Zebz's Sketchbook: One more update for the road... 1/8/09

[Zebz]

CHECK THE END OF THE THREAD FOR RECENT STUFF!

Long time no see my fellow Concept Art-ers! It's been a mighty long while since I've posted anything on this beloved site due to lack of internet and scanning capabilities but alas, here I am! I've returned! I've started a completely new thread because my old website/server is going to be shutting down and eventually all of those files will be lost to the net for good. You can still access my old sketchbook for quite some time at least. I'm just going to start storing these new files on a new area of the server. So rather than change all the addresses and everything... we'll just let those posts fall into the depths of oblivion. Plus I think it's about time for a fresh start, my drawings are finally starting to move in new directions a bit so maybe it's time anyhow for a new thread. Eh, if you're new to my SB than you'll come to quickly discover just how much of a rambler I am. I apologize in advance!

Lots of exciting new things going on in life these days but I'll spare the update for another post down the road when I have a bit more time on my hands. 'Till then I'll just let the art speak for itself. I've slacked pretty hard this summer and have allowed a lot of stuff distract me but I'm getting back on the horse just in time for the semester to start. One problem I've run into is this new sketchbook I've bought and been using. I like it but it's 11 X 17 and I can't scan it all. That's why quite a few of these will seem cut off or digi-photoed. The camera sucks at taking pics of the drawings, especially the pencil ones. So if anyone has any sort of advice on the matter than hook me up. On with the update... if any of this crap needs explanation than just ask away. Take 'er easy. God bless.

Ry

[melvin]

good stuff... i really like the bigfoot dude. dragon is cool too. you should post it in the dragon thread if you havent already.

that first monkey looks a little too smart for his own good though......."get your paws off me.........." (you know the rest)
where's charlton heston when you need him?

[hito]

great update man. Really dig that dude's jacket, the guy that's gettin rejected. I can relate to that too.

Look forward to more frequent updates!

[armando]

This stuff's awesome. How much is straight from your head? I dig the Ralph Steadman like dirty inking style. My only criticism is every hand is either hidden or unfinished.

[Ferg]

nice book. Your rendering is great, I especially like the second one with the halo kid. Got a great vibe. Constructive crit would be to tighten up your faces a bit... some of them feel a little over-worked... though others are great. Skull guy in the last pic is awsome as well. I'll be watching.

[GunTrouver]

I like the renderings and designs I think it's not very easy to work with ink but you did a very good job!

Keep posting!

[vigostar]

holy cow!~! great stuff man.. i like the animal looking characters the most.. you seem to have a real nack for the hair and stuff.. nice renders.. good sense of value.. i hope to see tons more!!

[Craig Houghton]

Wb man! Happy new sb.

I friggin love the all the inky goodness. It's dirty, but a very clean sort of dirty. The monk guy w/ the halo is just about perfect linework-wise. Awesome.

Stick around, it's great to have you back.

-Craig

[Zebz]

Hey, we've got a healthy bit of replies here! Thanks for the support!

Melvin: Thanks for the comments, bro. I'm sorry you're a bit distressed about the monkey. We all have our quirks, I suppose. Beware. He's whispering things into my ear about bunnies and meat grinders. It's late. Forgive me. I'm so tired.

Hito: Stop playin' like you're not the freakin' ladies man. 8)

armando: Thanks for the post, man. Everything in that first post is random crap from my disillusioned head besides the first monkey pic which I used ref for. But I pretty much diverted a bit from the original image. And you're right when you speak of hands. I hate them. I need to do some studies. Thanks for the challenge. I owe it to myself. I'm just to lazy to sit and do it. I will tho, I promise! Thanks again!

Ferg: I agree. I tend to overwork most of what I draw. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I've been working on faces more and more. I loved drawing them for some reason. My anatomy and drawing overall feels fairly stiff so I want to address those issues as well. Thanks for the post though! I appreciate the compliments! I'm glad you like what you see!

GunTrouver: Thanks, man. I'm trying.

vigostar: Gracias. Sometimes I overdue the value and stuff but I like to get lost in rendering a subject. And with that comes the risk of rendering it to death. I'm going to start trying to speed render, like throw the values down and see where that gets me. Stay tuned!

Craig: You can just shut up! You're thread rocks me so hard, bro. You've grown leaps and bounds, dude. I can't believe you're even posting in here. Ha! YOU KEEP IT UP! Got it?! Hopefully I can devote the sort of time to my art that you do. I'm too sleepy right now tho.

