Sketches and Studies by Craig Houghton - [11/16]

[Craig Houghton]

entdroid & blanquish - Many thanks. I was trying to develop only the lines on the hands to draw emphasis there, but I may have been too heavy-handed (bad pun )

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more stuff for the Farfallen game - pc race khorians (fur covered humanoids w/ root-like antlers often mimic hair)



very quick and sloppy khorian (light pen and watercolor w/ painter)



-Craig

[faux pas]

Good drawings, my only crit is I dont like how the fur looks "clumped on".

Whats this farfallen game ?

[Beelow]

Nices sketches and the watercolors are hot!

[Deselect]

You have some brilliant work here. Your line work is so simple and yet so descriptive. I look forward to some more updates!

[entdroid]

Great post! My favourite is the girl opening the mouth, looks so much more "alive" than the other faces. The others seem to lack emotion when compared to that one, it's really great. I love it
Keep posting!!!
Cheers,
entdroid

[blanquish]

nice update
Its rare to see a traditional artist working in the game biz-impressive!
I love the last dude, but im bothered by the water. Needs some white in it.
And you could probably do some soft trees in the background.
But i guess its not really necessary because the character is the main feature.

[CGMonkey]

This is AWESOME stuff mate.. Love your colors! Keep 'em coming!

[Johann de Venecia]

Sweet pics, Craig. Really diggin' that landscape in watercolor. Nice char/ concept to, its great to see those from you once in a while. Keep it up and best of luck.


Johann

[Craig Houghton]

cg - I appreciate it. Thank you for stopping by.

faux - Hiya. it's a non-paying project I've been doing some concept work for on the side

beelow - Many thanks.

deselect - brilliant! Maybe I can quit my day job finally. many thanks.

entroid - Thanks E.

blanq - You're probably right. I wanted to keep the bg or water from stealing the focus, but I'm sure it could have used a little somethin extra.

lukavi - Your work = My screensaver. I love it when you stop in.

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finally made it bak to the thursday night life-drawing

2 mins (always wanted to try bluelines for the gestures) (screw the values! )

2 mins

5 mins

20 and 15 -- from-life orc?


a priestess thing, but I never went anywhere with it


and, these aren't really worth posting, but I read Bancroft's Creating Characters with Personality and followed through with the 'assignments.' The style is completely outside my comfort zone. I've never been any good at cartoony stuff so it's an actual challenge for me.

these are unrendered and uncolored in Bancroft's animation'ish style.

had to use the circle, triangle, and square to first gesture the 'cast' from a western

then the lazy hero

the spunky love interest

her dog

his horse (likes carrots, named carrots)


random undeveloped cartoonish stuff




and, this one I actually rendered




some more nudity




Thanks for looking!
Craig

edit - added some wet to the ghost eyes per entroid

[blanquish]

about time for an update
The ones with stronger, darker lines seemed a lot better, maybe its your scanner, but its very light.
That mosquito type creature rocks!

[entdroid]

Yay! You're back! You sure are a disappearing guy...
Life drawing stuff looks awsome.
Your cartoony stuff is nice, but they lack a bit of personality, the best of those in that sense are the horse and the peanut guy (that one's lovely!)
I love the subtlety of the face in the first image, but she needs some strong higlights in her eyes. The eyes of the mosquito creature are a little opaque too... maybe there's a challenge for you: draw some reaaaally shiny stuff: plastic, chrome and metal, a wet floor, colored glass, you know, things like that.
The nude lying girl is beautiful.
Keep up the updates!

[sve]

Hello, Craig. As always I sat in artist thread looking at art and soaking up his mood and personality. You art has a light, delicate dreamy feeling to it. Remember we agreed that you are observer, well, not only, sometimes you screen the reality and go into journey in some other world. Do you space out often? I used to do it a lot. But not anymore, reality is quite demanding and I have to tell it made some drastic changes in me. Spacing out is good for you .

So I see this spacing out or strong desire and sympathy to the process in your faces and poses and soft textures. You want yourself or your viewer to be drowned quietly in subconsciousness without any sudden awakening. It feels good, although I remember you were somehow unhappy with this ability of yours. You wanted to draw someone blowing war horns probably. As always we want summer in winter and winter in summer.

OK. that was a general impression.
Now back to constructive critique.

http://www.leversandpulleys.com/uploads/ghost_eyes.JPG Nice, sincere, off guards expression of the face, but one eye is bigger than the other, strikingly bigger, to the degree it can't be ignored despite of the very truthful personality of the depicted. Personality is in the shape of the eyes, I think, they are wide opened, very open, just like windows and doors. Touching. Lovely face, if it exists somewhere.

Your cartoons have personalities in my opinion, they lack confidence.
But sure, you give some information about each character.

The cowboy is simple minded, kind, not rich, has a very agreeable nature, sweet guy. Not particularly bright, but very easy to maintain . he doesn't need much . Handy, but too dreamy to be any good in his job.

