Swordfish Study/Sketches

[Swordfish]

Hi all, Names Matt and like most of you i am trying to further my knowledge and hopefully start making some kind of income doing something in illustration or design.
A little brief history about me, I went to a Junior college off and on for a pretty long time, 6-7 years. Had some awesome teachers but had very poor academic habits. I went through the entire art program there which wasn't much. Its been about 2 years since i was last in school and since the jc was kinda filler and i had a bad experience at a bigger school I'm kinda doing things on my own.



*edit- Good news everyone, after almost a year of not posting on here. And a 6 month long burn out period when i did nothing art related, ive returned to post work that is probably gonna show no improvement with what i used to post on here.. But thats OKAY. I see alot of your who i loosely followed before i left have gone leaps and bounds which is awesome to see. =)

[Swordfish]

dont sometime before the weekend. not much due to the holiday weekend hitting and being pulled in multiple directions =\

[Frekkle]

awww yeah, steampunk
You've got your colors down pretty darn good! The only things that seems wrong to me is that in study #6, her eyes look like they are pointing in different directions.

[yogeshj25]

great work here! ur brush work kind of reminds me of my work. for the latest update. The girl's lifted foot looks like its floating instead of resting on the wall. work with the shape/perspective. ur off to a great start. keep it up!

[Swordfish]

@frekkie - thanks , i've felt like the color thing has gotten easier but its still got ways to go. The eyes on #6... lol yeah i know its an older study so theres not much reason to go back on it.. its more visible to me now though heh.

@Yogeshj - looks like you keep the brushstroke loose kinda like i do, but i think i do it more because of how slack off i was back when i first attended jc art classes, and i think setting time limits on everything i do doesn't allow me to get really technical yet. And neat Intuos 4 set up. makes me jelly. the intuos 4 that is, not the stand. but the stand is pretty cool too.


Holiday weekend = me getting nothing done so I'm playing catch up at least until i like I've done enough to make up for it. all i got done today but i have another one in line.

[Swordfish]

done today, wife gets a week off for spring break. means I'm spending some of the time i usually spend painting doing other things, but we've started to collar ideas for something she has been wanting to work on in terms of designs for a few stories of hers.

so just the fifth element photo study today. =\

[Morningtea]

Gorgeous SB

The only things that seems wrong to me is that in study #6, her eyes look like they are pointing in different directions.

Same here~
And those last updates are awesome!Keep it up~

[Hair Fish]

neet SB! Hells yeah to fifth element
Also loving your brush work

[Kanda]

Wow, nice paintings. I really like the colors used in the couture steam punk studies. Pretty awesome. I'm defs going to follow your SB

[Wohuan]

I love the use of the colors, you have some very good art work

[M1dor1]

Great SB . I'm curious about your next posts . Keep it up !

[pearblossom]

Hah! Fifth Element still looks awesome. Best reference ever

Keep up the good work--already improvement over the first studies!

[Swordfish]

its been hit and miss for the past few days =\ so tonight i speed through a paint in about 20 minutes just to see what could come of it if i was to use a reference and just try to get it all down quickly.. Also some thumbnails of ideas I've been trying to work out. random thumbnails mostly. Bottom 4 are the ones I'm kinda enjoying the rest are just kinda rings i barfed up on the screen while i searched for ideas.

honesty no idea what happened with the portrait though. colors got kinda muddy i think, i am kinda tired but it felt nice just to do something since i haven't gotten to in a few days apart from the thumbnail ideas. I'll have more coming monday when the schedule gets back to normal.

i really appreciate the comments about my use of color. for the longest time it was the worst but i think rendering things out is making a little more sense, i hope i manage to do the same when it comes to more imaginative works and not just on studies.

and crits and/or ideas on the thumbnails would be supper and will help me take them forward. mainly the bottom for unless something is brought to my attention about the others that i may not see.

[Swordfish]

Net was down yesterday and i didn't do much drawing due to it, photoshop isn't online yes but i work better when i can have conversations with people and do the forum/sketchbook/portfolio jumping i do for inspiration and stuff.. i didn't like the previous portraitish study i did. muddy colors make me unhappy so i had to double my attempts today and do 2 to make up for it.

[Swordfish]

i did a little silhouette stuff today with my previous sils and found the character and attempted some costume ideas until my "client" said what was liked and disliked..

Its really messy but its enough to get a good idea of what needs to be there in a finished illustration. Other than this i don't have any studies or finished works today. I have about 3 others things in progress though.

[Swordfish]

Not much from me these past few days. I started rereading my loomis books again and i did some gesture/study stuff. No photo studies or life studies. Nothing much more though, i designed a Boat tiller over the weekend which will be going to carving soon. I'm gonna keep that off of here though until the carving is done. I also should mention that the last time that I've actually sat down and done gesture studies for longer than 10 minutes/warm up stuff, has been a few years maybe.. probably back when i was in school attending figure drawing courses at the JC a Town over from where i am. Felt nice to do and I've looked into life drawing sessions downtown on tuesdays that i may try to get to, but for now these work.

posted 4 sessions, 3 yesterday and 1 today. ALl scrambled together for space reasons. Drawn on Fujitsu tablet, kinda like a paper sketchbook

[spartanx118]

Man i love your stuff, especially the girl character. Though i wish you could clean up the brush strokes a bit more.