Alright, I did some drawing today but I'm to lazy to scan it all so here's a little page of doodles I scanned in yesterday. Everything from my head except the girl in the lower right which I drew from life. I did capture a bit of her likeness I think. She liked it alright. Sorry that all I have are more crappy pen doodles. Hopefully we'll have better stuffz later. Thanks for lookin' guys. God bless.

Ryan

[maxetormer]

Hey man things are looking up, I can see
a whole lot of improvment since the last thread
ill give ya a more in deep coment later, Im too bussy
right now, but I wanted the subscription

Keep it up, its good to have you back!!!

[Mr.Blonde]

Good start here, just keep the ball rollin'!

ps- love your avatar

[rodrigo!]

nice work man, your rendering style is really loose and cool, nice nice. your faces in that guy look familiar, is it the same character?

p.s get some sleep heheheheh

[Teigrob]

Very nice renderings - and all with pen, eh? Do you do any sort of construction lines first, or just have a ball? I would like to see some action poses...pretty please? I think they'd be rockin' with that style of inking.

[Zebz]

Hey everyone, thanks for the comments once again. It's very much appreciated. I'll go ahead and issue out the responses...

Max: Thanks, bro. It's good to be back in rotation. I'll be lookin' forward to your critz and comments. Always educational, my man. You keep yours up too! It's lookin' freakin' amazing these days.

Mr. Blonde: Thanks. And I'm glad I could brighten your day with a little Bob Ross. He's like the God of Painting. Mad props. lol

Rod: Thanks, dude. Did you give me a compliment in there? Ususally you're pretty critical! Ha! Just kidding around, bro. I'm growing a bit, I think. And no, it's not a character... I'm just used to drawing the same guy over and over. lol I need to work on variation. It's just what happens to me after doing to many studies. Always some sort of negative in there. I'll work on that. Thanks for stoppin' by! You're lookin' great as well!

Teigrob: Great to have you stop in! I'm glad you've enjoyed lookin' around. Not all of those are pen but most are ballpoint. I love to build my renders and it takes some time. The ballpoints do quite well for that sort of thing. And I guess I sort of do construction lines but their usually just formed by my playing around with shapes and stuff sort of developing. I'm trying to loosen up more and do that sort of thing more because it comes so less natural to me. Slowly I think I'm gettin' better tho. We'll see. And yea, I need more action type stuff. My work is so stiff it hurts to look at it. Any ideas on how to loosen up? I am working on it. It's a struggle. I always seem to tighten up and then over work things to death. I suck. All in time.

Ok, here's to another update of doodles. That's all I've really been doing lately. Nothing to great. Hope it will sufice as a CA offering. I've been trying to do little figures to try and get myself to loosen up and draw the full figure. I seldom do. We've got a hand or two in there as well.

Doodles I was talkin' bout.. random crap with the ballpoint...


Sketches all from resources found in some of my pics (My friend Chris and Don and my girlfriend, Sarah) and the naked chic was from the net. I was trying to just to outline the face in a planar sort of way, I guess. Like trying to find the shadows and the lines of those places just in line... I dunno. It's late. Someone explain this for me. lol These are pretty quick and rough.


Some of those figure doodles... I suck at these... their so stiff... I hate me.


A page I'm currently working on. Thought it might give an indication as to how I work. I'm looking to actually slam this page with graphite and finish it completely. There are some errors (the guys eyes for example) that I'll need to fix. But this process ususally takes some time for me, like rendering it all out. I like to just sit and watch movies and casually build the values. This is only a portion of the page because my sketchbook is too big. More on that later...


And now for my scanner complaint. Here are a couple pages to give ya'll an idea of how much you're missing out on when I scan stuff in. But as you can see the digi pics blow. But the sketchbook is 11X17 and the scanner is pretty much the standard size. So we loose a bit. But here's a few snaps of what some of this stuff looks like in real life, I guess.



That's it for me. Hopefully we'll have more digital oriented stuff. My Wacom is gathering serious dust. I'm also thinking about some ideas for children's book type stuff so we'll see if I ever get around to workin' that sort of stuff out. Have a good one! Thanks for lookin'. God bless.

~Ryan

[vigostar]

hey, dude... nice update... I have been wanting to try out that style that has just a splash of colors... as you know im a big fan of the mighty pen..! anyways.. roller pen is quite difficult to work with.. i have tried and failed miserabley but, with hard work and dedication im sure it would happen for you.. keep up the nice work..

[rewind]

i love the dragon with the house on her back

[mull77]

Great stuff dude!

I really like your figure studies......i don't think they look stiff at all. You larger peices somethimes can, but that can only be changed through practice.

I'd like to see you put some of these characters together in a scene or interacting with each other. It's something i personally find pretty difficult.

