Gloominatis stuff -march 5th

[zryanart]

Great movie stills again! Keep it up!

[f1x]

^hum spam bots have come a far way...

On topic: those game of thrones studies are superb!!

[Gloominati]

zryanart- thanks

f1x- hehe yeah but he/she/it actually bumped my thread, so that'S cool Thanks!

Soooooo well I didn't post any studies since I had to get some stuff outta the way which needed to be taken care of for some time now, so now that this is done I can focus on my goals and the deathlinechallenge again.
Also, I spend some time to reevalue my goals and actually realize that they probably weren't the best ones to reach the "big one", meaning being able to work fulltime freelance until november this year. Until now my plan was primarily to focus on studies improving my skills FOLLOWED by personal work, improving my portfolio. After thinking about it for a bit I came to the conclusion that for me right now, or even for everybody in general it might be a way better idea to handle this the other way arround which means focusing on personal portfolio work followed/supported by focused studies. I kinda feel that "studying" has become quite a strange thing on forums like conceptart.org and other communities in general. People and especially starting artists tend to focus exclusively on "studies" making them their comfortzone, completely neglecting the most important factor of actually using them to improve in work that is done from mind. I kinda found myself in that situation as well, not too heavily but just enough to realize that I just don't get as much out of them as I could.
So for me the new way I am gonna handle my personal goals will be to focus on personal work, followed by studies to improve my skills where it's needed the most to complete a piece of work.
With this piece I actually managed to turn the bad habit of mindless studying arround just in the right moment. So what I wanted to do was to actually apply all the stuff I've learned out ot the moviestills in a personal piece, without knowing what the personal piece would be the time I did them. But I think it worked out quite nicely in the end, and I really wan to get deeper into these overcast/rainy/snowy greyish lightschemes, it's just wicked fun to paint that stuff
Oh one thing I have been noticing as well is that my workflow is actually getting faster and faster, kinda strange that this is the first time that I am really figuring out ONE way to work, until now I have basically just been doing anything, figuring stuff out as the process proceeded. Feels kinda nice to actually have control over the process

[Tugelbend]

Ooh, so much detail. Very cool.

@your post
My thoughts exactly! Plus it's much more fun to mainly do personal work.

[p sage]

Cool piece, man!

I've posted something very similar in my SB too... what I'm finding is that although (for me) it might be the best way, it's hard to stay on a regimen of being creative. It's easier to stay in a regimen of study, because you know what you're going to do ahead of time. So it becomes more difficult, in the end, to do a lot of work.

But I absolutely agree that it makes more sense to try and do imaginative work first, and then study the things that aren't working. Maybe there's a way to keep the output high while doing things that way.

Always love reading your thoughts and realizations.

[Gloominati]

just a quick sketchy maybe pointless update. Just the sketch for the new piece I started today, really looking forward to paint the shit outta it

Gonna try to apply the knight studies I did a few weeks ago, also I just fucking love knights mmmmmmmmmh

[Somelar]

Really good photo studies. I like the way you handle the colors. Last one looks promising

[tronrobot]

Hey man great studies and i love that last one, so much detail. I havent seen a hole lot of your thread but ive read some of your blog, great reads inspiring indeed soon ill take the time to go through your entire thread peace man

[andres333]

crazy texture work man! just keep doing it

[theUNKNOWNsketcher]

Great sb! keep it up

[Gloominati]

Somelar- thanks man

tronrobot- thank yooou

andres333- thanks sir, yes I will

theUNKNOWNsketcher- thanks


soooo hey everybody, just a quick studyupdate with some knights and armour and stuff. I started painting the sketch from the weekend and fucked up so hard, not getting done anything that I actually decided to take a step back, doing some more studies and then hit it again.
So hard, so bad, and still so rewarding, gonna keep doing these for the rest of the week and then give my knight-piece another shot

First one around 3 hours, second 2 hours.
More stuff tomorrow

[wasabi89]

Awesome SB man
The progress you made from page 1 to 32 is Outstanding
dont ever dare to stop drawing sir
and keep it up!

cheers

[p sage]

Awesome approach. You're doing it.

