The spectacle of an aerospace engineer attempting art!

[staylor]

Hidy Ho!
Just a quick little introduction before the sketches, my name is Sarah and I'm an Aerospace Major at college. Alas, engineering schools lack any sort of applied art courses so I'm stuck teaching myself. I don't intend to go into art for a career (I honestly would have more fun fiddling with instruments in a wind tunnel than drawing all day because I'm weird like that) but I really enjoy it as a hobby and it does come in terribly handy at times.

And now the sketches!
Here's a happy monster, you'll see him quite a bit.

And a recent space shuttle speedpaint.

An ink sketch of a demon thingy.

Another sketch of the happy monster, also called chimera.

A quick sketch done with sharpies.

And a really bad speedpainting.


I'll try to update as often as I can, but since school is beginning I don't know how much time I'll have.

[endercoskun]

liked the monstrosities. esp the 4th one. the shuttle painting is pretty nice too. the weakest is the last as you already said.

one crit, the legs of your monsters seems a bit small, as if they can't support the upper body.

keep it up the nice work.

[~Lover~]

Awww cute monster, tho i'm sure he would bite my head off if he got the chance. The sketch of Chimera was done really well because you can see every aspect of him. Post some more of him!
~Lover~

[staylor]

Thanks for the comments!
Ender- it probably is true that the legs are smaller than they ought to be. I have a bad habit of starting the torso in the middle of the page and running out of room when I have to do the legs. Like in the sketch below!
Lover- Thanks! I'll be posting more of Chimera soon.

And here's another creature from the Chimera universe. Since the 1970's people have known how to reanimate the dead. Problem is nobody can reanimate them well. The "zombies" are incapable of making goals and have to be told what to do. Naturally the government exploited this and started enhancing the bodies of the dead and giving injections of stem cells in the brain to enhance what little cognitive function they had. The zombies then made excellent soldiers and warriors. They feel no pain, have no mercy, and don't care if they die. This particular one was made for spying, Chimera gets to fight them.

[staylor]

Another cyborg-zombie. Once again I ran out of room for the feets. So I drew one next to him as proof I can draw feets. And he has no lower jaw.

[staylor]

Here's a slightly refined sketch. Done in gel pens. It's a biological spacecraft of sorts escaping from a black hole in a nebula. Or it's a demonic crow quill pen in a whirlpool. Depends on how you look at it. Mostly I was just fiddling around with inking techniques.

[MikeDunbarr]

You have a great grasp on anatomy... and your perspective work is fantastic!

[staylor]

That Fat Kid: Thanks for the critiques! I never realized there was any noticable problems with my hands, I'll start sketching them from life now. And I'lll start experimenting with real pencils, the mechanical ones I use don't shade too deeply.

Mike: That's odd, I thought perspective was one of my weaker points...
Anyways I'll keep working at it. I'm glad you like the anatomy!

Here's a speedpainting for the DSG, more experimenting with abstract backgrounds. The lighting was rather hard and I'm not entirely happy with it.


A sketch made during class. With jet-griffen creatures, a frankenstein dude, and a distorted face (blasted pen!).

[staylor]

Some new stuff...
A rather refined picture, still a sketch though. I was just having fun with letting myself go without having to worry about feasibility. Sometimes I have a tendency of overthinking my designs (but I guess that's why I'd make a better engineer than artist). Sharpie and gel pen over a quick pencil sketch. Also an attempt at making my pen work "clearer" as blackswordsman suggested.


Why does he have a gun? A really stupid looking gun. Which doesn't make sense because he's supposed to be able to fire energy beams without a gun. I guess I just wanted him to hold something. I fiddled with the levels in photoshop because I've noticed that my scanner dulls the contrast.

[staylor]

Anatomy!!! Every once in a while I try to refine my anatomy. I think I have the basics down, but there's alot of details I don't know.


And a suit of armor with an ancient fish, the name of which I can neither spell nor pronounce.

[staylor]

I really don't know what this guy is. Seems like some sort of organic robot to me.


