Meatslurps sketchbook - What I do to get better and have fun

[Meatslurp]

Hey! 
I want to post most of the stuff I do to improve on here from now on to hold myself accountable and gain a constant overview of what I'm doing.

This year I want to get better at drawing/designing from imagination and finally start learning how light works and to paint properly. 

Overall.... gaining the ability to make things that I would be excited about seeing out in the world. So if you see me half-assing stuff (like most of my sketches in this post)... make fun of me or something like that.

Here a fat dump of stuff I like from recent months.


The main guy for a game I tried developing on my own before I realized making a AAA sized game on your own when you can barelly programm/3d model is pretty much impossible.(Who would have thought?!)

[Artloader]

Hey dude, nice start here, I like your linework and your imagination already. I'd be interested in how you intend to improve your designing from imagination skills as that's an area I'd like to work on myself.

As for lighting, could maybe try incorporating some core shadows and reflected light in your paintings, checkout this awesome vid from Proko:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3WmrWUEIJo

Good luck!

[Meatslurp]

Hey dude, nice start here, I like your linework and your imagination already. I'd be interested in how you intend to improve your designing from imagination skills as that's an area I'd like to work on myself.

As for lighting, could maybe try incorporating some core shadows and reflected light in your paintings, checkout this awesome vid from Proko:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3WmrWUEIJo

Good luck!

Glad you like some of it and thanks for the suggestion! 

I guess you really see your lazy when people point stuff out to you you clearly know, but don't apply in your actual work. Really gotta work on just putting everything I know into a drawing/painting. Thanks for pointing it out.
I plan to read Scott Robertsons How to Render in the near future, so I think that'll probably also shed some light onto how I should approach painting/lighting/rendering.

As far as drawing and designing from imagination goes:
Most of the stuff I draw is purely from imagination, so I feel like that generally allows me to get a better and better grip on it. I already showed a good bunch of stuff but I also turn out a boatload of terrible drawings (though the frequency of those is getting lower).

I've also found Automatic drawing as explained in this video to be incredibly useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJYGFwGhHnA

For me it's basically designing forms, shapes or just lines completely without pressure and the more you know how to generally draw in an appealing way, the easier it becomes to let lose and let your intuition take over. If nothing else it made drawing more fun for me and took my fear of the blank page away.

Then I also just do a lot of quick drawing studies most mornings. I used to do a thing Feng Zhu once recommended for a while where you do 10 studies of a certain subject everyday and every week you pick a new subject and slowly increase the complexity. That helped me immensely and I really want to get back to doing that.
He talks about it in those two episodes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5nvzsslajk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLqWX7onVmU

There are a lot of design principles that are super helpful I'm just starting to learn about. I have a bunch of old books on graphic design that are great for shape design.
Industrial design principles I really want to learn more about, cause the little bit I know already really helps. Like thinking about ergonomics, materials, manufacturing. Just designing objects that could really exist. 

Doing master studies is also something I want to do more of over the year. I never really copy drawings that I like, but I think I could learn a lot about design/composition/draftsmanship that way.

Observing everything around me and trying to imagine drawing the things I'm seeing around me is something that I just started doing and it really keeps your brain constantly active. The information you take in is especially great, because your usually very aware of your surroundings. So when you look at something you know it's relationship to you. You don't have to guess the eye-level, you know the weather that is causing the light to fall a certain way etc.
Which is also why I find life studies more useful than drawing from pictures.

And when doing studies I have multiple techniques to remember what I'm learning:

- First a thing that Dave talked about a couple of times: To just draw one thing 18 times from reference and then 18 times from your imagination.
The 18 is a bit arbitrary, but it's basically a combination of repetition and active recall which are both some of the best proven ways to retain information long-term. I do this especially for base information I really NEED to always know, like anatomy and basic human proportions.

- Added to that is spaced repetition. I never just study a thing and leave it. I study it, test myself on in, study it again, correct myself, study more etc. This is especially useful over longer periods of time. I've found if I study something and test myself on it for even just 10min everyday for the following week, I don't ever really forget it again completely.(have only been doing this for like a year so we'll see how it holds up long-term heh)

- Break things down into simple shapes. We all hear it all the time, but it's really the holy grail of retaining information. Like a mnemonic that just jump-starts your memory. Also allows you to play around with proportions far more easily.