[PieMonster]

Super stuff man, really liking your new approach to things.

[Gloominati]

wasabi89- thanks a lot, nope not going to stop

p sage- thanks, not sure though at the moment

PieMonster- thanks

Sooooooo todays shitstudies. the concept behind these is pretty easy:
Basically trying to simplyfy more and more trying to get into the very basics of what makes stuff read (lightingsituation, form, material). The more I simplify without loosing the overall impression the less I will have to memorize in order to reproduce it from my head. Sounds logical, seems to work, so I'll keeep doing it

[kiwigarbage]

Whoo! Juicy stuff.

lighting studies are definitely working. It doesn't take much for the eye to register form...Just be careful that those thin highlights don't waiver where they shouldn't, and throw off the rest of the form!

[Gloominati]

kiwigarbage- thanks, good point!!

soooooooooo here are todays studies, still pretty bad but I think I am starting to actually get things so more tomorrow
A dynamic drapery study where I basically tried messing around, not using pressure sensitivity and especially not using teh eyedropper tool at all but just trying to pick the color I want from the colorpicker every time. Quite a intense learning experience

[Forrest_I]

I love these knight studies, very well done. Do you have a specific site you know of to find the reference pics or do you just use google images?

[prsnsweeney]

love that armor studies and your theory of simplifying makes sense. Did you go to school or have a degree in art or do you plan on getting a job based off your portfolio, i ask because im going to school right now for animation but i feel that putting together a good portfolio would be better than having a degree

[KT]

Wow, really great stuff Gloominati!I didn't get the drapery joke until I watched yesterday's stream. Anyway I hope you succeed in your deathline goals.

[Nele Klumpe]

The not using the eyedropper exercise sounds logical. Need to try that too.
Great studies, the armor looks great, I like how it looks so glossy and shiny
Keep up the hard work

[Sickbrush]

have a beer!

[Gloominati]

forrest- thanks, well its actually just google and flickr, check out my blog, I upladed a "refpack" so you can download it and have some refs

prnsswejwkldjasfhjklawer- thank you. nope no degree, I started going to artschool but escaped after a few months

kt- thank you

avis- thanks yeah and it's crazy helpful, cause you will realize how little "rendering" is necessary if you just nail the values

sickbrush- hell yeah!




hi guuuys, just a qucik scribbly update to compensate for not updating yesterday. SO this is actually my last armor study before jumping into my personal piece trying to use what I've learned. SO this one is crazy quick, maybe 20 minutes, focusing to get down the most important stuff as quickly as possible. and I think it actually worked really good, because all that's left is to basically just fleshing things out, there'S practically nothing really "wrong" with it.
Stuff like that always reminds me on what craig mullins said, that a sketch should be just as finished as a completely polished painting, it should be just a less refined version of it. This is actually everything I've been trying to do the last weeks, and I strongly feel that this is really starting to work out and I think this will be the key to getting startted intp the direction I want to go with my work

Oh and quite a bunch of people asked me about where I got my reference from for those knights I decided instead of being a dick and tell you to just use fucking google to invest 2 minutes of my time, packing the pics into an archive and upload it, so check out my blog for the link : http://cgbrush.org. SO get it, there are even nude chicks wearinga rmor in it (man there are some real weird fetishes out there outside my workroom)

[Malakuko]

Your armor is really great man! I love that you go in with hard strokes with that bristle looking brush, really gives an awesome traditional effect. I tried using some gaussian blur on my stuff and it reminded me of using water colors in a way. Do you think about that sort of stuff when your working?

[fudgeloaf]

Great studies mate, will be using some of your refs myself in the coming week cheers! also dunno if its personal preference or not but the amount of noise on the last study really throws off the metal texture, but the previous ones look dead on, watch out for that in the upcoming personal piece man!

