Danny's First Sketchbook (Learning to draw)

[Donna]

Ooh, openCanvas. It's amazing, tho no-one could ever connect if I was hosting... and it doesn't work with Windows 7 anymore Boo.

That's a lovely study! The pepper grinder does look a little 'off' because of the texture and I guess it could've been rendered better, but it does look tough to paint O_O So just keep studying, it will come together eventually

[BlackDelphin]

So you got out of your comfort zone in the end, and you did it! Looks great danny!!
The reflections turned out good, the pencil one in particular. It really looks good.

But i think the cast shadow of the big bottle should be somehow more defined, or at least the surrounding should have more from it's colour.
It looks so vivid and it is strange, how it doesn't reflect on the table or on the pencil..

See you danny, always a pleasure

[surfandsnow]

That last still life looks great, the only thing I noticed is that the water bottle reflected the pencil, but not the table or the background on the edges of the water bottle anyway looks really good.

Found another kchen link for anatomy http://analyticalfiguresp08.blogspot...&max-results=7

I think the head profiles could easily be improved with a little construction
Theres some info here
http://snigom.deviantart.com/art/Fac...m%2F38916&qo=0
and there should be some leftover construction lines in those profiles I did a while ago.
http://attachments.conceptart.org/fo...1&d=1265948793

As for values Id try to use a larger brush and try to create large shapes of value before rendering, also a quick tip you can change the opacity by typing numbers on the keypad.

Thats cool with jason manely and tad and good luck with the job situation.
The color paintings are looking really cool and your designs look like their coming along, just need to get some more technique and practice.

[Danny_K]

Donna Yeah OC is the rocksorz! and I do feel like the pepper grinder is off it got to do with the reason I rendered the bottle too much before I moved to the grinder instead working on the whole painting simultaneously. thanks for dropping by again! ^_^

BlackDelphin Comfort zone... it's the piece of cake zone, the happy place where we want to stay and never leave...
thanks for pointing those things to me I couldn't see them after working on it for so long will take in mind next time thx!!

surfandsnow Whoa thanks a lot for those links they're great!
I am putting all my effort on anatomy now, It seems very hard for me to grasp the head I am still struggling with it :/ if you could throw some more interesting anatomy links that would be great!
About the life study I agree I should have used large shapes at the beginning, it would give my painting unity thanks for pointing that out.


Today I noticed things start to be clearer though I still struggle with heads and anatomy I feel my feeling for color is improving.

I recently found out that my favorite artist of all time has passed away, Frank Frazetta was ahead of his time and inspired endless artists to this day including me, his art has influenced the movie and the game industry, fantasy wouldn't be the same today without his contribution.
Rest in peace good sir.

Started learning the planes of the head, took me around an hour and a half to do these Oo







around 25min no refs, trying to play with colors and stuff (edit: whoa looking at it to the next morning I realize how much this sucks, gotta do more studies)


OK this one was supposed to have a chick in the middle of all this chaos but she got lost along with my sense of wtf am I doing, composition, colors and so on...

[BlackDelphin]

You got really good with those heads as you went on! Great job danny, especially with the pencil rendered one!
More, more!!

The imagination landscape idea looks good, but more patience with your values.

[Ardescoere]

I'm really liking the improvement. I went through from the beginning and you're definitely getting better. Hopefully you continue to have time to keep the drawing up. Would love to see more

[Icecold]

Kickass still life that is, the pepper grinder indeed looks very hard to paint due to all those wood patterns.
Heads improving alot too, you've goot wonderfull feedback from Surfandsnow.

The little color piece sucks indeed but hey, noone ever will have onl;y super cool pieces, we all have our terri bad stuff, its human'ish.

What can help you understand color relationship is a very limmited pallette, pick 2 to 3 colors and try doing a whole painting only with those.
Make sure they are working with each other, so no eye burning super saturated greens and blues please. Take care.

