En skissbok - Mumph

[crabbyclem]

mumph,

jeez, I'm really impressed with your poseamatic work. Very simple, I'm assuming really quick, but the gesture and pose are totally readable.

Can't really find anything horrible to say, except maybe post 48, the bottom left character: her left leg looks like it's bent the wrong way.

Great stuff so far!

[Mumph]

eminkey2003: Thanks! I´ll do one tomarrow, think i´ll take the knight with the mace in to PS and work on it. Nope, I have never tried super sculpey, the first time I have done any serious sculpting has been this week (will photograph that later this week).
Yeah you are right about the eye piece, will think about that in the future.
BRINKMAN!: Thank you! Yeah, actually Alm0st also said that in an earlier post and you are both right. That´s the thing that is most hard for me, I will do a longer study or more finished painting this weekend.
Yeah, I worked slow on that one and was really trying to get the colors right, still looks off but one of the better ones.
crabbyclem: Yep, the poses are 30 s each. You are right about the leg, didn´t spot that, looks really weird now that I look at it
Thanks!

Update:
We had model painting today and i´m not at all happy with how it went. I repainted the big one towards the end and tried something different but it still looks bad. Well, well, hope the next ones goes better. I think I rushed it in the begining stages. I have a hard time mixing the right colors.

[Knarf]

Thank you for the doodle dedication, and many much thanks for starting the SSG.
too bad I'm also in the beginning stages of messing with color, or I would give you a authentic critique, but from what I see the first time you mixed it seems a little more over saturated and warmer? and the second time seems to be the opposite, maybe find a nice middle, which just takes some time and experience.

[eminkey2003]

I just started painting from life, so I can't help much with colors, but I notice that the first girl's stomach is missing the shadow on it. It makes it look like a waterfall of flesh, instead of something that curves and recedes under the body. I think it would also help to work from light to dark. I've tried mixing a range of values before I start painting, and that helped too, so long as it didn't dry on the palette.

[BRINKMAN!]

I haven't done a ton of painting from life either, but I'll impart some great advice from painting teachers in the past.
Try starting with a simple line drawing in the same color as your imprematura, then lay in your darkest dark and lightest light, then make your value, color and heat decisions keeping those two in mind as your extremes. I don't feel this technique is ground-breakingly helpful, but something about this approach subconsciously helps keep things in control.
Also in these recent ones it looks like warm highlights and mids and warm shadows. I think you could push the cool colors in your shadows a little more.
The second one has a really nice upper torso though. the forms are well defined in the arm and chest.

[Mumph]

Alm0st: Your welcome! Yeah it´s really hard, but as you say, it´s all about practicing.
eminkey2003: Yep, it´s very flat, I see your point, have to push the values more. I´m using acrylics so the paint dries very fast but next time i´m going spend more time mixing.
BRINKMAN!: Thanks for the advice and comments! By the way, what is the "imprematura"?

Update:
Some "studies" for the DSG and the military man, the DSG entry, military man (from reference) and the knight (done from a previous doodle).

[eminkey2003]

I like the gunman's pose, but I think the guy with the mace is going to tip over on his right side if he stands like that. One thing I've tried in my sketches is to think about how your drawings "work" in their own world. Imagine that you're creating a living diorama, and all the figures and environments not only have look right, but they have to be able to walk, talk, stand up, move, change, etc.

[Mumph]

eminkey2003: Yeah you are right, I should think more about the design and if stuff really would work. That will add more believeability.

Update:
Yes, I know, I have to do longer studies Tomarrow I will hopefully do a still life and perhaps start a project that I will be spending some more time on.

[BRINKMAN!]

Mumph, SPs are nice, as always. I had the spelling wrong, but imprimatura is just a fancy word for the turp-thinned wash you put on your canvas before you start painting. So say you are starting with burnt sienna. You'd mix up a super thin glaze/wash of sienna and turp and wash your whole canvas, then use thicker, less thinned sienna to do your line drawing to get structure and proportion down. This way, if you mess up on the drawing you can rub out your mistakes with a rag and not have another color muddying up your ground/imprimatura. It's a great way to start out an oil painting!

