Arthe's Fresh Start - SB

**Arthe Xavier** · May 30th, 2008, 12:48 AM

I had an SB running here some time back, but I thought about making a fresh start. Hope you enjoy!

**Arthe Xavier** · July 7th, 2008, 07:03 PM

Argh - haven't updated in ages.. And here I am, promising a fresh SB.

Ah well.

Here's some more:

Here's the 'artist' himself:

**Arthe Xavier** · October 30th, 2008, 06:45 PM

Man, haven't updated in a while - but since I've gotten a new boost of inspiration to draw, I just might start this thing again.

Here's a few 'newer' sketches / pieces:

**Hudd** · October 30th, 2008, 06:55 PM

Geez...and I thought I was bad about updating! Just kidding. Your latest update is nice and I see who it is right off the bat(a good thing). I think I like Audrey the best, you've created a nice face. Update more often, if I'm going to then that means you have to as well!

-Hudd

**Jaytea** · October 30th, 2008, 07:18 PM

Very nice work on your watercolor portraits here. Really like that Jack Sparrow one! 8D
I have a just a suggestion or two, I hope you don't mind. This picture sort of has a few black splotches, and it doesn't seem to blend real well. Maybe use a light brown for shadows in the hair? Also, a lot of your pictures have a lot of white showing, perhaps it's style, but maybe try to use more opaque layering and push to a great range of value- particularly dark grey for the last girl portrait? Other than that, keep it up- this is really tight stuff. :]

**Arthe Xavier** · October 31st, 2008, 01:13 PM

Originally Posted by Shalite

Very nice work on your watercolor portraits here. Really like that Jack Sparrow one! 8D
I have a just a suggestion or two, I hope you don't mind. This picture sort of has a few black splotches, and it doesn't seem to blend real well. Maybe use a light brown for shadows in the hair? Also, a lot of your pictures have a lot of white showing, perhaps it's style, but maybe try to use more opaque layering and push to a great range of value- particularly dark grey for the last girl portrait? Other than that, keep it up- this is really tight stuff. :]

Thanks.

Yeah, I should really try to add more depth - as in, have the background colour to be darker from the get go to avoid unnecessary white spots.

Hudd, I promise to update more often from now on. Really.

**Arthe Xavier** · November 1st, 2008, 03:21 PM

Here's a sketch I made - I'm trying to get a bit out of my comfort zone and start to study anatomy / bodies more from now on. I'll also try to do environments soon.

I'm not perfectly happy with this, but ah well... Left it half-made, too.

**Arthe Xavier** · January 12th, 2009, 08:09 PM

So much for frequent updating, eh?

I had a long dry spell in drawing, but now I'm back on track again. I've mostly drawn with pencil on paper ( the old-school way ), and as soon as I get my hands on a good scanner, I'll scan 'em up. Been doing a lot of anatomy-studies lately.

Here's a few digi-sketches to keep you guys occupied. I use Corel Painter X, but I'd love to learn how to use PS properly - I'm not very good with digi-portraits / drawings, I'm afraid. :/

I did this one tonight - it's supposed to be Kate Winslet, but I took some liberties. I originally used a photo as a reference. Had to re-work proportions a few times, and it's still not perfect. I'm not happy with the nose, I think it points too much to the left. Not 100% sure, though, so feel free to correct me and make observations. The shadow-work is, well.. It's kind of there, but it isn't perfect. Unfinished, I should say. So yeah, this is a WIP - I'd need to find something to do with the background too; all black is just... Boring.

Here's a shadow'n'light figure-study, from a photo-reference. Incomplete, but I wanted to show you the WIP. I'm currently trying to improve sketching-skills, meaning that I try to define my line-work, so that it'd be fast and fluid someday. This, however, is more apparent in my pencil-work, and not in this one.

Here's yet another WIP - my Xbox controller, which I'm trying to draw as still-life study. Darn it's hard! I'm pretty bad with colour-work right now, and that's something I really want to improve on.

Here's a random environment - I need to do these more. It's very grey and 'light', has no contrast what-so-ever. But it's my first quick environment in a while, so please, be gentle.

**Bill** · January 13th, 2009, 01:11 PM

I think that you have some good rendering that will improve as you go. As you are drawing it might help you to give yourself more time to examine the shape of what your observing. In your portraits for instance, I can tell who they are but the proportions are not there yet. edit: < Mostly I'm thinking about Jack Sparrow and Han Solo with this. Keep Going, and good luck.

**Arthe Xavier** · January 13th, 2009, 01:17 PM

Originally Posted by Bill

I think that you have some good rendering that will improve as you go. As you are drawing it might help you to give yourself more time to examine the shape of what your observing. In your portraits for instance, I can tell who they are but the proportions are not there yet. edit: < Mostly I'm thinking about Jack Sparrow and Han Solo with this. Keep Going, and good luck.

Thanks for the reply, Bill.

Han was a quick scribble, a caricatyre, so I didn't really concentrate on proportions with that. And yeah, I agree that Jack is a little off - his nose, for example, seems way too long.

