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NATURE's Sketchbook - Nature - 11-05-2019 Hey guys. Its time for me to make a thread to share my steps towards becoming a professional artist. Its inevitable for all of us who stay on the road. Ultimately I will become a fantasy/imaginative realism artist, preferably independent. As of making this thread I'm recently getting into digital painting. My current goal is become comfortable and efficient with painting in Photoshop, not just coloring lineart, and to make enough finished pieces that would resemble a body of work. Be brutal with the critiques, please. Here are my first 3 successful digital studies. This cast study of David's eye is where some basic brushwork techniques started to click. Experimenting with layering strokes at lower opacity/flow, not much blending. I like how this looks a bit painterly. Already a big milestone. I learned SO much about rendering/brushwork technique and value with this copy. Same process as last study but way more blending, combining hard round with airbrush. When I got to the rendering the hair I realized how powerful the lasso tool can be to quickly draw and render shapes or create a clean hard edge. Here's the reference to compare. I will probably start doing some studies in color soon. Right now I'm especially seeking advice for better digital painting process and technique, thanks. RE: NATURE's Sketchbook - The Road to Mastery - Fedodika - 11-06-2019 hey nature, your studd is pretty tight so far... Nice observation and such, if you want to do imaginative realism, id be itnerested in your attempts at that to see how the fundamentals youre studying are registering internally; keep it up and glad youre here :) RE: NATURE's Sketchbook - The Road to Mastery - bluehabit - 11-06-2019 The male bust is impressive, forms read very well. Welcome to the forums. RE: NATURE's Sketchbook - The Road to Mastery - Nature - 11-22-2019 Been easing myself into digital painting. Going to be doing some more simple still lifes to gain confidence and understanding in how to paint before moving on to more complex things like the figure. On the side I'm doing some studies from life as well as my favorite artists. Drawing your favorite artists' work makes studying and practice incredibly fun. Horse tax. RE: NATURE's Sketchbook - The Road to Mastery - Nature - 12-05-2019 Hey all. Can I get some critique on this griffin design I'm working on? Particularly the wing, there's something off about it but I can't quite tell what it is. I've gotten inspiration to do a series of hybrid creature designs so in preparation of these drawings I done lots of studies after some of favorite artists' cats and birds (Wendling, Whitlatch, Cooper, etc.) Here's some of them. RE: NATURE's Sketchbook - Tristan Berndt - 12-05-2019 About the griffin you asked about, I think the main issue is just that the feathers are way too big so the scale feels off and overall drawing seems somewhat awkward. Like, it's the wing of a normal sized bird just scaled up. Even birds who's wings are really big, have smaller feathers than the griffin proportionally to the actual size https://www.marwell.org.uk/media/images/full/img_3156_26032015190318.jpg (and ostrich wings are mostly just for mating, they're bigger and fluffier than any flying bird). RE: NATURE's Sketchbook - Artloader - 12-05-2019 Loving your work Nature :). Wonderful lines. The griffin wing feels like it should connect a bit higher up to me - I always imagine if I had wings they would be sprouting out of my back rather than out the top of my arms if you see what I mean. Take care friend. RE: NATURE's Sketchbook - Gliger - 12-05-2019 Sorry if I got a billion things wrong, but, does this help?, it was mainly the inconsistent feather overlaps that were messing with your design, I made the chest and axillary feathers fluffier, moved the head of the humerus a little bit back different bird wings do differnet things, so I'm sure this is more pronounced in macaws and  other birds that are great at taking off and moving around, but pat of the reason why on the underside of the wing distal feathers overlap (iirc), is to reduce drag on the upstroke, that goes for primaries, secondaries and tertiary feathers https://youtu.be/VTVigNA3KCY?t=275 also take into account the feather origins and directions, they got a long muscle that lets them move them a bit, so for this you just gotta use reference RE: NATURE's Sketchbook - Nature - 02-12-2020 Hey everyone, here's another update. Been doing some figure drawing and painting after my favorite masters to get more comfortable and experienced with painting digitally. Still working mostly in greyscale training my eye with values as that takes precedence over color according to Craig Mullins, and you can always colorize a greyscale painting after you figure out the value structure. Still, I'm practicing painting directly in color and its far more difficult in pretty much every way. Any advice? Just look at my study of Bocklin's Isle of the Dead. I find it hard to stop the colors from coming out muddy. As for the griffin, I decided instead come up with a more dynamic design later before rendering it out. What I have is a bit too static and boring for me. Thanks for the replies. Also I don't know why I can't remove that one file that was uploaded twice. References RE: NATURE's Sketchbook - Artloader - 02-13-2020 Nice studies Nature, I like your lines and values. My approach to studying colour is to take my time over it. I start off with a best guess and put the colour down on my painting. It will be wrong so first I ask myself should the value be lighter or darker? I squint to help me see value. Then I ask myself is the hue right, should it be warmer or cooler? I will often guess 5 or 6 times before I feel I've got it right. What I've found is that if I put in the effort to get the colour right, I really like the end result and that serves as motivation to struggle through the pain of colour guessing. Please note this is just my personal approach and if it is not helpful to you than please ignore :). Keep it going Nature!