Mutley's Sketchbook

[Mutley]

Armour studies / style experiments.

[Mutley]

Some landscape studies from photos - roughly an hour each. Trying to capture atmosphere and lighting.

[Osya]

Man, very cool landscape!) How long have you been painting one landscape?

[Mutley]

Man, very cool landscape!) How long have you been painting one landscape?

Thanks! They took about 1 hour each. I worked on them for 15 minutes at a time before switching on to the next one so I didn't get stuck making loads of small changes.

[cgmythology]

These look great! Very solid studies all around, really dig the landscape one especially!

[Mutley]

Some more gesture drawings / studies with values and some more landscapes.

The landscapes were an attempt to try and bring together the style of my drawings from imagination with the painted landscape studies from my last post and some colouring experiments. They took about 2 hours each. They look slightly mechanical and lifeless to me but they were fun to work on and there's ideas in there I want to develop further.

[AChi]

this is cool, i like the dynamic in your drawings

[Zorrentos]

The last few landscape studies made in your own style are amazing! I really dig them!

[Mutley]

Thanks AChi, Zorrentos! I'm going to keep developing the landscapes over the next few weeks.

...

So it's been just over a month since I started this sketchbook thread, which feels like a good time to take stock. I've finished chapter 1 of the Drawabox lessons and I'm 75 boxes through the draw 250 boxes challenge (I'll post some from the start, middle and end when I'm done). I'm sketching regularly, although still not on a daily basis, done some landscape studies, done some costume studies and experimented a bit with different styles.

Over the next month or so I want to start pulling all this together. Do some complete scenes taking in to account the landscape and figure drawing work. Look at painting figures from imagination (maybe in greyscale first) instead of the drawing and flat colours I'm doing at the moment and looking to improve the range of poses and the sense of movement in my imaginative work.

And try a few figure studies in colour too.

...and hopefully finish off the rest of those 250 boxes.

...

In the meantime here's a few studies and a couple of things from imagination from the past few days.

[Mutley]

Two different colour treatments for the same image.

The second one has a mistake where the terrain lines in the mid ground on the edge of the hill are too dark, I've fixed it but the forum doesn't seem to want to let me delete and re-upload the attachment...

I think I like the 1st treatment better anyway.

[darktiste]

The n.2 is nice but they character in the background would be to much in atmospheric perspective for my likING i would say.There is rarely strong atmospheric perspective unless there high humidity which would reduce visibility or alot of sand particule in place where there alot of small particule that get lifted by the wind picking them up just something i want to share if it can help you in the future.

[cgmythology]

Looking good! I prefer the second color treatment as it looks more natural, the first one appears a bit more flat and oversaturated.

[Daft Sketch]

Man those environment studies are dope af! Both the painterly and the simplified ones.
Like the first one in the last post as well! Bit of pop art going on, dig that.

Looking forward to the next batch!

[Mutley]

Thanks everyone.

@Darktiste - I see what you mean, now I look again the two characters at the back look bigger than they should because of the overdone atmospheric perspective.

The super saturated colour schemes are something I'm going to keep playing around with. I used to do screen printing which lent itself to those kinds of colours, with the linework there's lots of scope to play around with the colours so I figure that experimenting helps me get a bit of extra learning out of each drawing.

...

And here's some more studies. A few figure drawings (now in colour!) and some more landscape studies building on the style of the last few, with another experiment where I painted out all the linework to see how it looked.

[Mutley]

Some colour figure studies.

[Mutley]

Some more landscape studies. Somewhere between 1-3 hours each. These are a lot of fun to work on but I feel are still coming too mechanical. I'm probably spending too much time on each one, going to figure out a new approach and try a few from imagination as well.

[darktiste]

You should look into this artist Robbie Trevino you could pick up a few thing from him.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rRqRZa

Is work on those piece are a bit more saturated than what you generally find in environnement artwork usually so it remind me of your work as since it feature lineart aswell.

[xelfereht]

The simplified landscapes are stand out~ looking good!

[Mutley]

Thanks Darktiste, Xelfereht.

Darktiste, The Robbie Trevino pieces you linked to are fantastic. Lot to study and mull over in them!

Following on from my last post, I've started doing much faster landscape studies. These all took around 30 minutes each down from previous 2 hour average and they're presented in the order I drew them. There's a bit more variety and spontaneity as a result of having to find a way to get everything finished in the time limit.

[darktiste]

For me i think on number 4 you just need to find way to to make appealing group shadow that indicate your vegetation texture and create flow as well as a few stroke that indicate the texture pattern.Right now i would say it bit to flat,Implying something with color help read so does the silouette but if your picture is 70% vegetation in the foreground with the same level of inner detail as the midground your not separating the two as much as you could but there still enough atmospheric perspective to let me know they are not on the same distance from the viewer so you already have that.


N.1 is the most unfinish perhaps but it also the first one so i guess you just perhaps need to warm up before those.
N.2 There bit to many rock think about simplification to help the flow
N.3 The Color of the water it like there algua on top but it doesn't read clearly as that if that what those color are for
N.4 I already gave most of my comment at the beggining of this post
N.5 I feel like those shadow aren't working but i don't know what could be improve about them exactly.
N.6 It feel ok but if feel tame overall.
N7 I like the blur on the foreground my only issue is the sky look like the sea it hard to tell if it the sky
or the land or the sea
N.8 Nothing in particular strike me here i think you should try do more desert piece to play with dirt color.
N.9 This one strike me as the most complete it as a focal point the color are nice the lighting also is interesting.I think the selling point here is there no blue sky boring sky.

As parting word i think trying to play with different moment of the day would add additonal interest specially in your sky color.

Hope you don't mind this heavy handed style of critic it all with good intention.