Pavel Sokov's Sketchbook

[Pavel Sokov]

EDIT: Go to last page please!

Hey guys, welcome to my sketchbook!

Formerly this was my Critique Section thread, but it grew too be a bit too much and became unwieldy. So it has evolved into my sketchbook. However, I love crits more then anything, and would love a continuation of all the invaluable help I have been getting in this great forum!

I will copy the latest image to the first post each time so you can easily find out if I updated since the last visit or not. Cheers!

[THEMike]

I am not an expert, but I'll give it a shot. The image overall gives the impression of a lot of various "unrelated" elements tossed together, it's overall not very coherent. None of the statues or characters seem to really belong to the environment and it all looks really flat. I don't see a real hierarchy of values ( for example, the shadows on the stone faces on the doors are darker than the darker darks of the foreground characters...actually they seem to be the darkest values in the whole painting). The numbers on the doors (and the faces) look pasted on and I don't see where the light on the left statue is coming from, because it does not seem to affect the wall behind him and it can't be what causes the light ray up there. Also, I get the feeling that something with the perspective isn't right...If we're seeing this from the height of a human, shouldnt we be seeing those statues from a far lower angle? (I'm not really sure about that though) Another thing I noticed about the lighting: the right statue has a red secondary light shining on it from the right. What's up with that? Where is it coming from? Same goes for the other one.

[Nezumi Works]

Couple of things to add to THEMike's comments, the slabs on the wall look similar to cinder blocks, which plays hob with the scale of the whole piece. From that I get the impression this is taking place in the corner of someone's basement. The rays of light coming from above highlight that.

The anatomy of the little figures at the bottom is extremely vague, and doesn't look quite human. More like little effigies of people made of rags, somehow moving under their own power.

Compositionally, you've got huge areas where there's nothing of interest going on, mostly in the top half, which doesn't help the scale issue as it further minimizes what's below. The statues tend to lead the eye upwards, to where the figure at the top (who isn't in the same scale as the lower figures at all, and has totally separate anatomy) is looking and pointing away from everything that's happening, leading the eye directly out of the picture. That's sort of the opposite of what you want, so it could use a bit of attention.

Finally, if this were meant to be some huge edifice, I'd expect a bit of atmospheric perspective going on towards the top, but the wall is the same clarity all over. Something to look at.

[keith_v]

I agree with everything THEmike said. Also, why did you crop away the foreground??? Without the foreground, we're just staring at a wall. I did a paint-over to illustrate some points. Your perspective should be tilting inwards (think how it looks when you stare up at tall buildings). Also, your lighting is flat and tough on the eyes. There's no contrast. It's just... gray and murky. When you have an image that's that gray, you either need a splash of color or some powerful highlights to relieve the eyes. The image is way too dark also. I tried to paint away all off the black shadows, especially in the background. An important rule to always keep in mind is to reserve your darkest colors for the foreground. You also had a lot of dead space on the sides of the image that I filled with additional statues.

[toastergargletop]

my eye keeps being drawn to the dude at the top of the piece, and to the door, both of which are kind of uninteresting. I think its the sharpness of these two elements compared with the overall sharpness of the image.

Keiths paint over is gnarly. But again, I get drawn into the door, and I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that the statues are what you want to be important?

[jooxis]

To be honest a lot of things bother me when I see this image. I'll try to point out some things.

The image is overall very inconsistent and as THEMike pointed out, everything looks pasted on. The palette isn't "harmonious" to me. The shadows on the statues have a bluish hue, yet the doors are brownish. It doesn't work aesthetically in this image.
I'm not a huge fan of the flat symmetrical composition either.
There are inconsistencies in rendering. For example, some parts are blurry and others are sharp - for no apparent reason. This bothers the eye. The face and numbers on the door seem sharper than anything else on the image, while the muscles of the statues are airbrush soft. Also, two foreground figures are soft, yet one has more details. Why? Where is the focus? Then there's the figure above the door for example, his calves are quite blurry compared to the very sharp edged relief markings on his throne which are right next to them. It seems very random, what's in focus and what isn't.

[Mr. Corlan]

I'm not exactly at a level to critique your properly, but I can give you my humble opinion.

Black - The first thing I see in your work is an overuse of black. Way too much black! It's un-naturalistic and makes things unpleasant to look at. Black should be used sparingly. Think about it, where is there going to be NO Light whatsoever? Only in little cracks here and there.

