Punky Sketches

[vlada]

Hey Punky, good updates! And good for you on keeping up and pushing through. Us artists plateau a lot, and it's something I struggle with a lot as well. Just gotta keep on pushing and realize when it's time to recharge the batteries.

I can't believe that's (not butter) food coloring! So cool, and so much cheaper, I bet. I love that bird, watch out for those pesky contrasts!

Art is a marathon, not a sprint, and getting good fast won't teach you as much as getting good consistently <3

[Punk-A-Cat]

Thanks Vlada, wise words.. I'm /trying/ to keep that sort of thing in mind :D

Been playing with rendering in krita - sketched in ink, and blocked out, then hid the lines, only worked on the left/ front part so far.
Not 100% sure how to get that final polish on anything, but since the newest update Krita has been working extra smoothly for me, much faster and easier to use.

[VoodooMama]

ah the shark is looking quite nice! very nice use of color, and rendering.
For the macaw painting, it looks good, the only thing is the background color is very saturated colors so it competes with the parrot for attention. Maybe the next Macaw painting you do you could try muting or subduing the background, that way the bird's color could be the dominant focus in the piece.
Anyways, I really enjoy the animal paintings, you seem to really like doing those.
Keep it up! it's a great sketchbook ^^

[LaleAnn]

Man, that shark is looking awesome!! Very good colors and the details on the face are grrreat! :D Way to go, try to keep this persistent on your next studies as well (although this is more of a finished painting) ;)

One thing you might want to keep in mind next time is your edge control. Right now you're rendering everything the same way and keeping hard edges everywhere, which might screw up the depth in your paintings. For example, on the shark, next time, try to render as well as you did on the interest point (part where people will look for details, usually boobs and faces xD) and keep the tail less rendered and try to blur a tiny bit the edges, to suggest it's "vanishing" in the distance (and it kinda does especially in water). Hope you get my point :P

Keep it up, you're on your way to get real good! ^^

[Punk-A-Cat]

Oh yep, I understand what you mean, I haven't gotten to the tail yet, there is a bunch of atmospheric/ water based perspective going on that I haven't touched yet which would show lots of lost edges, I was mainly focused on the front so far. Yes it is turning out as a finished piece, but I'm really focusing on each part and trying to figure it out, so it /feels/ like study. I've been watching a guy (mural joe) painting underwater scenes and talking about the process - he uses acrylic, which is the closest traditional medium to digital I feel, so sort of trying to mix that in a little too.

It sort of started as a foreshortening exercise.. got carried away o.0

[Bookend]

Seriously fun shark. Wowwww. Especially loving the underside here-- The teeth, the colouration.. Did you use reference for this?

Keep up the good work, cool cat.

[Olooriel]

Love the shark! I can't really get the hang of Krita somehow...

[lurch]

damn that shark is looking great!

are you going to try and work that underwater skin into your chow entry? it'll look amazing.

[Punk-A-Cat]

Yep, totally referenced Bookend, one day I'll be able to do it out of my head, but this way a study mostly
I don't know how to use a bunch of stuff in Krita Olooriel, my saving grace is layers and the select tool I think :) (though the shark is one layer)
I did try @lurch, didn't work though :/

Been playing with ink and watercolour again.. need pointers on value, because I get this far, and then don't know how to push it any further.. (it was an absent minded doodle that evolved.. no reasoning behind the composition)

[PurpleScissors]

I love the colors of the last piece. It is very comforting to look at it. I think, this is exactly what watercolor should look like. I have a tendency to overpaint while I'm doing watercolors, I should stop doing that :D

[Bookend]

Oh Punky, that's a lovely sketch painting.

I'm not sure if you're even supposed to render past that for a sketch like that, but if you feel it should be, I think you need advice from someone a bit more pro than me.

Keep up the good work! Don't let anyone stop you!!

[smrr]

TOP CAT!

Dat improvement since day dot!

Very awesome to see, I love that shark, it's real cool. It's fantastic that you do a bit of self-reflection on your work, you'll find it'll help you a lot in the long run. :)

Keep pushing milady! :D

[meat]

Nice water color :) What to push depends on what kind of look you like :D Right now it could probably use a few more different colors, also in light tints, to hint at vegetation etc. Don't do the usual green patches, but look at frozen Alaskan tundras during spring/flowering season, and see what color patches are on that ground. Since it's all white in your painting, that's probably why I think of tundra and polar regions.

[Amit Dutta]

Liking that enviro direction.  You must have seen moebius's stuff, might be worth looking at in terms of your aesthetic. :)

[Punk-A-Cat]

I find Moebuis's stuff fascinating, especially after seeing some interviews with him.

Nothing much to show for the last week odd, so doing a sketch dump of a few of the timed drawings on pixelovely - the more finished ones are 5-10 min ones

[PurpleScissors]

Wow I see lots of hard work. Congrats for that. I love the hands, they look just fine. But I wish the pictures were a bit darker it's hard to observe some parts. I think it's about the scanner. Anyhow, keep it up Punk.

[Punk-A-Cat]

@purplescissors yeah I discovered I'd been drawing with a HB instead of my normal 2B, the problems with pencils all looking the same.

Right, I desperately need some help with these for the EDRocks things. Each is based around a bit of writing (my own - see below images) I intend to try and re-do using watercolour so I can get some blending and try and attempt some atmosphere, but I need to get these way better before I try that -_- HALP!


Image 1- Sand-dunes

Below the airless ridge they were sprawled on was a long low building, sand coloured. The dry fragments of grass still holding the ridge together cut into her palms. Coarse brown dried scalpels, with a new wet blood rust coating. The dust ran to sand, and the colours blurred from tan to pale almost crystalline. The building was silent. It had been ever since they arrived what felt like forever ago.
.....
The building was a long slug, corrugated plastispan shaped in an extruded arch. The end blank, a small door the only aberration in the smooth surface. No windows, no hint of what was inside.


Image 2 - winterdark -post apoc cityscape

The sky loomed with darkening mountains of grey, frosting the single spot of muted light. A light splash of moisture misted the air and soon soaked her. Her hair dripped, the cold sinking through her jacket, her jeans plastered against her legs. The filth that littered the street had blown in drifts across the hardmac. The few purchase points open were illuminated by frostlights from inside. Faded digi screens displayed tired advertisements over and over again.
Darius pulled her past this, beyond the graffiti stained palastiglass monotube station, towards their warehouse. She still wasn't sure why she'd chosen this sideways, or why he'd urged her to stay. Back when he was core, he'd insisted this would be safe, the last place they would look. But it wasn't safe. The roaming gangs, the disease, the augments that had gone mad, and the nulls. She couldn't think of a more dangerous place, apart from Summerwise. And then there was Dante. He ran a gang, of sorts, broken augments, the functional ones, the ones who were lucid enough to be used as weapons.

Image 3 - Ravine.

The sides of the ravine were steep and small plants clung from crevices in the sheer rock walls, the top was uneven, in places holding trees that could have concealed a small army, and in other places bare and barren stone. They were lost in shadows at the bottom of the ravine, the glare of the early morning sun just catching the tops of the cliffs. The horse’s hooves echoed and re-echoed off the stone making it sound more like an army was threading through the rock littered ravine floor, than just two lone horse riders. The grade on the mountain meant they were constantly bent forward in their saddles to compensate, and more than once she felt a thrill of fear as her horse’s hooves skidded on loose stones. She felt eyes boring into her back making her skin crawl and she turned in her saddle to look up at the towering walls behind her.

Image 4- Magtrain tunnel.

Fingers shaking she pulled the sonic cutter from its place on her belt, trying not to watch the polymer puff from existence as it hit the grav field on the tracks. She punched the mesh free, averting her eyes as it tumbled. She wasn’t sure Darius could fit through the gap, and the thought froze her solid, hyperventilating, until he nudged her, body and mind, reassuring.

~I’ll have to dislocate my shoulders, and come down head first, but I can get out, just worry about how we avoid the tracks.~

The tracks… The things that would reduce them to their molecular components and scatter them if they so much as grazed the invisible field… Just have to avoid that, right, no problem at all. She swallowed hysterical laughter as Darius’s concern wormed his way into her core, steadying her.

~Get out, you can’t do both!~

~Try me.~ calm confidence.

She didn’t argue, couldn’t. Pulling line from her belt she grabbed her last sticky wad, wrapped the end of the line in it, then pushed it firmly to the ceiling, giving it a hefty thump to activate the chemicals. Tugged secure she wriggled her legs into the gap, wincing as the sharp edges of the plastimesh cut into her thighs. Sliding slowly through the hole, she tried to ignore the pain as it scratched and tore at her. Wriggling free she fell, two body lengths, three, the tracks rushing towards her. Panicked she fumbled, slapping at the brake on her beltline, sobbing as it jerked to a halt, swinging giddy circles at the end of the filament.
Darius followed her down, face first, pain marred scowl, shoulders nauseatingly wrong. Hanging, spinning, wall, tracks, other wall, tracks, crackling pops of shoulders realigned correctly. Her stomach contents vapourised as quickly as everything else had.

“August”

Her upward glance met his beetled frown.

“We are going to have to drop on the roof of the next magtrain.”

It made sense, in a horrifying manner. Judging the height of the train she wound up a body length, the motor straining. Darius flipped himself, wrapping around behind her, harnesses locking together.

“Ready?”

She swallowed, nodding, this wasn’t something she would ever be ready for, but she unclipped the mag-clamps, handing them over. At least they gave them a slight chance of getting a grip on the surface of an object travelling at horrifying speeds.
They waited, slow revolutions twisting her stomach knots tighter.

