Anid Maro's Sketchbook

[Anid Maro]

Hi everybody. In an attempt to make myself take art more seriously (ie: Practice on a regular basis) I'm making a sketchbook. I'll probably update once a week, scanning in all of my week's sketches.

Ironically enough, I'm going to start off my sketchbook with five drawings that are months old, and then a sixth that I at least did within the past month.

The first two are a comparison between styles. Up to that point, I had a very stylized anime feel to my drawings, and I decided I wanted to switch up to something more realistic. The first is a girl in my old style, while the second is the same girl in a more realistic style (no references for either).

The third is my local city college, I looked up from where I was seated (outside, I was killing time between classes) and drew.

The fourth is some random foilage from my imagination. I was trying to convey what they were without much detail.

The fifth is a treasure chest (obviously ). I think I drew it because my girlfriend was on a pirate kick at the time.

The sixth is a self portrait I drew sometime in December. I used a photo of myself as reference.

[sickelsick]

the self portrait is 10x better than anything else u did. this is a peice that i would take farther. put in some mroe detail, more wrinkles in face, more value, and then it can turn out into a nice finished peice.

i hope u have a very nice and sexy SB!

[Kubushas]

Hi, well it seems that your self portrait is the strongest piece of your existing sketchbook, I'd agree with sick that you should add more details, and definately shade it for more realistic look-)

[Anid Maro]

Thanks for checking out my sketchbook guys. I agree, I think the self-portrait is the strongest of the five, but it is also the most recent (done approx in November, compared to July-August for the rest).

Instead of working more on the self-portrait though, I think I'd rather do another. I could use the practice. In fact, I'm going to set up a set of drawing exercises to do and make myself to at least one every day. That way I get the practice and I have something to put into my sketchbook.

I already have one done, actually. I drew a cup and then an inkbottle, which will be scanned in with the rest of my exercises I do this week.

So this upcoming weekend, I'm going to update. No really, honest!

I'm a terrible procrastinator, that's why I'm always going to get stuff done tomorrow.

[White Rose]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOI


you know when saw the list... of the td. and i saw i was competing against you . One thing i do have to say. I am not going underestimate you. I'm going all out on you..AND I'M NOT TAKING ANY PRISIONERS

pardon my spelling...
Silence... is my weapon..
so i have one request from you. GIVE IT ALL YOU GOT

good luck with your td ^_^

[defcombeta]

Noticed this thread after a bit of scanning through the list, a good start , and i like the portrait. the anime/ manga stuff is fine for the style, it reminds me of whats his name, he does that comic for arctic press. the chest is a nice image would look right at home in a rpg pencil and paper game.

keep at it, some good ideas are lurking here i think

j mac

[Anid Maro]

White Rose - You're so going down!

Defcombeta - Thanks for the compliments. Hopefully I can lure those lurking ideas out into the open. Also, if you're able to find out anything more about the Arctic Press comic, I'd appreciate it. Your comment got me curious, so I tried searching for info on it to no avail. Best I can gather is that they went out of business.

Now, what day is it? Tuesday! When do I update? The weekends (when I do)! So why today? Because I didn't get to my daily practice but wanted to do something.

So on to the new images!

The first one is a quick still life exercise I did. The cup sucks, the ink jar isn't half bad. The cup would have looked better if I darkened the shadows more and didn't surround it with a grey bg. Also the top is uneven. Bleh.

Next is my hand. As you can see under "Crutches", I used a photo reference. Why take a picture of my hand and then draw it when I could draw it from life? Because for some reason I was dead set on drawing my right hand, and since I'm right handed... yeah. I think it looks too much like a gloved hand, probably the hard and shiny light reflections by the knuckles mixed with hard shadows.

The last two are just quick doodles in Photoshop. The block I did today, so technically I fulfilled my requirement for daily practice. But these were so quick I don't really count them. Mainly I did them to get more familiar with Photoshop, something I'm not progressing too well with to be honest...

[Anid Maro]

Updates have switched from weekends to whenever I damn well feel like it! At least, that's how it seems, huh?

Anyhow...

The first three. Yeah, I can't believe I mangled this so badly. I took a picture of myself, sketched it out in pencil, then colored it in Photoshop.

Something didn't quite set right with me when I was done, so I flipped it horizontally.

Jeebus!

I tried to salvage it with the transform tool and by repainting my swollen looking cheek, but I think it was all for naught.

Ah well, the nice thing about practice sketches is I don't have to give a flying eff and just pretend I never did it!

The ball is just basic color and lighting practice. Started and finished in Photoshop. The nice thing about painting spheres is since I don't have a tablet, doing anything precisely is pretty hard. But a sphere is easy, I just get a nice round brush, blow it up, and click!

