Nonsense and whatnot

**StarBelly** · May 30th, 2008, 05:37 PM

I suck and I want to not suck

**StarBelly** · May 30th, 2008, 05:44 PM

Work from the past week.
Watch me stumble into traditional media after my tablet got drenched in tea.

**StarBelly** · June 5th, 2008, 12:07 PM

Some anatomy and some guitar hero sans pants

**Fshoo** · June 5th, 2008, 01:06 PM

Great studies, your poses are very convincing. Though I find your coloring average. But that's solved with some more practicing

**dcorc** · June 5th, 2008, 01:19 PM

Well, first of all, congrats for joining in and posting. Forums can be a very powerful learning tool, as well as supportive.

Nice studies, which certainly show drawing ability - I particularly like the skull with larynx and trachea. I think in the water bottle and cat, you could push your values, increase the contrast. Good poses on the figure works.

Post more, please!

**StarBelly** · July 6th, 2008, 01:20 PM

Have been traveling and far from my scanner, here's some better late than never speedpaints and a cat portrait.

**Danuh** · July 6th, 2008, 01:54 PM

Only champions play guitar hero in their underwear. Kudos.

Hay, nice sketchbook. Keep posting!

**StarBelly** · June 4th, 2009, 05:21 AM

IM BACK?! After nearly a year of abandoning this short-lived sketchbook and about 6 months since I was last taking art seriously, studying and sketching like I believed in something.
Today I realized I've been putting in 3-8 hours in photoshop a day once more and cried a tear of relief knowing I still had the funk deep in my heart.

Critique very much appreciated as I stumble back in time to recover lost skill

here's a speedpaint I no longer have the ref for

**StarBelly** · June 4th, 2009, 05:33 AM

Here's an awkard project I've been working on. These are the base parts (body, eyes, ears etc) for a virtual pet site type of thing, in the end it will have many variable eys and ears, tails, expressions and possibly even fur lengths.

I've been working through this over and over, not wanting to use something I will later be ashamed of

but here's the big problem: there will be items and clothing that layer on top of the animal image and that means that the fur on the outside edge must be the same length on all the animals I make with this base or else an item that is flush with the body won't cover the protruding long hairs...I hope that made sense

So I keep getting the feedback that the head and the body do not match each other in depth and I have to find a way around my problem with the fur length and still give the face a good fluffy kitten look, anyone have advice?

**StarBelly** · June 4th, 2009, 05:48 AM

Here's another that requires an intro

almost 2 years ago I did a doodle of a friend from memory, now he's using it as his facebook profile pic! How embarrassing for me! After pestering him to take it down he agreed under the terms that I have to replace it with a new portrait from photographic reference (which I can't post until i have permissions)

That first image is the old one. Dear god, what was I thinking? Probably, "IM AWESOME!!!!"

The second image is my first attempt at a new portrait, about six months since my last portrait from reference I am very out of practice, and the oversaturated ref pic wasn't helping me. After days of working on this I declared defeat and left the image as it stood, with crazy far apart eyes and glowing red skin.

For my most recent attempt I decided to go at greyscale first and to spend much more time on the original drawing. i worked on this all day and though it is an improvement over the last I'm still not satisfied, but it felt so wonderful to paint all day that I'm likely to do the same thing tomorrow and again and again til I have this portrait so stunning that everyone will forget his old profile pic ever existed.

**IIKII** · June 4th, 2009, 08:37 AM

If your last piece has more dark tone and more contrast, it would look better.

**Craz** · June 4th, 2009, 09:00 AM

Welcome back. You have improved much over the past year, even if you didn't practice for six months. The colours in the rock climber's face and the light in her hairs are well handled; it's a shame you lost the reference. I've got no criticisms or advice yet.

**StarBelly** · June 5th, 2009, 05:44 AM

Craz-thanks, in the six months that I was practicing I was definitely working hard
IIKII-yeah, value range is something I struggle with and tend to start out on the shorter end and only stretch when I'm sufficiently into things

Project updates:
Still refining the portrait, I thought I would do it in black and white and then use a layer set to color to colorize it but this has proven more difficult than anticipated, it may end up staying colorless

Making a giant sample sheet of different possible eye styles for the cat so I can go through and decide on either one style or multiple styles, kind of tedious generating eye styles but fun to see a giant army of staring cats forming

**StarBelly** · June 6th, 2009, 04:09 AM

I decided to take a break from the cat and portrait projects so I might be able to regain perspective on them tomorrow, I spent today doing some studies.