The sucking vibrations heralding the next train were almost a relief. It brought at its front apex a speed heated blistering cushion of air that flung them up towards the tunnel roof, and then set them swaying in long wide arcs, red and scalded. Darius slapped the release on the line as they swung back over the train, falling towards velocity blurred carriages, mag-clamps ready. The backdraft caught them, spinning, flipping, it tossed them to smash again and again on the slick surface unable to grip, slipping further, fingers scrabbling for purchase.

image 5 - ruins of laurent

He headed into the rubble field, walking slowly so Ash would be able to keep up easily, and watching his footing. Even here at the outer edge there could be unstable ground that would give way to the cellars and sewers that underpinned the old city, not to mention the possibility of traps. The bones of the ancient place loomed like the ribs of a long dead ship. Tall spars of rotten stone leaning at crazy angles, getting taller and closer together the further into the ruins he looked. The stone under his feet was a mix of granite and limestone, the crumbled remains of the outer walls and the fantastical frescos that once adorned them. Now mostly just a powdery dust that stirred up to clog his throat with every step. He worked methodically, trying to keep them to the outer edges, where there was less likelihood of running into any of the denizens that made the ruins their home. The morning passed slowly, his nerves raw with the effort of trying to watch every direction at once. Twice he had to stop and backtrack when he came to a large dark pit in the ground where the surface roads had fallen in. The ground around the edge had crumbled away as soon as he got within a few steps of it.

[lurch]

Hey I like these, especially like the horse head in the foreground and the light/dark rythms on the dunes, it's cool that you've thought out some back story too, makes for a cool theme when working through them.

I think that once you cover these more so there's less white visible, they'll read much better.

The only advice I can give is that on the first one, you could suggest more distance by reducing the size of the dunes as they recede, like you have in the last image.

I'd treat them like any other repeating element and just reduce them, so that they're tiny when they hit the horizon.

This is a good example of what I mean;

https://yourmoroccotour.files.wordpress....-dunes.jpg

And perhaps cut into that grassy edge in the foreground to contrast that shape against the softer curves behind it, I know it's meant to be clumpy sand, if it's that close that we can see stalks of grass, I'd go with less variation to its curves, or if you're going really choppy, more grass might help set it apart?

Other than that, I'd probably try and fade the greys out from the foreground to the back, so there's a nice gradual fade as the dune recede into the distance.

On the cityscape one, and maybe in the tunnel too, you could throw in a second focal point by maybe adding some relevant street furniture, roadworks kinda thing or just utility boxes, maybe a warning sign, or a cable or something hanging in the foreground in the tunnel.

Plus on the cityscape, you could add some more shapes on the rooftops, to give a more interesting skyline, like buildings always have those aircon/plant room things on, aerials in the such, and you could wreck some of the corners and litter the street with just random shapes to reinforce the post apocolyptic feel of it.

The tunnel again, you could use the light from the train to take care of the lighting, so it can shine forward and light up the track to a point and then fade to darker again as it nears us ?

Damn, I've waffled for ages, but these are just my initial thoughts, I'm working on all this stuff myself so take everything I say with a pinch of salt! hope some it helps in some way, be cool to see them finished.

[meat]

So be aware that I don't do environments therefore my crit is to be taken with a healthy room of doubt: 

Link to download paint over - I hope you use Photoshop - https://www.dropbox.com/s/rycajfc3pboc1b1/1.psd?dl=0

Punk: You need to study how the sapes of light area and shadow area really look like, especially how they end at their edges/borders. The 2 biggest interruptions to your images' readability are 1.) All those white gaps amongst your marker strokes as if you haven't the patience or are too lazy to sit there and fill in the area. White specks like that are killers of any images at any level, so your first priority will be sit back down and fill in all those white specks your brush missed. If your marker tip is too big for corners, well, I'm sure you can figure out a solution to a minor blip like that in no time. 2.) The edges/borders of your shape of shades is messy and sometimes don't even follow logic. Yes, you are arbituarily cutting it off and making it a hard edge when in reality it probably has a smooth transition, so what are you supposed to do? Just decide but keep the edge clean and less torn-fabric-fiber-like, especially for this kind of limited value thumbnail/study. Shape of shades need to always follow the underlaying forms. If you don't know what the forms of that object (eg. cliff) are, you need to get more reference, and draw it all out in pencil, then paint on top of that to get the shapes of shades right. 

Street scene and tunnle: See the difference when all the white holes are filled up? Better to have paint spill over than white holes. 

The cliff one doesn't read because all the dark medium and light shapes of shades are all over the place evenly distributed. Look at your bunker one, that one reads clearly. 

Bunker on the rolling hills are basically spheres that you only see the top side of. This is an example why learning to render the basic shapes are useful. Either you draw from mental library or you take a ball and study how it's shaded with the same lighting condition (top right, slightly from behind). Or goole reference images on rolling hills or layind down boobs. Same shapes. 

I didn't paint over the second one, because it's similar to the cliff one, and you can practice touching that up yourself. 


Alright, cheers mate!

[Punk-A-Cat]

Thank you /so/ much, that was so helpful!