[surfandsnow]

With the values, I wasnt actually talking about the still life(which is good) but more in general like with the digital sketches. I have a nice mantra that I think works well, The 2d Shapes Formed by the 3d Planes of course you still have cast shadows reflected light and gradation towards a pinnacle on the the form, but you have to start with a simple readable value scheme before you get into anything too complicated.

For example notice the v shaped plane on the front of the face on those loomis plane heads, but when you sketched "huk!" you didnt create a v shape with your value to show the facial plane. I'll also mention that shapes are sometimes harder to see when the edges are soft.(Once again try looking at photos with posterize, under adjustments or the cutout filter under the filter gallery, theyll help you see the shapes).

Another more quick tips on value/rendering is that the trailing edges(edges opposite the lite source) are more likely to have sharp edges, not only because of cast shadows but also because of acute changes in the form that can cause abrupt value changes that occur on the trailing side of the bump, but there always a exception of course. I should mention though that I think the value shapes are more important than edges.

Also yet another exercise would to look at photos and try to drawn the line that seperate light from shadow, The way the light/shadow line moves back and forth across the surface goes a long way to describing form. A few examples would be that a light shadow line on a sphere would be a curved line/ellipse and the light shadow lines on a cube would be a combination of squares/straight lines.
just try drawing the light shadow division lines without picking up your pencil. one thing you may notice is a z shaped zig zag.

I hope all that made sense, I tend to have a lot of thoughts flying around in my head and usually they come out in the form of long crits

That last profile looks great, I especially like the look of the crown.

As far as anatomy goes I think kchen was the best one, but I can post a few more general links(fav link dump).

figure drawing
http://www.dhfa.net/Artiststatement2.html
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=151539
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...&postcount=193

another approach to value sketching
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=166868
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=168711

some review/ ones youve probably seen before
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm
http://www.autodestruct.com/thumbwar.htm

Id/perspective thread
http://conceptart.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=146

probably not the best time but this place has some nicely sculpted cast at a resonable price(most are 25$), there great for some daily sketching/life drawing.
http://philippefaraut.com/store/reference-casts.html

The man Bobby Chiu!!!!!!!!!! motivational/painting videos
http://www.youtube.com/user/digitalbobert

Also the ten minute drawing link in my sig has a guy thats pretty good at teaching perspective too.

The 2d Shapes Formed by the 3d Planes.

[Danny_K]

Thanks for all the comments It really helps!

Today did not had much time for studying had to work but I managed to do some color studies from photos around 25min each, it was intense but it made me to think and work in big shapes which is something I want to get used to doing and it helped me to choose any landscape no matter how difficult it looks and also the limited amount of time makes me work on the whole painting and not just get stuck in one spot and detail it like I tend to do, bad habits are hard to break

[Icecold]

I think that currently you should larn more on how atmospheric perspective works, some parts feel like they are cut out and pasted in the picture. D you have to think of it as one piece one thing fitting into another.

I have a good exercise for you, pick a photo with interresting lighting scenario, also some different times of year. and try paint into it some primitive shapes: cubes, cones, spheres. Making the color match, making the light match.

P.S Send me some sun from california, it's ugleh' and raining all the time :/

[jskotte]

The last study on page 13 is really good, great colors. I haven't seen the pictures used for these last photo studies so it's difficult to know, but the colors strike as very saturated.

[Danny_K]

Thanks for the input guys I put together the references, let me know what you think, thanks!

[~KJK~]

nice enviros! you should try using more blue on them, and soft rounded brushes too!

[BlackDelphin]

Sometimes, not doing it exactly as in the ref is the best thing
You are trying to do art, not a replica..

So you should use less saturated colours in the background, using more blue and with a soft rounded brush as parsakoira said

For example, in the 1st landscape, the perspective of the island in front is quite off,and your values from the mountain on the right for example is way to dark and saturated;
The other two have more or less the same problem.

Now go experiment some more!!

ps. those are some wonderful refs!! where did you find them? and mind i have a go myself at them?