Oh and i really like the guy with the sword and the gun on his back

[loomer]

Great work here..and it really looks like a lot of love went into these sketches.
You render really well - and I really liked the splashed color effect over your inks as well.
If I had one crit...it would be definetly faces. I think that's your weakpoint right now. The faces are looking all kind of the same...same structure...same expression...mix it up a bit. Try using some reference too...even if you completely distort the fucker.
Otherwise, great start to this sketchbook...I'll be back for sure!

[hurricane]

its great to see you post again man !!

major progress since the last stuff i saw!

more more

cheers !!!

[Zebz]

Thanks again for all the comments! It's always great to hear people's responses. I appreciate ya'll taking the time to drop a line.

Vigo: The pen is mucho nice. I like it very much. It takes quite a bit of time to render and layer with a ballpoint but the result is so sketchy and beautiful, is it not? I'm glad my stuff is inspiring you to try some experiments as well! Keep gettin' 'er done.

rewind: Good. I'm glad you like it.

Mull77: Thanks for the encouragment. Yea, figures interacting with others is tough stuff but your right. I need to make a list of priorities when I draw. That's on of 'em. I'll see what I can do about it in the next few batches I cook up. I'm glad you liked what you saw!

loomer: Thanks! Yea, I see that problem as well. Maybe I need to just make a page of various heads with distorted proportions or something. I can do it. I just know I've been sort of stagnant lately. I always felt like I could draw heads/faces decently well. But you're right. Their all looking alike these days. Back to the drawing board. Thanks for giving me another goal to shoot for! See ya around!

hurri: Thanks, bro. Your wish is my command.

Not a huge update but an update none the less. I tried to finish up that penciled up page today but I think I'm tired of doodlin' on it. Ha! It's not completed in several areas as you'll see and it's still rough in a few as well but I got my ideas across so that's enough for me for now. I really like the image of the boy with the bull/ox type thing. I think it has possibilites as a larger painting. I think I may do s'more work with that one sometime. I dunno, I just like it for some reason. It's too dark now but I think with the right colors and maybe some work on the faces, etc. it might turn out quite well. I'm also including a little snippet of the girls face from the corner. The scanner keeps cutting her off and my friend said that was his fav part of the page so I wanted to include it.



Welp, I fell asleep tonight for like 2 hours so I'm fairly rested for a bit of drawing and painting tonight. We'll see how I do. One cup of coffee down. Three or four to go yet. Maybe we'll have another update by the nights end! And I'm hopin' it's all Wacom, baby! God bless. And thanks for lookin'.

~Ry

[DeNyed]

I really love all the contrast in your drawings. Only things I noticed is that your eyes for your people tend to be very far apart and the guys wrist could use more definition. Overall great work though , like your concepts and use of shadows,

[armando]

I love your art, so quit apologizing for it cuz your pissing me off! You were complaining about your drawings looking stiff, here are all the ways I know of to add dynamism:

Make use of picture gravity. There's a picture of a guy winding up for a pitch(8/23), he's standing straight up like this I. Tilt him like this /, stick his back side out forward and throw his arms far back. I got this idea from "Picture This: How Pictures Work". The shape you're making is a tilted triangle, and since a triangle can't balance on it's side it looks like it should tip forward.

This next idea is related, got it from "The Animator's Survival Kit". It's called anticipation, basically just means that before an action is performed there is an action in the opposite direction which means: Before we jump we crouch, before we throw a ball we wind up.

Next I would call cause and effect: Check this website http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/kley.htm. Disney stole there style from Heinrich Kley. Look at the picture of the parent monkey and kid monkey. Parent's got their tail up raised to whip the kid and he's crying. Look at the loop of action created, you start with whipping tail, then follow the eyes to kid's rear, then to his face and back up to the tail, he's being whipped continuously. They use this in comic books too, where you see someone who's COMPLETED throwing a punch then the other guy falling back.

Action performed from left to right is read faster than right to left.

Another thing to realize is that we use our arms, hands and legs to maniputlate things and ourselves. If you don't draw these parts then there can be no action.

For there to be action something must be done. Think up reasons for people to do something. The reason the drawings look stiff from 8/23 is because they're not doing anything. A guy has his arm out, why? A guy with arms overhead, why? Someone's kicking, Why?

Man, you'd be perfect for childrens books, your style kinda reminds me of those Scary Story books. Shit, I was supposed to study hands but now it's too late. Keep drawing and updating!