Lighting - I'm not sure if your overuse of black is giving you lighting problems or if your lighting problems are causing you to overuse black, but either way, you've got lighting problems. It's good that you're thinking about it, but in that case you just don't know enough to do this stuff from your imagination.

◊ Reflected light: You don't have any. Your efforts to convey form will fall flat if there's no light in the shadow areas. You have a white statue under strong lighting—there should be lots of reflected light.

◊ Lighting Consistency: You need to think about this more and do studies from life or photos. How can the statue be lit from above and in front and there be no light on the wall immediately behind it? Unless it's foggy out, light just keeps going, it doesn't fade out in 30 feet. You can see clearly on a full moon night and that light is just reflected light from the sun, off the moon, which is about 240,000 miles away through atmosphere and all.

[arenhaus]

I can't second-guess the reviewers, but I would think it's the cohesion, compositional issues, poor lighting and form, and the way you tend to use very mushy shading. There is also not much in terms of points of interest in this picture. It's kind of unclear what it represents, apart from it being derivative of the style used in some heavy metal album covers, and Barlowe's "Inferno".

If I were to make a single recommendation on how to improve it, it'd be "work tighter". Tighter form construction, tighter perspective and lighting, better brushstroke economy.
Plan more, render less. The more time you spend on planning the picture, the better it will be.

[cliffbuck]

been looking at them gates and just thought something wrong then i noticed it the doors are ajar and light coming through unless these doors slide which i cant see the angles that the doors are painted means the should be closed its especially noticeable in the straight lines at the bottom.added this image it is exaggerated but thought it explained my comments better

[Pavel Sokov]

Oh wow, what a plethora of replies! Gotta love Ca's critique section. Very helpfull words too, I can see more clearly now where my piece could of been better.

Let me just say that some of the problems you mentioned were caused by me simply taking all the character from an older version of the image and giving it a new background without really making sure to adapt their lighting to the new system.



The Mike

Like you said the hierarchy of values is something that escaped my mind entirely. I was not sparing with my blacks. The light on the left statue is none existent because I was not mindfull of the direction of the new light as compared to the direction of the light in my Beta painting. His legs and arm should be darker, leaving most of his light on his head and chest. The secondary red lights on the statues are coming from the old background being orange and be being neglectfull to get rid of them. Now they look like some sort of strange internal glow at best.

Nezumi
Hmmm, now I can see why the scene doesnt look gigantic when you ignore the little characters at the bottom, as compared to how large the Beta version looked.
It is in part due to the cinder blocks (these were meant to be large Egyptian Pyramid sized blocks), but mostly due to the complete lack of atmosopheric perspective. If I lovered the contrast, and threw some fogging and maybe some blurring up top, the scene would probably look more approporiatly sized.. The compositional issues you mentioned are true as well. I really should of thought better then to have that character point to nothing. (By the way the throne character is supposed to be a giant compared to the humans)

What I failed to understand is that my human characters look like a bunch of rags.I don't know what I did wrong and what I can do differently next time when it comes to rendering those small characters.

Keith

Wow, that explains a lot in terms of economy of my blacks, as well as compisition. The fog you added, and the black you removed made the image much softer to look at. The air has a volume, and a thickness to it! Very nice atmosphere. I love the expanded canvas, that helps composition, but also helps a lot with depth and scale of the environment. The wall and door finally feel epicly large! However, I can't agree with the multitude of statues, I think that would be information overload, and I already have too many elements.

Fantastic overpaint, extremelly educational and really opened my eyes. I feel as though overpaints are always the best teaching tools. Words are great, but there is nothing like seeing them implemented, it gives weight and a true understanding to the words!

Toaster

I am not too sure what I wanted to be important at this point... I think it was meant to be the steel door.

Jooxis

You are right, I do tend to paint different elemnts rather differently, but I do feel tha I disagree with the extend to which the sharpnesses don't make sense.

I was hoping that the air brush soft statues would convey marble so thats why they have no coarse textures. The 2 humans furthest away from us are soft because I wanted them to seem further away then the closest one, but I do suppose the size alone would of been sufficient to show that.

I also can't see the difference in sharpness of the creature's calfes and the throne. I suspect the level of zoom and lack of blacks in its legs make it look softer then I tried to paint it. For example, here is a zoomed in view of the Beta version, do the calfes look sharper here?



