What ImSkeptical learnt this week (Sketchbook)

[ImSkeptical]

It's like 4am so i'm just gonna post and run.
















Last 2 weeks of studying and experimenting and doin the chow.

Thanks for looking, onto next week.

[smrr]

I was blown away by your CHOW, Skept, @__@
Loving the style and everything up in here~
I don't know what you're doing... Making deals with the devil... Stealing pixie dust... But whatever it is... Its levelling you up quick snap. I need some of that shit in my life!

Keep doing what your doing, because its awwwsmm c:

P.s. ohhhhh maaaaaaan Code Geassss is fooking the besssssssssssttttt!!! Up to Episode 19 already c: ... I don't want it to end!

[ImSkeptical]

smrrfette - Thanks girl :D, I think the secret is me actually bothering to do things other than play street fighter :p

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I don't really have anything to post, it was mostly traditional that I can't be bothered to photograph. And streetfighter. And starting to watch all of Buffy again.

But I still want to keep it weekly. So here's probably the only thing I did on the computer.



So I was looking at my CHOW and I feel like an older version was better. Would be cool to get some feedback on this. I feel like maybe some of the colors and dodging out some things in the final broke some of the subtlety i had going in this version



Next week I should have some stuff. I've been working on fundamentals a lot, doing this Steve Huston workshop http://www.nmaworkshops.com/ - also just been drawing a bunch of figures in general, thought it would be cool to memories a bunch of street fighter moves. So even though I'm going to keep up with the street fighter memorisation I want to shift gears back to design. Writing it here as a commitment to myself.

Thats all for this week, if you like good movies, watch the movie Snowpiercer. The fact we live in a world where more people watch Trans*four*mers to hate it than know about Snowpiercer annoys me.

[Flo]

hey man, nice illustration. It turned out great I think. Also good for you to do the workshop. I think it is a great idea to invest in one-self.

One thing about your illustration would be that I am not sure what is actually happening. She is holding that rope and it is in a city but thats it mainly.

I think you could push the narrative and the dynamism a bit more. I did a quick overpaint to show what I mean.

First I tilted the composition since the verticals and horizontals made it too calm in my opinion and I flipped it because I wanted the main focal point on the right side. Then I pushed her inactive hand back into the shadow, so that there was a shadow hand / light hand and shadow foot / light foot. I don't know if that is something one should do, but it felt right for me :D

Then I added a weapon in her shadow hand to show some danger. After that I added feet since now with the tilted comp, her legs just ended in midair. Then I seperated the foreground a bit more by adding a screen layer between the foreground-pidgeon and her handbag. Lastly I added a saturated edge on some cast-shadows on her skin, added some light on her hand and the shadow on the ground by another person.

Still I am not sure what she is doing with the rope, but I think you have some purpose for that. Maybe sort that out, in order to make it easier to read.

On a technical side I think it is great work, but like I said, the narrative is a bit weak. Other than that I want to see more :)

Cheers

[Jaik]

Nice stuff man. Really cool. BUT THAT FUCKING TANGENT OF HER WAND THO. I have seen this image so many times, in the thread, finals thread etc and each time I think.. I wonder if she actually has an umbrella....
Other than that, wicked stuff man xP
Gonna have to let me know how that workshop goes!

[ImSkeptical]

Flo - Thanks for the paintover dude, yeah looking at it that tilt would've added a lot. And yeah, good call on the hand in shadow and the ambiguity of that wand, seems no one knows whats going on :( . Was supposed to be just some kind of pigeon swarm spell.

Jaik - :(

Also Steve Huston is the best teacher hands down. Or at least he speaks to my sensibilities, definitely look at his Facebook page posts if you don't wanna put down money on something like new masters.




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So i missed a week. I'm sorry. Here's a big update to make up. I'm kind of cheating though cause most of its just inktober.

Testing a fast character rendering process



Game project thing




Inktober














Inktober is fun, hard, frustrating, and making me realize how good people are at drawing. For the personal challenge I'm aiming at drawings kim jung gi style, but for anything to look good I usually need to do some kind of underdrawing. I'm making progress to not needing it though.

Aight that's it, cyall next week thanks for looking you guys are the best.

[Archreux]

Hey man, it's been a while since I've stopped by to check things out.

Great strokes and fluidity in your paintings, as always. That CHOW piece and the piece with the giant lady in the cave are awsome. Try not to abuse the smudge/blur tool too much as there are parts in these illustrations and sketches where it's very obvious, and for the most part there's places where it's put to good use. So just watch out for that.

The lines sketches you've got are great, especially the Inktober things you've been doing. I'm loving the page of digital sketches a couple posts up.

Gonna look out for more next week. :D

[ImSkeptical]

Archreux - Thanks for stopping by mate, yeah I tend to get carried away with that smudge brush. Hard to hold back with losing those edges xD. Thanks for the feedback


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So I'm doing so much drawing. I blame getting the Kim Jung Gi 2013 book. Most all of it is terrible, I'm glad inktober is forcing me to show some of it. Otherwise I would look like i don't do much at all. Not that I do do doing alot, but you know.. its fun to not feel so unproductive when you post a lot of stuff.

So here's some designs for hunters for that project again





That last one is just a quick material/color render, still needs a lot of work for a real design.

And here's Inktober







Alright its 4am i need to sleep. Thanks for looking.

