Would you like to come up and see my etchings?

[crackedskull]

Keep churning out faces and doing those creepy sculptures :D

[Adam Lina]

constructicon & crackedskull: thanks for the support!

Slowly but surely...

[meat]

Kudos for taking on doing the 3D clay sculpting. Keep that up!

Regarding the suburban painting, Put in the darkest dark in the image. I'm guessing there are some near-black areas under the car, under the bushes, and in some areas of the treetops. Once you put in the darkest areas, you can get a better sense of the space in that painting.

[Eve]

Thank you for dropping by my sketchbook!
And wow, I'm impressed you have the mood to make sculptures! Are you going to add the subtleties on anatomy, as I imagine it being really hard with clay being very fragile..

On the painting I have to agree, Try to push values more, adding darker shades and keep indirect lightning and also cast shadows in the back of your mind, it would bring the painting really to life!

I hope to see more of your progress :D

[Rosolino]

those studies of modeling are really awesome!! definitely they gonna help your notion of volumes. A lot of studies here.... man, you are insane haha!! congrats, keep it up!!

[aks9]

hey man!
cool to see some sculpture going on : )
a tip for the knight study you did (the one on paper), try to work more on separating the light and dark areas clearly. the shadow areas are a bit vague and dark with lots of gaps inbetween the strokes. it can be a bit hard at first to commit to really filling in large black areas, but i think its important, this is sort of echoing what meat says too.
keep it up!

[Cyprinus]

Great progress on that bust sculpture, altough it really looks a bit creepy with the eyeballs! It's really interesting to see your studies made from them!

About the white gel pens (not sure if you already ordered some): Yes I tried them before (: For some time I actually only used those because I was too lazy to use ink or other white paint. They are really great for details and little highlights; however I kind of noticed that they really vary in quality. I had some which needed 2-3 layers to be at least a little opaque. At the moment I'm using a Pilot "Choose" and I'm fairly satisfied with it, before I used a Sakura Pen which was also pretty okay (It was the simple Gelly Roll from the overview I linked last time, because the soufflé and glaze have some extra effects). I guess it really depends on what you'd like to do. The Posca Pens for example are available with different nibs. I got some with the brush nib, which I personally prefer because I have the best most variety for my lines and can even paint bigger areas. (I'm sorry for this text wall...it seems I can hardly stop when I'm rambling about pens and stuff orz)

[Flo]

yo haze,

I really like your ink-drawings and the fact that you take time to sculpt stuff to study it. I did the same thing twice now (I can still count it, which means I don't do it enough ;) and for me it was a way to learn anatomy and how muscles attached to different places on the arm.

but the big problem I saw for me was, that I am not a good sculptor and studying from a wrong sculpt maybe isn't helping in the right way. I don't say that you shouldn't do it, but just keep that in mind. i.e. if you sculpt a skull, really try to get the shapes right, before you learn from it.

also I feel like you concentrate on outlines too much, except for those 30sec head studies, where you seem to have a fixed workflow (circle, midline, features...) take a look at this:
http://theartcenter.blogspot.de/2010/07/...-tips.html
he is going: gesture, 3D block out, details. To me that is the best way to know where to put lights and shadows and to have a solid drawing. It takes time to adjust to this and I am by no means good at it and it can mess with your creativity since more of your brain's capacity is put into construction and not creating/designing, but in the end I am sure it is a great tool to have in the toolbox.

other than that keep it up

p.s. I like turtles too

[Adam Lina]

Thanks for the advice everyone. Im avoiding typing a lengthy response to each of you so I hope you dont mind. I had to take a week off due to tendonitis in my wrist. It sucks because I was really building up some momentum. Its a double edged sword since my enthusiasm made me forget to take breaks plus I had a weekend of drinking and eating unhealthy which i found is a bigger factor now that Im not in my 20s anymore. Eat greens and fish guys!

[Nika]

Hey,
Awesome studies! Your values and colors look really good. I got nothing to critique now, but I'll be back to check things soon : ) Keep this up!

[Adam Lina]

Thanks Nika! I'll try to keep it up. I appreciate you stopping by and commenting :)

My wrist has been getting better. Now its the problem of kicking myself in the ass to get motivated again. Theres not much to post but I feel like the last few days I've been getting back in the flow of things. I messed around with caricaturing but my exaggeration is pretty tame. Its a good thing to practice though because exaggerating forces you to really analyze things more to decide what should be exaggerated without breaking the likeness.

[clockodile]

These sculpting studies are really inspirational - I've seen people make head models, but the still life lighting studies are a great idea.

I like how you have overblown the jewelry in the exaggerated face. What may help with getting yourself to push exaggeration further is making a few repeated sketches of the same face, and trying to out-do the former sketch.

Hope your wrist gets better soon as well, tendinitis is a sod.

[Samszym]

You, thanks for the tips! The clay stdies are really cool, that must be an excellent way to learn forms. Really nice how you're varying the stroke direction. I think they'd look more confident if they had fewer marks in them, might be something to focus on in future ones

The caricature definitely coul dhave gone further, I think a problem with it is that you were willin gto exxagerated by making some shapes bigger, but it doesn't look like you exxagerated by making any of them smaller. One instance, I probably would have shrunk this dude's chin down a lot, that would have helped make his nose ring look bigger

[JyonnyNovice]

Nice to see Beetlejuice is still in people's minds : )

[Adam Lina]

clockodile: thanks! I spent more time focusing on exaggeration this time around.

Mariyan-Hristov: Im glad you like them. Its nice to know my sketchbook has some actual appeal for others to look at. The clay stuff is really a fun way for me to do still lifes too. Its more interesting for me to design shapes myself to study from then paint found objects.

Samszym: You're welcome! I'll try to offer what little I can to help you since you've been such a big help to me. Thanks for the crit too. I was lacking more than one dimension to my exaggerations. Im trying to find multiple things to exaggerate in different ways now and I think its helped a lot. Im planning on doing a lot more of these since I have fun doing them and I feel like Im learning from it.

[StardustLarva]

Ooh, I'm liking those caricatures. Lovely work on that acrylic painting too, you captured the texture of the tree well.

[Hobitt]

Nice stuff man love the sculpting stuff! keep it up

[Adam Lina]

Thanks guys! I messed around with that bust some more. I was going for a likeness but it ended up looking like a generic face. Eyes are hard to sculpt D:
I'm liking doing these value drawings on the tan paper with marker. Its nice I can draw with no bleed through and use both sides of the pages. I did a couple value sketches from life of a tree behind a roof and my bro 4wheeler. Also some rough pencil sketches from imagination that I dont completely hate for once.

[JyonnyNovice]

Nice stuff! We spoke about selling artwork and stuff - one of these days you should try and do something nice and big on some good paper as if it was going in a gallery and see how it turns out, just for an experiment to see if you can pull it off, maybe you're ready to make moneh!

For your doodles, the characters in perspective, do you just set up a couple grid lines and feel it out? Or did you have some other construction type lines going on under there?

[Adam Lina]

Thanks! It was nice talking to you. I keep telling myself I need to create some actual finished paintings to build a portfolio... One of these days :P

With figures I dont have a set in stone process I follow since I dont really do them from imagination a lot like I should be doing. I just kinda start with a circle for the head and a flowy line for the spine. Then I guess at what angle the legs will be at. Next I put in horizontal lines for the shoulder/collar bones and the hips. OR I'll do the torso and head with the collar bone and hip bone line, then figure out where the limbs will be. All while keeping in mind that Im trying to pick a consistent perspective. I find it helpful to try to imagine where the ground is and what angle its at. Im not sure how helpful that explanation is :)