I did notice though that my walls are rather soft, aside from the very sharp highlighting textures I painted on them. That does look unpleasent indeed, and makes it seem like the highlights are floating above rather then being on the stones.

Mr Corlan

You are right about both my oversue of black and my weakness of lighting.
My light does seem to be very thin and is strangely selective about where it lands. Next time I must try to make it thicker. I don't really understand how reflected light works, I must admit. For example on the right statue I added weak orangish light on both of the inside calfs. Is that reflected light? I am not really sure where to add more of those.

Arenhaus

Planning has always been my enemy. Actually planning has always made me my enemy. I really need to think things out more. I never ever stop and think about what I'm doing, I just go until whatever I am doing is done. Very weak.

CliffBuck

Yea my light is very wide, making the doors feel like they have sucha large space between them, that one or both of them must be ajar. I actually meant to convey them as being both closed, but the width of my light botched it. Thanks for pointing it out.

Thank you to all for the very helpfull comments, I can see more clearly now

[arenhaus]

OK, then. Try to stick to a method while you work. Divide the work on a piece into several stages: exploratory, constructive and rendering. During the exploratory stage, do compositional thumbnails, make character sketches, collect reference, think up lighting, etc. During the constructive stage, construct the perspective and make sure you have the form and volume right, then calculate the lighting and do color sketches to test it. During the rendering stage, collect all the material produced in the two preceding ones and, using it as reference, paint the picture starting with the background and going from general to detail, but never the other way.

Here's a good explanation of lighting: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

[Giacomo]

I'm not sure if the "orange" version came before or after the "black" one, but I like the orange one about a million times better...the 3D-rendered ironwork provides a good contrast to the softer painted parts, the deep space of the scene is far more dramatic, and the color is much nicer.

However: the reason you're not getting this in the gallery at CGTalk is that it's two amateurish copies of Michelangelo's "David" stuck in a really static, flat composition. Except for the statues--which are copied from photos--none of the painted forms (figures, wings, drapery) here are worked out in terms of form or contour...you're still just moving the brush around and hoping it works.

I--and many other people on this forum--have advised you for years to do tighter line drawings to get the forms right. Possibly some day you might actually do that.

[Pavel Sokov]

Guys, I am going to Madrid tonight and will be back on the 30th. So if I'm not replying, that is why!

Arenhaus

That is a very academic and solid way of doing things. I must admit I do this more on some pieces then others, but I am still VERY far from groing through the entire process. I rarely ever do thumbnails, and I just usually go ahead and paint the first thing that I come up with. I know this must hurts your ears, but true is true, my method is incredibly lazy and unthoughtfull. The idea of spending hours making little thumbnails and that I could be spending this time progressing the final image instead is very tempting to me.

But maybe I must recognize the fact that I am a slow painter because I spend up to half the painting time fixing and adjusting things I did wrong initially. Maybe spending 4 hours on planning will cause me to save 12-20 hours in corrections.

Thank you for the totorial! I started reading it a long time ago, but forgot to finish reading.

Giacomo

The orange version came beforehand.

You are absolutely right, I don't do line drawing. I paint with a fat brush and then cut away to find the shapes. Very weak of me. I did get up to using google sketchup to verify my perspective though! Wish I could accurately build my own grids instead of relying on technology so much.

But I do want to defend my David statues. While my eyes were opened to the lameness of the entire picture, I still can't see my Davids as being amateurish. Can you point out what is wrong with the Davids?

I did use reference for the Davids by the way, but didnt copy paste it and draw over it or anything. For that reason I feel as though the contours of my Davids are pretty decent, allthough they lack the full attitude of the real statue. I must also say that I think their form and volume seems decently conveyed.

If I am under an illusion again, please point out whats weak in the Davids so that I can see it as well!

[Conquerrisk]

The first thing I thought when I saw the closeup of the floating throne in the earleier version of your pic was "Does he know what that cuneiform on there means?" Of course, the majority of this picture's audience probably isn't familiar with ancient Sumerian script and doesn't care either, and for all I know the inscription you have on the throne could be perfectly appropriate, but the impression I got is that it's just on there to look cool. But then on the other hand, those pictograms on either arm rest look like they're related, so hey, what do I know.

[Syle]

Pavel, I have no right to critique your work because this is all way over my head.

But, I did feel the need to chime in about your traditional pieces that are on your website. They are great! They are so much stronger than your digital and concept pieces.

Can you incorporate your traditional skills in your goal to get into this CG society? Good luck! You have a good heart.

[Venger]

You're not applying the same perspective to everything.
We should be looking up at these statues as our eye level/horizon line is way below them.

this might help you
http://freddieart.com/QuickTools/ind...d=1&category=2

[Pavel Sokov]

Hello, I am back home now!

Syle
Thank you for the kind words, I am surprised that you preffer my traditional pieces as I feel much more lost and clueless when working with traditionall mediums. I have finished a large portrait of a family friend that I hope to take a photo of soon, maybe you will be pleased with it as well.

Venger
I used google sketchup to get the perspective of everything and the statues, but I completely agree that in the Steel Door version they do not look like they are in perspective at all. Allthough in the Gate version with the open sky, they look better. I am baffled by this because I litterally just painted over it, but it lost the feeling of perspective on the statues.

The perspective tool will be a valuable resource, thank you so much for it!

[dmal]

i had a nightmare several years ago, and it was like this. but without the flying. that would have been too scary. GREAT WORK!

[DPFX]

I'm sort've a "B- Time Traveller" (Ben Stiller Show reference) when it comes to anatomy, but I'm hoping this is helpful:

1. The anatomy of the skull is really inaccurate. Also, the circular wound doesn't follow the contour of the head. The neck anatomy looks off. You have many places (neck, pecs, ribs) where you have a look of stretched flesh, but the 'wrinkles' are uniformly shaped and sized and are parallel. This looks artificial. The nose doesn't seem to come off the face correctly compared to the eye socket.

2. The interaction of the anatomy around the pectoral/collarbone/deltoid looks off. If those are ribs on his right, they are anatomically inaccurate. If they are not ribs, they look too much like ribs.

3. His wrist looks really beefy, and the taught tendons on the back of his hand look inaccurate.

4. Whatever this is is blurry and indistinct.

5. That just can't be what elbows look like.

Now, my understanding is that Michaelangelo's David has been sculpted with weird proportions so that it looks more accurate when viewed standing on the floor looking up at it. Crazy genius.

Odd proportions aside, look how different the balance is between the original and yours. Look at the angle of the shoulders and pectorals, and the way the torso changes angle.

Look at his jawline.

There are also lots of subtle things that are more difficult to articulate...muddy rendering, cutout-style edges in places, highlights on the edges flattening form, sloppy rendering of hair.

Again, I hope this helps.

[Pavel Sokov]

Oh wow, my thread came back to life! What a surprise.

Dmal Thanks man!

DPFX

Hey DPFX! Those are good points and I agree with all of them, but don't understand the problem with the skull anatomy (the hole doesnt wrap around the form at all, I agree), and I completely don't see whats wrong with the elbow. I am looking at my elbow in the mirror and don't see anything. Can you elaborate?

Also could you help me out more with the skull structure? I don't see the issue with the eye hole, or the location of the nose.

What are tought tendons?

I understand the fault with the deltoid/arm interaction.

Agree about wrinkle artificality. I wanted wrinkles to affect specific areas of his body to give them a deformed feel, but it does indeed look strange.

As for 4), I thought it was a good idea to make things further away blurry and indistinct. Is that not true?

Are cutout style edges bad taste? As I was using then I was hoping to get a similar shaprness that Alpenfeger has or Randis in their works sometimes.

I took away a lot of things from your comments, especially my fault at highlighting the edges of things, it really does flatten things out it seems.


Now I will post a new marble or limestone bust of Athena I just did. I was just hoping to hear that I took the right approach with this piece when it comes to cutout edges and blurry sections.

It is a bust of Athena, the Greek Goddess of war.

"Athena and the fly"
Photoshop Cs5.
300 pixels per inch, 12000 x 12000 pixels.




Colour Balance Adjustment:



Details:

[Nezumi Works]

Her features are misaligned. I'm assuming this wasn't on purpose, as all the images I can find of busts of Pallas (even the pallid ones) she has fairly idealized features.

This suggests some sloppiness at the early stages, probably in not planning and roughing out where the features go in relation to each other and the head itself. So you end up with a head turned 3/4 one way, with a lower lip turned 3/4 in the opposite direction, and tilted away from the nose as well.

I'm also a bit confused by the light area on the forehead, which suggests she either has an elongated skull, or at least a light source under her helmet. Perhaps the housefly has an apartment in there and left the light on?

