@ Warbuton - thanks for dropping by and yes I def should try to do more still life studies to push myself more. Need to get into a a habit of doing them more often.
Some perspective and rendering practice not in a finished state though and another WIP.
Hey Jon, nice sketchbook so far, I'm glad you're sticking with it.
So I couldn't help but notice that on a lot of your studies it looks like you're mostly using the soft round brush and are only really blocking in the colors. I suppose it depends if you are wanting to push for realism more or not but I'd suggest spending a little more time on the studies and not just studying the colors or the values but the material itself and the texture. On the alligator/crocodile (I don't know the difference) studies you did for the Beastmasters illustration you didn't study how the scales on an alligator look and wrap around the body or anything.
And with different materials and textures it calls for a different value range here and there, it seems to me like you've got the blocking of colors in and smoothly rendering things but if you want to get that believability in there you have to start experimenting with that stuff. Textures can really help express form too, I mean just look at some of Dave Rapoza's paintings, a lot of his images have some rough texture to the materials where light can either be slightly blocked off by or seen slightly more of.
Anyway, mess around with that I think it will really help. Only other things I could recommend you show a little extra care towards would be value and anatomy. Keep posting :)
Went back and re-worked the turtle sketch/study, I already worked up the sketch too much that I got into rendering it in the previous post. When what I was trying to do was make/practice a presentable line work sketch.