Fishspawn's Journey

[Fishspawn]

More work. I think the first update was about 1.5 hours of work, this was probably another 1.5.

[Sepulverture]

Looking good man. keep at 'er.

[Fishspawn]

sepulverture - thanks

Whoops, forgot to post these. Still workin' on that pencil rendering - can you guess which of the lips are from ref and which aren't? Face is weird on purpose... i actually don't think it's weird enough.

[Fishspawn]

More sketches from the last couple of days. Trying to come up with weird airship designs for some friends. All rough quickies done at school. Except the ninja pirate... that was just for fun.

[Fishspawn]

Here's a few bones and a closeup of a sketch i'm working on.

[Lee W]

some nice ship concepts did good with the lip studies too

[paberu]

Hey Wes, good updates. I'm liking that pirate character - you should take him into photoshop/painter and get him coloured up! Keep it up

[jdeegz]

yeah dude, that pirate dude is sick.

[Envisor]

I just got through your sketchbook and Ive got to say youve got an awesome style. But Ive noticed that most of your sketches didnt take more than a hr or so, and it seems you rush thorugh alot of them. Only tip is to start taking more time on some of your pieces. Like take more time on developing form and figure for your characters and for your ship concepts which I really enjoy looking at. Keep up the good work.

[Blue Severin]

Spend some time on these getting as much right as you can. Stuff looks hurried. A quick crit on the spaceships, draw perspective lines as all the wings are out of perspective. The digis and lips look pretty good, more developed stuff like that would be sweet.

[Fishspawn]

Oldnoobie - thanks

rayk - Thank ye - may do that...

jdeegz - thank you

Envisor - Thanks, working on the taking-my-time thing as well as developing form more carefully... but i do love those quick sketches

Blue Severin - Yeah the ship concepts were pretty rushed mostly, will try to work on my perspective, more developed stuff on the way

I think this was a 1.5 hr speed. Ref used for the helmet... had no idea how to draw it. Otherwise it was from memory (mental snapshot from life today that i sketched out.)

[Lee W]

nice pose, form and lighting

[paberu]

Wes that last one is looking great, work a bit of red into skin tones with a multiply layer (learned from idiotapathy). Otherwise looking cool, though the boob looks to have sagged a bit too much.

[arvalis]

The right arm looks pretty good as does the torso and head, but the other arm and the legs are far below calibre. Im not sure how tall she is supposed to be, but with these proportions she appears to be around five feet tall. You need to start working more on your ability to put a character together, i think you are all to lax about the process. I seem that way now but i spent years being a perfectionist and i feel i have earned the right to draw lazily. Start learning what makes a character look powerful, its more that just pose its heavily influenced by proportion and design. I think you also need to start drawing bigger, you designs and pictures always look small and less grand due to the size of your pictures. They can be very large on a computer but if they started small it shows. I respect your ability to draw at all hours of the day, but how about instead you draw less and focus all that drawing energy into one picture. The phrase quality over quantity comes to mind with every one of your updates. I know you hear that you need to spend more time of your pictures from everyone, but this is very important to what makes a successful artist. Let alone being successful, to even get a job you need to know how to finish your pieces and do it well. I think you and i should have a drawing session where we just draw for a couple hours and in that time i want you to work on one larger piece or at least draw a picture that you like. How does tomorrow work for you, or wednesday?

[Fishspawn]

Oldnoobie + Rayk - Thanks guys

Arvalis - Thanks for the advice - but the problem is that its entirely taste. You constantly want to design characters - i just draw. It doesnt always have to have a purpose when i set out or when i finish, and i often draw normal, simple people just for practice/fun.

I feel like i need to adress the whole quantity vs. quality issue in my SB. Yes, most of this sketchbook is quickies (it is a sketchbook after all. Yes, i prefer drawing fast. I do tend to value quantity over quality by default - i like changing the subject and starting over. However, i think my sketchbook is deceiving as to how i've changed. See, as i've gotten better, i've gotten better at drawing quickly. And as i've progressed over the last year, i've devoted more and more time to finishing drawings and taking my time.

So at this point i'm about 50/50 time spent on quickies vs. longer drawings. But it doesn't look like that here because one long drawing takes many sparse posts of the same thing to finish, meanwhile i produce lots of other stuff. So it looks like it's 90% fast stuff, but in reality thats just because there's a lot more of it - because its faster.

Also, i tend to have more opportunities to do fast work (in the car, at school, etc) so i can fit it in whenever possible - its all about the pencil miles That said, i'm still working on my patience/ability to continue when i've "hit the wall".

More work on this one - here's the process i used. I agree with the crits about the pose, and i decided it would be best to just go to silhouette format to get one down and fix proportion issues. When i was happy with it, i tried a new coloring technique and did a lot of airbrushing, trying to pull the lights out of the shadows. Then i used some various layer types to color, threw in the alt. light and did some cleanup. I'd guess i spent about 5 hours on it today... not sure though, i was really relaxed.

