donJonSwan and Mr. Toodles thread

[Mr. Toodles]

donJonSwan and I have partnered up for support and to motivate ourselves to work hard!

this thread will showcase that work!

[donJonSwan]

Finished up our first session tonight, working on my Golden Boy challenge of color/lighting.

Study in the form of a cropped movie still. This one from The Thing. Spent two and a half hours on it and feel like more could have been done to make it colder.

If I were to spend more time on this piece I'd soften up the edges on the figure to make it look less pasted in place.



Sketchbook figure studies from earlier in the day while listening to the stream:

[Mr. Toodles]

Great first session I'm working on my goldenboy challenge of anatomy and figure drawing

Thanks to a great book suggested by my partner I created these gestures after reading the first few pages. My work flow is going to follow along with the book to get this down! All of these gestures were from imagination

looking back at these I see i need to work on my confidence of my lines and will work on that with my next submission to this thread

[Laura_H]

This might not be helpful, but I was looking at your screenshot from The Thing, I pulled it into photoshop and noticed you're using a lot of pure black in your images. Generally try to keep total black and white for areas that you want focus to be on.

Also, you're going for really saturated colours, sometimes a little desaturation can help. Also, going through your brushes and finding out what works for you. A 'snow' brush doesn't have to be used just for snow and same. Play with the brush settings and see what you come out with.

I did a little paint over and added in a little texture. Remember, you don't have to always be painting in the detail, it's nice to just hint at detail and let the human eye fill in the rest. I lightened up the coat, gave the background an overlay of a colder blue and then reduced the opacity down. With the fur around the neck, don't spend hoooours putting in every little hair, you'll be there forever. Look at where the light falls and where the shadows are. Shadow isn't black, it takes on colour of what is underneath it.

Please do forgive me if this is out of order! But it's only quick and I hope it helps a little :D

edit: Also, I just wanted to add that your sketchbook work is awesome, some really nice lines going on there! ^_^

Mr Toodles: if you don't have them already, have a look at the loomis books too for figures: http://alexhays.com/loomis/
Try to use larger confident brush strokes! :D There was an imagine FX pdf floating around somewhere for anatomy and a vipplu one for gesture drawing. See if you can get your hands on those! :D

[Mr. Toodles]

whoa today was a big imrpovement for me i did 45 gestures and my goal was to add weight and the placement of the spine in my gestures this book is the bomb

and look my lines are more confident :D
I need to work on movement flowing through the entire figure by working head to toe

[donJonSwan]

Thanks again to Laura for the paintover, super appreciated.

Spent this evening working on value and it absolutely kicked my ass. The whole process of turning a reference into black and white made my brain spin and resulted in bad forms, crazy geometry and all around terribleness.

Learned some great lessons though, and got some really great feedback from Toodles that really inspired me to stick to it.

Here's the end result, I plan on doing a whole lot more of these because I seriously need the practice.

[Laura_H]

Keep up the good work guys! Motiviation is the key! :D

[Mr. Toodles]

bit of a late start but its all good

So a few things, I was lurking on the forums while in class today and stumbled upon someones great advice to use a binder to put my tablet on an angle (lolololol) and i have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better control over my lines

Next i learned landmarks of the pelvis and rib cage today as well as more practice on where to put weight and how to place curves between different points of weight

[donJonSwan]

Another value study tonight, this time from Once Upon a Time in the West.

I swear, you can hit pause at any point in this movie and get something with a rad composition.

Started this painting different having learned some lessons from last night, began with only 3 values (20%, 50% and 80%) and spent a lot more time blocking out my form. I think I was overeager to get into the value study last night and ended up with some really distorted shapes.

If I were to spend more time on this I think most of my major forms are good, I'd just continue to detail, and try to get some better atmospheric depth.

[donJonSwan]

Another value study from this afternoon. Still life this time, need much more practice with real life forms.



Lessons learned so far:

• Warping a shitty drawing makes a shitty warped drawing.
  
• Start with a few (3) simple values to block in your forms, and build up from there.
  
• Take a break when you're lost and pushing around the same pixels over and over again.
  
• Think then draw, don't try to think through drawing.
  
• 20% lightest, 80% darkest. Don't oversaturate.
  

[Mr. Toodles]

I learned some landmarks with arms and legs and ways to connect forms and some ways to practice connecting forms

[Mr. Toodles]

Well today i dabbled in a bit of what i will be adding to my characters, their heads!
It was rough and i dont have the focus right now to do it so i just dipped my feet in and before i did that i decided it was a good idea to do a quick review of what i learned before and put it all together

[donJonSwan]

Oops, forgot to post pics from last night's session.

Working on value from imagination, didn't push either of these images very far (spent about 30 minutes on each). Added WAY too many highlights, something I plan to keep under control this afternoon.

[Mr. Toodles]

did some more head work i learned the proportions and planes of the head but not exactly landing them how i want lol any advice or information of this would be helpful

[DK]

Good work in here guys! Glad to see at least one of these partnerships are taking off!

[donJonSwan]

Study from yesterday, hard for me to take these to finished before wanting to move on to something new. I know that's something I need to seriously work on if I want to see the type of improvement I know I'm capable of.

[donJonSwan]

Started as a larger portrait, then the crop goblins got to it. Going to take Toodles advice and work on some simpler forms so that I can feel like I'm taking something to a more "finished" state.



..and this.

[Mr. Toodles]

so i practiced facial details and some more head perspective stuff i think im starting to get the hang of it

and a little bonus silly sketch i needed to get out of me after doing so many studies and reading lol

[Mr. Toodles]

unfortunately donjonswanand i missed a day if working with each other and ive had the most terrible headache for the past 6 hours

i tried to work but this is all youll get out of me today

[Laura_H]

Work is coming along nicely guys, one thing I would say Toodles, have you tried giving yourself a grey background to your canvas and sketching in a dark grey. It can help get rid of the stark feeling that a white canvas can give. You can always remove the grey afterwards (if you don't put it directly on your background layer).

Also if you have CS6 try out the new pencil brushes, they're nice and will blunt over time - to sharpen just select a different brush and then the pencil again. They have a nice feel to them. Try to do informative strokes too when doing your gestures. One confident line can have more of a dynamic feel that multiple scratchy lines and it'll help you to identify the movement within the line.

Good luck guys and keep it up! :}

Also I have a couple of links for you guys to download if you wish! I'll PM them to you both :}