Cthogua's Book of Sketching, now with 10% more nudity

[Cthogua]

Sunday afternoon piece. I called it commute. I could explain why I suppose...but I think anyone looking probably gets it

[danlambert]

Some sick subject matter going on here, and I'm liking the patterns and symmetry you throw in some of your images. You should do more COWs, that caterpillar one was great.
Peace!

[Cthogua]

A landscape doodle, done in Photoshop elements (what a nightmare) from imagination at my parents house about 2 weekends ago.

Danlambert: Thanks for swinging by and I'm glad ya dig the work...and you're right I should do more COW/EOW/CHOWs I'll see about getting on that soon.

[Cthogua]

Another "Lunch" photo study. Kinda half assed the foliage on the trees, but I was just wanting to wrap this up and move on as I've been fiddling with it for several days at this point.

[Cthogua]

Started this, drunk, last night...Sara saw something else in it, so I went with that. Kind of a Frazetta tribute I suppose, and it's forcing me to get better at painting women. I've repainted her face 3 times so far, and will probably again...it seems kind of generic now. Also that pose is a toughie without reference, and there's some questionable things happening that I'm going to need to look at some photos or get my wife to pose for. Anyway, WIP

[Cthogua]

continued working on it

[Cthogua]

kept working on the face and anatomy of the pose. Getting better..I think

[jackpot_anjr90]

Looking good! Really like your environment pieces. The latest one is looking good too...though I think the proportion of her torso is off. Her ribcage seems way too long which seems to be throwing off the proportion of the lower part of her body as well. Did a sketch to correct some anatomy problems over your piece...hope you don't mind. It's easier to show than to explain.

[Cthogua]

Jackpot: Thanks for swing by the sketchbook, and many thanks for the paint over. Since it was an imaginary sketch it started with some anatomy/perspective errors that later become much more evident, it's funny how once you see an anatomy issue and fix it, looking back at how it was before you want to slap yourself at how obvious and horrible it looks So yeah I continued work on it, mostly trying to resolve those issues you pointed out in the paint over. I'm pretty happy with the progress...I have to say she's definitely the sexiest thing I've ever painted Kind of a new thing for me...I was always kinda bad at painting women and female faces...however this has forced me to deal with my issues head on, step out of the comfort zone. When my wife first pointed out the figure in the mess of scribbles I was like, "that's a good idea, but I don't think I can paint it" but then I started and I haven't been able to stop working on it. There will definitely be more sexy ladies in the future. I'm also gonna start hitting up a local life drawing session this Tuesday again. Life drawing is one of those things that's scary at first, then I remember how satisfying it is. I don't think there's anything more "educational" an artist can do then drawing figures from life.

[Cthogua]

A label I made for a friends microbrewery. I realize it doesn't have all the legal stuff on it right now, but he's not actually selling it yet so it's more just to get something on the bottles. We'll get to the legalese soon enough. Hopefully there will be more of these in the near future.

[Cthogua]

Hehehe, so I totally misspelled Hefeweizen on that label, but alls well now, fixed and reprinted ;P

Anyway, I've trying to work on having better value "breakdowns" in my compositions. I've been looking at alot of painters and trying to break down whether it's a light foreground and dark BG, dark FG over a light BG, or a high contrast FG over a low contrast BG...todays lunch doodle...my god my posing is terrible (adds to list)

[Cthogua]

Had a rough day, but enjoyed making this doodle. I'm also diggin Whit Brachna's brushes...feels so natural

[Cthogua]

Some concepts painted from imagination for personal 3D Environment Art portfolio projects. (got laid off with most of the rest of my company)

Anyone needing an environment artist/concept artist, I'm lookin!

[wheezy]

Good stuff man! I see you finally updated your website too! Are you still with destineer?

[Cthogua]

Good stuff man! I see you finally updated your website too! Are you still with destineer?

Actually I got laid off along with 90% of the staff. So I'm hitting the digital pavement searching for jobs...got one art test, and then fucked that up by mismanaging my time and finishing the first part really well, but not actually finishing the second part lesson learned on that. I've applied a bunch of other places and I'm basically just waiting to hear back and working on stuff for my portfolio. Here's a batch of shrooms I painted up yesterday and the day before. I've been trying to sort of crank out some objects. It allows me to focus on my form and lighting...then I tried to paint a whole scene and felt like a kindergartner All things in their time I suppose...but its nice to have the unemployed time to just paint my face off.

[Sepulverture]

Hey there. There's a lot of creativity and expressiveness in this aketchbook here. Kind of inspirational. Keep up with the nice sketches, will drop in from time to time and check out what you've got going on

[TASmith]

I like your creativity! One thought. On the fantasy babe lounging in the wilds - I like the first WIP because of the contrast of her skin - the highlights. She seems wet, either from sweat or swamp muck, who knows but it ties in with the environment, and accentuates her curves. The subsequent updates are muted. Decide whether you want her shiny or not and then stick to it.

[Cthogua]

Hey guys! Thanks for swingin by my corner of CA. The positivity is definitely appreciated, I can get pretty down on myself sometimes. Also this recent bout of unemployment has left me with too much time to think when I should be painting. When I got laid off I though..WOW now I'll have all this time to draw and paint...maybe I'll even pick oils back up! However somehow it seems like every day the time just slips away from me. But that's just me making excuses really. I do have some work from a recent art test to post but I'm kind of waiting for the Art Director to have a look and get back to me before I make the stuff public. I got all the stuff together, and sent it in on Friday, only to get an email back from the HR lady that the AD would be out of the office on vacation until mid next week (this week) I'm pretty excited about the prospect though...it would mean moving from modeling/texturing environment art, to doing concept art full time, which is really the dream. In lieu of my own art work for now I will post links to two guys blogs who have recently blown my head open with their amazing artwork and really made me want to push harder to become as good of an artist as I can be.