I've only recently started to concentrate much more on proportions - it's more apparent in my pencil-work ( which I will try to upload soon ), and the results are slowly starting to show. I'm not very good at digi-painting yet - and that goes for rendering, too. Much easier to do with charcoal / pencils. :/

**Arthe Xavier** · January 14th, 2009, 10:16 PM

Ah - finally found a nice, relaxing way to work in PS. If nothing else, this new 'test' has inspired me to explore the program more.

Here's a work-in-progress Harrison Ford - it's very rough at the moment, but I'll work on it more tomorrow.

**Arthe Xavier** · January 15th, 2009, 03:38 PM

Here's the Mr. Ford -WIP again. I'm going to have to fix the left side of his face, it looks a bit wonky. But still.. I'm pretty happy with how it's coming along.

( the chin also needs some work, and the mouth... )

**Arthe Xavier** · January 16th, 2009, 07:03 PM

Here's the progress on Harrison so far:

And some Posemaniacs ( I'll try to do these daily ):

Something quick and random:

**Arthe Xavier** · January 17th, 2009, 08:14 PM

Did some pencil-stuff today - but here's one quick patch of 45-sec pose-studies from Posemaniacs. I'm still not happy with my 'skills' with the Wacom - the line-quality is shoddy. I don't feel as confident with it as I do with regular pencil. :/

**Arthe Xavier** · January 19th, 2009, 07:13 PM

I've started to do quick face-studies - or sketches if you will. I give them an hour tops, but mostly try to do 'em in 45 mins or less. I'm doing pencil-studies mostly ( darn I need to get a new scanner! ), but here's one I did digitally. Yet again, not too happy with it, but it's fast, so I didn't waste too much time on it.

**Arthe Xavier** · January 19th, 2009, 08:12 PM

Tried to fix the Harrison Ford -painting, which was atrocious ( now that I look at it again ). Still can't do it, though. I'm thinking about leaving it after this, and just moving on to something else. Once I have more knowledge ( of b&w, light & dark ), I'll fix it, but I'm not skilled enough as is.

**the ANGRY filipino** · January 19th, 2009, 09:07 PM

hey man, how have you been? Glad to see you updating! I know how it feels to not update for a while. For your Harrison Ford piece, try drawing his face in pencils, use multiple reference pics of the guy. Sketch his face multiple times, study it, observe the minute details that make his face recognizable..then after you've done that, you can work on the painting some more.. hope that helps.

**Arthe Xavier** · January 21st, 2009, 09:37 AM

Originally Posted by the ANGRY filipino

hey man, how have you been? Glad to see you updating! I know how it feels to not update for a while. For your Harrison Ford piece, try drawing his face in pencils, use multiple reference pics of the guy. Sketch his face multiple times, study it, observe the minute details that make his face recognizable..then after you've done that, you can work on the painting some more.. hope that helps.

I'll definetely do that, thanks.

I finally got my old, sucky scanner to work again. Here are some scans I picked out of the crop ( unfortunately the sketch-book I've been using recently is A3, and I'm way too lazy to scan the same page multiple times and stitch them together, so these scans are cropped up by default ). Apologies for the lack of quality in the scans, though.

**Arthe Xavier** · January 21st, 2009, 10:35 AM

Just did a quick sketch of old Indy, and uncorked my new, small sketchbook ( which I plan on keeping with me wherever I go - mostly for café and outdoor -studies ). It's not very good, though, and I had to touch it up a bit in PS.

What the scanner seems to be good for, though, is scanning up sketches that I can then later work on in PS - and I quess this will be the key to success with the said program. I'll do the linework with pencil, then scan it up and work on it digitally. It'll be fun.

**Arthe Xavier** · January 21st, 2009, 12:56 PM

Here's a test in Painter - I started to read CGtalk and am now motivated to really master the said program. This was a test to try layers - I still don't know what is the best approach to any given painting, but this test was a rather pleasant one regardless. I'm going to experiment more in the near future, make fatal mistakes fearlessly, and slowly become better at digital painting. I want to be good someday, but we all have to start from the bottom, eh?

**Arthe Xavier** · January 21st, 2009, 05:54 PM

Here's a WIP - I've been trying to block in the more shadowy areas, but I... I just don't think I have the skills to do this kind of thing yet. Not this complex at least. I'll do my best to try - it's better to try your best and then see where you went wrong than to not try at all, right? - but it's not gonna be pretty.

Here is it at its current state.

**Arthe Xavier** · January 21st, 2009, 07:01 PM

Here's a quick sketch of a face ( should be Audrey Tautou ), from a reference. And I'm off for the night.

**s-man** · January 22nd, 2009, 09:17 PM

Gooooood works! Keep it up!!!

**Kiera** · January 23rd, 2009, 04:41 PM

beautiful portraits, they are always recognizable (that's one skill I absolutely adore) and you've got a very nice soft rendering in the pencil studies

a small idea on the last 3 illustrations:
you start with a light grey as background color, right?
This is good, it doesn't distort your colors as much as when you would use pure white..
but I see that this light grey always shines through when you color (looks like Amelies hair would be greyish) ..why don't you just make the first layer in the backgroundcolor you want and then paint over it on another layer? This way it is way easier to choose colors that fit together and you don't have to fear that your canvas shines through. It's also easier to manipulate them (green giant has almost the same tone of color and the same value as the background - just make the background darker, problem solved).

