Tom Cardin's Sketchbook

[TomCardin]

Thank you Fishspawn!

Yup I learned a lot going back to my anatomy studies and less relying on my own mind for pin-up style figures. I am just a bit put off by being a copy machine, but thats my own demon to face. More anatomy to come!

But first I am going back to my dragon painting. I started this after reading the dragon thread...then found out I couldn't post to the dragon thread, I guess its closed. So its going here instead. These are the several stages of progress I have gone through so far, still a long way to go to final.

[TomCardin]

Another update on my dragon painting..."greeting the sun". Next is enlarging it and adding detail to the dragon which is still very plain.

[anubis713]

Hey! I love the last dragon on here!
A couple of the ladies are a bit off proportion wise.
But everything looks great!
Keep it up!

Great imagination too!

[Cold]

Hey Tom, nice reference and studied drawing you did there. My favourite execution of you so far, of the other are good too.

And welcome to 07

[saturniaus]

I really like your frog lady picture.

[Kronos]

hey man, incredible improvements! well done indeed! the nude is rendered very well but you say you're feeling uncomfortable? i don't know, but is it perhaps because you want to get a more painterly look? i think working on that would be really cool. its kindof a hard thing to work on, but try and see if you can get lots of information down with few gestural marks rather than the intense rendering you've been doing, not that there is anything wrong at all with what you've been doing, its great, but variety is NICE!

[SEspider]

Well done.
You have a nice style of your own. There's a lot of great art here.Well Done. ^_^

Going through them, I've noticed something. The dedatils seem kinda flat in a way. Don't get me wrong. It's clear that the images have depth, but small suttle details are missing.
Look at them closely and you'll see that some have no wrinkles or creases where there should be. Take yur frong drawing/coloring. There are bends in her pose, but at those joints the skin should have a few small winkles. remember, every creature has fat in it. even skinny ones like frogs.
Even your cool thumbnail painting looks a little odd without winkles in her bathing suit or skin.
You don't always have to draw these details in your art. Usurally shading/or coloring can add these little details.

As I said earlier, Very nice job. can't wait to see more.

[TomCardin]

Anubis713 - Thank you! I am really liking where this dragon is going as well, I should have a new update of it soon.

Cold - Thank you! I think I surprised myself with that piece. I was going to stop at the greyscale version in the previous post but I knuckled under and took it the rest of the way.

Saturniaus - Thank you! That was one of my first digital painting pieces and I learned a lot about what not to do on it...hehe.

Kronos - Glad you like it too! I would love to get a more painterly look to my work...what made me uncomfortable about this piece was just feeling like a copy machine. I was very focused throughout the work and happy with being able to maintain that state but the end result feels dry, though it was what I was aiming for. All reasons why I want to improve my digital painting abilities and that study gave me a nice kick in the pants.

SEspider - Thanks! I do need to work on clothing and wrinkles, I believe I will tackle a clothed figure for my next study.

Thanks everyone for checking out my sketchbook! I am thrilled! I just finished work on this week's COW...The final version is posted on the COW #72 thread, here I am posting a couple of the progressions I took:

[SEspider]

Very Beautiful and Unique.

[Orifice]

Seems you have gotten better on makin your stuff into hole pictures instead of fore and background. This last one I like alot. Very good concept, looks believable and cool. Good work.

[geldslaw]

wow, just love the development of your work and the style and mediums you express your ideas in. thankyou for sharing

[Cold]

Good effort on that last one. Seems like you payed attention to the light source a lot, which is good and shows, dunno myself if the colour selection is the right one, since i have no skill with it, i can't give you any good advice. Maybe the stone texture could have done with deeper and darker values, other than that good work overall.

[AztcFireFlower]

Now that's the most unique dragon I've ever seen.http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...1&d=1168076710
Excellent take on the blue mountain glider - great imagination!

[TomCardin]

SEspider - Thanks! I have tried to really define my own look for dragons, yet one that is shared among many representations...I built upon that and tweaked and pulled to arrive at this visualization - very fun to do...I am definitely in on more COW's.

Orifice - Thanks so much! It's a concerted effort of control to keep my vision of the composition from beginning to end...I am striving hard to make whole pictures. This is one area of painting that I am hoping to improve.

Geldslaw - Thank you for the kind words. I am finding so much inspiration here that at CA that I am almost overwhealmed. I try to create a better representation of the vision in my head with each painting I do.

Cold - So many things to figure out in a composition, I too was very happy with my lightsource. Color was tough, I have recieved other crits that I kept the color too limited to blue...but from the start I wanted to show the glider in its ideal hunting environment, a bright high sun...And I didn't see brown dirt mountains...so my palette reflects my imagination of the creature in its environment. I am hoping people will understand this from the description given in the text. I overworked the mountain peak and I am probably the least happy with that portion of the image, deeper shadows and more form are in order.

