Hi,
I haven't been here for quite a while and my previous sketchbook sunk somewhere in the depths of this forum. Since I plan to have a week or two of intense studies I decided to post a thread in hope of some additional motivation.
Beautiful! Nice start to your new sketchbook. Welcome aboard the improvement train.
I'm afraid I don't have much to critique-- The lady with the dragon is absolutely awesome. There's something odd about the lighting though, to mine eyes. I wish I could more specifically point you in the right direction there. And I may be incorrect. ;)
Thank you :) That was a first time I've tried to apply such lighting, so it may be a little incorrect. I'm a little too inexperienced to see what might be wrong with it.
The amount of detail that you can manage is amazing! It's sometimes a bit too much for me though, try to lower the density of details outside of the focal points... That should clean and give a better hierarchy to your images!
Besides of that, truly beautiful and inspiring work! Keep rocking sir!
I love the mountains and the way you draw clouds. I cannot paint any background correctly even the simple ones so your environments are really impressive to me :)
Something cool I learned about painting mountains and clouds. Go check out videos about the Mandelbrot Set, it's all about things in nature having these infinitely creviced silhouettes, where the more you zoom into it, the more they look the same. I ended up applying it to some of my work with trees and clouds and mountains, and I got some insanely awesome work through its application.
Also, that last piece you made with the spikey mountains, were you in a different mindset when you made that one vs the others? It looks honestly a little stiffer than the ones previous (I do that a lot, so I ask out of kindness :3)
You know, I always open a new sketchbook with open mind, and as soon when I saw your first post, I was like, GREAT! Really fantastic stuff, don't recall seeing your work, but definitely digging your stuff mate, keep on posting!
The amount of detail that you can manage is amazing! It's sometimes a bit too much for me though, try to lower the density of details outside of the focal points... That should clean and give a better hierarchy to your images!
I do have a tendency to overdetail unnecessary areas. Recently I try to simplify some of my brushwork, but there is still much to work on.
(09-11-2015, 07:46 AM)DavidSzilagyi Wrote: Something cool I learned about painting mountains and clouds. Go check out videos about the Mandelbrot Set, it's all about things in nature having these infinitely creviced silhouettes, where the more you zoom into it, the more they look the same. I ended up applying it to some of my work with trees and clouds and mountains, and I got some insanely awesome work through its application.
Also, that last piece you made with the spikey mountains, were you in a different mindset when you made that one vs the others? It looks honestly a little stiffer than the ones previous (I do that a lot, so I ask out of kindness :3)
Looks awesome, keep it up!
I remember I used to be fascinated by fractals. I know they are used in 3D environment generators. Thank you for pointing it out, I'll definitely do some research on that matter and try to incorporate it in my work.
The last piece is a WIP that I abandoned for a while. I wanted to paint something in a style of old traditional fantasy illustrations, but it didn't quite go as well as I hoped for. I'll have to fix that one sometime in the future.
I honestly don't remember. It as well might be that I didn't do any studies for that particular piece, just got lucky with a doodle and went with the flow. It was a half a year or so ago so I don't recall.
Great stuff!! Your paintings in the first post are pretty impressive, and I like your studies a lot, especially the ones of trees and moss. Keep 'em coming!
Thamk you guys for the kind words. I'll definitely try to post as often as I can. Unfortunately my new tablet still is not working properly, it was tested for mechanical defect but none was found. I uninstalled drivers 3 times but it didn't help much. Hopefully I'll be able to resolve this matter quickly :/
@Rhasdra: It's true custom brushes can be very confusing. I remember when I downloaded min yum's brushes I pretty much didn't know how to apply them, having suddenly >100 brushes with no manual was very overwhelming.
I still believe basic round brush and soft brush are the best brushes since you can paint almost anything with them while custom brushes have usually a very limited use. The smaller study in my last post was done with only round brush IIRC.
I think the wisest way to approach this matter would be to determine your needs. What I mean by that is for example - if you need to paint moss quicker and more realistic, either make a brush or look for one with a specific texture and test it for a while (if it doesn't work, just delete it). Using custom brushes just for the sake of it is rather pointless.
If you do environments then introducing a texture brush and also anything that generates a little more random shapes, values or colors than just a round brush might be good.
If you want to imitate a traditional medium, then taht's another story and takes a lot of practice. Anyway you certainly can become a master without a single custom brush - I believe Jana Schirmer doesn't use any and she does absolutely amazing stuff.