And after reading up on the interesting device known as the supersonic propeller (which was ignored in favor of the jet engine despite excellent performance) I decided to create a supersonic Korean war era turboprop.

[Poohgee]

Cool stuff !

Really like ur daemon with a jet engine as a head ... sexy :-)

[Bomba]

You've got some good ideas... just need to fortify your anatomy understanding. If you can, study from life when possible. Believe me, it does make a difference. Keep going, you are on the right track.
-J-

[staylor]

Wheee! I've returned from vacation and finally have access to my computer!
Pooghee: Thanks!
Bomba: You're probably right. I've started drawing from photos recently and already I can see how much I need to learn.

And now for the artsy stuff!
Here's an unfinished picture. I erased the parts still in pencil, including part that went over the hand.


Here's a quick sketch of a photo of a skateboarder


The final inks of the jet head monster seen earlier in the thread


Random sketching (and an odd looking cat)


Attempts at dynamicism and composition. Alot of mistakes in this picture but at least I know what not to do.

[BAKI]

wow you make amazing monsters with beautiful pencil and ink work

[Brutillus]

Really sweet stuff!
I love your more finished pieces of monsters and crazy fantasy stuff. as far as "creature design" goes these are actually pretty crazy. I also like the primitive warrior with the spiked club and the cat thing in the background, it's more original in terms of character design than a lot of the ho-hum fantasy stuff I see all the time.
Although it looks like you've got an understanding of some basic muscle groups, I think you could benefit from a little deeper study of anatomy, even if it's just checking out a Hogarth or Bridgman book at the library. you're drawing skills are good enough that you could probably improve your anatomy pretty quickly.
I also like that you're not afraid to jump into crazy scenes or unusual poses.
I think it's pretty damn cool that we have an aerospace student on CA.org,
you could probably teach everybody a thing or two about spaceship design!
edit: that last one reminds me of frazetta, I'm sure you've seen his stuff.

Keep up the good work!
I'll be back for more

[staylor]

BAKI: Thanks!
Brutillus: Thank you! I just did another anatomy study, but I'll check out the books you recommended. I usually reference a college anatomy textbook, but it's becoming clear that it wasn't intended for art. And yeah, sometimes I do see some really unrealistic aircraft here, but unless they're aiming for reality I ignore it. Sometimes art comes first and realism second, I've slowly come to understand that (a long time ago I used to be a rabid aerodynamics critiquer!).
And I am terribly proud of being compared to frazetta

Here's an anatomy study. He's a particular superhero I made up. He may be one of the most powerful superhumans ever but he's rather useless. Anytime anything resembling a fight breaks out he runs in the opposite direction as fast as he can. Why? Any powerful impact causes him to start a nuclear reaction and fry anyone within twenty miles. He'll be perfectly fine but noone nearby will be. His body is so radioactive he even tends to irradiate any innocent bystanders. He does have the handy ability of forcing radioative materials to decay, so the government occaisionally evacuates a nuclear powerplant so he can remove the radioactive waste (seen here), but the rest of the time he's stuck in a heavily shielded bunker alone and depressed. Poor guy doesn't even have genitals

[staylor]

More sketches from pictures. I love the kitten. The man's hand is too long though.


And another fun sketch. I'm practicing with larger pens now, though I love the .2mm microns I feel that it may be letting me fiddle with details as opposed to working with the entire composition.

[staylor]

I can't believe I'm doing this...

It's the beginning of a comic. I figure it might be a good way to practice doing different things and to become more flexible. They won't be too spectacular, just quick drawings. It follows the picture in the previous post. Hopefully it's clear and readible.

[dCepT]

Good lookin' out! You obviously let your work seep into what you make.. I'll show some of this to my brother..hehe.. he's an airplane-mechanic, going to be a technician this year I think.. He'll blow a wad! He's in love with WWII-fighters..hehe

Poses on your characters are a bit stiff... if they're standing still try for example an exaggerated contrapose (don't know if that's the correct term..) to loosen up the way they come across.