AztcFireFlower - Thank you. I grew up with fantasy books and fantasy role playing games...my friends when I was a teenager all had favorite fantasy beasts and I chose the dragon hands down as my iconic creature. A dragon painting for me is a labor of love and an effort to share my visualization of these creatures. I am glad you liked the glider...though its a lesser dragon form its still a dragon and its a success story for it has regained something that was lost to other lesser dragons, the sky.

Whew this puppy is almost done...I am going to go one step larger, to 1600x1200 for the final image, but for now here is this:

[TomCardin]

Yikes! Voting has started on COW #72...I am gonna go have some kittens. Hope I have a shot...I think I held to the topic well - Blue Mountain Glider.

Kinda bummed that there are a lot of entrants that are levitators floaters and wing flappers...seems they are going off topic a ways.

Anyhow if you're reading this, go vote for your favorite!

Ahh and COW #73 has just been posted. I am going to go get started on that!

[TomCardin]

Hmm...This weeks COW is strange..I am having a hard time getting away from the female form as representing beauty. I have to run this thru my head a few more times, but its hard when I think of hairy beauty.

A beautiful hairy creature, what is it? Beautiful to whom? Hmm it sure seems that it would have to be beautiful to a human eye to be labled such. I could make something that I could SAY was beautiful to an alien eye but would that meet the criteria of the COW, or better yet, would that get votes?

Here is a scan of some pencil sketches I did today between meetings at work...I think they are dead ends, too human...but I might grab one and go with it anyhow if nothing else comes to mind soon.

[TomCardin]

Ok back on the computer...Couple thumbnails later I might be getting somewhere with this hairy beauty.

Came up with a hairy bug that didn't look too scary...but it more on the "cute" side.


This is more promising, its a Jovian Light Dancer...living deep within the clouds of Jupiter where darkness is eternal and temperatures are only a few degrees above freezing...this is an early glimpse of one of these elusive hairy beauties.


no colors available at this distance and resolution, will try to get a better image with the bigger scopes on the next revolution.

[Listing]

good start here. To sharpen your quality (and notion of forms) do more from life. I'd like to see a self-portrait or some social sketches.

[TomCardin]

Image downloaded from Deep scan scope 1:

...Radiations detected deep within the atmosphere of Jupiter. We're at quite a lot of magnification tracing the wind patterns via the movement of luminous jovian cloud fronds and came across this hairy beauty. It appears to be feeding on the fronds and gaining some of their bioluminescence. Hard to estimate the size of this creature as its entire form is lost in the darkness, but the portion we can see is several kilometers across, based on the established size of the fronds.

We're going to bring one of the bigger scopes on line to grab a better shot of this, expect a larger more detailed image to be uploaded on the next revolution...some of the boys here at the station have already dubbed this creature a Jovian Light Dancer and we're all quite taken with its beauty. It seems to be made up of thousands of tentacle-like hairs and the large round glowing organ is still a mystery. We would also like to put in an early request to get some time on the Piers Macroscope to get a better image of our discovery.

Image downloaded from D.T.I.S. in-line device:

You boys up there are really on to something special. We just recieved the shot from the Deep Thermal Imaging Scanner and everyone here is going nuts for this "Jovian Light Dancer" of yours. The boys down in the biology annex are figuring that that lovely glowing eye is actually its stomach where it is digesting the heavier luminous elements of the fronds. The best news for you guys though is we have your approval right here to pull the Piers Macroscope off line of its deep sky imaging for several hours during your next shift. We can't wait to see the detail and resolution that will get you.

[TomCardin]

Listing - Thanks so much for visiting! You know... a self portrait sounds like a pretty good idea. I'm gonna go for it, oh man, its been years since I did one, woo back in highschool.

[Kronos]

hey man, your going good! i really like the look or the stuff in post #46. very cool concept, although if she had such a tall back she may need more substantial support from her legs even though i realize you were going for elegant legs. i'd like to see more of you pencil drawing in here too.

that last thing is an interesting interpretation of hairy beauty for sure, if you go with that one, lighting will just about be everything, you'll have to make it really beautiful. i would ditch the colours you currently have for the background and go more with the bottom right corner, and then have the hairy beauty a really vibrant complimentary colour or something....anyway just a suggestion....

keep it up man, just keep on drawing

[TomCardin]

Image from the Piers Macroscope:




We were thinking that the "Dancer" was pulling the fronds into its mouth, but after three planetary revolutions we're not seeing that kind of movement. Now with this latest high res image from the Macroscope we can see that luminescent particles are travelling up the hairs towards its stomache. So somewhere along the hairs themselves are the Jovian Light Dancers mouths. We can only imagine what the central orifice is, perhaps some sort of propulsion vent.