The huge box on a planet was again, color and lighting practice. The shadow needs to curve more though...

And finally, yeah, I did it. I rendered that self portrait I said I probably wouldn't touch again. I wanted some more Photoshop practice, and this line art was just sitting there, beckoning me. I'm pretty happy with it, yeah there is a lot more detail that could be added (like actual hair instead of a weird helmet ), but for what it is I'm pretty pleased.

[Envisor]

The self portraits turned out better than the other works you have. Im liking this last one. If anyone hasnt said this, you should put some figure drawings and life studies in here to kick your art to the next level. Anatomy studies will also help out a great deal. Keep up the good work.

My Sketchbook- C&C very welcome
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=85772

[Anid Maro]

Envisor - Thanks for looking! Yeah, I do need more anatomical studies and life drawing. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to squeeze my way into a life figure drawing class this semester, but I'm going to make sure to get it in the Fall.

In the meantime, yeah, I'm probably going to get an artist's anatomy book to bolster my figure drawing skills. Once I get rolling with some figure studies, that stuff will go up ASAP!
_________________

Now, I've got another update for my sketchbook. Inspired by the Peer Project where I remember seeing some light studies involving some large monolith-esque blocks (I think it was from there...), I drew up some of my own in Photoshop.

The first one was pretty quick, the second one I had a lot of fun with, figuring out the reflections and what not. I kinda took the second one slightly beyond the realm of a practice exercise, but oh well.

Oh, and yeah, I thought big grey monoliths were pretty boring, so I spruced them up with smiley faces (and one sad face)!

[cepator]

looks like dirty Sanchez, if you know what I mean

[Anid Maro]

looks like dirty Sanchez, if you know what I mean

Well... I was happy with it... thanks a lot!

[NiGhtiNGale]

I was looking at the hand picture and thought something didn't look right and it's not. Your fingers are curled over too far, you shouldn't see the part that is shaded (If you don't know what I mean try making the same position with your real hand and compare). You would have to have an extra knuckle and bone there.

[Anid Maro]

I was looking at the hand picture and thought something didn't look right and it's not. Your fingers are curled over too far, you shouldn't see the part that is shaded (If you don't know what I mean try making the same position with your real hand and compare). You would have to have an extra knuckle and bone there.

Yeah, I see what you're talking about. I double checked my reference picture to see what I did wrong. Turns out, the bottom three fingers are fine, but I drew the top of the hand wrong. The knuckle of the index finger should have come out further and the finger itself shouldn't point straight to the left.

Bah, it seems all of my drawings I do from photo reference are off. I think I'm focusing too much on copying the reference over constructing the object on paper. The self portrait is the only one I'm happy with, and that one I used both a photo reference and a mirror.

So, I think I'm going to lay off the photo references for a while and do my practice stuff from life instead. Since I can't keep the same viewing angle in life, it will keep me from just mindlessly copying (instead I'll have to construct the object and make sure it looks right).

Thanks for pointing that out to me NiGhtiNGale.

[Anid Maro]

Well, in an attempt to follow through with my resolve to work more from life I grabbed an orange, set it on my workspace, and got to painting.

Not to thrilled with how it came out. Firstly, I learned painting an orange is hard. Secondly, I learned to either cover up that window or work earlier in the day, when the sun keeps lowering in the sky while you're trying to get the lighting right, it can screw with things.

Primarially I'm not happy because the orange doesn't look like it belongs. It sticks out too much. Some more color mixing may have helped, like putting a little of orange into the table it's sitting on (the reflected orange light). But try as I might, I couldn't actually see any orange in the table. Part of that may have been crappy lighting though (my two lighting sources were the window which was obscured by blinds and my computer monitor... yeah...).

Ah well, there's always tomorrow.

[Anid Maro]

Alright, here's an unfinished attempt at painting a cup.

I basically stopped working on it simply because I got tired of it.

I know it has several things wrong with it, I can see them clearly, but working with a mouse is very imprecise and hard to work with.

Anything I did on this took me several times longer to do than it would take me if I were working with a pencil or a brush. In fact it took me a couple of hours just to get to this point!

So I just got tired of it.

I'm probably going to give Photoshop a break for a while and go back to pencils and inks (maybe pastels if I can find where I put them).

Until I get a tablet I think I'll leave Photoshop for coloring finished ink pieces, the mouse is just too frustrating to work with from start to finish.

[Anid Maro]

Alright! This is more like what I'm talking about!

This was about 20 minutes in pastels and then scanned, no Photoshop.

I may have gone overkill with the purple shadow, and it'd look better with the white "grain" removed, but overall I'm rather pleased.