[guitarjames]

hey,
New stuff is looking good, I prefer the old one to the new one because this one the rendering is to soft and her arms look out of place to the shoulder.
keep it up.james.

[Fishspawn]

guitarjames - thanks for the crits. I was going for soft rendering (to offset my usual roughness) but i see what you mean about the shoulders. It was supposed to be a poofy-shouldered jacket, but that doesnt really come off in the final version.

Sorry for the absence, was in Laguna Beach registering for my classes next fall, it's going to be a fun year

Didn't get much drawing done but i did doodle while in the car for a while, hence the roughness. Anyway, planes from ref in green colored pencil and normal mech pencil, and a girl from my head. Trying to find other angles/poses than what i usually throw out.

[Lee W]

very nice planes nice work on the girl from the bird eye view too though I think the shoulders could be a little wider.

[jdeegz]

no harriers!? they are my favorite maybe because its the only plane i cna spot.

[Fishspawn]

oldnoobie - thanks

jdeegz - heh, just going through a book of reference, i'm sure i'll get to harriers sometime

Here's a school doodle in ballpoint pen.

[guitarjames]

Hey,
Some of those planes are nice , on the last update the legs/feet look a little of balance maybe do some bone studies.
keep it up .james

[Fishspawn]

guitarjames - thanks, bones on the way

This one took me probably 2 hours to draw and then i did a quick color.

[Fishspawn]

Figure drawing tonight. A bunch of 1-2 min warmups, with a 5 minute one somewhere in there. Then there was a long pose, but i really couldn't get it so instead - you guys are really going to hate this - i decided to study it from a few different perspectives, so most of those are 20 min or less drawings. The last one i did i think i finally got it so my studies worked

I have been spending a lot of time trying to digitally color that girl in armor a couple of posts up, but so far i keep changing it so much that nothing has been worth posting. It probably won't even resemble the original when i get it to a place where i can post it.

[Lee W]

good work on the last life drawing I would suggest thinning the lower part of the leg (particularly the part under the calf muscle) and feet a bit ....

[JERI]

Hey Fishspawn sorry for the very late reply. You've had lots of updates since I last checked. Either I have been away for too long or you've been working very tirelessly

For the biker, I really think the hard shadows you had in #581 looked much better.

[paberu]

Hey wes, awesome progress with lifedrawing! Forms are looking much more solid . I'd recommend doing some value studies, shading is looking a bit inconsistent (I need to do value study aswell >_< ).

[Fishspawn]

oldnoobie - thanks, yeah that's a problematic area for me...

JERI - more like working very tiredly... yeah i like the first one better too, just trying new things.

rayk - thank ye Yeah my values have problems - although i will blame some of it on the horrible paper in my current sb, scanner won't pick up the subtler details from it.

So, i have a story to tell. (yay?) I have been working on digital paints, as you can see from the first few images. The problem i have is that i don't think its worth rendering a drawing unless the drawing itself is already dramatic. I'm tired of static poses. So i often start painting over a sketch and then i want to change it - sometimes i erase over it completely and start anew. Its not just this one either, many of the paints i've posted the early stages in and never finished i have dozens of drafts of like this.

I decided to change this by just focusing on poses for a while. Part of my problem is that i try to think up poses from my head and get frustrated because they aren't clear yet (silly brain!) so i furiously draw faster and come up with even more junk. So after the digis are a couple of feeble attempts at that - although i like my ninja cowboy idea... I might have to do a series of ninjas.

So after being frustrated with those boring/badly drawn poses i switched to drawing mitsurugi from Soul calibur, but that didn't really catch my interest for some reason... i don't know why. Then i dug up my old How to Draw Manga Pose Resource Book - Vol. 3... and i'm happy now. I had forgotten how many great poses are in there, and they are actually drawn in a more realistic style than in most of those books, which was helpful for me.

The process i did is actually kind of backwards because i'm going to train myself to be able to construct poses. All i'm used to doing now is contour drawing, which makes good composition tough. So i did contour drawings of the figures (which i'm decent at when i'm drawing small) and then bubbled in some construction spheres afterwards - to train myself how to place them and what shape they should be. The last page is actually mostly reffed from TV, getting the pose idea in my head and quickly bubbling it in - so i think my studies helped to some degree.

Expect to see a lot more of these until i can draw dynamic poses out of my head

EDIT: These are really bright on my monitor... if they are too hard too see let me know and i'll mess with them in photoshop...

[guitarjames]

Hey,
Improvment!Woot, with some of the lifedrawings it almost looks as if they are being held up by strings, try and make them a little more grounded,last studies are looking good.
keep it up .james

[jdeegz]

i like the stages of descisions you went through for the girl.


-jimbo!

[arvalis]

Werent you gonna do some gun studies, your lack in the technological style department shines through brightly. It doesnt matter if you cant really detail a gun, you should at least know the proper silhouette for a gun.