We have a better idea of the extent of this creature now. It does seem to be quick large and a significant portion of it is descending deeper into the clouds of Jupiter. The forces along its length must be enormous as it goes further down the gravity well.

[TomCardin]

Speed painting done for the daily sketch thread...MONSTER HUNTER FOLLOWS GAPING BLDG. TRAIL OF RAMPAGING BEAST

I kept my brushes big and my strokes loose. Instead of starting with greyscale thumnail I started a bit larger with a warm grey background and painted in just warm and cool. Its no masterpiece by any stretch but I achieved a hint of a loose painterly style I have been aiming for.

[TomCardin]

Another speed painting for the Daily Sketch Group thread

[Orifice]

The hairy beauty looks cool! I like thatone alot! The area round the mouth and the eye(?) is the best part. One thing that I notice right away when I look at your paintings is that they could use some good work with values. Its almost hard to get to high value-range. For example in this last one. Shadows should be alot darker. A good way of getting values right when digi-painting is to block in to start with. So that you can get the values right, then starting to refine. It looks like you shadow by doin alot of strokes, which, by my experience atleast, often makes things look more like dirty then shadowed. So your main thing should probably be to look into and practise values. Hope this helps a bit atleast. Keep it up my man!

[TomCardin]

Orifice - Thanks! I really like what I achieved with Hairy Beauty. I am not getting any critiques at all in the COW thread so I am worried about how it will do.

You are right about how I did my shading on those speedpaint sketches. On the dragon one in particular I needed to go darker in the shadow values...digital painting is an ongoing learning experience for me and I thank you for your crits! I will continue with those values in mind and a cleaner technique for getting them down. I had been doing my first sketches in greytones then adding the color. This was getting me paintings shaded with black and white that were coming up lacking. Now I am searching for a happy medium, but I am far happier with colors than I was.

Here is a sketch I did while away from my computer...just #2 pencil and a very bad eraser which I quickly decided did more harm than good.

[TomCardin]

Time for old squidhead.

This is a sketch I did for my friend's project. There's always room for Cthulu.

[Dreamworker]

I Tom, I see very good progress in your digital painting skills in particular I like the girl painting posted in reply #26 #29, very natural effect. I think that in noref images you have some problem with proportion and anatomy, but as you write in the first reply your goal is to accive a results in digital painting and in this case your studies following the right way!
Keep sharing, ciao

[JERI]

Hey TomCardin

I think the way you're handling the light gradient is looking more natural than when you first started out. Atm I think most of your colored images can use some stronger contrasts. Adding another layer of shadow should do the trick I reckon, but have a try and see if it actually works.

Cool Cthulu

[TomCardin]

Dreamworker - thank you! I like at least feeling I am improving. I will keep up the figure studies.

Jeri - Thanks! Painting with color is so different from just shading a greyscale image or doing texture maps and setting up lights for 3D renderings. I have been doing graphic arts for many years but I am finding a lot of my skills fall short when moving it digital illustration and painting. Its a learning experience and I like this media emmensely. Glad you like Cthulu...I am going to be doing 2 color paintings of Lovecraftian beasties for my friend, going to be fun.

I just worked this up for the EOW thread. Garbage Planet.

IMPORTANT! Only throw non-recyclables in the red depositories. All waste from the red depositories are immediately hyperspaced to Cygna Beta. Wastes bound for Cygna Beta will NOT be pre-sorted, hyperspace transmission is instantaneous. There is absolutely no return of any items placed in red depositories.

With the advent of stable zero energy hyperspace transport fields in 2120, Mankind quickly spread through the galaxy...fortunately his garbage did not. Easily installed in designated rubbish bins a series of transport fields immediately gate all materials tossed into the bin to reciever fields orbiting Cygna Beta. Cygna Beta is a massive body orbiting the Cygna Alpha Singularity. With intense tidal forces rubbish is quickly fused into dense rocklike deposits and eventually pulled into the singularity. The reciever station is located on the tidal pole opposite the singularity in a relatively stable orbit and waste is continuously flowing out from its many hyperspace reciever fields.

The use of these hyperspace transport bins for rubbish was nearly outlawed soon after it was put into operation as many saw the bins as a way to immediately and permanently dispose of criminal evidence, suicides, even murders were committed using the initial rubbish bins. It was decided by majority vote by the Network of Forward Thinking Rehabilitationist party that the advantages of the system outweighed the sudden spree of mysterious dissappearances and crime. Its worth noting that within 78 years of use of the rubbish bins and permanent disposeall units the population growth of humanity has stabilized and suicides and murder are almost nonexistant. The department of missing persons maintains a steady growth rate and employment therin is at a premium.