- Break things down into simple CONCEPTS. This one is huge for me, because I cant really picture anything in my head when closing my eyes.(Though I'm trying to train it and am getting better) I cant visualize things, so I break things down into concepts or rules. Like for head construction: The head is 5 eyes wide, the idealized figure is 8 heads tall etc. and I really just try to make as many observations or rules like that as I can when drawing. So When drawing a car I know a normal car is roughly 6 wheels long and a bit more than 2 wheels tall. You know what I mean.

- Try to think of as many things as I can to apply what I just learned and just play around with it. Exploration is a thing I feel a lot of people coming up leave out of their regimen because it's not as intent as a study or doing a proper drawing. Feels like your wasting your times sometimes, but it's really, really crucial for me. Again great for repeating a concept you've learned in your mind and that's how I feel I'm building my creativity. Lot's of little ideas adding up.
Like studying animal skulls and thinking: I could use them as a mask, I can push the shapes to draw believable cartoon versions of the animal, I can decorate primal looking scenes with it, I can use the shapes of the bones to design armor, mechs, architecture etc.etc.etc.

- Learning very few things thoroughly instead if trying to learn too much. If you know how to draw one suit of armor, understand it's layers, why it's shaped the way it is, it's not that hard to invent another one. So instead of just drawing different armor a thousand times, get more focus. Generally your brain has a very easy time when creating/connecting synapses to ideas that are already established. So if you add more and more information to one neural pathway that is already solidly ingrained, it makes for a more reliable and efficient thinking process. It's basically like building a good infrastructure in your brain instead of just placing random bits of information into your head that aren't connected to anything. (I will probably take some time at a later date to explain a bit better and more thoroughly what I mean... It's late and I really need to think about it more to be able to put in on paper properly)

- Applying everything I learn/ always looking to solve a problem when studying
Kind of goes together with most of the stuff I already said but: I don't just study armor to study armor. I study armor to be able to design armor and knights, so that's what I try to do after a study. Sounds pretty straight forward, but I see a lot of people doing studies of things they never actually use, which is still good and leads to improvement, but again creates a problem with focus.


So the tl;dr being:
Learning more on how to design in general through books, videos etc.
See how the problems I'm facing have been solved before e.g. masterstudies
Learning how the things I want to design really work
Practice drawing them and experiment with my knowledge/ test myself constantly.
Apply what I learned.


Hope there was something interesting in there for you. Felt good to just get some thoughts "sorted" a bit. So thanks again for asking a good question heh

Cheers!

[bluehabit]

Hey man welcome to the forums, like your username!
Also your sketches, renderings everything really well done (especially creepy garfield).

Drawing from imagination is something especially that I am trying to improve at because I have tendency to just try and render everything really tightly and I am trying to sketch alot more.

Question when you do these applied observation to imagination studies like draw a object 18 times. Lets say you are doing hands will you draw like 1 hand, then after you finish it try and then try to use your memory to recreate it without looking at the source and repeat? Or do you do 1 drawing from an observed source, then just make up a hand in some imaginary pose different than what you most recently did?

Anyways looking forward to more!

[Meatslurp]

Hey man welcome to the forums, like your username!
Also your sketches, renderings everything really well done  (especially creepy garfield).

Drawing from imagination is something especially that I am trying to improve at because I have tendency to just try and render everything really tightly and I am trying to sketch alot more.

Question when you do these applied observation to imagination studies like draw a object 18 times. Lets say you are doing hands will you draw like 1 hand, then after you finish it try and then try to use your memory to recreate it without looking at the source and repeat? Or do you do 1 drawing from an observed source, then just make up a hand in some imaginary pose different than what you most recently did?

Anyways looking forward to more!