Seth Engstrom

Nathan Fowkes

[Shard]

awesome stuff dude..mushrooms are ace makes me want to paint some too!! sorry to hear about your job, and good luck for this new position!! looking forward to see what you cooked for it!

[Cthogua]

Still kicking around, looking for a job. Had a couple of things pop up, but so far nothing seems to have worked out. Keeping at it though. In the meantime I painted this cover for a Tampa area, brutal death metal band, Exophagy. Keep in mind it's a wrap around cover/back kinda thing and will have the bands logo and title on the front, and song list on the back. Oh yeah, and the maggots never really got finished because the painting ended up being cropped somewhat to fit on the cover. It's also not going to be in like Walmart or anything so the gore isn't an issue...for them the gorier the better. It took me longer than I would've liked, but I learned ALOT doing it. I think this is the most elaborate illustration I've ever worked on. To be honest I'm not entirely happy with the pose of the main guy...I'd like to just redesign him from the ground up, but time didn't really allow for that, plus the band is super stoked on it anyway, and has already said they want to use me for their merch.

[Cthogua]

Here's another cover I'm working on for a friends band "Rapegoat" Basically he liked that old piece I did with the girl, but I didn't like the BG as I thought it was too much, and unbalanced, value-wise (Thanks Drew ) So I tried to create a simpler value structure and a sense of hierarchy (still working on that) in the piece. Also I made it square to fit the single panel printing template. When I was adding the extra pixels I figured out to make it square I needed to add 6.66 inches to the width...got a kick out of that.

Oh yeah...thanks for swingin' by Shard!

[Cthogua]

Update on the Rapegoat. The text is temporary, and the side bar will have an tiling decorative pattern incorporating the name RAPEGOAT.

[Cthogua]

Played around with the layout some more. It's meant to be campy, but more overtly satanic than a Misfits kind of thing.

[Cthogua]

Rapegoat final. I've been doing a lot of pen and pencil drawing lately and unfortunately I don't have ready access to a scanner. I have to go to Kinko's for one and it just bugs me to pay for a scan that I used to be able to do, and probably tweaked better than the dude at the Kinko's manages. Anyway I've been doing tons of what I've been calling "shape exploration thumbs" experimenting with a scribbly shape generation method. Basically I'll make some sort of semi-automatic strokes and shapes with the pen or pencil, lightly. Then after I've drawn a sort of mess of shapes on top of each other (typically 3 to 5 seconds worth of scribbling, not frantically, but quickly and with minimal intention) I'll draw a much heavier, or pen, outline around the silhouette of the scribble, and sometimes choose some of the internal shapes to outline as holes or negative space. Once you can see the shape I find them immensely inspiring, sort of a pencil version of Andrew Jones' Painter chaos. They look like spaceships, guns, heads, alien plants, anything you want really...and turn them 90 degrees and bam...they're something else. Like I said....I need to get a scanner.

[Cthogua]

Box Wine + 5am + some old artwork =

[Cthogua]

A painting that emerged from some shape brush tests. Definitely inspired by Vyle and Sparth. I originally titled it Tryptamine Palace, which is actually the title of a book I saw the other day about this guys experiences on 5-MEO-DMT, an extremely potent hallucinogen derived from the venom of the Sonoran Desert Toad. The idea was that the blue nervous system guys were like astral bodies, projected from their biological source by means of tryptamine technologies into what is basically another dimension ruled by Multidimensional Insect Overlords. I decided to change the title to Astral Citadel, to remove the drug reference for portfolio posting, and out of respect for the book as well. Hope someone looks in this dark little corner occasionally...seems my usual visitors have dropped off. Probably better things to do anyway

[drd]

Thats a kickass album cover dude. Have you already totally finalized it? Personally I don't love the text a whole lot if you're going for a black metal feel. It could be cool if it was more Sleep/Electric Wizard-esque though.

Nice sketchbook man.

[Cthogua]

Thats a kickass album cover dude. Have you already totally finalized it? Personally I don't love the text a whole lot if you're going for a black metal feel. It could be cool if it was more Sleep/Electric Wizard-esque though.

Nice sketchbook man.

Thanks man, yeah it's done. He wanted it still kind of loose and in black and white for cheaper printing, and he really liked the text actually. They aren't really a black metal band, more like a thrash/punk band with satanic lyrics.

Anyway here's a random painting from the day after Christmas. Turns out a receding forest is tough nut to crack! I'm really not all that happy with the way the trees turned out, but I decided to just call it done and move on for now.

[Cthogua]

Haven't posted anything in a bit, mostly been working on updating my 3D skills in hopes of returning to the lands of employment...however the path has thus far eluded me. I actually had an in person interview that went really well, they flew me out across the country even. After the interview the CEO told me they'd be sending out offers around the second week of Feb, and in a later email even said "we'll be in touch soon" However the second week rolled by with nothing but silence on their end, perhaps its a bit soon to assume the negative, but with each passing day the silence grows a bit louder Gotta keep trying I guess. Anyway here's a bit of what I've been working on. I also did a page of value/composition thumbs for practice...any advice here would be massively appreciated...I'm feeling a bit like I'm in a vacuum of late.

[Cthogua]

A Kekai inspired doodle