First a bunch of heads from imagination, trying to give them all a bit of personality. Then several speedpaints from photo refs. I did one more 20 minute face but forgot to save, but it was no tragedy as it was just a worse version of the last one.

Does anyone else find that they start strong with speedpaints and quickly go downhill? I posted these in the order I did them so you might see what I'm talking about. Does this go away with practice?

**StarBelly** · June 10th, 2009, 04:34 PM

More 20 minute speed paints of women's faces, all from photo reference

Concentratin on a few of my weaknesses, distance between eyes, saturation, values and most of all likeness, the latter needing the most work

**RedSquirrel** · June 10th, 2009, 04:42 PM

Haha your first post with the raptor made me laugh

Your kitties are cute - and I (think) I get better after doing a few speedpaints, makes you looser and gets one into the flow of things and such.
And the more painting you do, the better you get, so yes it will disappear the more you practice. Makes sense, no?

**StarBelly** · June 11th, 2009, 02:14 PM

RedSquirrel- it just always feels like I start strong and degrade as I continue, so I'm trying to do at least three speedpaints a day to shake off the dust and get back in the groove

More speed paints from ref! Back to the basics with black and white for value studies

**StarBelly** · June 18th, 2009, 08:17 PM

Today's speed paint portraits from photo ref, focusing on value. I feel like these are paying off already

**DeeStar** · June 18th, 2009, 09:34 PM

the guitar hero underpants sketches are awesome. I also like quick sketches (maybe from a bus?) on the second post of this page

**StarBelly** · June 25th, 2009, 01:27 AM

Well, I had a rough week, but I got back to work today

**StarBelly** · June 30th, 2009, 02:49 AM

tried to do a longer head study, but in the end I should have spent more time on the general structure before moving on : /
and I went to the art store to pick up some paint because I get really frustrated with digital coloring and miss acrylics, but i left discouraged, it would cost more for me to paint than it costs for me to eat. So I tried to emulate my acrylic palette in photoshop and practiced it on a doodle of an arbitrary cat girl and threw on too many canvasy painty textures for good measure.

By the way, all my digital work is done with a bamboo fun, intuos3 died several months ago, can't afford to replace it so I've just permanently borrowed a bamboo fun. The things I love can be so expensive.

**StarBelly** · July 1st, 2009, 04:02 PM

more stuff

**StarBelly** · July 7th, 2009, 05:03 PM

I've been trying unsuccessfully to get pics of my gesture studies of people in public places, cameras and I don't get along.

I just got a huge improvement in my workspace, instead of being on a couch I now have a desk and chair and my very own monitor, so I no longer am restricted to painting only when my roommate is at work. On top of all that my Intuos3 has magically revived! I always defended the bamboofun, saying that it's the artist, not the tool, but there is a serious improvement when I use the intuos, all these pics come out so much smoother and it feels more like painting, less like using a solid stick of material.

This first image is completely from imagination, which I was really proud of, though noone else seems to like it much

**StarBelly** · July 12th, 2009, 05:29 PM

more junk
struggling with perspective and other stuffs

**StarBelly** · August 27th, 2009, 11:57 AM

took a month long vacation to visit my family, back to work now

**StarBelly** · August 28th, 2009, 01:56 PM

A commission, but now I feel like I should have spent more time solidifying edges and stuff...

**StarBelly** · August 31st, 2009, 09:39 PM

blargh

**StarBelly** · September 2nd, 2009, 07:24 PM

trying to start seriously doing environment studies, failing hard so far

**DeeStar** · September 2nd, 2009, 07:37 PM

nice work, particularly the portraits

**StarBelly** · September 4th, 2009, 01:10 PM

I've never used brushes aside from the standard round so trying to stumble into both doing environments and using a wide range of brushes to assist me is pretty difficult. I am reminded of my crayon drawings of mountains from when I was about 9 : /