Such a good confidence boost in the morning. I feel validated lol

I feel like I need to do a lot more tight stuff like you do(took a look into your SB. Some really good stuff in there, but I agree that sketching more would propel you forward a lot!). I think we all have the problem of getting out of our comfortable way of working. Rendering stuff is still so painful to me. Its a constant "I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS WOULD REALLY WORK. I DON'T HAVE The RIGHT TO PUT A COLOR/VALUE DOWN" in my head lol

How I study really differs quite a bit. I try to keep everything I mentioned in mind, but don't always have the mental energy/discipline to study in the most "optimal" way and I'm still always trying to find ways to adjust the process for me. I find that some things are much harder for me to draw and remember than others, so that also always affects it.
Going with your specific example, I just rolled with it and did a study session


As you can see I try to nail down that one pose, but try to think about the structure and 3d form, so I'm able to draw it from any angle. The goal is to basically be able to draw that one pose of a hand without even thinking about it. 
I though about doing it that way because even though I 

Like I mentioned earlier, the "drawing it 18 times" is kind of arbitrary. Daves dad just came up with that for some reason, which I though was funny, so I mentioned it heh. To me that always just means "draw the same thing until it's easy and then keep going for a bit". But I would experiment with that yourself if you want to try it. Some people get exhausted really quickly by doing the same thing over and over. I have pretty bad ADHD so I really had to train myself to not get frustrated by this method, which I'm not sure is necessary. Made me hate drawing for a while.

oh and the green squares indicate hands from imagination

[Fedodika]

Hey there!

I like the world youve created in your drawings, it has a quirky and unique feel to it... As i look through i see sketch after quick idea after quick idea, but whats it all for? Alot of your concepts feel disconnected, like they dont belong in the same world; i think for an appealing portfolio of quick designs, there should be some coherency and symmetry in the designs so they feel cohesive. But thats aside the point, which is my main critique:

I think you need to finish something; like this for example

https://i.imgur.com/cBSYkyZ.jpg

Take that picture, use reference and spend several days on it to really make it rendered well on each material and contour. Its a very cool idea, but i think itd shine so much more with some rendering, even if its a stylized kind of rendering like Dave's comic work, just dress it up more.  youre perfectly capable of drawing a decent character, just dont leave off on it once you throw down a background tone and mask it with a color; push it!

[Meatslurp]

Hey there!

I like the world youve created in your drawings, it has a quirky and unique feel to it... As i look through i see sketch after quick idea after quick idea, but whats it all for? Alot of your concepts feel disconnected, like they dont belong in the same world; i think for an appealing portfolio of quick designs, there should be some coherency and symmetry in the designs so they feel cohesive. But thats aside the point, which is my main critique:

I think you need to finish something; like this for example

https://i.imgur.com/cBSYkyZ.jpg

Take that picture, use reference and spend several days on it to really make it rendered well on each material and contour. Its a very cool idea, but i think itd shine so much more with some rendering, even if its a stylized kind of rendering like Dave's comic work, just dress it up more.  youre perfectly capable of drawing a decent character, just dont leave off on it once you throw down a background tone and mask it with a color; push it!

Thanks for stopping by!

I'm glad some of my stuff spoke to you and you're 100% right. Finishing drawings/paintings is something I have a immense problem with that I'm slowly working on overcoming. After a certain point It feels like the energy needed to continue rises exponentially until my brain just starts giving out or coming up with a thousand different, unrelated drawings.
It's been like that since I started drawing, which means at this point it's a really hard habit to iron out, but I'm really trying to work on it!

That's also why most of the drawings look so disjointed. They aren't drawn for anything bigger or coherent, they just stand for themselves. Either because I had a quick Idea or for practice. They are also not meant as a portfolio. I don't really feel completely ready to make one yet. I have a couple of bigger projects I'm working on and some  of the work for them is also in the sketch dump. Should probably have labeled the things belonging together. I guess I'll start doing that when I finish some of the stuff to a level where I would actually want to slap a label on it with my name behind it, because I really don't want to leave my babies in this half-assed state. hah

I pretty much know I just need to push through everything I'm uncomfortable with so I will try to use your comment as fuel to do that!

[bluehabit]

Thank you for taking the time to create that lengthy response along with the practical application of your study that was very helpful to me.

Not sure if you use discord much but we have one if you would like to join: https://discordapp.com/invite/azX8fwT
The other popular one which is a bit more active is from Sinix on youtube:
https://discord.gg/NRfDnRW

[DESQUOLOR]

Damn! Your art has some serious swag and love in there man. You definitely have what it takes, so just stick with it and focus on building tons of mileage.