O'Donnell's sketchbook

[Xenzo]

Howdy folks! Been awhile since my last update, it was just before I went to THU! Quick mention about the event, it was AMAZING!!! I got feedback from so many great artists, even a paintover from Robh Ruppel and Marc Simonetti! Met so many great people and lots of new friends etc. Had interviews with Ubisoft, CD Projekt Red, Disney to name a few, these were just to get some feedback on my work and the direction I'm heading, they were all so laid back and offered very valuable advice. I highly recommend the event if anyone can afford to go next year :)

Anyway here's that piece I uploaded last, completed. Those last compositions I uploaded were so horrible goddamn what was I thinking!! There's some explorations sketches and a moodboard to go with it as well.

Oh and also I'm uploading mostly on instagram these days, if anyone is using it here's my link https://www.instagram.com/gavinodonnellart/

[Xenzo]

Hello guys, it's been a while! I'll be uploading a big art dump from the last 6/7 months. Lots of stuff to show! I'll try and do it over a couple of posts. Here's some commissions from a few months ago. A couple of pencil drawings and more recently some oil painting. Really enjoyed the oil more as it's way faster and less tedious!

[Xenzo]

Here's some more sketchbook work, I was trying out some ink and markers for environments. Really fun way of making thumbnails, something I need to do more of.

The woman in the throne was an idea for a "plant queen." I went to a little concept day workshop and came up with this. 

I pick up a few of the John J. Park tutorials and tried them out then later on. Highly recommend them he's a great teacher. 

[Xenzo]

Howdy folks in case any one is interested I've uploaded a FREE photopack to gumroad, it's royalty free so use it in your concept images, studies, or reference!

https://gumroad.com/l/DOdKQ

Enjoy!

[Artloader]

Awesome studies and sketches here - love your brush work dude!

[Xenzo]

Thanks Artloader!!:)

Ok so in college this year we had to make a little short advert, it could advertise something real or made up. So I chose to advertise this little toy. So here's all the development work from it and the final movie. There's expanded storyboards,  early character designs. There's photoshop background paintings, and then some screenshots from tvpaint which I animated in and I also used after effects for putting it all together. Be sure to check out the youtube video :)

[Xenzo]

Little sketch after watch Tomas Muir's gumroad on working from abstraction.

Any thoughts on this before I post it up?

[John]

Just a nitpick. I think the red tree isn't interpreting the light as well. The way the grass is painted, I'm inferring a orange-yellow light source is lighting the scenery. The tree is probably too red, but it kinda does look okay stylistically speaking.

And maybe the grass should reflect some of the yellow-green light on the leaves, like what you did on the trunk of the tree.

That said, the color choices are pretty. Good luck with the posting.

[Xenzo]

Just a nitpick. I think the red tree isn't interpreting the light as well. The way the grass is painted, I'm inferring a orange-yellow light source is lighting the scenery. The tree is probably too red, but it kinda does look okay stylistically speaking.

And maybe the grass should reflect some of the yellow-green light on the leaves, like what you did on the trunk of the tree.

That said, the color choices are pretty. Good luck with the posting.

Hey John! Thanks so much for the tip, can't believe I didn't think about the bounce light!! You're spot on.

Yeah it could probably be a lower saturation, I was kind of exaggerating it as it was suppose to be the focal point.

[Xenzo]

Did this one for the character design challenge last month. I went with good oul Bronn!

[Xenzo]

I worked on a little game project this year in college so I was doing some concepting and designing the spaceship from the game which was fun. There's also some 3d paintovers from Blender, black hole sketches and a spacey corridor. Very new to all this sci-fi stuff, have to do more :)

[Xenzo]

Here's some homework from the first couple of weeks of Intro to Environment Painting on Learnsquared.com. Looking at alot of different architectures like Neolithic, Greek and Roman. Really enjoying it so far. 

[Xenzo]

Finished up that sketch from the previous week. Lots of struggles with this one. Couldn't really get the distant city to work, ended up making things way simpler in the second image by scrapping the distant city and adding waterfalls .

Here's the artstation link https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qdbXP

[Xenzo]

Invested in an iPad Pro so been learning how to use Procreate. It's amazing for sketching on the go, really enjoying it so far. So here's a few bits and bobs from it. I'll also attach some videos that the app automatically records.

[Xenzo]

[Xenzo]

[Xenzo]

[Xenzo]

[lgraniteArt]

Just scrolled through your sketchbook. You've made a lot of art gains man, keep it up. Really liking those thumbnails from the Learnesquared.com post

[Xenzo]

Just scrolled through your sketchbook.  You've made a lot of art gains man, keep it up.  Really liking those thumbnails from the Learnesquared.com post

Cheers Igranite, slowly but surely I hope! Yeah really enjoyed the thumbnailing, gotta do more of those!! :)

Hi guys,

Here's some more studies, trying to get better at stylizing environments. I was looking at an Eyvind Earle painting for this one. But I tried to create a different composition based on the ref. I also made a bunch of brushes in Procreate that resembles Earle's work. Fun process and learned a lot. Its a much better method than just ''copying'' from the master. Check out the process video below.