Espa's Sketchbook

[EspaMistwalker]

Finally back at it again after a bit of a break I suppose!

[Amit Dutta]

Heya I've had a look through your stuff and you are improving a bit with your form painting, but I think you need to do more focused study and application on the structural drawing / perspective side of things before you start painting, especially with characters. Drawabox.com has simple exercises that work on the most fundamental build up of these skills. They may seem basic, but they will help you go much further.

You tend to paint/draw quite flat, and not show the turn of form, especially around contours of the silhouette. Showing forms turning realistically is all about showing accurate planes, following accurate perspective and when it comes to rendering, value and edge control.
Look up the Asaro head for the planes of the head, and there are similar resources for the major planes of the body. If you can understand the major planes in any form, it becomes much more methodical and easier to render and light effectively.

In terms of edges, all your contours are very hard edged...this does not imply a turning form. Look at master studies and how they handle edges to show the form. Also google the blog posts on edges by a guy called Stapleton Kearns, and get Alla Prima by Richard Schmid. Lots of knowledge in there.

I also recommend trying to do more accurate line drawings or sketches that resolve all these issues up front. Because the drawing hasn't been structurally resolved in perspective accurately, judging by the line sketches in some of your wips, it will mean a much longer harder painting and faffing around to get things to look right structurally when you really should just be mostly focused on rendering.

I think if you focus more on those fundamentals in your study/practice and apply to your illustrations, it will help with everything in general, but also will begin to eliminate the "collage / cutout" look that shows up in your final renders. This is a very common thing that happens when form isn't being dealt with properly.
Check out Walent's sb thread here on how he approaches his figures. It is very structural and you can see the results of the approach!
http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-1...ght=walent

Keep it up

[EspaMistwalker]

Heya I've had a look through your stuff and you are improving a bit with your form painting, but I think you need to do more focused study and application on the structural drawing / perspective side of things before you start painting, especially with characters.  Drawabox.com has simple exercises that work on the most fundamental build up of these skills. They may seem basic, but they will help you go much further.

You tend to paint/draw quite flat, and not show the turn of form, especially around contours of the silhouette. Showing forms turning realistically is all about showing accurate planes, following accurate perspective and when it comes to rendering, edge control.  
Look up the Asaro head for the planes of the head, and there are similar resources for the major planes of the body. If you can understand the major planes in any form, it becomes much more methodical and easier to render and light effectively.

In terms of edges, all your contours are very hard edged...this does not imply a turning form. Look at master studies and how they handle edges to show the form.  Also google the blog posts on edges by a guy called Stapleton Kearns, and get Alla Prima by Richard Schmid. Lots of knowledge in there.

I also recommend trying to do more accurate line drawings or sketches that resolve all these issues up front.  Because the drawing hasn't been  structurally resolved in perspective accurately, judging by the line sketches in some of your wips, it will mean a much longer harder painting and faffing around to get things to look right structurally when you really should just be mostly focused on rendering.

I think if you focus more on those fundamentals in your study/practice and apply to your illustrations, it will help with everything in general, but also will begin to eliminate the "collage / cutout" look that shows up in your final renders.  This is a very common thing that happens when form isn't being dealt with properly.
Check out Walent's sb thread here on how he approaches his figures. It is very structural and you can see the results of the approach!
http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-1...ght=walent

Keep it up

Thank you for all the advice! That's something I've definitely been struggling with and wasn't sure how to go about with in improving so thank you, I'll check all of those out!

[EspaMistwalker]

Some coloring practice and trying to test out some anatomy stuff I've been trying to learn lately. Also, testing out some new brushes! *which I now love*

[Fedodika]

Hello there Espa, I noticed in your recent face that the eyes are not symmetrical, and this is very important in face drawing. The top left guys left eye is too high, the bottom right guy's eye on the left is too high, and maybe look into drawing pretty eyes like, on their own.

An eye can have many things that make it beautiful and if you leave those things out you are selling yourself short. you have the basic shape right, but don't forget even men have eyelashes, and that can add a lot of character to the eye. In fact, in a lot of (caucasian) men, the eye lashes and the deep shadow in where it is located in the head show most the form.

I love this picture because it shows a lot of form of the head created by shadows:

https://www.quickposes.com/assets/poses/...af8d73.jpg

Also study the skull especially the front and you will notice it is an organic, but round shape, but Amit gave you a pretty good critique already :)

[EspaMistwalker]

Hello there Espa, I noticed in your recent face that the eyes are not symmetrical, and this is very important in face drawing. The top left guys left eye is too high, the bottom right guy's eye on the left is too high, and maybe look into drawing pretty eyes like, on their own.

