Crimson Daggers — Art forum

Love the boat piece, a real step up in the level of your work!

Great updates, man. The BB piece is looking nice, especially the reflective surfaces. The main thing bugging me about it is that Walter seems to be off balanced, almost as if falling over. It might be something as simple as selected him, transform and just rotate him slightly.

Ursula - Thank you : )

Jonesoda - Cheers man, they're pretty fun, should have fleshed one out probably, didn't really like any of them enough though. Next time :)

Egbu - Thanks dude, means a lot.

MrFrenik - Ah, I painted that for a friend, and I think they've already had it printed, but I'll definitely give it a tweak before I post it around, cheers dude :).

New Stuff

Sketch thing


Playing around with colour layers, trying to recolourise a desaturated Sargent painting. Hope it makes sense as an exercise


WIP

WIP

i think it definitely makes sense as an exercise, if not other, than to experience with what colour modes/layers can be used in different situations.. seems interesting, too :)

It makes sense, but you might notice that certain color passes just don't seem to "work" when applied, and that's because the underlying values don't match up. What I'd suggest doing is a variation on this exercise, which is to do very quick color studies, playing around with different palettes and moods. 2 or 3 valued value studies are also great for playing around with grouping your lights and darks into different patterns as well.

Kaffer - Cheers dude, yeah I learnt a bit, not sure I'll use it all that much, but worth playing around with.

Mr Frenik - Yeah, colour studies have always helped a ton when I've done them in the past, should get back into that. Cheers dude :)

Couldn't get the BG guys to work in this piece, so tried cropping it, but eventually just stopped. :/



Sketches




Character Design WIP

hey mate! i usually see all your studies in tumblr, wanted to leave you a comment for quite some time. After seeing all these studies and killer practice, i would love to see you try a bigger project, something like a full illustration about something you atm consider impossible to do, so you can push and test all these practice.
It doesnt matter if you start and cant finish it, the point would be to test your limits doing something really challenging. (And hopefully, learning a lot in the process!)

Just an idea, just keep practicing hard mate! :)

Man, this is always suck an awesome sketchbook to look through for inspiration.

I agree with Eduardo, pushing yourself on a really long piece will help a lot more than you think, even if you can't finish it.

Nothing much else to crit in here, you are working really hard. Very inspirational to see!

Eduardo - cheers man. Yeah you're totally right, should really try and push myself a bit further. Gonna finish this current piece, quite enjoying it atm, but yeah, I'll try and do something longer next :).

Jaik - Thanks dude, yeah definitely gonna. :D

So, finished this.



And gonna work on a study and a piece along side each other for a little bit. Here's the lines so far
Mead Schaeffer study


WIP

Study WIP


WIP

that study is coming out great man, the forms really pop out. gotta love mead schaeffer. keep doing your thing

Passed 3400 Hours Here

BenFlores - Cheers dude, yeah he's the man :)

Finished the Mead Schaeffer Study


WIP

So, finished this. Not really happy with how it came out, but I guess I learnt some stuff. Moving on



Studies




Sketches




WIP - Gonna push this one as far as I can. Pumped!! :)

Scrappy Building Studies


WIP - Any feedback more than welcome :)

Today's stuff :)

Quick study, working on a process for sketching


Spitpainting - 3 headed ogre


Studies - Crows


Peasants


Clean Lines


WIP


As always, and tips, or feedback would be much appreciated :D

Hey, nice paintings.

Damn. Amazing. Your stuff is really good. You could introduce a bit more textures here and there but overall, improvement is really noticabled. But there's nothing to be suprised about. You're working like a mad man. Crazy. Keep the juices flowing! Thanks ;3

man, every time I drop by here it feels like ages because you upload so much in between visits lol.

That cracking ice piece looks really promising too dude, I kinda laughed because I'm guessing you ran out of stream with it and got bored so all the motivation vanished with it, which is exactly what I do all the time haha.
I tweaked a couple of bits, took about 15 mins, just to help you out. I first went on image>adjustments>brightness/contrast and upped the contrast a tiny bit and darkened it slightly, so that the brighter values could be used to pop the focal point (middle dude). Then I took one of those feet out because it made a weird tangent and move the far dude across a bit to make more depth. I also blurred that foot in the foreround some more. Finally with an overlay layer I ran a bright orange over the two figures on the head shoulder area, one to help the comp and two for some juicy orange/blue contrast. Plus over the top cracking under the feet probably doesn't make much sense but it sells the narrative some more.
It's a really sweet piece man, I hope this helps you In some way man.


This new piece is looking good too. There's only a couple of things which jump out at me at first glace. The dudes face with the sword looks mildly interested if not a bit bored to be there, the other dude's face on the other hand is showing great character and story.
Second thing is that guys sword. The way the foreground guy is positioned against the sword guy is giving the impression of them being at an angle which points towards us, yet the guys hand and sword seem to be pointing away from us, if that makes sense? Perhaps just try make the sword bigger as it gets closer to us and that might help, kind of like the rope in your previous piece at the top of the canvas.

Always awesome seeing your updates man, I love seeing your stuff evolve.

zakknroll - Cheers dude

Ramalooke - Thanks man, yeah I should really work on getting texture into my work. I'll give it a crack with this piece, hopefully :)

Warburton - Haha, yeah that's exactly what happened dude. It just didn't match up to the picture in my head. Thought the idea was better than my execution of it, so I just kinda bailed lol. I like what you did though man, thanks for that. I wanna finish this current piece, but I'll try and go back and tweak it. It'd be nice to make it presentable at least lol ;)
I've tried to tweak the sword guy's facial expression in this new piece, it's not perfect, but I should be able to make it work with a second pass I think. And yeah, I see what you mean re: the sword. I'll try and tweak that at the end. Saves fucking about with layers and stuff atm. Cheers man :)

Update on this piece. Like halfway through a pass on the right hand guy, so loads to fix still. Looking forward to painting shit loads of bounce light in. Gonna be funnnnn :)