Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah Staying Awake

[RickRichards]

Thanks for taking a sneak peek at my SB. You have very cool work here sir!

[Grotessive]

Simply amazing! I've got to learn a lot from you ^^

[pnate]

Very nice drawing skills! Enjoyed scrolling through your sketchbook, keep it upppp

[nphill19]

Dude, what on earth, your sketchbook is so cool. I love your pen/ink sketches, you have a really strong sense of placement.

And then Zbrush? Whaaaat haha, very cool, post more!

[Vicianus]

@Fedodika
YEAAAHHHH!

@RickRichards
Of course! Thanks so much, man! :'D

@Grotessive
I don't think it's as much as you think, thanks so much for all your compliments though!

@Pnate
Thanks man!!!

@Nphill19
oh my god, thanks so much! ;A; It means a lot!

All your guy's comments made me smile SO HARD, thanks for the support everybody!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

This week's haul:



I hit my 40 page goal, but several of the pages weren't in my actual physical sketchbook (Throw away drawing exercise sheets) so I'm a little behind to do the 160 pages this month.

Here's the pages I said I would upload from two weeks ago:


And here are drawings from just now:



I'm super stoked, because normally I only get one or two good(ish) drawings from a life-drawing session, but I liked a majority of them this time! All of these are 10 minute drawings.

And the digital life drawing from Monday:



I was actually bummed out earlier today and yesterday because I felt like I was stagnating, but really I had just focused a little too much on boring kinds of study drawing and lost interest. Looking back, I accomplished everything I set out to do this week, I'm making improvements!

The biggest leap I've made is I'm making ACTUAL PAGE COMPOSITIONS NOW!!! Back on page 1/this summer, and even last semester, I remember my biggest problem was that I couldn't make my pages look good, I was always just drawing random stuff on random parts of the pages and it was a horrible mishmash. This is my first sketchbook where (almost) all of the pages look at least somewhat neat!

Now that I spent a whole week focusing on photo studies and thinking about what real people look like and I feel pretty confident with my knowledge of limb rythms which I was super stupid about before, I'm going to buckle down again on really learning the muscular anatomy and executing this stuff from imagination. I'm going to keep working from reference, but also be pushing to really get this stuff nailed into my brain in ways that I can use straight from my head. I'm also going to be focusing down on heads again, studying skulls and angles and capturing closer likenesses than just random facial features.

Onward to next week!!!

[Fedodika]

ooooh yeeae.... hgehehe did you draw those hotties for me hehehe ;3 oooh.. i do enjoy your... taste in things hehe! uuuh, wow you have some very nice line drawings, good weight distribution and character on the faces/figures. your figures have good weight and movement, i like how they're REALLY ROCKIN OUT SOMETIMES uhhh... hehehee.....

Well i think you could try to add some shading to these drawings with your pencil once you get a good line drawing established and really try to create the textures you see manually, don't worry too much about the digital rendering part just yet too much. If you learn to make say the realistic texture of skin by hand or like a cotton shirt with pencil, you will know what to look for in digital to speed up the process.

you have a fairly good handle on proportions and what makes a face look good, plus your hands look very very very good, if you could add volume to those, and nail the lighting, it would be bang on correct! yea yea, you have some SERIOUS skills with drawing and drafstmanship i wish I had heuhueh...

One last piece of advice i have for you is to do like a simple study each day of something that is quite simple like a portrait or a still life, digitally and try to get the edges and values as accurate as possible. This will help with everything else in the ways of brush control, but if you do this, you will catch your rendering up very quickly with your drawing capabilities, you'd be surprised ;)

[Rosolino]

Hey Sthepanie!
What a great studies you have here! I like so much your drawings on paper! It is something that i liked and appreciate on others artists :D!
It seems that you already have a great notion of female face! And you have a lot of studies about anatomy proportion here on your sketchbook o/ Great Job! Don't stop!!
But I couldnt find so much studies about values, It sappears that this part you have not worked so much! I would probability recommend that :)
And some animals studies will be cool too o/ (like getting out of confort zone, creating some monsters/creatures)

Hope i've helped in something :)

[Vicianus]

@Fedodika @Rosolino

Thanks so much guys!!! For the kind words, and the feedback and tips. ;A; You guys are right, thanks for calling me out on never doing value stuff HAHA I'm shifting gears to focus more on forms and lighting forms/texture now that I spent a while focusing on two dimensional type abilities. Ever since you guys posted, I've been focusing a bit more on values and shading stuff, unfortunately the drawing are all pretty lackluster AND I've been underproductive so I don't have much that I want to show off. I'll do some animals real soon, I promise! 8'D I have something in mind, uehehehe.