[Zebz]

DeNyed: Thanks for the comments. Are the eyes too far apart? I'm gonna have to do some research. I thought I was gettin' slightly better with that sort of crap. Thanks for pointing it out!

armando: Holy crap! What a great crit/comment! Dude, I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out. And yea, you're right. It's late and I have anatomy drawing tomorrow at 9 AM so I won't try and comment to much on what you've said now because I can barely comprehend what I'm doing at the keyboard. lol But I'm gonna digest it tomorrow evening and hopefully start applying. I get the gist of what you're saying tho. I guess I just need help getting ideas for what sort of action poses to draw, etc. Here's to loosenin' up! Thanks a ton. And I'm glad you like my art. It means a great deal to me that someone thinks some of this crap is acutally decent. And yea, actually, I'd like to work on some children's books sometime soon. Did I mention that in an earlier post? I think so. Oh well. Thanks again. Do you have a thread I can check out with your stuff? I hope you stick around. You're freakin' helpful. Ha!

Ok, so I've been hyped up on coffee and in between phone calls with my girlfriend and trying to figure out stuff for college tomorrow I worked on these paints with my Intuos. I have no clue what I'm doing with a tablet so be warned. Plus, the first I sort of ran out of juice and it's incomplete in many places. But I'm so slow at digi-painting it sucks. But the second one turned out kind of neat. Too busy though. Just experimenting to see what I can do. I'd like to get better with my color/paint work since I have no eye for it now. Here's the crap for ya'll. The first is the boy/bull sketch attempted to be colored. The second is just random. Both are Photoshop. Critz and comments appreciated.



Tomorrow I start my second day of my Senior year at Uni. I have almost all drawing classes this semester as that's my degree. I'm so pumped to have a drawing class with one instructor, I actually started earlier today (ok, yesterday now) and I'm so in awe of this dude. Check out his stuff and tell me you wouldn't want to learn from this guy! (www.victorwang.net) God willing I'm gonna improve a ton this semester. I'm going to be drawing tons, that's certain. Eh, bed is calling. Thanks for droppin' in. I've gotta get my sleep schedule back in order.

Ry

[maxetormer]

Yo ZebzFree I see you have been loaded with critics and advise,
heck I think I just picked up sum good advice from the critic
armado did of you work good stuff.

Your doing lost of improvement lately, you shading is
becoming more and more solid on you ballpoint sketchs and
you full body figures are looking more and more losse and
natural.

Im reall blow away by this one

sb1.gif

great sence of bluk and the expresion, the material of the sword
and furr of the ape are spot on, way to GO man!!!

My personal nick picks

You still aligning most of your eyes on line, and that flattens most
of your faces rember that everything is realted to a horizon and
vanishing point hence the eyes should be on cilinder on perspective,
your 3/4 view heads do show a great deal of volumen but the
frontal views become very flat (I have lots of trouble doing
straight frotal portraits as well ) this one is a a good
example of what i mean:

sb20.gif

The bull´s head look 2D I asume that you did not maked
a geometric construccion with basic shapes to alocate
the bulls features, and the boys head looks flat as well,
the snout of the bull should be upper, if the kid is below the
horizon too we sould be able to see his legs and for that
matter the top of the bulls body as well, right now
you are using a supeposition of planes to generate
a sence of deep but its not working because of all the
perspective inconsistencies.

Lighting is too soft and disperce as well, pick a light
source and put some good deep darks on you paitings
(I have tons of trouble with this same issue
Im a cronic soft shader, but we must loss the fear
to add sum good contrast )

You place the eyes the nose and the mouth to close to
the center of you faces in most of your drawings, Im
aware that people have diferent distances on thier face
features but you do this in all most all of them,
the features should divide the head in 1/3 form the
top of the head to the beginig of ey brows, 1/3 from the
eyeborw to the nose and 1/3 from the nose to the chin,
appy this formula of standard head creation to your heads
and you will see what I mean.

Thats all I got for now, again this are the same things
I keep repeating to my self and I might be wrong in more
that one thing so do take my advise with a sack of salt

Keep droping the goods and keep the studing fun UP!!!

[thirdeye]

Nice stuff Zebz. I spot some anatomy flaws but nothing you cant work out with time. Like the last one - it's very graphic. Try maybe cleaning it up a bit.

[Flaskpost]

Whoa man! I´love to look through your sketchbook irl. I can imagine it would be amazing! Great stuff here! Keep posting mate!

[Zebz]

Max: I'm really glad you're seeing some progression. It's really been encouraging the past few months to create works that I feel somewhat happy with. I'm still longing for that fluidity and movement. But hopefully we'll ditch the static image trend sometime soon. Thanks for the critz as well. I'm really trying to make myself think about some of the things you and others have mentioned. I hope it shows, at least a bit! I'll keep pushin' on! You do the same, dude. Have a great time in Prague. I hate you for goin' without me. Just kiddin'. More power to ya. Throw back a couple for me.

