René Aigner's Sketchbook

[ReneAigner]

[meat]

Wow... this portrait of a girl has such soft light, it reminds me of Rembrandt...

[ReneAigner]

Thanks a lot meat!

[JonHop]

Beautiful work, the crashing waves and the last portrait piece are especially stunning, keep it up!

[alexfreitas]

Wow man, amazing :o

So you also study psychology? I am in my last year as well, but I have a long way to develop my art. It's surprinsing that you think you still are not "so good" as professionals...

By the way, who are some of those guys you think are top level?

Keep it up your sketchbook!

[ReneAigner]

Thanks a lot Jon!

Thanks alex! Cool, another psychologist. Do you plan to get into art or are you going to do something in the filed once you graduate?

To be honest I'm having a hard time naming specific artists. there seems to be a lot of extremely high quality work all over the place, e.g. on cghub. However, Concept guys are also doing more and more photo bashing and while i do understand the need for the technique in certain development situations, I think many younger artists are skipping the funamentals and are, unintentionally I guess, smokescreening their true skillset by relying very heavily on photobashing and overpainting. That might skew the general impression I get when i look at some of that work. Well, we'll see in a year.

[Peppermint Butler]

you make it look so effortless, what with the frequency of your portrait/landscape updates. I aspire to get to your level!

[ReneAigner]

Thanks Peppermint!

No update for such a long time. I've been brushing up my MODO knowledge (which unfortunately yields nothing that would be worth showing), been doing some work I cannot show and, I have to admit, I've also been too lazy for my own good for a few days. Let's put an end to that. Here's a portrait I did for a friend.

[ReneAigner]

[matkaminski]

Another thing that might help you some is to get a piece that you are studying to like 50% or 75%, and then take everything you just learned and try doing one from imagination right next to it.
That way you can have a rendered study and then one from imagination using what you just learned.

Also, you might do well to throw down a master study or two. I personally suggest Sorolla or even Bouguereau. Two different approaches, but basically just a loose to refined two that can help you approach your painting in two different ways.

Keep it up! :)

[ReneAigner]

thanks for the tips matt!


I'm leaving for Oslo next week, workshop at Grimnir HQ for a few days to get development of the game started off. Until then...

A sort of experimental self portrait from life. Which is quite a hassle to arrange, huge mirror, light, and then spinning 90° around from mirror to cintiq to paint. Worked out ok though.

[Janos]

René ! your Portraits are so freaking good love this stuff!!
More over i love all your vehicles !!!

You have a great sketchbook and awesome work ethic !!

Have a good one

or

Gute NAcht :D

Janos´

[alexfreitas]

Your art is very inspiring, keep'em coming!

About the psychology topic, I like psychology, but I think I like art way more. I really hope to make it as an artist :) You particularly inspired me for being a psychology student and being so awesome artist :D

[ReneAigner]

Thanks a lot Janos!
Thanks alex and good luck with both your studies and art!

Have been experimenting with my workflow for vehicle design, trying to fit MODO into the pipeline. Not so thrilled with the design itself, but to be honest this was mainly about experimentation and seeing how MODO could help. I'll have to play more with materials/textures, overpainting everything is a bit of a hassle.

[crackedskull]

Love the workflow in your works, keep killing it.

[ReneAigner]

Thanks cracked!

Only a quick enviro for today:

[ReneAigner]

Not sure if you're interested in this sort of thing, but let's try. Here are two OPs I did in another art forum. To be clear again; these are not my artworks. I only did the critique and OP.

The value structure doesn't work. If you want to show that something is glowing, you have to lower the other values in the image significantly. That will go a long way to make the fires and the cool light really pop and glow. Also think about edge quality; right now all your brushstrokes are very messy and there are neither really sharp edges nor are there soft or lost edges (which you should see in the smoke etc.)
Quick OP to illustrate:

Your values don't make sense. You have two kinds of light sources in this image; the night sky (which by convention we tend to depict as blue-ish) which gives a very dim and diffuse light and the artificial light sources (blue magic light and torches). Apart from the areas where artifial light hits form, no value can be lighter than the primary light source: the sky. Which means that the building and large parts of the landscape are way too light. This causes the image not to read visually and it also stops the magic light from "glowing".
Apart from that basic stuff, I'd advise to simplify some forms in the landscape and leave the moon out altogether since t's competing as a focal point with both the caravan and the magic blue light.

OP to illustrate the value issue:

[Doolio]

I think this is awesome. Your explanations are clear and they make sense and the visual info one gets while watching a two-frame gif is very "direct", I would say even better than if the images were next to each other.

[ReneAigner]

That's great! Because all I have to show for today is another OP :D

The problem is that there's no focal point and the eye is very efficiently lead towards the right where there's... nothing really. I just "slip out of" the picture.
How to fix this:
Establish a focal point (e.g. by making the light above the door more saturated) and close off the comp to the right somehow to ensure the viewer doesn't "exit" the picture. You'll have to sacrifice the train, which is a bit sad, I quite like it, but it serves no compositional purpose like this.
Quick OP to illustrate:

[ReneAigner]

A quick study before I'm off to bed: