Walent's sketchbook

[walent]

Hey guys,

I'm Walent, my real name is Vlad Gheneli, I'm 25 years old and I'm from Romania. I've studied some architecture and interior design but dropped out from both, in pursuit of my real passion for art.

I've heard a lot about the daggers lately, everyone has a lot of great things to say about it. So I decided to start posting here as often as I can, since I want to continue improving my skills.
By now I've decided I want to focus on environment concepts, but I also love painting mechanical stuff, like robots and all sorts of ships and vehicles.

At the moment I'm having some trouble organizing my painting process, meaning I often find myself zoomed in and detailing something in the background, even though my focal point is only at a sketch stage. I also have some issues regarding the depth of each elements. When I'm painting an environment, I often paint it mindless when it comes to some mountains and rocks, without thinking of the exact positioning of each, and only after I realize something is wrong, I start replanning each element's location, thus wasting a lot of time.
Do you guys think learning a 3d software could be helpful at positioning elements into an environment? I'm not planning to do 3d modeling anytime soon though... I love painting too much.

Many times I find my painting so full of unnecessary details that I just have to leave it and start working on something else.
I'm also trying to use lasso tool as much as I can, since I know painting sharp edges without a lasso is suicidal, but it's pretty hard since I love painting freely.

I've seen some artists paint limited details, focusing on one spot and leaving everything else just as a silhouette, and I simply love that style. I'm trying hard to achieve that.

I am also having trouble painting anatomy from memory. I though that being an environment artist will let me skip the anatomy part, but I guess I was wrong.

I'm finally enjoying my vacation right now, but soon I'll be posting a lot these.

You can find most of my work on my DA page:

Here is some of my latest work (feel free to comment, criticize on anything that might help me):

Oh, and I almost forgot, even though it kind of passed, but still... Merry Christmas everyone!




















and today's studies:

[Mig]

Love that flying ship with the sails, and the dungeon looking thing with the arches (very Piranesi).

Maybe spending some time knocking out thumbnails before you start painting might help your process. As far spending too much time on details, I've found forcing myself to start zoomed out (eg. 25%) and not letting myself zoom in till things look resolved at that level.

Very nice stuff Vlad :)

[Korky]

pure love, i like your sketches.
How long does it take you to finish a piece and what kind of brushes do you use?

[JonHop]

Hey Vlad and welcome, I really like the mood you convey with your colours in your environments, looking forward to seeing your progress here :). As for anatomy it's just a matter of understanding the underlying structure of the body and how it connects, how it turns, what it can and cant do positionally wise, so just keep pushing your studies, bridgman and loomis are good for that.

[TylerDonnelly]

You have some great work! Welcome~

[walent]

Thanks guys

How long does it take you to finish a piece and what kind of brushes do you use?

Well that really depends, I can bring up a presentable enviro sketch in 45-60 min, but rendering it could go up to 7 hours. I hate spending too much time on them though.

I don't use many brushes, I think I have 5 of them, but each has different sort of settings several times so I can use the same brush for different stuff.
Most of them are square brushes, and a couple are just sort of random, for stuff like clouds and background elements.

I might try do that, Mig, thanks.

And here's some anatomy for today (around 30 min each), I'll go more into enviro and quick pose sketches tomorrow.

[EduardoGaray]

sick work man! i love it, specially your landscapes.
But your studies are pretty good too.
Show me more!

[walent]

Some quick studies for today:




Some enviro sketches, 10-20 min each




and one more, 1 hour

[walent]

Don't have much to show these days, but I guess I can say this one here is my last environment piece for this year, and I plan on getting at least twice as better next year.

Cheers!

[Heavenwill]

Man you have a great sense of atmosphere and space ! we already talked about that !

I'd love to see more polish of course, I get the sort of sketchy feel you want to convey and that's what I like in your work but with such bases laid out you could really push the detailing.

Keep us amazed :p

[holdkocos]

is this Simone? :3 ...

[walent]

is this Simone? :3 ...

I really don't have any clue what you're talking about

Thanks Heaven, I was actually thinking on bringing the last one to the next stage, because I really like how it turned out and I feel like I could actually do more, bring more details to it, since it also has a pretty high resolution. We'll see, hope I get the time for that.

So I started this year doing some sketches and a couple of concepts:

[Heavenwill]

cool cool cool

[holdkocos]

ehh XD
that girl portrait( down to the sphinx)...looks like Epica's singer, Simone Simons :P...

[walent]

ehh XD
that girl portrait( down to the sphinx)...looks like Epica's singer, Simone Simons :P...

Oh, no, that's actually a friend of mine

[art8100]

amazing work , all the sketches are amazing especially the sphinx pic :blush:

[Einver]

Ha, I'm loving these. great sense of immersion in many of your pieces. I get lost in the atmosphere and believability!

If you were to harness better edge control, you'd be a dangerous man! keep it up, what you're doing is definitely working.

[walent]

Thanks for your comments guys

Today's results on GD's event (30 min each):










And also playing with some dance costume concepts someone asked for:




I really like how my works turned out today, I feel I'm getting closer to where I want to be.

[bemota]

As I've said, really nice work.

The costumes are very TRON like. ahah Pretty neat designs but i would make the lines shine.

[walent]

Actually the lines will be made out of some kind of glowing fiber wire so yes they will shine using batteries. And the choreography will take place in the dark.
And yes, they're inspired by Tron costumes, only that I had to use just a single wire for the entire costume, because they can't (or it's pretty hard to) combine more wires.
I'm not sure of the mobility though...
Oh well, if they really turn out like that maybe I'll post some photos.