One tip when you start working digitally:
- read up a lot of tutorials and blogs to learn all the functions of the program and experiment a lot, those programs are gigantic, painter and photoshop are huge and especially photoshop mixes colors in another way than traditional paint (sometimes blue and yellow mix to grey

). It's a lot to learn.
- learn the basic keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys as early as possible.
Stuff like brush/eraser/step back/ step foreward/ eyedropper/ palette/ transform/ drag canvas/ make brush bigger/smaller/ zoom in or out.
This makes the working process much faster and intuitive, it also saves you a lot of time (really. a lot.).
Good luck, keep working!

**Arthe Xavier** · January 23rd, 2009, 06:19 PM

Originally Posted by Kiera

beautiful portraits, they are always recognizable (that's one skill I absolutely adore) and you've got a very nice soft rendering in the pencil studies

a small idea on the last 3 illustrations:
you start with a light grey as background color, right?
This is good, it doesn't distort your colors as much as when you would use pure white..
but I see that this light grey always shines through when you color (looks like Amelies hair would be greyish) ..why don't you just make the first layer in the backgroundcolor you want and then paint over it on another layer? This way it is way easier to choose colors that fit together and you don't have to fear that your canvas shines through. It's also easier to manipulate them (green giant has almost the same tone of color and the same value as the background - just make the background darker, problem solved).

One tip when you start working digitally:
- read up a lot of tutorials and blogs to learn all the functions of the program and experiment a lot, those programs are gigantic, painter and photoshop are huge and especially photoshop mixes colors in another way than traditional paint (sometimes blue and yellow mix to grey

). It's a lot to learn.
- learn the basic keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys as early as possible.
Stuff like brush/eraser/step back/ step foreward/ eyedropper/ palette/ transform/ drag canvas/ make brush bigger/smaller/ zoom in or out.
This makes the working process much faster and intuitive, it also saves you a lot of time (really. a lot.).
Good luck, keep working!

Wow - a lot of great advice, Kiera. Thank you.

I really hadn't even thought about the background-color, but sorting that out should genuinely help. I've always just started with a grey background and then tried to paint in the background color through the same layer as ( most of ) my other coloring...

And yes, I should really try to read more about the programs - especially Painter ( which I am more comfortable with in general, and as such it will probably be my program of choice - Photoshop could be nice for finishing touches or effects, but they're not very important to me at this stage ). Any tips regarding where to start, though? Any good blogs or sites out there, outside of CGtalk?

Anyways, I'll scan some pencil-sketches later on tonight. I promise to keep working.

**Arthe Xavier** · January 23rd, 2009, 06:50 PM

Here are some sketches I made throughout the past few days. Nothing special - I've actually been trying to force myself out of my 'mr. perfectionist' -drawing habit. As in, I try to be more loose even if it means that the end-result isn't pleasing me. I'll do this as long as I have to - until I get 'good at it', so to speak.

**Kiera** · January 23rd, 2009, 07:05 PM

And yes, I should really try to read more about the programs - especially Painter ( which I am more comfortable with in general, and as such it will probably be my program of choice - Photoshop could be nice for finishing touches or effects, but they're not very important to me at this stage ). Any tips regarding where to start, though? Any good blogs or sites out there, outside of CGtalk?

hmm.. Makani has all tutorials that I consider important in her fav section:
http://makani.deviantart.com/favourites/#Tutorials
those are all different programs, but I think many of the theories (green underpainting for example) and ideas how to approach a painting are helpful and don't depend on the program

otherwise there's still the painter section of conceptart:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=23

also: kickass new update, your values are so good

**Arthe Xavier** · January 23rd, 2009, 07:16 PM

Thanks again, Kiera.

I'll definetely check those links out! Whatever the case, and no matter how long it takes, I'm determined to become a better digital painter. I do realize - even now - how convenient and great Painter ( for example ) is for experimenting ( with colours, et al ) once one has the basics down. It's a long road for me, but... You know.. One step at a time.

**Kiera** · January 23rd, 2009, 08:28 PM

haha, I make sure to check your sketchbook from time to time to see how you progress.. all these things need time but I'm sure you made a good choice with focusing on painter
(I choose photoshop as my first program to learn and now some years later I know a lot about it and I can do all the moves without even thinking.. but after I got used to some easier programs with better brush engines I don't use PS for painting or sketching)

**Arthe Xavier** · January 23rd, 2009, 08:54 PM

Sure, I'll do the same to yours, Kiera.

Here's a WIP of Padme - I started with the approach you recommended. First the background color ( black ), then the whole background-color for the face in one batch ( white ), then I slowly started to fill in. Its a much more convenient way to work, at least - although this is my first attempt, so I'm not in any way efficient with it yet... x)