Sula's Sketchbook

[kikindaface]

heeeey, nice amount of work ! i'd say to be carreful on your brush economy, and edges, because everything loks really soft! you can go harder on some parts of your paintings. your last illustration have a really good light and composition, but colors kinda killed them, the red of the background is way too warm, you should try to balance the warmness of the foreground with a less warm background to add some depth . Keeeep it up ( btw, i have a question, i've seen Sulamoon on your profile, and remember an interview with jana and johannes saying this name, where they talking about you ? i've been dying to find this interview again but has been deleted by livestream ... :D )

[Ursula Dorada]

@Lumens: thank you :D

@Kikindaface: hehe I actually spent the whole day thinking of how to reply to this. First of all, thanks for the feedback. Yeah, the whole soft brush thing is an experiment since I don't like blurring my pieces at any point. Its based on an important feedback I got, still no conclusions from it.

And yeah, I am going to disagree with you here. I don't think the red killed the piece, it is there and it was carefully placed. It is, you know, a homage to Ocarina of Time, so I will just link you this: http://25.media.tumblr.com/47f8407946965...3_1280.jpg I was not going for generic cinematic feel for the piece :)

And haha yep, I was on that interview :D I asked them a couple of questions, I remember they did say my nick out loud! But yeah, I SulaMoon pretty much everywhere. Wondering if I should revert to SulaMoon here too :)

And now, today's study. Plenty of hardbrushes, but a bit more than I could chew on in only one hour.

[kikindaface]

thanks for your reply ! i better understand what was your inspiration ( pls don't blame me if i never played at zelda !! ^^ ) Concerning the last study, i like it, you managed to give to your piece the same mood ! And that's cool you asked some questions to jana and hannes ! Do you know where i can find the video/ mp3 ? i've been looking for a long time without finding ..

[JakeB]

You did great with that last study Sula. Really well simplified, captured loads of it, in such a short time. Good job. :)

[Ursula Dorada]

@Kikindaface: All good man! :D And thank you hehe. I think it was Dave himself who gave that interview/talk, but I am afraid that if you can't find that on his stream or his youtube channel, it's really been lost :(

@Jake: Thanks man :D Haha now you guys makes me wanna try this crazy complex stuff again lol

Today's

[Ursula Dorada]

I figured why not post this here - look, I have found myself a hobby it seems. Traditional media:

[Ursula Dorada]

Today's



Now to play with my acrylics <3

[Ursula Dorada]

Today's

[pearwood]

Very cool, Sula, and fun to watch.

[Ursula Dorada]

@Pearwood: Yay, glad you enjoyed it :D I will try to stream every time possible :)

Today's

[Veneq]

A hobby, eh? I'd say you just found another way to push your art and improve and are doing so...

...very quickly.

[mindwrack]

this latest stuff is looking great! these loose studies should really help your brush economy, the traditional work will too! (its good to see someone else doing traditional painting on here :D) keep it up ursula!

[Ursula Dorada]

@Veneq: Haha well, yeah. Not expecting to actually finish anything with it, but I do love them real brushes :D And yay, thank you <3
@Mindwrack: yay traditional :D Thanks man!

Today's

[Ursula Dorada]

Today's

[Veneq]

The audacity to take on that neck piece... I have no words.

[Ursula Dorada]

@veneq: Hahaah oh yes. You can see how I failed it though - but I have an idea that may work and so some testing needs to be done. hehe.

But for now, have this pencils!
Yay, I love my scanner.

[Ursula Dorada]

So guys!

You saw yesterday the problem I faced with that neckpiece on that color study, right? How I never managed to get it down decently in the time limit.

So it happens I spent some time thinking the problem over, and I arrived at a pretty decent solution. This was my result after 15 min of rework:



The long time solution to this was to draw each scale and smartly make the layers work on top of each other. That would have given me a million layers, which is something I avoid with all my strenght on my daily studies.

So, I remember they introduced that weird brush mode called "behind", that was introduced a couple of versions ago. It paint only on transparent pixels - as if you were painting on a layer behind the current one! And there you go, I was able to block in the scales in less than 10 min. Start placing the top most ones, branch from there. Mind the shapes!

Now, on top of that a multiply layer to lay down shadows (don't forget to vary temperature of the shadows there!), both big volume shadows and the little drop shadow between a couple of scales... And add some highlights now. It is a faster way to get a much better result - I am pretty sure it will come in handy for hair, feather and fur at some point, so I decided to share :D

[Jaik]

That's a great idea, I have always wondered if the behind mode had a practical application. Great job and very useful information, most certainly will use this trick in the future.

Sketchbook is looking great by the way, love the sketches on the second last post!

[JakeB]

Sketchbook stuff's looking crazy good, love your pencil work. And holy shit, that behind mode thing is AMAZING. Not sure what I'll use it for, but it's insane. Woah, thanks lol.

[Lyraina]

Lovely sketchbook indeed! Great digitals as well as pencils.

Thank you for the "behind" brush mode hint - I think I completely ignored this one so far. Looks like it could really come in handy sometimes. I'll definitely keep it in mind and experiment a bit!

It's nice to see you pratice with GoT screenshots, they really do have lots of great light/mood situations!