

[Suira]

Hey! It's been an...."interesting" weekend. Tryed a lot of ideas and shit, but I'm having hilariously horrible FAILS. yet that's what happens when you've been a lazy ass for 4 years and haven't properly learned to define by value and not only in line, so this is my own fault

Yet I'm happy in that no matter how shitty the results I'm gonna keep trying till I get the hang of it. So for today a couple things I did with ref ( though I'm having a hard time not getting bored by the 40th minute), an hour and something for the SP , and like 30-45 minutes for the jar thing. And the rest is from imagination, wich i shouldn't be doing but those are the ones I really don't get bored with, well , at least not so much.

So yeah, it's all fun and interesting I'll try to keep it up. Cheers!

[Setherial]

cool updates man

[M.Calza]

Hey there, cool stuff, you already said it but just to reinforce, I think you should work on your values, especially midtones, you don't use it very much, try to tone down your general contrast, if you take a look at the 2 last ones on update #104 they are way better and more balanced(in therms of values) them the rest, and they don't have pure white or pure black(or very little of it). Try to make a value scale from 1 to 10 (1 being black and 10 white) and use just from 3 to 8, idk if it would help you, but I think you could give it a shot. Sorry my poor english I hope all of that makes sense.

[Sleep.less]

Hey man! You've got some good stuff here.
Your pieces are promicing. As for critique, they give a sense of 'too cluttered', the eye doesn't have any spot to rest on the page. Try lowering the fill on the brush when doing objects that are not that important, then do the important parts with a normal one, that way you get a 'focus' effect. Also, you need to work more on your composition, because more than often, your pieces lead the eye out of the image. When I'm thumbnailing, I always take the rule of thirds, arcs and edges into consideration to lead the eye where I want it to be led.
Keep on practicing!

[Kerah]

Hey, thanks for dropping by
Your stuff is very interesting, really liking the traditional stuff, they've got some edge
Cheerios!

[Suira]

Setherial- Glad you dig man, still a very very long way to go!

M.Calza- Hey man, I cannot thank you enough for the feedback, I read what you said a couple weeks ago, I've been trying all sorts of things ( usually with sloppy results) , the 1-to 10 scale idea is theoretically great, when I read what you said I was really convinced that would fix my values, but in practice I kind of get lost and end up dulling everything up and making it absolutely horrendous, and when I work the other way around ( adding black like crazy) I messed it up too, so I'm trying to get the basic "black points" of the image,I don't know how to call it, but it's like the really basic parts that define the shape and provide the hard edge kind of contrast that makes the picture tridimensional. Well, that's what I aim for, for now I'm getting crappy results, but still I'm thinking this focus works better for now, later on I'll have to focus on combining mids properly into the mix, which is also gonna be a nice challenge. Well, I guess all I mean is thanks for the idea

Sleep.less- I totally agree with you, everything on my stuff is looking very messy,cluttered, and that really bothers me. After some experiments I'm thinking it may because I only use two brushes, one soft, one hard, and they both have the size adjusted to pen pressure, and since I'm no master of steadyness this might be one of the reasons why. The other obvious one is the FACT, that I use WAY TO MUCH unnecessary lines cause I lack confidence,and I really gotta get that shit fixed beacause I feel like it's ruining the mood of everything I paint. And yes, some comps look like shit, I'm also trying to work on that by really trying to focus on each part of the process, meaning that I'm starting to actually THINK about the comp wwhen I do it, and now I realise that before I just used it as it came out haha, I'm kinda retarded sometimes. Overall, your advise it's been a tremendous help! Thanks a lot m8.

Kerah- Thanks! ^^


Hello again! First, I know I should have updated way sooner, but, it's been really a rough time, I'm not gonna start telling on a forum stuff about my personal life, but in short, it's been a fucking mess. So I've been around an entire month and a half without doing shit except thinking. So after I got back up I started trying to pick up the studies and I realised how HORRENDOUSLY my stuff sucks ( I knew before, but, man, I mean, really? xD). So I read the feedback and thanks to some of you guys ideas I had the chance to test where I'm really standing on the Value / Contrast / Edges / Structure Departments. And after the test it turns out I fucking SUCK! wich is amazing, because it means at least now I realise, so I'm trying to fix this shit and it'll maybe take some time, but Ohhhhh Loooord, I'm gonna make it eventually.

So, without further LOLLY-GAGING ( I think that's how you write that) here's what I bring today. Some Color Still Lifes, built with color for the first time, turns out it's not so hard when you got some slight notion of values , still it's freaking dificult to not have it look horrendous but hey, I hope it'll improve with practice. There's also a couple value studies , ( btw I must say I'm having a hard time for now getting values dark enough and I generally have to darken them via adjustment layer, I know that's not how it's supissed to be done, and I itend to adress that )aand a bit of progress on that indian guy painting and a shity doodle ohhhhhhh and it think the FIRST genuine "artistic" piece I've made, wich is the guy with the orange.....thing ( my english is limited sometimes ) wich started out as an edge experiment and then I saw what we white man do everywhere around the world with our money investments and bank and shit system, and how millions are suffering and I felt like painting the "white devil" native cultures use to talk about, I say artistic because it's the only one I've made without and intent to make it look cool or something but more to express a feeling.

Well, I hope to be back soon with much more, I could have dumped lots of shit, but really in this stage nothing's gonna be pretty cause I'm more concerned with dabbling with mistakes and learn from them than making pretty pictures, still there's a ton of not so horrendous traditional drawings I'll be probably bringing soon. Aaaand that's it, hope you all have a nice week and that you enjoy summer if your part of the world is getting as warm as mine, cya! ;D