Skeffins Sketchbook

[JyonnyNovice]

I'm enjoying all your update and instagram posts, I particularly like the facial expressions in the recent updates, really expressive.

[cgmythology]

Really nice updates here, you have a great eye for lighting and color, always very lively which I enjoy immensely. Keep up the great work!

[Skeffin]

Well... it's been a while. Spent a month playing Hades, did a commission for a friend that took ages as it was way outside my comfort zone, work got tiring and I just had no energy. Anyway, signed up to schoolism a while back, and I'm focusing on doing more concept designs so here's my first outfit exploration. She's supposed to be a smug sorceress with a love of ornate finery

[chubby_cat]

Really liking the new post, Skeffin. I can totally feel the smugness in the sorceress (especially in the first expression). Are you doing a concept course on Schoolism? Schoolism has great courses so you can't go wrong with any haha

[Jana]

I really like the colours in this sketchbook, everything looks so vibrant. Especially the city painting with the plants in your first post is my favorite.

[Skeffin]

here's some older stuff

and a piece I did for a friend that I really struggled with, still not happy with it tbh

and some hair concepts/expressions for my sorceror character

[Skeffin]

Really liking the new post, Skeffin. I can totally feel the smugness in the sorceress (especially in the first expression). Are you doing a concept course on Schoolism? Schoolism has great courses so you can't go wrong with any haha

yeah I'm doing craig mullins digital painting course, then I'm going to do nathan fawkes landscape one and then any character/creature design course I find. So far I'm happy I shelled out the $$$ for it

[Artloader]

Hey Skeffin - I'm loving the brushwork and the colours in your enviro pieces - great going dude.

I also see that you're doing the Craig Mullins Digital Painting Course on Schoolism - how are you finding it? I just signed up for it myself.

[Skeffin]

Hey Skeffin - I'm loving the brushwork and the colours in your enviro pieces - great going dude.

I also see that you're doing the Craig Mullins Digital Painting Course on Schoolism - how are you finding it?  I just signed up for it myself.

Overall I'd say it's pretty good, it's a great course to start on, and he really hammers in the fundamentals of making sure your values work and your shapes read well.  I'd also go through some of the feedback videos he does on other classmates- there's a lot but you do learn some useful things.

[Skeffin]

So my precious laptop broke about 2 weeks ago ... cue existential crisis as I wondered what I was going to do with myself in the evenings. And also, I'm an idiot who didn't back up my files. RIP my psd files, my wip file, and some of my art notes. And the brushes I spent ages sorting, but ultimately I didn't lose too much of value ( jpgs of my more complete work were emailed off to someone so those were salvaged)

There was some extra hassle with ordering the replacement laptop, but everything is sorted now and I love my conceptd3 ezel. Was able to get permission to use my work laptop for art a few days ago, although I wasn't comfortable downloading brushes on that and my workspace was CRAMPED (although the 2 extra monitors was nice, I had to keep my intuos on my lap and spending all day in my room was doing my head in). Yeah I know the brushes you use don't matter etc, but they sure do speed up the process when you use ones you're familiar with.

Anyway, here's a master study from sargent from the lesson on edges in schoolism, some doodle of a face I did while trying out the legacy default brushes in photoshop, and some map crunch studies I used to break in my new laptop today.

[Kassatay]

These environment paintings are absolutely amazing. You're really good with color and shape design. I think if you use a little less saturated colors, it will be even greater. Just my two cents!

I really like the last character design clothing. Keep it up

[Skeffin]

These environment paintings are absolutely amazing. You're really good with color and shape design. I think if you use a little less saturated colors, it will be even greater. Just my two cents!

I really like the last character design clothing. Keep it up

Thanks ! Yeah, the thing about slightly too saturated colours is something I struggle with, I've heard it a few times before. Eventually I'll get there aha. I was trying to emulate a more vis dev way of using colours, as well as their style but vis dev jobs in UK are basically non existent so back to concept art and painting I go, even thought I think illustration is more of a natural fit for me....


Not much of an update but this is the first piece I've done where I'm happy with the mountains. I think I used to try and find a textured brush that would do all the work for me when it came to drawing rocks and obviously that wouldn't work, because duh. But this time I sat down and studied the forms and tried out things until I was happy with what I had, as opposed to just scribbling with a random brush and praying. Colours were picked using the colour picker mostly ( yeah I know its bad ) as I had other priorities and the colours in the photo were actually pretty nice anyway.