Oh, and typically, Pallas Athena has a bit of a downward gaze, which is totally missing here. Not necessarily a mistake if you intended to vary from the norm, but a bit unusual nonetheless. The hair looks a bit yarn-ey, which also varies from the actual statues, which tend to work with separate locks of hair.

Did you do very many studies before doing this version?

[arenhaus]

I completely don't see whats wrong with the elbow. I am looking at my elbow in the mirror and don't see anything. Can you elaborate?

To see such things you need to focus on the underlying structures, not on the surface. Your own elbow isn't necessarily the right reference for a person of a different build and fat ratio, for example. So you cannot rely on the skin; you need to track the muscles under that skins and "see" what makes up a particular bump or dent.

Also could you help me out more with the skull structure? I don't see the issue with the eye hole, or the location of the nose.

The issues are entirely structural, not anatomical. You do a lot of glossing-over of structure that you try to hide behind shading. You can't fool a professional like that, however: you need real structure. If you have trouble seeing the problem, do structural drawing and perspective exercises until you are blue in the face.

What are tought tendons?

He meant taut tendons.

As for 4), I thought it was a good idea to make things further away blurry and indistinct. Is that not true?

Not in this particular case.

Now I will post a new marble or limestone bust of Athena I just did.

You need to practice reading and building the structure. You can't do good shading without a firm basis in structure, and you're skewing your skill heavily in favor of shading at expense of structure. This will not do. You need to get a lot better at this. Forget the shading for the moment; do structural drawings with lines. Get the form tight and right; no sloppiness; no deviation from perspective; no hiding the lack of attention under shading. Stop thinking in terms of paper and color; learn to think in terms of space and form. Learn to be your own structural Nazi. Leave no place to instinct; the tiniest detail must have a definite position and perspective.

Learning to build formal perspective helps with these things, too.

[Giacomo]

Her features are misaligned. So you end up with a head turned 3/4 one way, with a lower lip turned 3/4 in the opposite direction, and tilted away from the nose as well.

The mouth is a little off-center, but in my opinion it's not that big a deal. I like the concept of this piece quite a bit, and the execution is solid enough to get the idea across.

Pavel, some of your other work has fairly major issues with composition and/or drawing, but this one is, in my judgement, working well. Certain people on this forum are in the habit of obsessive academic nitpicking and/or delivering condescending, meaningless windy pronouncements about "structure" and "form." I'd advise you to ignore them.

[arenhaus]

Giacomo, if you don't see the structural issues with that Athena bust, I advise you to study more structure and form.

[Nezumi Works]

A little off centre? IT'S THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION FROM THE REST OF THE HEAD! Look at the curve in the middle of the lower lip, and how it recedes in perspective to the left, not the right. That's a huge mistake in structure right there.

The fact is, this is a study of a bust that traditionally involves idealized features. Just slapping things wherever you like will be even more obvious than usual, especially if you're trying to get into someplace like the CG Society showcase, which I gather has pretty high standards. If that remains the OP's goal, you're not helping them get there.

[Pavel Sokov]

Wow..

Well I don't usually do this, and honestly never have, but when I read "Just slapping things wherever you like" I have to admit I felt a little pissed for the first time after years of getting critiqued.

Listen here, I have a strong desire to improve and love to listen and learn, and that is the reason why I get better in my own eyes. Improvement can only be through failure and I recognize it and revel in it. However, with this piece I was trying to approach it as academically as possible and by no means am I slapping stuff on left and right.

In fact the reason why I decided to do a bust is because:

1) I have already done 2 traditional drawings and am working on a third charocal drawing of this bust which I have full acess to on mondays (I am taking a fine arts class outside of my business school), and this digital painting is my 4TH go at the same bust. I would of never brought this up, but I was challenged on it and if we are being honest here, I must say. I did very many studies on this piece.

2) I have lots of photos of it, and its memorized by memory already.

3) It has simple shapes, so I can focus on structure as much as possible and conveying the form.

Now, onto the allegged missalignment of the features.

The bust happens to look like this from the front:


Notice the discrepency between the eyes, the leftward tilt of the nose, and the not perfect arch of the helmet. Those are all features of this perphaps unusual bust that I set out to convey because my objective was to copy the bust.

I do admit I set myself up by choosing to do a bust that I knew had crazy eyes, a dude's chin, and a giant nose. That is my fault I chose to gamble with that. But I don't think I particullarly deserve shit like this:
IT'S THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION FROM THE REST OF THE HEAD!

