So it's time. It's been a bit difficult for me to get back into art,. Art means a lot to me, it got me through foster care and many difficult times in my life, and I've dealt with arthritis and carpal tunnel before I even had any real success as an artist. For a while, I did work with 3D doing architectural work for people but that was something I was never passionate about.
Anyways, for me, art was the most fun to learn on conceptart.org, so Crimson Daggers seems like the next best step. I'm very rusty, and I will need to learn new things, as well as re-learn many others, but I hope to find the artist I'm meant to become along the way. Anyways thanks for coming to check out my sketchbook. Well, regardless of everything else, it's something I love doing, and lately, I feel like I love art again, and that's a great thing.
I plan on sharing everything I can here, from my successes to my failures, my mistakes, etc. because that's how we learn, and maybe even reach mastery one day, I've always believed I had very little talent, but when you're truly passionate about something I believe you can grow through effort and hard work. Feel free to give me advice, critiques etc that's what I'm here for. I hope to contribute to this Sketchbook for many years to come. And hopefully contributing to this will motivate me to keep going, and to draw even more.
I am not the most talented artist. But I am dedicated, My conceptart.org sketchbook (RIP) was around for about 10 years, I also started it age 12 so most of it was very, very bad haha. I try to treat my journey like one of those slow growing trees. I don't grow very fast, but over time I'll develop very strong foundations, and I just need the self confidence to not give up this time. This has been my dream ever since I was a kid, what's made me who I am and I owe it to myself to try one more time. I've never had a "real" teacher besides nature, books and tutorials but I hope to give myself somewhat of a real curriculum this year.
I am not good with introduction speech.Let just get to the part about what i think you could do to get some rust off or move from what you are normally doing.
Why not try a good old graphite pencil seem like you would get a bit of appreciation for capturing value it a lot harder with just a mechanical pencil which cannot achieve a gradient of value without breaking all the time outside of hatching or doing a great deal of smudging.What i think is really important to address is value else we don't develop were fundamental skill which is obsercation
You are not achieving alot of the darker value that would create a more polish look in your traditional work but you are not alone let be clear it a typical common issue among many artist they just don't commit to a finish look they quit to earlier because to finish an artwork you need a good deal of value control.But that for different reason it either them being shy on the pencil or it just that they don't have a good grasp of a full value range or even know to what it refer .They cannot understand how be gentle with the tool or forceful when necessary.It important not to be scared to break a few graphite pencil but it not require to achieve great value.
Here a little challenge for you if you are up to it according to the first rectangle of each row draw the same value 4x in the subsquent additional rectangle.Print as many of this page as you feel is necessary until you feel like you can capture the value of the first rectangle of each row.What is the goal at the end is for you to hit to darker value much more often moving on when the project demand it.
Obviously it hard to judge your value skill if you post alot of W.I.P what would be preferable is to post your best piece or to be more precise your most finish piece first to establish your level of competence.
Yeah that's true, I haven't actually drawn for years until recently, and was primarily a digital artist so especially my traditional drawings and sketches are a bit rough atm. I have a bunch of finished old work from years ago, but as I'm trying to learn I'd rather wait til I finish a piece again before I post any finished work.
I'll get some more drawing pencils when I can and do the value exercises as well! for now it's just what I have on me. thanks man , and I'll keep that in mind with the values as well. It's easier for me to achieve the correct values and colors digitally but I'm currently lacking the traditional tools department.
for traditional I'm also thinking of pen and ink/brush pen because it may be easier on my hands (arthritis and all) i appreciate you coming by my sketchbook and commenting on my post. I checked out yours as well and you had some insane progress over the years!
I don't know how bad your carpal tunnel is but it might also have to do with holding the tool to strongly.What you can do if you have trouble with pressure sensitivity is to get a few differnt grade of graphite pencil some will make darker mark more easly than other by having a range of 3 to 5 different grade you can achieve a gradiant without putting alot of pressure on the pencil.You could also play around with marker they don't build value the same way it a bit like doing paint you build up the color by going over rather then pressing down.
Just a rough concept painting from this evening, still needs a ton of work tho. and definitely darktiste I think if I get some normal graphite pencils it'd be easier. One thing I definitely don't want to do is study things without applying them so going to keep it up with these as well.
For some reason it's actually harder painting in just greyscale again haha, mainly because I usually would paint in full color from the start, but it's good to re learn and focus on my values
and finally a knight concept sketch. Honestly never been the best with characters or figure drawing (focused on painting environments more) but it's a good skill to learn.
I feel like is left arm as to much of a bent it doesn't seem to mirror the arm guard and mobility on the left i will wait to see if that was just a feeling or not.
some recent 30 minute speedpaints. Not to try to encourage speed, just to make sure I stay in the daily habit and to keep me motivated. I have some assignments I'm working on for a class that I'll post later
Just some experiments, studies, sketches and practice, as well as rough sketchbook stuff. I think I finally have an idea on a set style for my work, but it's just about getting my skill level up to there the moment.
I definitely see you're improving here. What course did you/are you taking?
Also, I think everybody has tendency toward over blending or under blending when painting, smoothness or sharpness. I think you are probably in the over blending/smoothness camp. I was just recently going through my notes from various tutorials and books, and one of the things I had written down was that overly smoothing results in generic roundness, while defining surfaces into defined planes makes them more specific and characteristic of a specific form.
(12-23-2023, 10:49 AM)ThereIsNoJustice Wrote: I definitely see you're improving here. What course did you/are you taking?
Also, I think everybody has tendency toward over blending or under blending when painting, smoothness or sharpness. I think you are probably in the over blending/smoothness camp. I was just recently going through my notes from various tutorials and books, and one of the things I had written down was that overly smoothing results in generic roundness, while defining surfaces into defined planes makes them more specific and characteristic of a specific form.
Thanks and yeah I definitely have a problem with that, for now I've been taking art camp 2, but gonna start craig mullin's digital painting soon, besides that just studying from books, reference and practicing from imagination. I definitely am in that camp, hopefully the lessons will help me improve in that regard (over painting/blending etc), tbh my end goal is a more painterly style with visible brush strokes and stuff. For now it's all self taught, so I'll have to find critiques elsewhere.
I also used to not do traditional art at all for a few years, and over relied on digital I think, so it's like relearning from the beginning lately, really learning how to draw well, perspective, etc instead of relying just on painting alone will help me improve considerably I think. Been also learning to draw directly in pen, it's been a learning curve so far
Great journey so far. At the start I would have said you do what I do and focus maybe a bit too much on the outline and neglect the inner forms, but you seem to develop that more towards your more recent posts. I can't believe I'm saying this but... try not to rely on your textured brushes. It can muddy the image and make it hard to refine the form. Particularly with the studies, you never get a detailed sense of the source image to compare and use to identify weak areas, just an approximation of what it kind of looks like.
(01-03-2024, 03:45 PM)RottenPocket Wrote: Great journey so far. At the start I would have said you do what I do and focus maybe a bit too much on the outline and neglect the inner forms, but you seem to develop that more towards your more recent posts. I can't believe I'm saying this but... try not to rely on your textured brushes. It can muddy the image and make it hard to refine the form. Particularly with the studies, you never get a detailed sense of the source image to compare and use to identify weak areas, just an approximation of what it kind of looks like.
Yeah, that's something I've been more keenly aware of lately, I'm gonna try to use soft and hard round brushes more and focus more on the inner forms and construction as well for drawing. Thanks for stopping by.
Idk if it's because when I started out I focused more on silhouettes and painting shapes more than line drawing, but it made it easier to see those forms when painting more than anything, it's like there was a mental block or something idk, or I just didn't know or practice the right things enough. I also need to practice from reference a whole lot more, But I'm going to study books like Michael Hampton's more especially which should help. Most of the time I paint directly in color as well, so I need to go back and do more greyscale studies & paintings alongside them as well.
Personally, I really want to become more confident as an artist this year, both in my traditional and digital work and hopefully have an actual portfolio by the end of it all.
So, bunch of terrible sketches today hah but decided to post everything here so might as well. (well besides my pages and pages of line and circle practice in pen)
But been learning a lot, a lot of these are super gestural, like 1-2 minutes for practice (mix of gestural, construction etc)
ll post more painted studies as well next time (probably later this evening). I don't have a cintiq anymore, so I'm also just practicing line construction and digital sketching confidence on my wacom, alongside painted studies. Going to balance that out with more ink drawings as well. Also will be studying more figure construction and perspective as well so I'll post those studies later as well.
