The Lama's Sketchbook

[The Lama]

Pretty slack on my sketches today but here they are: 

[walent]

Hey, I like that you're posting a lot. The beans look awesome. Your lines are pretty good too.

One thing I have to mention though, try to give the viewer as much information as you can about the form. For instance on the shoulder armor, I can see it as a rounded shape because I've seen those before and I can relate to that shape, but if you're painting something less recognizable, it's gonna be hard to read if you don't give enough information. Maybe someone who hasn't seen a shoulder armor before will consider it as being flat, because the roundness isn't obvious, especially because it's only linework, without any rendering.


Here:



Of course, some pictures are made from an angle that doesn't show this, you only know it's rounded because of the way it reacts to light, but you're the artist, you can draw whatever you want, so just change the angle so that the form is clear.
Think about how much more believable it would be if you would apply 2 principles, show form through line + material rendering.

I'm trying to make sure it's really clear, so I hope this makes sense.


Keep it up!

[The Lama]

Thank you so much for the paintover Walent! :) I totally agree with your advice, everything i've done so far has been quite flat so tilting it to more interesting angles and rendering the materials a bit more will help a lot. I'm gonna do some more armor studies for tomorrow's sketches and apply what you suggested.

Today's sketches:

[The Lama]

ughhhh today was not a good day, rendering things is breaking my brain

[The Lama]

Aw noooo, I missed a day >____< here's my sketches for today though:

Praying mantis heads are so crazy


Some figures from ref+imagination


Random choppy dude:

[The Lama]

Skitches:





Got a schoolism subscription so just took some notes and did some skull studies from Terryl Whitlatch's creature course

[miloyoyo]

I'm loving your stuff! especially the creatures and animal studies, keep it up

[The Lama]

@miloyoyo Thanks dude!

Todays sketches:

Just faces some from ref, some from imagination:

[The Lama]

Some lighting studies from Sam Nielson's schoolism course, really enjoying the lessons and how simply he explains such a complicated subject

Included some of my notes too:

[The Lama]

Did some pencil sketches after way too long, feels nice :D Sorry for the cruddy photos, I need to get a scanner :P

[The Lama]

More figure drawings and another assignment from Sam Nielson's schoolism course, it's kinda breaking my brain so i'm gonna watch a butt ton of the student critiques and apply the corrections

[The Lama]

Fixed up some stuff on the chrome parts, made them a bit darker, added more curvature to the edges and added some dings to the larger chrome bit.

[The Lama]

Today was kinda weird, decided to just jump into painting using shapes and do a few 30min paintings. What I turned out was pretty horrendous but it does feel a lot more fun than my usual lineart method.













Might double my time limit because i'm clearly super out of my depth when it comes to paintings. Don't wanna increase the time too much because I find I usually switch off and forget what i'm doing if I have too much time.

[Ramon]

Thank you very much your work is amazing!

[Lodratio]

Your stylized drawings are seriously something. I agree doing some more realistic stuff has its merits, - it can really improve your accuracy when it comes to thinking in 3d space for one, but don't be ashamed of going back to your comfort zone every once in a while.

[The Lama]

@Ramon Thanks man!
@Lodratio Thank you man, yeah it's good to mix it up and attack stuff from different angles so to speak. I should go back and forth and create more portfolio pieces though, so that may require going back to some stuff more in my comfort zone.

Been working on an illustration for CC challenge, still out of my comfort zone but reasonably happy with how it's coming along.

[Artloader]

Great studies Lama, your figures are coming along nicely, you have a nice flow to them. Those shape painting experiments look pretty cool :) I hear a lot of people talking about shape painting so I think I will also look into this myself, I saw a Gumroad tutorial by Anthony Jones a while back, I will check it out and let you know how I get on if you're interested.

Keep it going dude!

[The Lama]

@Artloader Thanks man :) Ill have to keep up the figure drawing everyday, I think it'll be a slow burn getting good at that. Yea you should definitely check out AJ's videos, he's definitely been the biggest influence on my art. I'd love to see what you think of it. Thanks for stopping by man!

Ok so this took a looooong time, did a rough AO pass on my bounty hunter fella. Now for flat colours.

[The Lama]

Finished him up before bed

[The Lama]

More stuff today, feets and figures, and some random painting experiments. This video from Sinix helped me a ton with feet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05fn1DlFRtY













Gotta build up some more momentum. Trying to do my first page of each anatomy subject from ref and then doing the next from imagination, seems to be helping me identify problem areas