Elderscrollers Sketchy Stuff

[Elderscroller]

Some more speedpainting:

[Elderscroller]

Some more pencils now for a change. I really want to have more natural and dynamic characters, so I start to focus on that for a while now.
First, I wanted to establish sort of a tryout of my abilities to do so at my present level. So I drew some characters from my mind, trying to make them look somewhat natural (that is: not stiff looking)
First one was awful and I guess, I wasn´t really focussed on the pose. I´ll post it nonetheless for learning purposes:




For the next one, I focussed more and some turned out ok/good at least in my eyes. Please, if anyone sees this differently, tell me :)






And just for fun, a dragon´s hoard:

[Kaffer]

Awesome sketches man.. Are you planning to finish any of those?

[Elderscroller]

@Kaffer: Thanks :) Stuff I post here is just for fun and practice, I´m not planning on finishing any. Then again, I´m working on a big personal project, maybe I´ll post some sketches from that and these will be finished some day (hopefully)

Here are 2 speedpaintings, nothing spectacular, just having fun

[meat]

I really like the lighting of these speed paintings, very atmospheric! What's the size of the canvas for your speed paintings?

[crackedskull]

Quite a bit of imaginative work here. Efficient techniques in the spitpaintings.
Ink sketches are looking awesome, the dragon one is really sweet, keep at it.

[Elderscroller]

@meat: Thanks! I usually start by opening an A4 sized document, crop it and after establishing a composition, I might crop it more. Once finished, I shrink it way down and apply a bit of a smart sharpen filter
@crackedskull: Glad you like my little dragon. It was done during an RPG P&P session. I always draw when playing, I find it very productive to illustrate what is happening during a game session

Here´s another speed environment:

[Elderscroller]

Some more figure drawing with pose emphasis. Not perfect yet, but it is easier to do day by day

[Elderscroller]

Haven´t posted in a while, so here´s a small speedpainting.
I started a course I won on TAD about light&form, hopefully I´ll get something out of it and I´ll improve a bit more

[Samszym]

Ah, the class with Dorian? I had that about a year ago, you're gonna love it!

[Elderscroller]

@Samszym: Yes, exactly! I´m quite excited to be there and Dorian is really a nice guy

Some doodles from imagination, still figure drawing and trying to get down some anatomy from memory

[Elderscroller]

Having fun at my TAD course about Form&Light. Here is one of the first assignment, draw boxes, organic and combined shapes. Nothing too exiting, but it gets oneself into practice mode!

[Adam Lina]

Those exercises look very helpful. Keep us updated so I can try out the assignments for myself :D

[Elderscroller]

Here are some doodles and quick notan-style light sketches.




And here is a very useful exercise to practice observing light (directions, value and color) and rendering. Basically, you take a screenshot or even a painting and paint in one or more light guides for different materials. The light guide is a sphere that has the same lighting conditions as the observed material. Once you have that, you take any form you have drawn and render that to look like a 3D object that could be part of that scene because it matches the lighting. For more practice, try not to use the color picker!

[Lionsketch]

Cool shape and light exercises, they look solid. Keep it up, I look forward checking up and see the improvement!

[Elderscroller]

@lionsketch: Thanks! Hopefully you WILL see improvement :)

Some fun stuff I did today. Basically painting a guy´s face and change some aspects like making the skin sweatier, add some dramatic lighting or change the guy into a girl. Or transform him into a wookie-orc....

[Elderscroller]

Pencils again:

[Elderscroller]

Some speedpaintings from the weekend. I have to start taking more time with those, focus more on values. I guess I´m rushing them too much

[Elderscroller]

Some pencil sketches and a value scale from my TAD course:






While it may seem boring, doing those value scales with pencil is a great exercise to get familiar with values. Basically, you try to etablish steps from dark to light that are as equal as possible and as smooth as possible (no blending stump) First take the darkest step and go as dark as possible, then try to get the value at number 5 which is a mix between lightest and darkest, then take the steps in between darkest/lightest and medium value and so on. I didn´t get it 100% correctly here, some steps are a bit greater than others

[Adam Lina]

That portrait in the top left looks good. In the portrait next to it you placed the eyes too close together. See how the space between the right eye (our right, her left) and her ear is wider than the portrait on the right? One thing that helps me is to think about how the outside edge of the eye socket is a plane change from the front of the head to the side plane.