[jablar]

I love the steampunk contoures studies...
nice girls

[CheriRone]

The girl's lifted foot looks like its floating instead of resting on the wall

[Swordfish]

its been a while since I've produced anything to be honest. part personal problems, part creativity issues. Big part of it being that second one. Slumps are fun =\ I'm having trouble even coming up with ideas that i can apply what i learn from studies to. All i have is a photo study of a picture my brother in law took when he was deployed. Im very uncomfortable with environments which is funny because its what i wanted to do when i started down this road in art. But i don't do many of them, i think its been about 8 months since i tried an environment study/or imaginative piece.

so I'll try to get my studies up at least and try not to be so down that my creativity is severely lacking at the moment. i do feel like I've fallen out of things a bit and the tools don't seem as easy to use. must remedy that

** and i do acknowledge the comments before about little things that seem off, they are appreciated greatly

[ct2ulao]

You have some cool studies in here. Keep at it! One thing that is worth mentioning is that you tend to make a lot of the things you paint have the same feeling and look of texture/material. It sort of shows in your studies and that is one thing that almost hasn't changed from your first few posts. If you carefully look at your studies, the way you render cloth, and objects/environment/backgrounds as opposed to the figures are very similar. This goes for the figures as well (everything is applicable, really), try to think in your mind as you paint "okay, i'm painting muscle, this has to be a soft surface... okay, now i'm painting bone, this has to look like a hard surface,"

Granted, not all of your paintings seem like one material, but a lot of them do tend to seem that way. I'm not sure if its because you kept it loose or they are speed paints, but everything should definitely have a different "feel" to it, even if they are speed paints.

Communicating that something is a different texture/surface than another thing is one thing I definitely need to work on as well. And I think the best way to truly teach yourself on how to paint/render different materials is to render simple shapes/objects like a cube or a sphere into different textures/materials. I know that sounds really boring, but I think its very effective, and I should definitely listen to my own advice .

But all in all, good job! It seems like you know what to do to improve

[Swordfish]

i haven't posted in a little while but i have been doing things. mostly stuff in an physical sketchbook so i don't have much to show in terms of digital. I'll post what few digi stuff i have but it isn't much. I feel like I'm at that point where i thought i knew where i was going and what i was doing and got thrown on my ass and need to revisit all the fundamentals again. hopefully i'll get to visit everything and learn just a little bit more from it.

and to Ct2 they probably seem that way because of 2 things, 1. they are kept pretty loose but 2. i just really haven't spent a lot of time working on material studies and how they react differently. I honestly feel like its a little beyond me at this point only cause i feel weak in most aspects of my work. I look at materials and such but right now i tend not to worry to much about it cause if i can't get something to look right anatomically or from a perspective point of view, its materials and how they are painted don't seem like they will help the picture much either.. Its on my to do list though in the future and i have some pretty cool ideas about how to go about learning it.

as for what I'm doing right now. life drawing, trying to get outside. in depth anatomy, note taking, trying to get my mind to think more creatively since i lack greatly there and never seem to do anything in terms of personal pieces that aren't dull. and its been fun drawing traditionally again.

as for the attached images. i did some paper skull studies and what not and decided to take some pictures and see if i could figure out my own head for fun. Second being a landscape which i didn't really enjoy doing just cause i just can't figure out how should go about doing it. its based loosely on a photo my sister took up in utah, its unfinished i think but its probably due to discouragement than anything else. Most of it is done with standard round/chalk and poly lasso tool, couple texture brushes but i try to avoid using them if at al possible though i do make some time to time to small goofy stuff.

my discouragement might also be due to having no idea what i want to do anymore. learning everything is good but i feel better when i have a general direction i can focus on, I'm all over the place right now lol.

I'll post more often if i can help it. its helpful being on here hearing the few posts of feedback I've gotten.

[Swordfish]

ive been away from the forums a while, mainly due to having a semi anti social personality and an inability to share my work. I also spent a couple months building a motorcycle, but i have kept on some studies. I went back to drawing on paper. I had a couple old anatomy books and was tired of having such poor knowledge of faces so i studied the skull, muscles and each individual feature more in depth and have been trying to take what i think i learned and apply it.

This is kinda what ive been up to, ive also been painting traditionally again, and have work that is taking alot of time away from doing any of this but i still try.

[Pete Hidalgo]

This is so awesome! http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...1&d=1334200702 ha ha. Great studies man.

[Swordfish]

Some stuff from the past month or 2. I gonna start another pass on the painting soon, get more contrast out of the colors and address a few issues with it. wouldnt mind hearing from others the issues they see and ideas on how to rectify those issues

alot of the skull drawings are done off of some dethklok mugs i made for the wife.. small 10-15 minute sketches on evenings when i had one sitting around drying. Although they are sketchbook material they still pretty funny looking, loose reference used on them from a few skull stock photos i had.

[Swordfish]

just dropping this off.

[Swordfish]

havent been able to paint but I've spent a lot of time preparing a few things to paint when i get the chance to paint aging, which should be tomorrow or the day after =\

[Swordfish]

happy easter all.

[Swordfish]

quick water color sketch

[Swordfish]

still wip. need to change some contrast issues between the character and background.