An eye can have many things that make it beautiful and if you leave those things out you are selling yourself short. you have the basic shape right, but don't forget even men have eyelashes, and that can add a lot of character to the eye. In fact, in a lot of (caucasian) men, the eye lashes and the deep shadow in where it is located in the head show most the form.

I love this picture because it shows a lot of form of the head created by shadows:

https://www.quickposes.com/assets/poses/...af8d73.jpg

Also study the skull especially the front and you will notice it is an organic, but round shape, but Amit gave you a pretty good critique already :)

Ah, thank you for catching that! I keep forgetting to flip my canvas and eyes are something I tend to make asymmetrical if I don't ^^; I always try to make the eyelashes on men but they always end up making the character look super girly and I'm not sure how to get around that ._. 
Also, thank you for the advice!

[EspaMistwalker]

Didn't really get to experiment too much with this piece as it was more of a christmas present than anything else. I did however get to try out more of a tarot style for this and I think it came out pretty decently ^^

[Fedodika]

Cool texture on the moon thing!

One good exercise you could try is to look at a photo for a few minutes, and just write down things you see and then try to replicate it to the best of your abilities without looking at the photo.

ALSO! Try drawing a nude figure to the best of your ability, then find a figure with a similar pose and correct any proportional, anatomy flaws you see.

You do an okay job at the hands, but I think you could really invest time into anatomy, like learning a muscle a day, and finding it in charts or trace overs. I'm sure you've heard of Proko on YT, he's got some great stuff for learning those things!

And posemaniacs is a great site for gesture drawing, doing lots of those could really help your figures feel more natural and less stiff

[EspaMistwalker]

Cool texture on the moon thing!

One good exercise you could try is to look at a photo for a few minutes, and just write down things you see and then try to replicate it to the best of your abilities without looking at the photo.

ALSO! Try drawing a nude figure to the best of your ability, then find a figure with a similar pose and correct any proportional, anatomy flaws you see.

You do an okay job at the hands, but I think you could really invest time into anatomy, like learning a muscle a day, and finding it in charts or trace overs. I'm sure you've heard of Proko on YT, he's got some great stuff for learning those things!

And posemaniacs is a great site for gesture drawing, doing lots of those could really help your figures feel more natural and less stiff

Thank you! 
I honestly think I really need to do that for the hands. As you noticed, I'm quite bad at hands xD 
Definitely something I try to do normally, just didn't have time to look for one this time around ^^; and yes, I watch his videos quite often, just haven't had much time this month to study but I'll definitely be investing in my anatomy next month!
and I definitely need to get back drawing from posemaniacs on a schedule xD
thank you for the all the tips~

[EspaMistwalker]

Just working on some concepts for a character design challenge I'm trying to participate in. I'm not too sure about the second design and I still need a third one. *please ignore the sloppyness and the hands, I'm just trying to sketch them in for now* any advice/suggestions? *they can't look too much like they're just in costumes either*

[John]

Hey Espa, what's the brief? Want to talk it over at the shoutbox or Discord (https://discord.gg/azX8fwT)? There's a room called "Critters cave" in Discord where often than not people give crits. I'm sure it would be more conducive to flesh it out in one of the chat rooms.

[EspaMistwalker]

Sorry about not responding I seem to not get notifications very often even if I mark the box to subscribe to this thread :/ anyone know how to fix that? 

Anyways, in the time I've been away I've been trying to take some of the advice I've received here and learn my color and trying to fix the anatomy problems that I have. Still not there but I've made some progress I think c:! Also this piece isn't finished yet, and I'm having some troubles trying to decide what I want to do with the background. I don't want to overwhelm it but I feel like it's just too bland?

[Bookend]

Nice character sketches! Loving the ideas and the attention to detail.

[EspaMistwalker]

Nice character sketches!  Loving the ideas and the attention to detail.

Thank you c:!

[EspaMistwalker]

New fanart stuff. Haven't posted here in a while. Figured it's about time I do now that I have some freetime ^^; Just a wip piece for now, I still have a lot of stuff I need to finish on this o:

[EspaMistwalker]

In the beginning stages of making some fanart in anticipation of the next expansion coming out ~

[EspaMistwalker]

Quick little watercolor study 

[EspaMistwalker]

Just doing some quick warm up gesture studies 

[EspaMistwalker]

Finished a small commission for my friend with her dnd characters~ now to finally get back to more studying!

[EspaMistwalker]

trying to do some studies on other skin tones and facial shapes