Griffin's Sketchbook

[JackGriffin]

Last one im going to do for a while, trying to refine my blending skillz for soft skin. I need to get back to studying colour and light.

[jondawo]

Are you painting with opacity jitter set to pen pressure? It looks like opacity is set locked to 80 percent. Blending becomes a lot easier when you're controlling the opacity through pen pressure.

I did some tests.

and thanks for the advice on my thread. I found it quite useful and there's no such thing as an over-crit (at least for me )

[JackGriffin]

I'm using opacity jitter set to pen pressure but I'm in the habit scratching away at my work which gives it that horrible patchwork look. I think I'm using the same settings as you although don't get to see the full spectrum of possible opacities as quite a lot of the low opacities are hidden away in small lines because I've set my brush size to change with pen pressure but without a minimum diameter :/ I'm going to have to change that when you can blend like that, thanks for your help!

[JackGriffin]

I think im going to leave this sculpture for a while now.. I'm not capable of finishing it to the standard I want it to be at the moment. The arms and legs were really annoying me so I just took them off (having no arms worked for Venus).

[JackGriffin]

Landscape speed paintings, trying to pick colour using my eye. Had a lot of fun doing these

[JackGriffin]

Getting faster

[JackGriffin]

One more just before work, spend a little longer painting on this one.

[JackGriffin]

2 more colour studies, hopefully there will be a few more tonight.

[jondawo]

Nice man. The patchwork brush style lends itself quite well to landscapes.

[JackGriffin]

Thanks Jon, I've been trying to just focus on the colour although its a little too saturated at the moment, I've tried what you suggested about my brush settings and it works great on skin, thanks Here are some of the sketches I've done today, I have spent far too much time on areas of these paintings which took the speed out of speed painting and I lost sight of what I'm meant to be studying. I'm having trouble with detailed things like trees, bushes and standing hay. Any suggestions would be of great help.

PS kept crashing and I've lost about 2 paintings..

[JackGriffin]

Colour studies, less saturated studies and im starting to be able to pick colours out with my eye when looking around outside

Experimenting with brush settings, bringing in some texture/ trying to make trees look organic

[JackGriffin]

Portrait colour study, in need of doing some quicker ones.

[JackGriffin]

Value studies and brush experimentation

[JackGriffin]

Screwing around trying to come up with stuff from imagination, its a start I guess. I need a story to tell before I start.

[JackGriffin]

Stepping into the realm of industrial design, working on perspective etc.

[JackGriffin]

Iv'e been spending quite a bit of my time collecting bits of information that I didn't know about to build my 'visual library' and understanding of things, things I should know about. So far I've read some stuff about chinese military, japanese architecture and fist weapons - all general knowledge but it cant hurt to know. One pretty cool thing for a design I found out was that the chinese would throw a tiger skin over their horses!

Heres what I've been up to today and yesterday

[JackGriffin]

Self portrait from today

[JackGriffin]

Alien civilian vehicle concepts, working from silhouettes

[JackGriffin]

Looking into emotion in eyes and coming out with some gesture drawings from imagination. I need to start churning these out!

[JackGriffin]

Environment studies, had a lot of fun doing these!

[jorvaa]

Your painting studies are amazing. I love how they look like oil-paintings - really brilliant.

[JackGriffin]

Thanks! Speaking of oil paintings, that still life you did in your sketchbook recently is awesome. You have a good eye for colour.

Around 20 minutes each for these bad boys - suggesting details like the above drawings

[JackGriffin]

[cumquat]

hey, great sketchbook. You show marked progress from the first page to here. Your brush strokes are getting softer and more informed. Really nice studies too, keep it up. If you do want to soften your brush strokes a bit more, may I recommend Linda Bergkvist's brush set (if you don't have it already). Link below to Linda's brushes and Sarsa's hair brushes.

http://www.innographx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3666

Also, thanks for posting that 'more you know' section. It was really informative. Great read.

[JackGriffin]

Hey, thanks very much. Its a slow road but I'm glad you see an improvement in my work. I downloaded the skin brushes and put a few of them to the test by smoothing out the skin of the portrait at the top of this page. They worked a treat! I didn't want to smooth out the skin too much so I left the portrait with a loose paintery feel. Thanks for showing me these brushes, heres what I did with them.

Always happy to spread some interesting stuff, I'll be posting some more as I learnt a lot from them myself.

[cumquat]

hey, pretty cool ! Glad those worked well for you

[Widdershins]

These are looking great! Your colour and tonal studies are amazing, this is where I'm working to get towards!

[JDBI]

Good studies. The colors on the landscapes look a bit over saturated maybe, especially the blue, but I actually kind of like that about them.

[JackGriffin]

Thanks everyone

@JDBI - They're definitely over saturated not by choice but because I'm not so great at picking colours with my eye which is something I've been working on today. I'm going to do some quick landscape studies soon I kind of like over saturated images sometimes though, bioshock infinite has pulled off being super saturated really well and it looks amazing. Natural colours is the way I need to go for now!

A colour study - trying to train my eye

[JackGriffin]

some sketches before bed