After all of my trouble with Photoshop, I was starting to wonder if my problem was less the mouse and more my skills...

Good to know that isn't the case! Not to say that I have the most phenominally beautiful orange ever created here, I'm just happy to know for a fact that it is lack of a tablet that's holding me back in Photoshop.

Although better lighting certainly made a difference. Seriously, I have no idea why I worked with that terrible lighting on that first orange.

Maybe I'll try that cup again later tonight...

[Anid Maro]

Here's that cup in pastels now. About 1 hour of work, and it shows.

I suppose the blue design could have used some more blending now... ah well.

And of course, my inability to draw nice looking ellipses shows through here. I happen to freehand everything I do, and I happen to be unable to freehand ellipses or circles very well. Usually it isn't an issue, but when it comes to something like a cup which has a perfectly cylindrical shape, well the cup tends to look a little wobbly.

That's part of my frustration right there when I was working with Photoshop, I already can't draw a circle, now add a mouse to the problem!

[Anid Maro]

I've been working on my "Gods at War" Thunderdome entry for the past five days, hence no sketchbook updates.

However, I decided I needed a break from that and had to draw something different. So I took a reference picture of myself and did a selfportrait. A simple, easy diversion.

Spent about three and a half hours on it (as indicated in the upper right, 12:28 PM to 4:05 PM), more than I intended, but it was turning out well so I just kept going. Probably could have blown at least another half hour getting the background shade the same value as the rest of the shade in the piece, but I figured for a diversion I'd done enough work.

I've been starting to time myself when I do practice pieces, mostly out of curiosity. As I practice more and more, I expect to be able to work faster and faster (in my opinion, I work kinda slow, one of my goals is to fix that), so I figured I should start timing myself early on so I can see the difference.

Rendered all in pencil, your standard scantron friendly #2. I think later tonight or maybe tomorrow I'll try coloring it in Photoshop, since I haven't messed with Photoshop for a while.

[Anid Maro]

Okay, here's that self portrait colored in Photoshop.

Kinda wish I did more detail on the hair in the pencil drawing (particularly the hair in front of the face and below the chin), but oh well!

Gonna be short on the notes, because it's late and I'm tired. So all I've got to say is tomorrow I'll probably notice several mistakes that I missed tonight. Such is life.

[Notorious K.A.B.]

That's a pretty damn good potrait there Anid,I don't really see anything wrong with it...but what do I know ?Nice,more!

[Grim Reaper]

First of all thanks for visiting my sb.
Now- I like your work too, especially your self-portraits. They are very good and stylish. You have a clean confident line which proves itself well in that comic-book style pictures of some of them. In the portrait of yourself( the one where you can see the whole body) I think proportions are a bit off and looks like your neck is too short... but you might just have short neck in real life...Anyway it's all very interesting. You struggle with mouse as well? It's real hard to use photoshop with only mouse. ..I have a problem with that. I think of pencil or a brush as an extension of a human hand, and the mouse is that evil gnome trying to **** everything up for us...It's just not easy to produce something with it. We really have to buy ourselves some good graphic tablets mate and flyyyyyyyyyy

Don't fear the Reaper!
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthr...r%27s+dark+art

[Envisor]

Lovin the cups. But especially lovin the latest self portrait, kinda look like Jesus in that one.

[darkchild]

Hey thanks for checking out my SB. I went through your SB and I really like the last post with your self portrait. I think it's because of the cell shaded qualities to it. I love cell shaded art. Not too much to crit other than keep on practicing and keep on doing what you're doing. Any plans to do some serious anatomy studies? It would definitely help with your portraits I'll be back to check on your new posts!

[Phoenix-09]

First of all I'd like to say thanks for visiting my sketchbook! And I thought there were many more posts in this sketchbook on account of your DeviantART account looking so far ahead of this...oh well. I see very fast improvement here, it's encouraging!

~Phoenix

[Anid Maro]

Notorious K.A.B - Thanks. Turns out that I couldn't find much wrong afterwards. Room for improvement, yes, but nothing that seems flat out wrong.

Grim Reaper - The full body one is just completely screwy. It happens sometimes.

And yeah, I agree, we both need ourselves some tablets. Although I am getting more used to the mouse, I still feel a bit held back by it.

Envisor - Jesus you say? Now I can go around and tell people I'm comparable to Jesus. And then likely get punched in the gut. Heh.

Darkchild - Yeah, serious anatomy studies are on my list of "things to do". Also on that list is "do things that are on your things to do list".

Phoenix-09 - Thanks for the compliments. It's good to hear that I'm improving, helps give the motivation to keep plugging away, you know?

