Diedra's sketchbook Vol. 2 - update 4/26/13

[bish0p2004]

This is really good. The folds in the cloth are amazing and perfectly rendered.

Great sketchbook, looking forward to seeing more.

[Dark_Eyes]

Wow! Some great progress in here! Keep it up! Take some stars of course *****

[Blueflies]

Love what you've posted so far! You started off pretty great but even still I see improvement and progression the more you post. I'm in awe of the way you paint such realistic flesh, it appears so soft and lifelike! The Dragoness is looking amazing. Keep it up.

[devastacio]

Hello there mate,

Thanks a lot for your comment on my sketchbook. Sorry I didn't visit CA for some time. Ill be visiting your SB tomorrow for a detailed comment.

[Harmageddon]

Hey girl, or should I say, hello lady,

Thanks for your outstanding criticism in my sketchbook, I'll do my best to incorporate it in my future works.
As for you, where are the new things! I'd love to see new works.
You've got what it takes to make cool stuff, so let's see some moar!

PS: dierat, I just checked your deviant account, very nice texture packs you made!
I'm just trying to incorporate those in my works, so the timing is excellent!

[Izene]

Great process!Can't wait to see more!!

[dierat]

Black Spot - It’s a girl! And the color changes and all that are just tests so we could decide on a color scheme before moving on to the sprite, but I agree the head thumbs are more interesting to look at. I haven’t worked on the faerie in a while, though I do plan to get back to it soon. And that model sounds interesting; I’m looking forward to seeing the results in your sketchbook!

thedestroyer - Thank you!

Voodoo_Mama - It is a fun study, but rather challenging (in a good way ^^). Thanks for stopping by!

bish0p2004 - Thanks man! That fabric took ages; I’m glad to hear it was worth the effort

Dark_Eyes - Wow thanks!

Blueflies - Thank you! I like to think I can see some improvement as well, though it’s subtle and there’s still so many areas that I need to work on.

devastacio - Np!

Harmageddon - Thanks man! Yeah I’m lazy about updating my sketchbook.. heh And I’m glad to hear you like those textures; it’s nice to know they’re of use to people!

Izene - Thanks!


Kind’ve a boring update, dur. Just wips and all that.


Back to reworking the Dragoness piece. I’m pretty much done with the head and headdress (it still looks a tad weird but I think I’ve reached the limit of my current skill level with that), and now I’m working on fixing the shoulder, arm, and stomach area. After that I’m going to touch up the pillows and fix the value range issue I created there.

On a side note, please learn from my mistake and fix anatomical issues in your work before you get into the rendering phase. A lot of the problems I’m discovering and addressing now have actually been carried over from the original sketch and should have been fixed a long time ago.


Update on the shell study..


And the gorilla.. I choose this stuffed animal for a study because it has long, shaggy hair and I’ve never painted fur before. So right now I’m mostly experimenting with the brushwork and trying to figure out how to make it look fur-like without resorting to tiny brushstrokes for the individual hairs.


And these are a bunch of thumbs for another painting I’ve been thinking about based on Swan Lake.

[Satu]

Girl, you make us wait for you updates too long!

Well nothing to crit, the shell study and the gorilla studies are coming along nicely.
It is really hard to draw the fur and hair without starting to nibble with each individual hair. I know I don't know how to do it lol. Also how big is that gorilla?? I wan't a stuffed huge gorilla like that too, haha!

Looking forward to see the next wip from your swan lake painting. Keep it up!

[Black Spot]

That stuffed animal is sure going to be a challenge. You've never failed before, so it'll be interesting.

A ballet picture is going to be difficult in trying to avoid all the clichés that we've seen a million times. Composition is also a tough cookie as you've made them all dead centre, making them even more clichéd.

[miycko]

i still can't get over the sheer number of silhouettes/options you're able to do for a single character, it's very impressive Glad you're fixing the Dragoness piece to a point where you'll be happy with it, nowadays i don't have the patience to rework a painting so kudos to you. the shell gorilla study are coming along nicely & those thumbs for Swan Lake look good, personally i like number 8, it'll be quite interesting to see how you tackle the two characters

[Rotor]

Thumbnails, nice. It's always good to explore the subject like that, I'm only just beginning to try and incorporate that into every bigger sketch I do. The dragoness is coming along nicely, the lighting is good.

Keep it up.

[syrella]

Your work has a very classical 'fantasy' look to it- pretty and whimsical

I think just keep practicing your over-all "drawing" abilities. Your rendering is already very good. You just gotta make sure the underlying structure is okay before delving too far into the details. I'm sure you know all of that already though.

Keep up the good work!

[Ninetales]

The dragoness is an amazing piece already. Your painting and rendering skills are great!
The fabric looks so real. The values of the skintones are good, but I'm not sure where all the violet colour in the shadows comes from. It doesn't look 100 % natural, but somehow it still looks good.

Cool sketchbook!

[in2eternity]

You have very lovely studio, I like those pink walls) Do you stand at your PC while painting too?
And as always, great works here,they make me want more and more of them)) Really looking forvard to see further Swan Lake work ))

[dierat]

Satupeikko - Yeah, that gorilla’s awesome! It’s about two feet high. It’s a novelty Valentine’s Day gift I bought at a gas station years ago. What a find!

Black Spot - Yeah I’ve been kinda torn about whether trying to make it more dynamic even though it might result in losing the classical ballet feeling. I like the second to last image, the one where she’s on a box structure, because it gives the image a strong diagonal. Lighting is another tricky issue because I want the moon in view, but that would mean they’re backlit which would would flatten them and make them pretty dark. So I’ll wait on that one while I think it over about what direction to take it in. I might try zooming in and going for a more intimate composition.

miycko - Thanks man! I like 8 too as a pose by itself, but I don’t think it would work very well as a composition. Will have to think about it.

Rotor - Hey thanks man. Yeah thumbnails can be a pain if you’re in a hurry to get into the image and start really drawing, but over time I’ve found it very exciting on its own. It’s all about exploring possibilities and being creative, and it really helps if you figure out the big problems early so you don’t have to fix them at the end (I really hate that, lol).

syrella - Yeah, that pretty much sums up my situation I think, heh. I’ll keep trying to improve the underlying structure in my images, thanks for the comment!

Ninetales - Thanks! I think that violet is part artistic license and partly because those pillows used to be a pretty saturated blue which I was trying to reflect onto the figure. I’ll probably tone it down a little since the pillows have changed color. Thanks for the crit!

in2eternity - Yeah I stand at the computer and paint, which can sometimes be a deterrent to getting anything done :/ I have to take it down anyway because I need to use this room for something else, and I’m planning to go back to a standard sitting desk for a while and see how that affects my productivity. Thanks for stopping by!


Update on the gorilla.


This is an old sketch I found and started fixing/developing. It’s the Lady of Shalott moseying down the river to Camelot.


A female druid kinda character based on the Mursi and Surma people of South Sudan and southwestern Ethiopia. First is a sketch for the pose, then thumbs studying their use of cloth, body paint, organic accessories, and face paint.

[dierat]

Continuing with the thumbs from the last post, I’ve been taking the elements I liked best from each category (except the face paint which I’m skipping for now) and trying to figure out which combinations work best together. Right now my favorites are #21-27.

[Harmageddon]

Wow girl, that's a crazy amount of thumbs ! Crazy in a good way, mind you
From the last batch I like 29, 30 and 32-35 best, personally. They have a certain elegance in their clothing that I like.
The gorilla is coming along nicely, as is the lady of the lake.
Curious to see where you take them on your tour du force to their finish.
Keep it up!

[dierat]

Harmageddon - Thanks! I like those a lot as well, but I decided against them because I didn’t think they fit the character as much because the cloth headdress isn’t as nature-y as the headdresses made from organic materials. I’ll probably use some of these designs for something else in the future.


Next round on thumbs, iterating on the ones I liked best.