[Danny_K]

Thank you so much for your kind replies guys! it means a lot to me I want to improve so bad and for some reason I stick with over saturated colors, yesterday when I was driving my car I was starting to notice my surroundings, I noticed that there are no saturated colors anywhere at all except for some areas that get strong sun on them but even then they are not saturated as much, doll colors are more realistic, will be back very soon!

I'm going to Los Angeles right now for a good job interview for a photography studio, so maybe I wont have to work for Denny's heheh wish me luck! ^_^

Links to my refrence source, btw christina it's in scotland
http://www.pbase.com/hwatt/scotland&page=1

[BlackDelphin]

Have a safe trip danny, n thanks mor the link
Regarding what you said about the surrounding, and i quote:

Atmospheric perspective. Colors get cooler (bluer) and lighter in value as they recede into the background. They get warmer and the dark values become darker as they get closer. Note. In nature this doesn’t always prove to be right. When we look at a tree that is 100 yards away it will still be dark and a warm green. The value shift will be very subtle in comparison to a tree right next to you. This slight difference wouldn’t even show in a photo. If you paint it this way you won’t be creating the illusion of depth. However, If you add more mauve or blue to your greens as well as lighten them, this will push them farther into the distance. The more you apply this concept the further they will recede. Simulate it is a humid day with a lot of moist in the air. This has to be exaggerated to a point.

[Donna]

Cool refs, Danny Try to focus on colour more, saturation too, it's a bit off in some areas (sky is oversaturated in the last speedie, for example). It is true that there are no overly saturated colours in nature. Except when the sky gets dark before rain, colours become really vivid and bright then

Good luck with the interview!

[Danny_K]

Thx thx thx! you guys rock, it helps me so much
The interview today went great! I think they might hire me, it was the first time I wasn't nervous at all in a job interview must be because the guy who interviewed me was super duper nice and the job is exactly what I like which is photographing people in a studio. I'm sure when I will be interviewed for a concept art position in the future it will feel the same.
I really hope they hire me because it's a 1000 times better job then working as a server at Denny's, all I can do now is wait and pray O_o

Anyhow this is all I had done today, it's an old American penitentiary,
reference once again from pbase : http://www.pbase.com/jstjohn/esp
What I did with this one I went away from it for 10 minutes when it was half done and I noticed the values were totally off, and I noticed that standing away from the monitor when the whole painting and photo were smaller, also squinting my eyes helped me to see which shapes are standing out comparing both the ref and the painting and I added a character for the fun of it.

crits as always are welcome!

[Icecold]

That's some serious progress.
The only thing that bugs me is the overall softness, but i did not see the ref tho.
Mkay i have a suggestion, practise the values and lighting situations for a while now. Leave color, it will make it easier to focus on things i've mentioned.
Look up one of THE artists daniel chavez, sample his b&w works with color picker and analyze which values work nice together. ( it helps to set the color bar in ps to grayscale, so you can see the %) I'd highly recommend doing your own value scales with pencil, gradations and such. I will be doing that type of stuff soon myself, as values are the things that our brain recognizes as objects and other stuff, color and saturation are just additions.

See you.

Here's the link To Daniel's blog: http://dc-concept.blogspot.com/

[Fallenangel]

Nice progress Danny,
1. I think that you should concentrate a bit more on defining the shapes and the shadows in your paintings. (even if it is a quick painting)
I can't show it to you (i don't have my tablet with me) so i"ll try to explain:
take the green table thing on the left, it seems that the wall and the table are connected together, the are the same thing??? it doesn't supposed to be like that.
These are different objects with different colors, shape and etc... you can fix it by hardening the shadow and/or making the lines of the wall and the chair more defined and straight.

2. Your lines, try to make them more straight, most of artificial objects, like tables, windows, chairs, walls, etc...have straight lines. When you distort them you make your picture less realistic. All your hard work on colors and values doesn't count when a chairs leg doesn't look right.