[Yor]

Man you kickass! Have another beer !

[ClaretCrab]

nice work with metal! good job!

[Overtoom]

You.. are.. awesome.. Still doubletaking at some of your works. Your clouds, your armor paintings, your Bouguereau color study, they are all so amazing!

[Dilated]

argh man awesome stuff. And that post about just doing studies is so true, I've only come to realise myself I was falling in that horrible trap.

[Gloominati]

Malakuko- thanks man. well I don't think about making the digitals look like some sort of traditional media, it's more about fundamental designprinciples which do also apply to the kind of brushes you choose, like mixing very soft brushes with hard textured ones for example.

fudgeloaf- yepp youre right, all these noise and sharpen effects are just cheap tricks to make something look more interesting, I overdid it though in the last one

Yor- thanks man, you definitely deserve one too!!

ClaretCrab- thanks

Overtoom- thanks a lot!

Dilated- yepp studying just can become waaaay to comfortable


soooooo hi guys, some kind of rather boring update today but since I've been into the deathline challenge for roughly 5 weeks now I figured that it might be time to actually look back, seeing where I have failed, where I have succeeded and where my goals already might have shiftet.

So what went well?
One of the first things I did in november was to get everything set up with the tax office so that I am legally allowed to get additional income through freelance work by january 2012. This point was actually the first thing that gave me a little freakout because it might actually be that I get into trouble with the taxoffice if I don't achieve the amount of additional income I had to kinda guess in advance in 2012. So at this point it was clear that I was not allowed to fail, like at all

I actually got used to my rather crazy sleepschedule which basically means 6 hours of sleep each night in order to be able to work for at least 7 hours after my 8 hour dayjob every day. I feared that this amount of work would totally destroy me but surprisingly after the first week felt like dying I am now feeling way mroe healthy than before, I hope it stays that way

I started getting a bit of freelance work mostly through the jobsection here in the forums, which is supercool because I got way more offers than I would have expected. Within these 5 weeks I got 8 private-comission joboffers which is really cool.

After some struggle I did also start to overcome one more personal goal about which I don't want to talk about yet

So what went bad??
I still feel that I didn't balance the amount of work of studies/personal work/comissions well enough not getting the perfect focus, So I will be working on that

There is one big personal decision I really need to make, which I couldn't get past the last few weeks :
It's the question if I should move into a smaller(cheaper appartment in order to make the beginning of my freelace career smoother). Actually the answer would be quite simple because the only things that kinda keeps me from doing it are the facts that I just moved in 9 months ago, and put quite a bunch of money into renovating my apartment, and the fact that I just enjoy living in a place with mroe than enough room for me and my stuff. Moreover moving would have the advantage that I could save up even more money to start freelancing next year...
So this is the thing I am struggeling with right now quite a bit


So and last thing: which goals have changed?

Actually I amnaged to stay quite true to my goals in general, I changed the balance between studies and personal work towards doing way more personal work than studies or better said to do more focused studies to support my personal stuff.

One thing that I added to the goals list is kind of a personal thing which will help my art as well I believe:
I really want to get back into pencilsketching, and getting really good at it. Like I see so many guys whos sketchbooks are just soo awesome to look at and this is a skill I want to have as well, just for myself


In order to get to this goal, here are some sketchbook pages to get used to pencil and paper again (which is wicked hard).
So here are todays studies, half from ref, half from mind trying to apply what I've learned. I wanted to focus on torso foreshortening especially on the area around the trapecius since this part has been always crazy har for me to get right from memory. There are so many specific things going on there when the body is foreshortened depending on the position of the arms, it's crazy, but getting that area exactly right will convey space and form so much better than just bullshitting it.


OOOF long post, here are the shitstudies. Excuse the typos but typing that shit was exhausting enough, I dont want to correct it now

hmm the ones from memory actually tend to look better than the reffed ones