[ImSkeptical]

So inadvertently took 3 months off posting. I think I was out of state (for PAX australia) and then out of country (for Bali Illustration Workshop) most of November. Also for a while I thought I would have a job doing color boards for all of 2015, so ended up playing dota again for a bit. That fell through though :( , pro tip, don't spend money if you haven't signed anything yet :p.

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Anyway, still been busy practicing art. I think I have something cool to show though. It's me discovering a problem I had and then hopefully solving it somewhat.

So for awhile I've been annoyed with color. When I was doing super bright colorful images, although it would sometimes take a bit of struggling, I would eventually find something i liked. In the last year or so I've been trying to move away from it because when I show people my work, a lot of the time the only comment I would seem to get would be "nice colors". I'm not exactly sure what else I was wanting them to be saying, but I did think colors was probably my strongest point, so I was motivated to move away from it try and practice more subtle color schemes.

At the start of November though, I did this art test for some color scripts



In the process of doing it, I started to realize something very important about my understanding of color. Like usual, with some of them I struggled while others came easy. But at the end of it, yeah they might be passable (I did pass the test), but comparing it to Dice Tsutsumi, something was just off about some of them. I don't think I figured it out exactly what was wrong at the time, but I do think I started to realize that I was only comfortable with doing direct sunlight, and skylight in the shadows. Any time it deviated too much from a daylight to golden hour to sunset sort of lighting, not only did I enter struggle town, I would always leave it somewhat dissatisfied.

This became even more apparent after doing these











The first was just a copy. But the rest I was trying to apply that subtle brown school lighting like Rembrandt, Sargent and Zorn. There was just something a little off to me, specifically about the color in these. Especially the one with the hands in the lap, it was really bugging me. I think it was here that I decided to focus a bit more on color and painting again, whereas most of the year was spent focusing on drawing. So here's the studies i started to do to help fix the problem.









I was still strolling through the streets of struggle city at this point. Especially with that abandoned still life right at the end there, why didn't it have that grey brown mastery excellence. Why were the masters just so damn masterful?

I think it was around here when i stumbled across some videos on color by Nathan Fowkes. Surely a god of color such as him would be able to enlighten me with epic art secrets. Well, as with all art tutorials after you've been at it long enough, nothing really new was taught. Just those fundamentals that everyone knows like vibrate contrasting colors; variety in saturation; you can get more color out value schemes that have lower contrast; warm light cool shadows or cool light warm shadows; etc.

But what a minute. That was the issue. Cool Light! Warm shadows! Something I already 'knew' I just didn't 'know'. Like every discovery you have in art, it's something you've read on the internet and been told by everyone and anyone repeated time and time again. And if you don't already know exactly what I'm talking about; don't worry, work on this shit long enough and you will.

So with that I entered a frenzy of studying that subtle overcast grey brown masterful and probably most importantly cool light I was after.























Simultaneously with these studies I was 'applying' the learning into these quick sketches. A lot of them are just abstract color blobs trying to find harmonies. But in my mind these were just as important, if not slightly more so as all the master copies.



Also, not part of the story, some studies on texture





And here is the end of the story.








Okay that first painting was already kind of figured out and I just cleaned it up. It looking somewhat close to good is probably both a fluke and me applying the little drawing ability I've gained through the year. It was done before my realization around the time of the first few studies where I was figuring out the problem. But it needs to be put at the end for dramatic purposes! Screw chronological order :p. Anyway those other two I think are directly influenced by my newfound knowledge and practice of something I already knew. And that is either pick warm colors for your lights and cools for your shadows; or cool colors for your lights and warms for your shadows.

As always, its all about the basics. So go back, learn what you've already learnt unless you havn't in which case do. And you too can make paintings that for once you don't immediately feel like deleting and only show out of pressure to attempt to persuade people you actually are doing something all those hours of the day alone in that room. Other than playing videogames.

[smrr]

An updatos!
Finally!

I'm so glad you made that write up, so good to see where you made your discoveries and whatnot - of course, the leveling up is more than evident (I fckin love the chick with the scissors! got that Kung Fu Hustle + Street Fighter type of vibe and I dig thaaaaat)! Really, you can see where things clicked for you, Skept! It's crazy haha

Man I gotta study colours now

We'll catch up soon (and maybe I'll actually see you at life drawing some time lol)

[Archreux]

Hey, this stuff is a really big step up from your last post three months ago.

These studies are really killer, especially those portraits. Your stoke economy, color and mood as improved a lot, too. Thanks for sharing that little story of how you came to discover all these things. It's always interesting being able to read or hear about the more personal journey of discovery.

Not much I can really say about the latest batch. Also, words cannot describe how much I love your paintings of the game character designs. Is that Monster Hunter? So good. :D

[meat]

I'm amazed by how your loose brush strokes look organized and contained, and make a powerful image.

[Heliux]

come back! ;_;

[Cyprinus]

Wow, that last post literally blew my mind! I can only agree with the others about the points mentioned, I also think that your brush strokes improved a lot, they look really beautiful to me (: And thanks so much for sharing that insight in your studying of colour, I love reading about this kind of stuff.

[Flo]

Hey man, nice update on the warm / cool contrast thing. Sorry for not scrolling through your whole sketchbook. Btw that scissors are wrong way around. the curvy part is the outside, the straight part the inside ;)