That probably didn't make sense, but I'll leave it there just in case.

peace

d-C

[TGping]

about your comic- there's nothing wrong with using a regular douple lined border for the frames, its less gimmicky. try changing the angle of the scene within the frame, like tilt the horizon. having the characters basically the same size throughout tends to be boring, but you haven't really fallen into that yet.

above all, you are telling a story, try and make it so that the audience can understand what's going on without the use of words. even if you are using words.

so I think you are off to a good start for your first comic.

[staylor]

Young Paddy1: Thanks for the comments. Because this is my sketch thread I really tend not to spend much time on this stuff. I do come back alot to my more finished pictures. And I agree with what you said about the squadron picture, maybe I'll fix that.

dCepT: Airplanes are awesome, and WWII warbirds were even more awesome, I'm glad you enjoyed it (and hopefully your brother will too!). I'll have to look into what you said about poses, I definitely need to get better at them.

TGping: Thanks for the critiques. I'm not using the normal border lines because the comic is just a quick ink drawing, it's easier for me to do some quick messy lines than pull out a ruler. I will keep that in mind though. I'll also try to "liven" up my scenes.

And here's a birthday gift for my mother. She likes Japanese prints and I decided to do one in that style for her. It was stained in tea for several hours to get a yellow aged look.

[staylor]

Alrighty, here's the completed inks of something I've been working on. I think I'll add some ink washes or gray marker coloring. I'm not that practiced with creating ink backgrounds so I decided to go all out. This was also an experiment with trying to get the foreground pop out from the backgound with darker colors and thicker lines. It worked partly, better than the previous stuff I've done but there's still a ways to go.

It's not really a sketch but it isn't done yet so I'll put it here.

[T-Raktor]

I really really like this one: perspective and all. The first of your works look a little sloppy, but they show improovements. And i really like your imagination. Keep it up!

[staylor]

Boogieman: I forgot to comment on what you said earlier, sorry about that! But yeah, drawing while studying engineering is hard. I think both hobbies of mine have suffered because of it. I am doing some more anatomy studies though, once I scan those I'll put them up.

Inkfish: I never thought of doing that in my sketches, I'll have to keep that in mind on the next ones!

T-raktor:Thanks! It's good to hear that i'm improving!

I've got some more sketches that I'll try to scan in later, but I did finally get my camera hooked up to the computer, so here's a few paintings done for my junior project (don't ask me how I mananged to get a painting project at an engineering school, I'm not really sure how it happened but I'm glad I did!)





I guess they both kinda look like stereotypical new art student paintings, but they sorta are. I've learned alot from these (mostly what NOT to do) and I hope that over the summer when I have access to an airbrush and much more time I'll make better paintings.

[TGping]

that last piece is incredible... but here s an oppurtunity where the ruler would've been helpful. specifically on the left hand building, it seems to be leaning right a little.

you know what I really like? its that it seems you know how to use ellipses, quite refresshing actually.

[staylor]

TGping: Thanks! And you are right about the building. I used a ruler for the initial pencil sketch but didn't do so for the pen outline, and it strayed a bit. Now I'm using rulers everywhere!
As for the ellipses...are you talking about the wheel? I did that freehand, but years ago all I drew was cars at car shows. It taught me a couple tricks about drawing tires and other such cylinders.

And here's another quick .2mm micron pen sketch! No underlying sketch, no reference, just a terribly detailed doodle. A bit of practice with hands, because I'm not so good at them.

[staylor]

Wheee! Page two!

And here's a doodle of a freaky jet man.


I'm going to have to do some life studies, things have been really busy for me recently though. Maybe I'll get some done over christmas break.

[Hypronost]

Inspireing sketches you got here man!
I really like your style.
I'd love to see some more of the finished up sketches.

[invinciblewombat]

Love the monsters you've got here, especially the one with a human face for a forehead. Can't wait to see the final finished piece of the demon fight either. the only real crit i have is on the airplane drawings it looks like they're just hanging there becasue the propellers don't appear to be moving. Otherwise great job and keep it up