I just have one thing to show today, even though it's been a while. I finally cracked open PS and actually painted yesterday so :O



It's Princess Star Butterfly from Star vs the Forces of Evil. Yeah!

I made some new life direction choices recently, and I need to start picking up commissions. :o I haven't really ever, does anyone have tips on finding clientel and the mysteries in the way of freelance...?

[Vicianus]

I don't have anything "new" right now, but thanks to a good critique from one of my teachers and a little extra time, I was able to bring this painting to a much better level! :O



I think this is so much better, the face reads more clearly as the focal point, the hair has a softer and more hair-like texture, and the expression is way less vague. Because this is Star Butterfly, I really wanted to capture that wide crazy-eyed expression with a nice grin; a little crazy but friendly. Yeah!

[Vicianus]

I'm just gonna dump this, since I want to take a break from working on it... UoU C&C appreciated as always!!

WIP of Pearl from Steven Universe:

[Fedodika]

lets see i darkened it a little, then slid the contrast up a little bit... Then i took a multiply layer and just brushed it on the shadows and varied the opacity. Then i took a color adjustment layer and raised the blue contrast a pinch, then a soft light layer and added some bright teal to the shirt and stick and couple other places; just keep pushing the volumes and contrast!

[Vicianus]

Thanks for the paintover, Fedo! ;v; Haha all of that is stuff I'm still working out, what I posted is kind of like an initial paintsketch before really shading most of it, BUT you're spot on with the stuff you did and I'm going to model the forms to reduce the flatness.

Here's figure drawings from today:


Just some quick goals for me, because my semester is ending in like a month, so by the time May 11th rolls around, I want to knock out:
100 face studies
100 arm/hand studies
100 leg/ feet studies

....yeah.

[Vicianus]

I haven't scanned my sketchbook in a hot minute. Here's the dump:







And some painting/face practice:



Getting WAY faster and more aggressive with value work, capturing much more of the figure with better line quality and values and stuff. Doing a bit of environment sketching everyday, starting three days ago... I really want to learn to do environments! Some of them have so much character, I just love Paul Felix's work. Yeah!

[Vicianus]

Quick WIP dump and run. I want to get realllll serious about art again.

[Fedodika]

woooooooooh what a cyoootie <3 <3 nice values all arouund on her! <3 :) Maybe you could make her a little more expressive since she's just grinnin, make her angreeeey >:/ rrrrrr

[Grotessive]

I really like these figure paintings! Good job and i also want to see some of those enviroments you're working on!

[Vicianus]

@Fedo Thank you!! Ahh yeah I should totally do some more expressive stuff. I'm a big fan of somewhat blank or neutral expressions, and for this I want her to feel loosely threatening. Once I finish out this semester, though, I TOTALLY want to try my hand at making some really emotionally expressive art work. Thanks for the suggestion!

@Grotessive Thanks!! HAHA errr there's precious few hidden in the sea of figures from my sketchbook up there, I really want to do more and get more up! UoU


FOR NOW THOUGH
I just finished my sketchbook, it took me two months instead of one but ah well, no big deal I guess. :O Finishing this next one in a month would be SUPER COOL but instead, my goal is to draw all the time and from things around me as much as possible, and also to really fill the pages working more on my compositional sense again.

I have a whole bunch of drawings I'm not going to post, I've done a dickton but I'm just going to post a few, most of which I had to scan for class or individuals.


This sketchbook was #3 for 2015 so far, onto #4. UvU

[Vicianus]

My gestures have been annoying me with how weak they are. I'm reading a book on gesture drawing for animators that describes the gesture so that if it is not there to adequately portray the pose, you will end up with just a drawing. "What a horrible fate - to be just a drawing." I want to breach the barrier, the just a drawing barrier! So for figure today, I payed more attention to gesture, proportion and construction. I'm going to continue with that as much as I can in my figure studies.

[Patrick Gaumond]

Have you seen Stan prokopenko's video(s) on gesture? They're honestly the best resource on it imo, showing how a good gesture doesnt need to be accurate to the forms but the pose/feel/motion of it.

https://youtu.be/74HR59yFZ7Y

[rainbowsorknives]

awesome progress! love it, keep going!