Thirdeye: Thanks for the comments and crits! I appreciate 'em a lot. Yea, I have an anatomy class this semester and it's supposedly going to be the hardest class I've had in college according to my professor and fellow students so we'll see if that clears up some of my problems. It's nice to have a class devoted to studying things I'm too lazy to usually study. Hopefull that class will kick my stuff up a notch. And glad you like the last one. I agree it's messy. I always over do it. lol I'll see if I can do s'more. You keep workin' hard to! You've got a great thread over there.

Flakpost: Thanks, man. It's not that great to look at in real life anyhow. My classmates don't seem all that impressed. Keep up the work on yer end too, man. You'll get there.

Alright, I've been lazy with school starting back up. I don't have much to show for it really. I've been doodlin' mostly since I have 3 drawing classes that pretty much have been takin' the drawing out of me. But I'm trying to stay productive. I'll give ya a taste. I've got a lot of mindless doodles and crap I'm not posting but I don't think anyone would really want to see that sort of junk so here's a few things that seemed interesting. Thanks for keepin' up.

Max... you ordered some eyes studies and I think I'm starting to understand what you said about them curving around the head like a cylinder. Some of the faces worked better than others. I still need more variation in my faces. I need to do more eyes studies as well. But this one really helped. I noticed an improvment almost immidately when I figured it out. lol it's like a light just popped on! Thanks, Max!


I've been doodlin' a lot more than anything, trying to do the whole figures and crappy gestures of people from life and such. I'm really into the pen with these sorts of things and the brush pen I bought. Kind of fun but I'm really lazy when I'm doing them. The drawings are nearly thoughtless. So I'll just give you a couple to give you an idea. Also been doing quite a bit of mindless doodling from my head with the brush pen as well... but I don't think their very interesting. If you guys think so I'll post s'more. The first is a girl sleeping in my class today and the second is my art history class watching a video on Serraut. I've already seen it.



Like I said, I have an anatomy drawing class this semester and it requires us to keep a sketchbook just for anatomy and he wants it pretty much full by semester's end so you can expect more of this sort of stuff. I won't post all of the pages so far. The first one is more detailed and interesting. The second one is pretty much what a lot of the other stuff is right now, class notes and quick sketches, etc. But it's helping. My professor told us that most students want to learn to draw the head but he thinks that the pelvis is the most important part of the body. He's encouraging us to draw the pelvis first and the branch the body out after that. It's interesting way of starting. I'm hopin' it'll help me drawing more figure stuff from my imagination. Eh. Ramble. Sorry.



Thought I had posted this little quick marker sketch from this summer. Thought it was interesting.


And now two of the several drawings I've done for class thus far this past week/first week of classes. Having not had a drawing class in like 8 or 9 months I thought I did decent. And I haven't had figure drawing in like a year and half so tat was nice too. We've been concentrating on measuring and and finding angles and all that crap. Most of the other drawing are even more uninteresting then these. Both of these are unfinished, about 2 hours each. I'm moving pretty slowly I think but I'm picking up speed with each drawing. I think I'm working out the kinks. Been a while since charcoal. Sorry for the blurry photos... I suck at takin' pics of my stuff. It totally lost all the texture. I swear their a bit nicer in real life! lol Anyhow...




That's all she wrote, folks. Comments and critz appreciated. Hopefully I'll have another batch of crap soon. God bless.

~Ryan

[neoknocker]

Hey ZebzFree,
That is some really great studies. Quite Inspiring. I'll go hit my skethbook!

[arghmisfit]

welcome back zebz

you got some great sketchies in here, i heart 'nanas made me smile

as for crits some of your faces seem to have lots of space in the middle, dunno if u mean to do that or not

-argh

[Zebz]

Hey... thanks for the comments and critz. Glad you liked it Neo. Arg, good to see you too, bro! Keep your stuff up! You're lookin' great! I've been makin' all sorts of facial mistakes. I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the help!

I woke up late and ended up missing class and decided to just take the day to relax and get all my crap in order that I haven't had time for. I'm one busy mug. Also been really wanting to paint lately for some reason even tho I suck. Here's a speed paint in Painter. I wanted to go over it with color but kept getting crappy everytime. I may try s'more of these. Sinix has got me wantin' to get all over this tablet lately. So here's my humble first offering. Eh... ramble... get used to it. I do it often. Thanks guys.

Ry