[Mumph]

BRINKMAN!: I see, thanks for the explanation.

Update:
The clay hand is from this week, with the characters I tried doing them with markers and white acrylic paint and it was pretty fun but I feel I have more freedom when doing them digitaly.

[Knarf]

wow your latest stuff is very very impressive, I love the military man also, but I gatta give it up to the funky doodles yet again. LAzer eyes and red nipples for the win!!! those SP's are coming along nicely also.

as for some tips in charcoal, sorry I'm not an expert on the medium, but there are various way to work with it. try experimenting with different charcoals, cause it looks like you are just working with charcoal pencil. with vine and willow, you should get something at least thicker than a pencil, those fat fat sticks help cause I love using the sides of those to just sweep in my value. just remember the more tools you have to more variation and options you have on building up a piece. that's all i got for now.

[Gabriel-B]

Hey Mumph, Nice collection of work here, good clean-cut line work, I'm enjoying those cloth studies. Your posemaniac figures are improving, keep doing it regularly, I find it helps a lot.

[Gorgoleon]

Hohoh satan vilka härliga grejer! Du är ju riktigt bra, de här sista ölburkarna är magnifika! Kul att se dina grejer, de känns som du har en härlig "avslappnad" stil som jag strävar emot själv!Känns som jag började jäkligt tidigt med photoshop när jag egentligen skulle satsa på att lära mig grunderna med penna och andra traditonella medel. Så de får jag göra nu istället ! Inspirerande!

Och jäkligt kul att träffa nån irl som är på ca, de har jag faktiskt inte gjort förräns nu
*subscribes* / john k2

[Mumph]

Alm0st: Ha ha, thanks man and thank you for the tips, I will get a hold of some thicker charcoal for sure.
Gabriel-B: Thank you! Yeah I will do that.
Gorgoleon: Tack så mycket! Jo, samma här faktiskt. Höll på väldigt mkt med photoshop i början och har själv nyligen gått över till att verkligen försöka lära mig grunderna med traditionella medel. Men jag menar, det du fått ut från photoshop skadar ju inte på något sätt bara ett annat verktyg.
Vi hörs på skolan!

Update:
The selportrait turned out pretty shitty I stressed it, for example the mouth turned out way to small and I don´t like the colors either, well well.

[Mumph]

Update:
We drew still life in class, and I did some after school. I´m going to try doing one acrylic and one pencil study each weekday. Tomarrow i´m going to start doing some anatomy studies as well. I was testing different ways of shading. I really need to practice shading and doing longer studies

[crabbyclem]

Hey mumph,

Sweet linework.

The recent paintings look a bit flat/lacking some volume; that might be due to lighting though. Just my observation; my painting needs work too.

Also, the comic/style curvature of the shinbone is REALLY exaggerated, but hey, it's your own style!

[BRINKMAN!]

You are a machine! I'll be back with more thoughts once I'm not at work.

[Mumph]

crabbyclem: Yeah it´s probably a mix of the lightning and also that they really are flat I need to work on that.
Do you mean all the characters? or just one in particular? I tend to exagerate a lot when doing those doodles, more fun I´m more concerned that the proportions look right, but nice observation. Thanks for the critique!
BRINKMAN!: Sure my friend, i´ll give you some more work to critique

Todays update:
Croquis (charcoal: 30s, 1 min, 2 min, 5 min, 10 min and a 15 min one) and some other stuff.

[Knarf]

Woot!!! looks like someone is having fun with charcoal. keep it up, try incorporating a background to give those figures an extra oomph. The background doesn't even have to be complicated and a replica of what you see, just add some dark and lights, and let the magic happen.

[Mumph]

Alm0st: Yeah, it was very fun. I will try that next time I use charcoal, thanks for the tip!

[eminkey2003]

Looks like you've improved the figure drawings from the top of the page to the bottom. I don't see any full figures from imagination though, just lots of studies. You might want to practice those.