Speaking of people's progress being encouraging, I find this thread to be very inspirational. If I'm ever feeling like I'm not getting anywhere, I can just look at this thread and imagine where I can be in merely a year if I keep at it.
________________________

Now to get to why you're all here...

Art stuff!

Nothing much though, just a CG'd apple. Between classes and the GodvGod Thunderdome, I haven't been finding much time to fill up my sketchbook.

But I felt I needed a break from my Thunderdome entry (I'm not digging the colors in my entry right now... bah!), so I just did a quick still-life of an apple.

Not sure how long I took, I think it was about an hour, but I forgot to time myself. Oops.

By the way, if you've never done a still life before and find yourself choosing between an apple or an orange, do the apple. Way easier, trust me.

[Anid Maro]

It's Color Theory time!

Since I've found my color work to be somewhat lacking, yesterday I took the time (re: all effin' day!) to study up on color theory.

Due to this, I've come to despise the painting instructor I had when I took a painting class a few semesters ago.

We had three classes a week, and each class was three hours long. And I've recently discovered that there is enough material about color theory alone that she could have spent the first hour of every class lecturing about it and still never have covered everything.

Instead, when anybody had a question about anything, her response was that art is one of those things you "either get, or you don't", so go back and figure it out yourself.



At any rate, some notes about these images I made.

Firstly, on the CMYK images if you download them and eyedropper the color values in Photoshop, the CMYK values won't come out right. That is because to make this web viewable I had to convert into RGB mode. The colors still look the same to me, but the values are in fact slightly off.

Secondly, on the "Complementary Pairs & Contrasted Values (RGB)", when I say that the highlights are "+75%" and shadows are "-75%", that's not quite accurate. Such a system worked just fine for the top row and bottom row (Primary/Secondary colors and Greyscale) where I just did +/- 192 (75% of 256). However, the middle row (Tertiary colors) was somewhat more complex. In the end, my highlights had the numbers "255, 224, 192" while my shades had "63, 32, 0", I figured this out by finding the "middle ground" between a primary highlight/shade and a secondary highlight/shade.

The reason I did these was just to educate myself about colors. I doubt I'll choose my colors by moving RGB sliders (although these images I made might make nice palettes...), but I did learn a lot.

Like the difference between Fuchsia and Magenta.

And yes, I know that won't really matter unless I become an interior decorator. Bite me.

A couple of useful things I learned, however...

One, if you don't flatten your layers before converting from CMYK to RGB, it will screw with the colors.

And two, I generally prefer CMYK colors to RGB. RGB can get unrealistically bright while CMYK is more muted and suited for non-PlasmaBlast effects.

[Anid Maro]

Something small I cranked out today.

Got really frustrated color wise. Tried using a combination of colored pencils and pastels, and then eventually went over the colored pencil with pastels.

Pencils were way too light while the pastels were very hard to control.

Eventualy I just got frustrated and tried to do everything in pastels without giving a damn how messy it got. At which point, it started to get a little fun, go figure.

Overall I'm kinda angry about this. I know I can do better, but for some reason I just couldn't seem to do better. Bah!

I think I'll start doing some anatomy studies, I'm sure I can find a website somewhere for the reference.

[Envisor]

Hey Anid, the color charts turned out pretty cool. And the head shots are well done also. Ive got a site with the Loomis books on there for free.
Heres the link.

Loomis Books
http://fineart.sk/index.php?cat=1

Hope these help out.

[Anid Maro]

Envisor - Thanks for the compliments. Yeah, I'll be checking out the Loomis books, in fact I already have Creative Illustration on my harddrive. My only issue is I find it much harder to read through something on the computer as opposed to actually having the book. I suppose I might end up just printing them out.

For my anatomy practice, I was able to borrow "Concepts of Human Anatomy and Physiology", a medical anatomy book, from my mother, who has it because she is a nurse and not because she just likes to hack up people... at least, I don't think she does (she could stuff them under the house...).

It really is overkill, of about 1000+ pages there are maybe 20 or 30 I'll end up using. Heh.

I'm keeping things pretty simple right now. I've started out with arms and didn't work beyond the lineart. Already I'm learning things, for example I've occasionally had problems figuring out the relationship between the pectoral muscle and the shoulder muscles. Well, no longer! A few more of these and it'll be a problem of the past.

The female sketches I don't think came out very strong. But that's alright, part of it is I need more practice and part of it is that I'm drawing a completely disembodied arm (which is going to look weird no matter how I cut it). (Edit: Now that I look at it again, her lats are way exaggerated. Ah well, I'll note that for next time)

And yes, I wrote "Boobie!". I considered putting dots in the o's, but it's not like I'm a three year old or anything...

...

...

I'm five.