Graives Sketches and Studies

[Graive]

Hello, everyone. I'm an art student working my way through my education. I'm currently enrolled at UCSD as a media major studying film, and on the side I'm taking classes with Ron and Vanessa Lemen at Studio 2nd Street in Encinitas, CA.

I'm starting this thread as a motivation to myself to constantly practice, and hopefully some of you might spot something I might be doing wrong and be able to help steer me in the right direction.

I'll start things off with some past sketches/studies I've done with photoshop.


EDIT: I moved the previous works down so I can easily change my thumbnail.

[Graive]

*EDIT: Here's some of my previous work.*

Heres some sketches from figure invention

[Dahami]

That first babe is really hot!!! I'd love to see you finish that one. I wonder who she is and what she's wearing. Beautiful hips on her. Thanks for sharing.

[Graive]

So with school pounding me to the ground, I've managed to get some practice sketches done in my sketchbook. This is over the past 2 months. I'm trying to invent figure and make them animated, so I don't use any ref for these practice drawings. I get enough of that in class.

Thanks for the interest! Maybe I'll throw that back into photoshop and finish her up. It would be a good painting exercise.

[thegrayslayer]

Some of the sketchwork is really nice. I guess if you're looking for advice - just do a whole lot more of them! Can't beat working from life really, to truly hone observation skills and that will feed into your freehand / non-ref'd stuff.

~ Slayer

[Graive]

Ah yes of course! I've been doing so much drawing from life that it gets to be a little too much and I need to practice what I'm learning with my imagination. These are kinda that exploration. I need to start doing these in photoshop/painter as speed paintings and practice color theory along with them.

[nurraymjo]

Excellent stuff Graive... your figures look great and your digital stuff is quite nice.

[Clockwork Bunny]

loving the progression you're making, you can se your style and skills improving with each piece.

look forward to seeing it improve further. Good luck with the course!

[Graive]

Here are some pen drawings I did in my wittle sketchbook. We had what my instructors call a "Sketch Night" at school with a band playing and lots of wine and guests. I was able to get these sketches done in that time. I got really loose and just had fun.

Whatcha think? I think I like pen and I should start using it more.

Also, does anyone know how to change the thread picture to something other than the first image in the thread?

[Graive]

Started some character concepts for a game my friend is producing. These are really really rough and not final at all but I sketched them up to get an idea of the character class he wanted. It's a futuristic cult type spell caster (psychic) type bent on controlling time. They are genetically modified. The counter to these guys, the military, is something like a highly futuristic decked out armor merc with a visor helm.

I did a quick attempt at painting into one, not going to go any further.

[Graive]

Someone had asked me to finish the first image on the thread, so I'm working on it now. Here's an update. I'll start in with color once I'm done practicing seeing value. Then I get to do the fun part of deciding colors!

[Graive]

Here's a quick 30 minute sketch. I don't know how to take these shapes to a finish...

Maybe I can practice at this.

Worked a bit more on the painting.

and here is a near final rendering without color of the girl above.

[Graive]

Here's a change to the previous image. I should finish up this chick too huh?

Gonna hit Balboa Park with the crew and do some studies. I'll post what I get done afterwards.

[Graive]

I've been vegetating and not working enough...

[Graive]

Decided to start speed painting. They might not be illustration worthy, but its getting the junk out of my head, and feelings. Plus I get to play with photoshop a little more freely.

[Graive]

Been practicing in class since my car was broken into and lost all my oil paints and brushes.... but yeah so digital in class has been funnnn here's the progress.

[Graive]

Here's some sketchbook stuff... and new stuff!

[Graive]

Here's a WIP

[Graive]

So I haven't been in the forums lately.. UCSD has been killing me, and I've been training for a job as an assistant illustrator so I haven't really been keeping up with the posting. I have something like 100 images from the past 4-5 months I'm gonna post now. Gonna do them in 20 image segments.

The images are not in chronological order, so some might seem better than others earlier than later.

Enjoy!

[Graive]

next load

[Raoul Duke]

hey ian it's Kirk. It's nice to see you on the boards. I can definitely see a ton of improvement in your figure invention. I see allot of struggle in your sketches. I'm glad to see you are taking on some of the more difficult challenges and not just sticking with what you already know.

I recommend you continue working on facial abstractions, head planes and muscle rhthms of the face. One thing that helped me is pausing the TV while a commedian or an actor has an interesting expression and doing a two or three minute sketch. That really helped me understand the mechanics of facial movement.

[Graive]

Thanks, Kirk. I'll take that advice and do some studies. Here's another 40 sketches lol.

[Graive]

next load

[Graive]

Finished this one finally. Getting better at painting I think.

[Graive]

Here are 2 studies I did from life in digital painting class. 2-3 hours each

[Graive]

Here I decided to spend 2 hours doing 30 minute speed paintings. Here's what I got done in 30 minutes for each picture.

[Graive]

Thought I'd add a few more. Most of my work is under a NDA, but I'm gonna try and do more stuff outside of the project for practice and perhaps some illustration practice.

I guess the important thing for me to notice about where I'm going is how quickly I'm able to do things now. Full figure drawings used to take hours... now they take ~20-30 minutes. So that's a +!

Please feel free to critique my sketches. I need to know what to focus on right now so I can fix my mistakes.

[Graive]

Here are some paintings I've had stashed that I'm planning on finishing this month:

[Graive]

I can't believe I haven't posted in so long... I've been out of school for so long that I've slowly had to get myself back into drawing and studying.

Taking on a lot of freelance multi-media work, so I haven't had a lot of time to spend on traditional media.

Here are some things I've drawn over the past few months. I have a bunch more, but they need to be finished before I can scan them. Also starting to experiment with watercolor.

I can say at least that my figures are looking more solid, but I need to work on line weight variation and making sure they stay proportionate.

[Graive]

Here's a batch of my latest studies.