[Skeffin]

finished craig mullins course (I skipped a few of the assignments which I probably shouldn't have, but hey) and moved onto Nathan Fakwes digital landscape drawing course. Tbh this course is something I'm far more interested in but something about his videos puts me to sleep, in a good way.

Anyway here's assignment 8 for CM. I struggled with this one. Perspective, what's that ?
And some drawings of my niece

and the first nathan fawkes tutorial. Didn't realise you were supposed to follow along, so I sort of winged it based on what I could remember and utilising what craig mullins said about not being a slave to the reference i.e. changing things based on what vibe you want to portray. If there's one thing im taking fro this NF course, it is CURVES ADJUSTMENT LAYER IS MAGIC. I recently began using it but just the general s curve and I was of the impression overly relying on it is bad, but. Up until he used the curves tool and colour adjustment, I was thinking his painting wasn't up to his usual standards and then suddenly, it looked amazing. his double s curve thing is posted here, he toned down the opacity to 27%

craig mullins also apparently likes to use huge canvases for rendering. 10000 by 11000 pixels. I was quite surprised as previously my max was 4000 pixels ish, and that would tank my old laptop if i had too many layers

[JyonnyNovice]

Ahhh those pictures of your niece are just sooo soothing to look at, full of charm, such a great job ^_^ I bet her mum is happy to see those ^^

That's the nathan fowkes landscape workout right? I started doing those too, just last week! Forgot to include them in my sketchbook update. Me too I got a new appreciation for the curves tool, so useful to group values and stuff, I only ever used it like the Levels tool before. I didn't do the workouts for the last couple days, got really frustrated with my results and just can't find similar brushes to what he uses on clip studio paint. But if you're gonna keep going maybe I will too and we can see share results or something.

[wld.89]

Damn, your last update is really cool ! love the tree you painted ! Concerning the adjustment layers, i think they are great to use when fixing minor mistakes or slighthly improving an already good painting, but if your values are totally wrong, i think relying on those adjustment layers is more detrimental, i've seen tons of artists using those kind of layers like to make subtle changes. That was my 2 cents, feel free to ignonre ^^ and concerning the canvas size, yeah, sometimes it's really huge ! i've heard tons of artists saying they use a canvas 4 times bigger the final size but imo it's not enough and it's more confortable at 8 times the final size ! it leaves room for more zoom and you're not stuck with brushes at 1 pixel size ! keep it up !

[Skeffin]

@jyonny yeah well, the mother complained I made her too podgy : p but I'm glad you like them 

@wld89 totally agree, you can't just use curves as a crutch if you don't have a good grasp of the basics of value yet. Also damn, how large do you make your canvases for say, a detailed landscape piece? Also the tree was me copying Nathan Fawkes follow along tutorial and his version is way better

here's some updates, just chugging along with NF digital landscape painting (I'm so sick of landscapes by now and there's 23 more lessons to go... ). Can't seem to finish one of his lessons without needing a nap midway or getting distracted so progress is slow. And some sketches I did both digitally and in a sketchbook ( trying to hone my pencil drawings skills again as they have been sorely neglected)

[Skeffin]

did COW, theme was dragons. backstory is a coral reef dragon that obtains its energy from the algae that live in its coral. They migrate to waters where the conditons allow them to thrive, taking fish that live amongst its coral reef with it. However with rising ocean temperatures, the weaker and older dragons cannot make the journey to colder waters. Their coral becomes bleached, their energy source is depleted,  and eventally they lay to rest on the sea floor to die. 

there's also a jellyfish dragon with a squid eye I banged out tonight, which was another desgin i was exploring before. I did want little jellyfish head propulsion systems along the lenght of its body, but that ended up making it very hard to read - i think that thing would work better if it was less curled up

and seeing as here be dragons, here are some fruit dragons i did a few months back

[Skeffin]

oh and here are some sketches. i saw an ad for marc brunets starter pack brushes being free, and some of these are really nice to sketch with. normally im not very inspired when laying down a sketch for the first time but i don't know if his brushes are imbued with witchcraft or something but the ideas were flowing a lot more freely than usual.

[Jana]

Those fruit dragons are absolutly adoreable, love them! You did a really good job designing them after the fruit, everyone looks really indiviual.

[Skeffin]

ah cheers jana  

late new years resolution - try and do 15 -30 mins of figure drawing per day. Drawing skills have been severely neglected

art dump (cow, chow, some enviromental awareness stuff for instagram, some super quick ~3 mins each coral studies from several weeks back)

and some sketches from quickposes, just noodling around for fun rather than focusing on anything