Especially in capslock as if I went ahead and painted the mouth on her tits instead of the head.

Here is the reference photo, and the ref photo next to my lines upon which I painted. The only difference is I feminized the chin and the nose because they were gigantic.




Now, like I said it is my own fault that I selected a non idealized or even symmetrical bust. But that doesn't mean we can start hitting capslock and shitting on my face, with comments like "Hey Giacomo, if you like this piece then you are basically a fucking idiot".

Anyways, if speaking like that because you are better then me is the correct thing to do, then I will just take it because for better or for worse I learn from it anyway.

I am moving on from that and asking an actual question to Arenhaus:
You speak about delivering structure and form and not hiding it under the use of shading. But I thought that shading IS the way to show form?

[Nezumi Works]

I wasn't necessarily saying you were slapping things on, so much as that's what Giacomo came off as suggesting. Basically, it doesn't matter if it's wrong, good enough is good enough.

The "tone argument" has never been a convincing one anyhow.

I'm seeing a trace of the statue (which does get the angle of the bottom of the mouth wrong), but no structural breakdown (balls for eyes, centre lines, all the usual stuff). Could you post the one you did, please?

One thing to add about the lower lip that I just noticed on closer inspection, you've made the terminator band of the shadow very thin, so it becomes a line bisecting the lip in that direction, rather than part of the shadow. Since it's a cast shadow from the nose, you won't get the same terminator band as in a direct shadow, since there's less influence by reflected light on the far side.

[Pavel Sokov]

For some reason I don't understand anything you said in this sentence:
I'm seeing a trace of the statue (which does get the angle of the bottom of the mouth wrong), but no structural breakdown (balls for eyes, centre lines, all the usual stuff). Could you post the one you did, please?

What is the terminator band? I don't understand the second sentence either.

So sure enough, my painting got rejected with the following explanations:

-There might be noticeable artistic or technical problems in your image.

-The context of your image may need a more creative presentation.

-The image might contain elements that could be offensive to some.

So basically its not only shit, but its boring shit that is so shitty/boring that its offensive to some. Wow.

I am just doing better and better...

But I decided to adjust the mouth perspective as well as rotated the eye. It was unnefficient to do because I had to do it seperately on both the colour versions, while making sure the changes are identical.

Let me know if this is structurally better.

[Nezumi Works]

I really don't get the offensive thing at all. Maybe they meant the presence of the fly? It's a bit unclear.

As to the rest, as I thought from what you said before these guys have crazy standards. Your A game isn't enough, you gotta bring your A++ game. For that, you've gotta have totally solid foundations, and high quality finishes as well. No amount of nitpicks (so long as they're accurate) is too many.

I was afraid the terminology was a bit confusing, I might have been off. So for the terminator band (or just the band), that refers to the fact that the edge of the shaded side of an object is the darkest part of the surface. That's because reflected light hits the other side and lightens it up a bit. The first image in this thread may help clear things up. Cast shadows on the other hand will be dark throughout and have a much more defined edge, since they don't contain reflected light in the same way.

So what's going on with her lip is you're treating a cast shadow like a shaded object, resulting in a very thin terminator that looks like a contour line, making it look like the lip is heading off in that direction. Take a close look at those photos you posted, you'll see the shadow there is more uniform than your painted version. Also, rotating the mouth the way you did does help. It looks way better now, so does the eye.

I think it might help to reduce that reflection under the helmet, as I can't see it in the reference pics, certainly not as pronounced as in the painted version. Maybe tone down the reflected light on the cheek too. It's in the reference yes, but there's quite a bit of contrast in the painting that makes it seem brighter.

I think even if this didn't make it into CG Society's showcase, it's still a damn fine study that gives you more experience and knowledge.

[Nezumi Works]

Oh, and about structural breakdown, I'm referring to taking the reference and analyzing the forms that make it up, doing cross-contour lines/centre lines on the forms to map out the shapes. What you're doing is figuring out on paper (or virtual paper) the structure that makes up the form. That informs your values, since you know how the light works on a spherical form as opposed to a cylindrical one, etc. For just sketching obviously you wouldn't do that, but for more involved and detailed stuff like this, it's a good step to take, because it helps you firm everything up early.

As someone said to me once, drawing is planning. Style goes on top of that.