Sketches,Paintings,Models and other stuff (SB update: 22/Jan)

[andrea.bianco]

My name's Andrea and I finally decided to create my own sketchbook here on ConceptArt. I'm doing it cos I hope to learn a lot from your help and critiques.

ATTACHED 94x94 THUMBNAIL TO BE USED FOR THREAD :

[andrea.bianco]

A bunch of old sketches : some copies from paintings (live and from artbooks), some life drawings. They are between 2 and 4 years old actually, I'll scan recent stuff later

[andrea.bianco]

Some digital paintings I made before I knew what speed painting was, and I never heard about Craig Mullins either

I used mainly Pixia as software, while now I switched to Photoshop for digital painting.

[Feil Magnus]

Hello and welcome,
your drawings are academical but good , there are some mistakes in proportions
in the first one the middle finger is too small,
the second one is perfect
the forefinger in the third oone is curved too much
on the seventh one the right houlder seems wrongly connected to the body
the other ones are good.
hope it can help you

[andrea.bianco]

@ Feil Magnus : thanks so much, I agree with all you said actually. U meant 8th or 6th one, not 7th I guess?

[Feil Magnus]

yeah actually the guy hiding his face and throwing seeds.
The speed paintings have a good dark personnality especially the first ones
(although the hand of the drowning man is weird) but i like the concept.
the last three ones are goo dtoo, keep on training on the shadows and lights
and your rose is very cute

[GriNGo]

awesome start man! I love your studies and later the color illustrations - have a nice composition to them. I think you need to work on defining detail on your illustrations without the use of texture.

[Robz]

man how i wished i could use brushes like that, are you using photoshop or painter? sorry to ask questions when im leaving a comment on ur portfolio but im realy looking for help to improve also great stuff man keep it up

[andrea.bianco]

@robz: I'm using Photoshop at the moment, though the paintings on the "older" section are made with Pixia. In Photoshop I use default brushes, in Pixia I created my own ones; but I don't use Pixia so often anymore

@GriNGo: Thanks mate! Actually quite a lot of people is saying to me that my paintings are not having an uniform detailing -- some parts are detailed, some parts are not. I'll try working on a more uniform detailing before starting the texture work, thanks for the tip!

[andrea.bianco]

It's some days I'm playing with alchemy (discovered on this forum actually) and since it's helping me to learn new facts about speed painting, I'll post here on the sketchbook my first 2 speed paintings based on alchemy thumbnails

First one took kinda 30min, second one kinda double the time. I used photoshop default brushes, except for backgrounds, where I used a splatter brush found on net.

Every critique and advice is welcome as usual! I just started learning speed painting and I joined this forum wishing to learn and get better

Next time I hope to post some scans from my paper sketchbook, see ya!

[andrea.bianco]

A small animation regarding the painting of the last image I posted here, maybe it can be useful to who's learning, like I am I resized it to 70% the size, cos animated gifs of detailed images are quite heavy :

[andrea.bianco]

Two 10 min live sketches of a friend and two fast copies from paintings.

[andrea.bianco]

I'm doing them mainly as values studies. Here comes a new one :

[zhonked]

Hi Andrea, thanks for commenting on my sketchbook You have really nice stuff here! I really like the studies of hands you had earlier on and I definitely like the environment paintings you have. Most of your paintings have a soft dreamy quality to it. I would love to see one of your environment paintings with a more solid feel/lighting/style like your recent fish creatures. I'm not much of a painter so please take anything I say with a grain of salt. Keep on posting!

[andrea.bianco]

Hi Zhonked, you're very kind I'm actually trying to give my paintings a more solid and sharp look; I still have to find/create a brush that I feel confortable with. I'll paint some more creatures and then I'll try to paint and post some environment, hoping they'll look better than the ones I posted already

[andrea.bianco]

It's an heavy and slow swimmer, and it can easily get up to 7 meters in length. Despite it's scary look it's not an aggressive creature, and its look is more of a deterrent for other creatures wishing to attack it. It swims near ocean floor, using its small arms to move sand and rocks, making other creatures escape and become visible. It's interesting to notice that ancient fossils are proving those arms were once much longer and used actively in fighting and moving.

Photoshop, wacom.

[LifeWontWait]

Neat concepts man!

For these fish are you trying to make them look like they are made of stone? Maybe add some bright highlights to make them look a little more wet... right now they sort of look like they are stones floating in space.

Looking forward to seeing more!

[andrea.bianco]

@LifeWontWait : thanks mate! They're actually creatures I imagine are covered with a kind of bone that is similar to stone. They're not inside any environment so they're missing a more detailed light behaviour, though I'm thinking to paint one of em swimming inside of water Thanks again!

[Mr.Juicy]

Nice style u got.
Some crits - all of your bony creatures got no separate lower jaw. I know it could be explained as bones are very flexible etc.
And some highlights that would make creatures look wet I think would fit.
Keep sharing!

[andrea.bianco]

@Mr.Juicy : Thanks for the comment Mr.Juicy! Well basically in first one jaw is very small, second one is a pure exercise with values so it has no mouth poor of him , third one has mouth but it is inside muzzle and hidden by point of view (I should do a fast sketch to explain this) while on last one actually jaw is "absorbed" by those excrescences on it and by the lower and softer part of armor-skull. I'll paint next one with a more clearly separate jaw and hopefully a wet feeling to surfaces (if I can manage to do it, I failed miserably when I tried ). Thanks again! (by the way, I subscribed to your sketchbook, it contains plenty of interesting creature designs and inspriring sketches)

[destinyapocalypse]

nice jobs i like your enviromental designs and yours moonsters

[Shard]

great stuff dude..that last one looks really solid!!
again my only suggestion would be to try lower your contrast a bit..so u can get a bigger range of values in!!
looking forward to see more!

[andrea.bianco]

@shardana : you're too kind mate! I kept a wider range of values till the end, while painting last one -- then I went berserk with black in the final stage, cos I felt I wanted to make it more stylized somehow.. they're actually just thumbnails for fast concepts that I'm pushing a bit with detailing -- I'm keeping your advice in mind and I'm trying to apply it to some environment speed paintings, which I'll hopefully post here soon

[Bagg]

Hi just having a look at your sketchbook, the gray scale stuff looks really good.
My only crit would be to look at some of the colors in your urban type environment paintings, the colors look a bit dirty or washed out. Anyways apart from that your work looks really good keep it up

[flurry]

Thanks for stopping by earlier. Love the textures in everything, the fish are cool - good luck with the wet highlights, all I can say is remember where the lightsource(s) is.

[Leo Ki]

Howdy! Found you and your Alchemy experiments
I like the fact that you detail the habits of the creatures you invent, it's
important for fine tuning the anatomy.
What I would suggest for speed paint training is to keep them very rough,
using simple large brushes and focusing heavily on composition and light
- as in photography.
Make a lot of them, quickly, without bothering about textures and details
and accuracy of outlines. Make some from reference too.
Everything you will learn from that can be applied later to the smaller details.
I hope this helps although I don't consider myself good at speed painting.
I'll be back! Keep at it!

[andrea.bianco]

Thanks so much for your advices Leo Ki! I'll do my best to follow em. You know, my "problem" is that it seems I can't stay away from details, it seems I just can't create good rough speed paintings. I'm doing my best at it, but after a good start I find myself fixing details, and in a while the speed painting is not a speed painting anymore. Someone tells me it is good, someone tells me it is not. I wish I could have that impressionistic approach like you can find on C.Mullins or on our precious Levente here on CA.org, but I'm having a very hard time fighting my instinct fro detail. I came here basically to get help, we'll see.

It's nice we met here too I'll keep an eye on your sketchbook

[AztcFireFlower]

Nice start to your SB.
You have a nice technique for sensitive rendering. I think a little time spent in investigating the anatomy and proportions would make your studies begin to grow in strength. It really helps to just sit down one day and memorize the proportions and after begin to break down the planes into smaller proportions. Everything is related to everything, especially helps when breaking down the human form in order to draw it.
By the way, I'm doing studies of the head, among other things. May I use your icon image? It has a nice lighting on it, and I'd like to practice some design elements with this pic.

[andrea.bianco]

Thanks so much AztcFireFlower! I love your sketches and I'll keep ur advices in mind next time I'll start a creature/character. Your sketchbook is filled with interesting and beautiful studies, they remind me of Hogarth someway (i subscribed to your SB by the way). Of course you can sketch this boring face you see in my avatar

[andrea.bianco]

This ferocious predator is supposed to be at the top of its food chain. It's a quite fast swimmer and despite its relatively small size (it can grow up to 6 meters, though there are uncorfimed reports about a 10 meters adult caught near H.C. Bay) it can attack much bigger species. Its skin is almost complitely covered with an armor of plates that keep growing and replacing during all life.