My Sketchbook: Learning Digital Art

[Esterk]

Hey everyone, thanks for checking out my sketchbook. The main reason I joined ConceptArt.org is because I want to improve my digital art. I just started doing digital painting stuff in Photoshop, and really would love to learn and refine my skills more. They are pretty basic, but I would love to have some feedback because I really want to improve. Most of the stuff I have right now are from Daily Sketch Group exercises, but I'll get more stuff up soon!

Thanks for any comments/critique you guys can offer

PS. Everything I do is in Photoshop CS4. I have Painter 11, but have barely any idea how to use it.

About the below images:

1. A piece of art I did for a friend's videogame, this was actually my first serious foray into digital art.

2. DSG prompt: Scimitar Wielding Demon

3. DSG Prompt: The Dragon Sculptor's Creations Come to Life

4. This was a random piece I did last year, I wanted to make sure it turned out decently, so I spent a good 3-4 hours on it.

[Esterk]

Are these images too big? I feel like they kind of are...

So here are the rest of the pieces I have done up until now, so I'm all caught up on my digital works.

1. DSG: Exoskeleton Caribou-Like Alien Species (Love how this one turned out)

2. DSG: Hulking Robot With Pale Human Like Face (Hate how this one turned out)

3. DSG: Explorers Find Alien Pillar

4. DSG: Engineers Stand In Front of Steam Producing Tech (Today's DSG)

5. A random dragon thing I did in Photoshop to experiment with brushes. I can never really figure out the kind of brush to use in Photoshop, so I was kinda messing around. Still haven't found a brush I really like.

[Cam Sykes]

Hey there man I see you need some help.

First of all I'll just begin by saying, working digitally does not solve basic drawing issues.
I see you enjoy working mainly from imagination but I think at this point it will be much more beneficial to you to do heaps of studies. Either that or use tons of reference when doing a madeup piece.

For instance, if you're drawing is really good, you can slap any colours on it and it will look decent. So I would advise you to be doing Anatomy, perspective, observational, and jsut about everything to improve. There's heaps of resources out there to get you start but I'd be recomending loomis as a start as it's beginner to advanced and he makes it quite easy to understand, and covers everything.
You can find his ebooks for free online at http://www.placidchaos.com/Loomis/Andrew%20Loomis.rar


In regards to the basics of digital painting this thread should help you alot and gives a good exercise you can do yourself which will teach you alot of things.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=107217

Now this would just be a start but I believe drawing from life helps the most, and if it's a peticular subject you can't go out and draw find a pic on the net or in a book.

[Esterk]

Thanks for the helpful advice!

I have been working on drawing anatomy and practicing the human form in my actual sketchbook, but I just haven't had the access to a scanner to post them up here yet. I coincidentally just found that exact same link yesterday and downloaded the Loomis books! So I hope to take a look at those this week and practice a bit.

Thanks for the critique, I'll get some of my anatomy studies up soon and will definitely try to do some life drawing, I actually haven't done too much (on my free time anyway, most of it was from drawing classes), so that's probably an area I need to focus on. I'm not entirely comfortable with the human form yet, my problem areas seem to be the legs and the neck area, so I gotta work on those.

I got some other pieces of digital art I'm gonna post today, and then this week I should be able to post some of my work in my sketchbooks.

Thanks again for commenting, it was a big help to know I should probably take a step back first.

[Esterk]

Ok, here are two more pieces, a little smaller now.

1. DSG: Large Biped in Rage Pose with his smiling little buddy

2. Apple from life using Photoshop (looks kinda fake to me...too shiny?)

Next posts will be from my actual sketchbook!

[Esterk]

Here are a few more pieces.

1. A school assignment I did, rendering myself in multiple styles. This is a piece that took a while, and I like the way it turned out except for the the terrible background. A couple of tweaks could improve it, I know. The original is 18 x 24, so it's pretty big.



2. Daily Sketch Group: BIG BEEFY-TIRED INDUSTRIAL TRANSPORT VEHICLE LOOKS BUILT FOR SPEED. Kinda crappy.



Thanks in advance for any comments/critiques

[Esterk]

Here are some drawings from my Drawing III class. My professor was nice enough to let me bring my tablet to class, and I really learned a lot from it.

These are from September, they were short poses, which is why there is a lack of detail in some.

[Esterk]

A couple more figures, these were from October

Still doing a few quicker ones here


Starting from here on, we starting just having one long pose:

I hate the face on this one, but practice makes better, eh?:

Back to doing grayscale: