Roadside Attractions, new stuff August

[Mike L]

Hello Everyone,
I'm new to the forums, so this is fairly unfamiliar territory for me. I won't bore anyone with details on my background, other to say that I'm an Illustrator and teacher, and I'd just like to share some work.
Hope you enjoy, and thanks for having a peak...
These sketches were inspired by weird rock formations and really big teeth, and they manifested themselves as these little fish.
-M

The first image was inserted so I'd have an icon image for my sketchbook, still figuring out this whole thread thing...

[Mike L]

Here's a detail...

[Phloof]

Umm.....wow....

Rendering is amazing! Very atmospheric.
I have a feeling this is gonna be an awesome sb.
Can't wait to see more!

[Ogihara]

great sketching technique, just keep updating, people usually want to see diversity and commitment before they start writing in the sketchbooks, your start is at least looking great!
Peace!

[riposino]

awesome work, that gumline is sick.

[Mike L]

Thank you Phloof, Ogihara and riposino, I'll keep 'em coming. And thanks for the tip about keeping things diverse, etc...
Best,
M

[Mike L]

Hello,
Here's a random sketch that ended up serving as reference for an experiment with some brushes in Painter.
For anyone's who's really curious, the brushes were the Impasto Oil, Wet Oily Blender, Blended Palette Knife in the Artists' Oils; Round Camel Hair in the Oils.
I'll post the painting in stages...

[Mike L]

Here's the image, underway in Painter. I’m just trying to break down the image into a light and dark pattern at this point, and get the pattern of the shadows looking like it makes sense. I didn’t exaggerate things as much as I usually do, but I’m still trying to give him a sense of character and push a few features beyond reality. I had a little photo as reference, but really didn’t use it much as the sketch had everything I was looking for. The colors are fairly muted to start, I began with a crimson palette, and just used light and darks of that color. This is really a pretty standard way to approach painting, I’m certainly not reinventing the wheel here. You can see near the nose where I’ve blocked in the areas that I’ll add shadow to, it might look a bit strange now, but in the next stage I’ll add the darks. I usually save the highlights until the later stages, if I start noodling away at one area the rest of it usually falls short of what I’d like to achieve. By slowly building up the lights I can pick one area on the image as my focal point and build the lights up to that spot.
On a really technical side note, the pencil layer is set up as a multiply layer, I paint the background in on my background layer to set an overall value, then I drop the pencil layer and paint away.

[James Thomas]

DAME love it..all of it ><..nice..v inspirational

[Mike L]

At this point I’ve hit everything with paint, and gotten it to a three value system with darks, mid tones and some lights, but not many. This is a handy tip for anyone interested in painting, as the values(lights/darks) are doing most of the work. With this type of loose painting I’m working with broken color, meaning I’m not blending the paint as much as I usually do in some of my tighter work. I like working this way because it allows the viewer to fill in some of the blanks; if the silhouette of my subject is believable then I can leave a lot of detail alone, and only go for areas that I’d like to use as focal points. Here I’ve knocked in some color to represent a collar, but it’s starting to distract from the face, so I’ll have to go back and build up a few more lights in the forehead to help balance things out. The lights on the forehead will be the most intense, and the rest of the highlights will be dimmed down as I move away from the forehead. This should help create a believable and hopefully dramatic light source on the character. One last note, you’ll notice the image is flipped from the original. I do this a lot when painting digitally, flipping the image allows you to see all kinds of mistakes, and makes it easier to correct. Again, it’s a fairly common trick, same thing as holding a sketch or traditional painting up to a mirror.
I'm reluctant to get into too much detail here in my explanation, it's already getting pretty long but feel free to ask me anything, comment, etc.,

[Mike L]

Well, I’ll call this done, or abandoned

Here I’ve brought up the highlights along the forehead, and decided to soften the edges along the shoulders to allow him to blend a little more into the background. I always find it’s a delicate balance between hard and soft edges in a painting, especially with portraits. Hard edges tend to stop the eye, while soft edges tend to allow the viewer’s eye to travel, so I’ll attempt to place them within a painting to allow for some movement. Again, this is another pretty standard trick with drawing and painting, nothing new under the sun. He’s also been flipped again to the intended angle. I probably could have spent a little more time on the ear, but I set a limit for myself, and I wanted to stick to it. This one clocked in a around 3 hrs, but I already had a sketch scanned and ready to go and paint with.

Anyways, thanks for having a look.

-M

[p sage]

Nice renderings and constructions all the way around. Will be watching your book for sure

Cheers

[Mike L]

Thanks for having a look, P sage, I appreciate the feedback.
-M

[NickyBeats]

awesome stuff so far man! love those graphite sketches of the fish, and those crazy teeth! really nice work!!

[DoctorDigits]

awesome pencil work, hope to see some more of that

[Psychobuddy]

Hi Mike.

Odd to see you here, love the fishies.
I'll try not to stalk you too much.

[Jephyr X]

Congrats on starting your CA sb. That first image is very cool...digging the graphite fish thang-eez too.

[Mike L]

Sketching in ball point pen here; once it's down, it's down...you can see where I couldn't decide to do with the left hand, or claw, or whatever that thing turned into. Mostly I wanted to get carried away with proportions.
Thanks for dropping by.
-M

[cuptow555]

Holy SHIT I am SUPER fucking jealous of your pencil and pen techniques

[NickyBeats]

holy crap. this last one is fucking sweeet!!

your like the offspring of dale keown and n8 van dyke!!!!

[Mike L]

Hi Chip
Thx for the props...
The techniques are just trial and error over the years, and lots and lots of time put into it. I try to think of simple forms first, light them, then add details, light those, so on and so forth. I try, not always successfully, to describe form with the line direction, especially with pen. Pencil leaves a little more room for straight up value, but over the last little while I've kinda been migrating back to linear approaches with sketches. I suppose the trick is to want to keep discovering new ways to put marks on a page.
take care,
M

[Mike L]

Thx Nicky,
Like I mentioned in my last reply, it's kind of an ongoing thing. I'm a fan of those artists too, so the comparison is very kind.
-M

[p sage]

Really like the contrast/values in the pen drawing.

[Galeo]

Very cool sketches, Mike. I love the teeth in the second sketch and the pen piece.

[Mike L]

P Sage: Thx for viewing, it's a fun medium to sketch in, makes you commit to the marks.

Galeo: Thx!
-M

[Mike L]

An old doodle...
-M

[Mike L]

Messing around with some eye treatments for more little fish characters.
-M

[Mike L]

This guy was inspired by a little crab that caught my attention in a pet store, giant claw, really wild. The actual name escapes me, but the idea found it's way to this sketch. This thing's a hybrid of lots of spare parts.
Thanks for having a look.
-M

[Bahamuth]

those pencil sketches look aswesome., i really like the details on the eyes of the fishes, i guess its where u start? anyways makes me wanna go and draw too , thanks for the inspiration .

[Mike L]

Bahamuth: Thanks! I usually start with big shapes/forms, to try and get a sense of the mass(big or small) that something might have. If the eyes are important, I'll go for more detail. For this guy the it was an eye experiment, so I certainly focused there. On the flip side, to relax and just enjoy drawing, I'll wander all over the page and see what happens, that gets rid of the tendency to get to tight.
-M