Edit: Added 32 - 38; think I’m done with these now. Now I need to figure out which one to use :/ Right now I'm liking #36 the most.

[miycko]

great thumbnails as usual, i like numbers 14 & 23 from the latest batch i'm curious as to how long you took to do these? Lady Of The Shalott looks promising & very nice work on the gorilla's fur

[dierat]

miycko - I like #14 as well but I’m not really into that green cloth. I added a few more thumbs to the second image in the last post including some variations on that one. I really like #36 and I’m considering moving forward with that one. What do you think?

The first couple of pages of thumbs were really quick because I was working mostly from photos at that point and just simplifying the designs into thumbnails. I probably spent about 1-2 minutes on each thumb. The last few pages involved less drawing and more dragging layers from previous thumbs, but they took longer because I spent more time looking at them and trying to think of new variations that would be better.

[Voodoo_Mama]

The gorilla study is looking really good so far. The fur looks very nice and not too overworked, which I find very hard to do with textures in general lol.
Thumbnails are very interesting. I'm not sure which one I like the most, I like a lot of them.

[Blueflies]

My votes are for 13, 20 and 36. Great stuff, I really like the way the thumbnails evolved. So many good ones but I think the most visually striking ones are the ones I mentioned, to me at least.

[miycko]

i say go for it, you'll get to keep the design & i also prefer the yellow to the green

[CuriousJoe8]

those are some impressive thumbnails geesus.

[dierat]

Voodoo_Mama - Thanks, I’m glad you like the fur! I’m not sure exactly how much I’m planning to render it; hopefully it doesn’t end up looking overworked and boring. I do like the roughness right now, but I would really like to take it to a point that I would be content with in a ‘finished’ piece if you know what I mean.

Blueflies - Cool! I’m glad you mentioned #36; that makes me feel more confident that I’ve made the right choice Indecision can be a such a time-consuming sandpit sometimes.

miycko - Alrighty, full steam ahead then!

CuriousJoe8 - Thanks!


Compositional sketches. I’ve been really bummed about this because I have a design I like but I couldn’t really find an idea for the composition that I liked. I know the last image looks silly (I doodled it while watching Star Trek ) but I’m hoping it’s the break I’m looking for. It’s not the most original composition ever but I think it’s much more engaging than the other ideas I came up with.

[dierat]

Finally found a composition I like. The halo of the wreath was giving it an art nouveau effect that I liked so I extended the cloth to emphasize that (also because I just love painting cloth lol). The thing in the upper left is kind of a placeholder - it’s supposed to be a nature spirit or something like that, but I haven’t figured out what that is or what it looks like yet I might change the cloth to white because it’s become such a dominant shape in the composition, which I hadn’t originally intended, and the gold is making it stand out even more.

[Harmageddon]

I'm happy to see you've chosen a composition to work on.
Personally, I'm not that technical yet on composition, but it works for me:
the golden lines direct the eyes to the figure's face, and the nature spirit thingy also demands attention.
I think the interaction between the two is working already.
I'm curious to see what you'll turn this into. Go for it!

[dierat]

Harmageddon - Thanks man

Been rendering out the figure and such, especially trying to get the face worked out because I'm terrible at faces and hate having to fix them at the last minute. And as you can see I'm currently avoiding the background altogether.. I have some ideas of what I'm going to do with it, but I still need to get it actually drawn in. :/

[Kjesta]

Wow, it's so enlightening to see you work this piece out step by step! I love all the playing around with the thumbnails, now that I have a GT myself I'd really like to try stuff like that out.

What I like particularly in the picture so far is that you really capture how she looks African, not just Caucasian with dark skin, which I see far too often. Do you have any plans for the background yet?

[dierat]

Kjesta - Thanks! I really tried to alter the structure of her face to fit the geographical area that I’m using as inspiration for the piece, so I’m really glad to hear that you like it. For the background, I was thinking that since she’s a nature-related caster, she should be lounging on a tree up in the forest canopy, as seen in the current wip.


Sketched in the bg. I want a forest-y setting, but I’m trying to keep it kinda simple.