Flo's sketchbook

[Flo]

I 've been to Magdeburg yesterday, they have a really nice church there

[Flo]

Here is a Sargent study from ref and from memory (haha so lame)

What did I learn:

- next to the eye is the plane change eyesocket<>cheeck
- next to some shadows he put a highly saturated area
- the jaw-line is a mix of hard, soft and lost edges (I have read this in Stapleton Kearns blog http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.de/2010 ... rgent.html you should check him out, he is super-smart)
- the eye lid (and pretty much everything else) has some clearly defined planes. Depending on the degree of smoothing it appears rounded off or square
- you don't have to draw every detail, some can be implied like the ear-rings and still work fine
- I haven't really paid attention to the color and the light and should do that more

[Flo]

hey guys,

here the stuff I was working on lately.

A Scott Burdick study, he is great with edges. My study took about 1,5 h but I haven't got the effect out of it that I wanted. I should work on it more, but atm I don't feel like i have the time for it. there is so much I want to finish.

some animal studies are always good, that vulture-turtle just looks uber-nasty. I want to use it for a character sometimes, as well as the turtlebelly-study.

lastly some more work for the birthday present and to more cards for "Dungeon League" (Linework by Lena Kuschke)

Crits and Comments are warmly welcomed

[Flo]

here's a quick character from imagination (roughly 3,5 h)

[Adam Lina]

...I like turtles

[Flo]

I have done some materialstudies yesterday and applied some of it in my recent illustration

I am not too happy with the bubble and the translucent blue ball. also the red ball at the bottom looks kinda dead to me. That is actually a problem I am struggling with right now: dead colors. I am not sure how to avoid them, without adding too much color which makes the colors look cartoony again. so my work is constantly osscillating between dead and cartoony :(

maybe I have to add subsurface scattering or put the saturated colors somewhere special (i.e. close to the terminus?) in order to create a more realistic feel? or is my lighting wrong? I think I have to many inconsistent light-sources, what do you guys say?

I would love some c&c

@haze: turtles... are the best!

Flo

[Flo]

Here is the momentary WIP of the piece, I am still struggling with the arms, those bastards. I will do some anatomy studies soon, after that I hope I can solve their weirdness.

also I started to do really small 30 min studies of images I like. It is something Nathan Fowkes does with his watercolor sketches and I really liked the idea. and it helped me too. the picture with the dude on the mountain with the bird was a great source of inspiration for the last step of my piece. he puts light against dark in a really interesting way, so I tried to use that idea for me.

[Flo]

i did some muscle 'n' bone studies. I hope it helps, but to be honest I feel like I already did a lot anatomy studies, that didn't help me. But maybe that is just me, doing them wrong ^^

the old masters study got a wonky face, seems like I have to practice faces too ^^

the 2 water color studies where done in the Naturkundemuseum Berlin, it is great to check out, if you visit the city.

[Flo]

today's study and the current state of my piece

crits and comments are highly welcome, since I am not sure how to push it further

[Flo]

some final touches on the piece for my brother

a Franz von Stuck study and a comp on my interpretation of it.

[Flo]

hey peeps,

here my latest stuff.

I have been to the Naturkundemuseum Berlin again (Museum of nature-science) where I drew an parrot, a dinosaur-skeleton (the tallest standing skeleton in the world, Guiness World Record) and painted a cool looking stone in water color. Today I did a plein air painting while hanging out at Treptower Park in Berlin with my coworkers, having a little early summer party.

that's all for now, see you soon!

[Samszym]

Cool stuff Flo!! Really nice to see some drawings form life, museum sketching is always a blast.

amazed by all the work and thought you put into your illustration, I feel like the monsters int he foreground might have too much contrast and are taking focus away from the main character though

[Flo]

the latest stiz

@Samszym: Thanks a lot man, much appreciated. Yeah, I hope all the thought I put into it shows. Actually it feels a bit more like work than fun that way, but it is the best way for me to learn. I feel like doing studies, just for the sake of it has helped me to build a visual library, but working on a piece where I constantly question - study - push just feels like the right way to do it. If you have the time look at some studies people have done in the beginning of their sketchbooks and see how they repeat those first studies a lot. like doing a certain animal-study and then doing animal-characters after that and still do them now. it is weird and interesting. I try to find that behavior in myself and challange it.

study for the challange piece, some fun drawing (alienhead) and a charcoal study of a tree
and I finished the painting for my brother. Since he will never look in this, it is safe to post here :D

sorry for the lack of regular updating. :( I hope I can show more soon. Though I plan on doing longer paintings in the future, so actually it could be that I post less but when I post it is worth watching (hopefully :)

Cheerio

[Adam Lina]

Hey thanks for the advice on my sculptures in my SB thread. That Dr. Matze painting turned out awesome! His head looks a bit big for his body. The traditional stuff is nice to see too. So many people only do digital these days. Keep those updates coming!