Girl on the other end is very real. She has a big bottom, she can't be a space cadet like her guy. Big bottom keeps her on Earth. She likes her home and likes to fill it with goodies. In the relationship of those two she will domineer and in the end will create quite a working horse out of her loved one.

Her dog, well, yeah, fluffy and evil inside. very possessive. those little curvy dogs are very jealous of their owner. I wonder if dogs have some paranoia.

Boy with a white eye. Poor creature with distorted growth and distorted soul, like Quasimodo in Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo. .


Your life drawings don't have precision, it is very surprising to see, I thought it would be other way. strange.

I like hyper realistic digital on the post before, it has an exact sensation of young, sticky foliage and flowers being out of confinements and unwrapping in front of me. Nice to see and remember the same feeling.

I like the girl resting on the tree, As I told , the themes and faces and poses you chose, they are like comforting words of the wise friend. they can heal, I think. Like the spots of sun coming through the trees tops, I think it is one of the hardest effect to catch and I love it so much. You did it wonderfully. And it creates response in me.

Well. enough for today. Hope you and your lovely girl doing great.
All the best.
Sveta

[Craig Houghton]

blanquish - I had no idea how light everything was scanned till I went to work -- I'm at a different angle to my LCD lately and it's been darkening my view. Thanks for the heads up!

entroid - cartoony's a sore spot for me. i really suck at it. realistic stuff is much, much easier. I've been trying to avoid eye highlights lately, but you're right and the drawing looks better with em now I think. I love textures, but I've never been a fan of man-made shiny. Wet is good though -- I'll do some work with that.

sve - It's always a pleasure to have you stop by. Thanks for taking the time to offer not only some great crits, but the general impression as well. It's very therapeutic. I've been spacing out a bit more lately, but I'm much more likely to be a wide-eyed pursuer of whatever happens to grab my interest -- I usually suffer from over-enthusiasm. As for the crits -- I have very little confidence with anything cartoony. It's just not my thing, but it's something I admire in the work of others. I have to struggle to do anything like that. As for the life drawings, I'm not sure what you mean by precision. Do you mean lack of detail or inaccuracy? It may be surprising, but my rough drawings are always very, very rough. I usually build up drafts over my roughs.

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Ok, back to my comfort zone. This is for some packaging. THe company requested vertical art to replace a drawing of a dancer on their charcoal pencil packaging. They've used my work in the past, but I still have yet to see the newly printed boxes make it to the store. Once this current project makes it into print I'll post the packaging, but it should be in most art stores & walmarts etc.

vertical art for the charcoal pencil packaging





Thanks for looking!

-Craig

[entdroid]

Looks good Craig! Considering the position of the head, though, I think the branch with the apple should be much more to the right, 'cause right now she doesn't really seem to be looking at the apple. That or lowering the head a bit.
Keep posting! You know how much I like your work

[Alexandr Pascenko]

the girl on the tree is awesome , jus tdon´t tell me please u already let woman jump on tress for u naked . like your sketchstyle

[comixnut]

Craig very very cool stuff man. All of your stuff is just getting to a phenomenal level. Do you know Charles Vess? You are starting to remind me of him. All of your stuff is awesome but i just simply love the face of the freckled girl, and that's saying something since the cartoon cowboy is just brilliant!

Keep it up man!

[Craig Houghton]

ent - many thanks. you know how sometimes you reach for something so high that you can't look up at it at the same time you reach for it? that's what I was going for with, but I'm not sure if I conveyed that.

goblin - you bet

comix - I'm glad you like em. Cartoony stuff is a serious challenge for me. I hadn't seen any vess stuff before, but I like what I've seen so far. Great stuff.

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here goes

an acrylic blue emu on a little 5x7 canvas


a little sumi -- on the off-chance.. ever notice that sumi ink smells like "Stinkor" the old He-Man Figure where the actual action figure smelled?


i've been trying out vine charcoal -- i never gave it much of a chance in the past


redid the chickadee in ink & wc




took the vine charcoal outside and tried a plein air with it at Brooksvale Park in Hamden


from-life at the New Britain Art League's new clothed-model saturday thing (1 of 3 2-3hr sessions)






second-session - WIP - one more session to go (next saturday.. loving the clothed model thing)


did this in-studio between sessions from study - acrylic 3.5 x 2.5 inches? TINY


mom on the rocks 12x16 or so


took the vine charcoal to the thursday night drawing -- uncompressed charcoal makes the erasing so damned easy

2 min gestures, one over the other

1.5 hours? pose


Thanks for looking!
Craig

[Justin.]

Hey Craig, about this lil series;

IMO a few things could help out- he has reall broad shoulders, and really broad ankles- but not a broad chest or a broad waist (kinda heroic-ish), and it kind gives him a goofy (Not like playful goofy, but like "Something's off...", artistic type goofy). I think he might work better with slightly narrow shoulders and a bit of a higher waist.

For cartoonish stuff, take a peek at Cheeks-74, note how much he incorporate figure's rythym into his work- it is definitley a crucial component in cartooning, and it seems like you tried- but as with all things in art, it does take time. Try using the blue pencil to work out different geometric combinations and see what kind of character (no details or clothes, just different shapes, no faces or gestures or anything) other people think it might be. Kind, mean, heroic, lazy, effeminite?

Keep truckin Houghton!

[blanquish]

great update!
I like the pen and watercolour stuff.
Before you give it a watercolour wash, do you use pencil?
birds are my fav.
for some reason, your pencil hatched stuff doesnt appeal to me. you do the lines too far apart, and it looks like its only hinting at form.
your mum on the rocks is superb, great values.
I was searching through my book case and stumbled upon a book called faeries( one of the artists names was brian froud, or something like that, i forget),it reminded me of your stuff.
on the pencil note, I reckon really soft pencil would suit you.
great as usual

[entdroid]

OMG an update!!!
The sumi bird is my favorite. I don't recall the smell of that action figure, but I always thought sumi smelled like wet dirt.
I LOVE those two last drawings on dark paper, great shapes and curves, great mood.
I also like the acrylic study a lot, 'cause you use a lot of washed up colors, so it's great to see you move out of your comfort zone a bit, I really enjoy the darker values and higher saturation on that one. I think you should make more experiments with color.
I think all of your work is really really impressive, you have a really good grasp on values and anatomy, but I always feel like you're too afraid to mess it up. I don't know if this perception I get is true or not, but I think you should experiment more and allow yourself to make more mistakes.
Anyway, glad to have you back!

[Craig Houghton]

justin - Great advice all around -- I'll be revisiting the cartoonish stuff shortly. Many thanks.

blanquish - yep, there's usually pencil under there, but I erase after inking. with the hatching do you mean the two girls on the couch and such? In those cases I'm just hatching to remind myself where the values are when I do the real thing later on. btw. my gf is very into Froud. She's a faery artist so it's no surprise I suppose.

ent - yep, an update. it had to happen finally. wet dirt is a good description. I'm glad you liked the update, and you're definitely right about being afraid to mess up. I think I'm moving away from keeping things so stifled, but it seems to be a long road. And, for everything I post I usually have twice as much that I just throw in the pile and never scan.

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a messy pelican


another vine from life -- ran out of time for the hand so.. it's um.. cropped


an apple tile? just something random



Thanks for looking,
Craig

[Lake]

Yo Craig - it's been a little while, eh?

your birds are looking simply MARVELOUS. very realistic and believable. Your figure needs some serious work though. I can see you have the basics of shape and tone down, but anatomy could definitely use improvement. Would like to see some bone/muscle studies from you.

[Burnt]

fabulous stuff! keep it up^^

[Inkfish]

Beatyful pictures. I especially liked the pictures of birds you posted in the Potography section and the inks you posted here.

[lema]

you got skills. i don´t know what more to say.
i love this one:
http://www.leversandpulleys.com/uploads/edging.JPG
from photo?

[Craig Houghton]

Panda - Heya Many thanks. As for the figures, I'm always looking to improve, and I'll keep an eye on it/do some more studies.

Burnt - Glad you like.

Inkfish - Thanks for stopping by -- I should be posting some of my more recent bird photos soon over there in the photo forum.

lema - I really appreciate it. Many thanks. By the time I painted it I'd lost the photo ref, but I still had my drawing -- I think that was rather liberating.

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I'm still finishing up the watercolor of the two girls on the couch (finishing it in-studio -- the last from-model session was dissapointing because the location of the couch had changed and the lighting was just terrible).

In the mean-time, apparently I'd forgotten to post this from a couple of weeks back.

My brother and I have been home-brewing beer. I put this together for our first on-bottle label. bear in mind, this is mean to be viewed on a 2x4 beer label. It has issues, but it was from a 2-second drawing.


-Craig

[Craig Houghton]

Thanks for looking!
Craig

p.s. I seem to have a beard now. I should SP it.

[blanquish]

ooh, cant wait for the sp!
the last one is beautiful!


oh, and any chance of doing a run through with watercolours doing a wash over pencil. I dabble wth watercolour, but it doesnt look very good.

[enthombed]

hey, hey, hey, Craig, great stuff sice my last visit here bro, damnit this watercolors are great a lot, damnit i will save some stuff this to my reference.

Keep posting

[entdroid]

That watercolor is looking great, but I think the color you used to make the shadows, not sure if it's a black or a blue, is too dark. The value change is too big and makes the shadows look a bit like stains, I notice this specially on the clothes of the girl closer to the viewer.
The beer bottle label is really cool, I think the texture is grabbing too much attention though, maybe you should lower it's contrast a bit.
Keep it up!
Cheers!