[crabbyclem]

your figure drawings are sweet...as usual.

Those quick ink-gestures are awesome. Very confident lines. I'd like to work on that too.

As for the flat paintings, again, I'm still learning it myself... But a tip I heard and try is to make sure you have a full tonal range, that means you can exaggerate your shadows and highlights. Most of my paintings are all in the muddy-grey range, but look a tad better when I add some darker darks and lighter lights...does that make sense?

[Mumph]

eminkey2003: Yeah will do.
crabbyclem: Yep, makes sense I will do that next painting session.

Update:
Haven´t updated in a while because my friends was visiting me over the week end. Starting with a light update today and then more seriously again, tomarrow

[BRINKMAN!]

MUMPH! Scissors have really nice darks and lights and feel substantive. You loose, cartoony drawings all have nice energy.

The "magic" that almost was talking about with adding the background to the figures is happening! The latest batch are super nice.

One thing I've noticed that could use some work: You always make your eyelashes very prominent in your self portraits. I realize that this could be a stylistic choice, but they come across as symbols rather than accurate representations. I feel like you might get more varied and interesting results in your self portraits if you pay attention to more accurate shapes in the eyes rather than your stylized versions of them... just a thought!

Great work here.

[Mumph]

BRINKMAN!: Thanks man! Yeah you are totally right, that´s something I have to work on, getting away from drawing symbols and really seeing what´s there. Great critique!

Update:
Yesterdays croquis. Not at all satisfied with them, I was really tired and couldn´t concentrate so I left before the last session.
I´m more satisfied with todays painting session though, I really took the time to try finding the correct colors, well as close as I could get. I didn´t stress it.

[Knarf]

love the oodles of doodles! Just a question tho, what exactly are you painting on? newsprint?
btw those croquis rock, and that last painting, as you said "satisfying".

[KingElvis]

holy crap, awful lotta new stuff sinc my last visit! and nice variety. I think you loosened up a löittle, right? haha
the colors on this last painting are very good placed, i think. much better apinting than the one from nov 19th- from what i can say. Looks like youve taken yourself more time with this last painting. be careful with that shadow on her torso (left). that might flatten the rest if youre not careful. but i know i know- its not finished yet

[BRINKMAN!]

The last gesture drawing and that painting are just fantastic. You are making some great progress!

The only small crit I can think of is that the left side of the model in the painting seems to sort of blob into the couch and is a bit formless... really though, that is nit-picking! High five!

[Mumph]

Alm0st: He he. I´m painting on a brown:ish type of paper. We have them in rolls here. Thanks man!
KingElvis: Yeah perhaps I did Thanks! That is actually as finished as that painting gets, we only have so many hours each week with the model. We change poses each week and most of the times, models too. I think the effective painting time was about 3,5 - 4 hours.
BRINKMAN!: Thanks, great to hear! He he, please keep on nit-picking, that´s the kind of critique I want High five back at you

[eminkey2003]

My only crit is that you might want to put more thought and imagination into your drawings if you want to be able to draw a wide variety of things. I often fall into a habit of drawing the same stuff over and over, so sometimes, I play little games to get the juices flowing. For example, I draw a scribble or a bunch of dots and try to make a drawing from the shapes. Or, I come up with a general topic (military, hospital, travel, food, etc.) and try to list as many things as possible in that category. By doing this, and I realize a lot of things that I can and can't draw. Sometimes, it really comes up with fun ideas.

For example:
Ancient Egypt:
pyramids, sand, dust, tombs, kings, excavation, rubies, buried in the desert, sun god, goddess, curse, mummies, sarcophagus, gold, torchlight, the mummy's curse, the mummy's revenge, king tut, old kingdom, middle kingdom, new kingdom, booby traps, book of the dead, scarab, pharaoh, gold, necklaces, wings, Nefertiti, Cleopatra, Osiris, Isis, Anubis, grave robbers, scorpions, offerings to the dead, etc.