[Flo]

Wow, I didn't realize it, but now I see it too. His head is simple a bit too big. It is already in print now, but if I can't live with the result, I will definitely reprint it. Thanks :)

[Flo]

hey guys,

not that much to show: an anatomy study on toned paper, a personal sketch and more work on the Bali Challange piece.

I try to solidify my greyscale to color workflow, this time I am trying Overlay layers for the colors (colors set on value 50 so it doesn't mess with the values of the whole piece when mixed together) and additional color layers here and there. Still it feels weird a I don't know if it is good that way. all the colors don't seem to have the right temperature. but I will push through this as usual ^^

the bat-faced-dude is a piece I did solely for fun and I realized how much I missed just painted and drawing for myself. I have been caught up in work for others so it feels great to get some me-time after all. I will definitely keep doing that.

[Warburton]

Hey man, im sorry its been so long since I last posted here and I feel bad coz it looks like you've been busting your ass lately with the studies and recent pieces. I like the direction your work is moving in too, it seems to have evolved since my last visit.

I noticed you've asked a few times for c and c so I thought I'd share some with you for what its worth ;)

Your latest illustration came out pretty sweet. Its clear to see you put a ton of work into it too which is awesome. I love all these studies your doing too, its very inspirational! The few things which jump out to me as being a bit off are mainly just a couple of anatomy issues, mainly round his left bicep and the size of his hands (which seem small). It looks a little odd too because it feels like there should be some foreshortening there but there isn't. The values didn't end up too badly in the end but the lights and darks of the dude are different from the lights and darks of the creatures which looks a little odd because its making them feel like they don't belong in the same space as him. Finally the stuff at the bottom could do with some more atmospheric perspective to break them up a bit because it looks like one big mass instead of multiple creatures.

Other then that it seems pretty cool man and you did a pretty awesome job with it. Cant wait to see your next one which will be even better, especially with the way your studying! :D

So from looking through the past few pages things I'd recommend you focus on are 1, your structure. Focus on basic shapes and getting those forms to read. When you paint stuff try and visualise them as basic 3D objects to get them forms to pop.
2, On the subject of structure and form, keep hamming those values like you are doing. Again basic stuff like black and white studies and still life's will go a long way with those ;)

Hope his helps man, your doing awesome and your stuff is defiantly improving and I cant wait to see more soon. Take care mate.

[Flo]

hey there will,

no worries for the long absence, I am also 100% guilty of it.

First of all, thanks for stopping by and leaving a long post like that. I really appreciate it man <3

and thanks for the crits on the dr.matze piece. I will go back to it, and go fix those issues.

But before that I have to finish the Bali piece.

If anybody has some c n c, I would love to here them.

[Flo]

again, long time I didn't post anything. It feels weird, that I expect people to check out my sketchbook and leave comments, when I am so lazy at it myself. hehe no hard feelings, I hope I can be better at this anytime soon.

other than that I have some issues in my art I have to work on. Mainly that I need to check my shapes, before I finalize a study.after that there is a long list of course, but I think this is atm quite important, since I have been pointed on it more than once.

if you see any flaw in my work, please feel free to tell my, I would love some feedback.

the first one is virtual plein air study: //www.google.de/maps/place/Island/@64.771071,-23.6237809,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m5!1e2!3m3!1s37677562!2e1!3e10!4m2!3m1!1s0x48d22b52a3eb6043:0x6f8a0434e5c1459a!6m1!1e1

I am not the first with this idea, check this: http://sheppard-arts.blogspot.de/2014/05...udies.html

and this http://lingy-0.deviantart.com/art/virtua...-454702765

The second one is part of my first freelance gig, where I paint lineart I get. It is all done for a card-game about football mixed with fantasy.
Maybe I should add, that I give myself only 4 hours per character to keep the salary above the critical 10€ / h mark.

the third one is a failed attempt to paint like Thomas Mahon or Dave Rapoza. lawl.

[Flo]

quick char doodle and studyyy