Keep up the great job and keep practicing.
Alex.

[krel]

:o Great news about the job interview! Hope it turns out well for ya!

[Mag-Neo]

---Really nice ref's right up there........ KEEP MORE & MORE POSTING, mate.... CHEERS!
................................................

[BlackDelphin]

I don't think making the figure to soft is an issue, i think it's just weird how it has a hard edge and then a soft one. In any case it is progress, yes
I see you adding more textures too.
Try adding a desaturated adjustments layer on top, and switch that on and off, to make sure you're ok with your values.

See you Danny!

[surfandsnow]

Some quick atmospheric perspective stuff(to reiterate)
-contrast lowers with distance
-saturation lowers with distance
-edges soften

--everything shifts towards the background color with is usually the color closest to the horizon line.

Ive found the easiest way is to just go over everything with a soft airbrush to push it back.

For interpreting saturation levels, if you use a layer of all gray/black/white set to color/hue/saturation and flick it on and off you will the more drastic visual changes with more saturated colors(similar to what delphin said). Also comverting the inmage to bw with layer modes or grayscale is different from DESATURATE(under adjustments), desaturate does not take into account the inherit value of color. You may already be aware of this, but just wanted to make sure you know photoshop converts to bw in different ways.

with the first ref sketch with the islands and brown the islands should be flatter than you drew then because of the perspective drawing thing a little flatter than you want to draw them is one of the trickier parts of perspective.

I agree that you should probably focus a little more on value as well.

For the glowing figure try using the linear doge brush mode, it emulates a light source by shifting the hue and raising the value and making things look bright. It has a bias towards shifting the hue towards yellow and cyan by it acts differently depending what color you have. It also works good you metal(specular highlights)/back lit sub surface scattering/ strong colored reflected light and any thing you need to look intensely bright. you can also look at the Color Temperature (<-- you can google this) charts in kelvin for a little more info about color and light sources.

you can also use unsharp mask under filters/sharpen the help make stuff look less blurring, it adds more definition/contrast to the brush strokes.

Keep it up and good luck with that photography job.

[Danny_K]

Icecold thanks dude for the good advice, though my intention on that study was to focus on colors and values and not rendering, edges, etc...

Fallenangel thanks bro, will keep that in mind

krel thanks mate, it's gonna bring me closer to my dream...

Mag-Neo thank you sir, I can't keep up with myself

BlackDelphin yeah tons of experimenting around that one, I'm trying to use textured brushes more lately, its something I couldn't understand and have totally no idea which brush to use and when, so I'm kinda fishing in the dark with experiments LOL

surfandsnow whoa lots of information! I will have to refer to this later to understand all of it, thaaaaaank you!

Today I did some sketching and more head plane studying, heads still coming out lame some are OK but whatever.




This one was a color&Value study together with some textured brushes experimenting, I'm not concentrating on rendering at this point.

[BlackDelphin]

Some studies will satisfy you, some won't. It would be ideal if all would make us happy, but that's not how it goes..
But on the other hand, this feeling makes us feel even more content with ourselves when we do succeed!
You're doing great Danny, keep them coming!
Experiment and experiment, and in time you'll know witch to use my friend

Love the mood you created in your digital piece.

[jatherip]

more face construction it helps, but you need moooree, old friend!

[engelhardt]

Hi Danny_K, you improved! Good that you do so many head studies - I did not even start this. Your digital stuff is cool: the light creatures from #367 look very interesting. I agree, You should try some life studies! - And there you go: #390 is a beautiful work, I think it is these things that really help improving the skills. Why not try to draw a head/face from model? Good luck and keep up the hard practice!

[Danny_K]

Thanks guys

not much today, some head studies and a rough photo study which I don't like a bit

[BlackDelphin]

You're getting so much better with head planes!! Good job Danny!

With the landscape study, i think you added to many details in the middle ground, so our eyes don't know where to concentrate.
Still, it's ok if you look at it for a while.
You'll do better next time