Elderscrollers Sketchy Stuff

[Elderscroller]

[Elderscroller]

Trying out imaginary portrait again...

[Eyliana]

Nice sketchbook. I really enjoy looking at your pencil sketches. And the imaginary portrait looks really good as well :)

[Elderscroller]

@Eyliana: Thanks very much :)

Trying out designs. The woman´s clothing is a combination of some elisabethian, medieval, rococo and minoan fashion and with the male figure is tried to do something with an aquatic theme. Kind of ended up like a fantasy mixture of aquaman and doctor octopus 

[JyonnyNovice]

Hey man, long time I didn't comment but still checking your thread everytime you post something new. Awesome as always, your head is so deep in the fantasy world with all the props and costumes and creatures. Really love it. It seems to effortless for you to devise these things.

I Want to say something apart from just that I like it so, how about mixing it up and trying some other mediums? I know you do digital painting and traditional pencil a lot (I guess you like things you can take on the road and need minimal setup?) - how about some brushpen / brush & ink, charcoal, coloured pencil, ball point etc even straight to pen sketching with a sharpie or something. It helps us discover new ways to work and stay fresh and find new directions! Looking forward to more, like always.

[Elderscroller]

@JyonnyNovice: Thanks for visiting! I´m glad you still like my stuff. As for using other media: I have some samples on other pages in this sketchbook (mainly ink, ballpoint pen and watercolours) and I do use them next to pencils and digital drawings as you really learn quite a lot more from them. I also plan on turning to oils soon to see how this turns out :)

I´ve been to Vienna this weekend and visited the Edvard Munch and Romanticistic period paintings exhibition (next to the Starwars Identities exhibition :) ) Munch really drew some heavily depressing images full of pain and suffering. His style of drawing is really very different to mine, so I kind of tried to combine them a bit, so these drawings here are a bit more sketchy than usually. And I really need to get a light tripod for my sketchbook as standing around holding the sketchbook and drawing in it is really exhausting....  If someone knows of one that is light and small (!) I´d appreciate your suggestion

[JyonnyNovice]

Have a look at musician stands for sheet music, I had one years ago that folded right down so you could fit it in a rucksack easily. You could get a short one and a fold up camping chair, could be a good setup. They are a bit wobbly, not like an easel since the tripod part starts really low near the base but could do the job perhaps. Unfortunately I don't remember the make or anything.

[Elderscroller]

Have a look at musician stands for sheet music, I had one years ago that folded right down so you could fit it in a rucksack easily. You could get a short one and a fold up camping chair, could be a good setup. They are a bit wobbly, not like an easel since the tripod part starts really low near the base but could do the job perhaps. Unfortunately I don't remember the make or anything.

Ah thanks JyonnyNovice! Why didn´t I think of musician stands! :D I´ll have to try one out. it´s not so important that the setup is wobbly, I just want to avoid cramps :)

[Elderscroller]

Portrait for Christmas. Merry Christmas to you all!

[Elderscroller]

Happy new year to all  of you! May your pencils always be sharp and your paint ever flowing.

Some stuff I did in the past days. First one is an acrylics painting (continuing with my traditional media experiments) and last one is porportion/figure practice with long pose studies (mainly from Bargue)

[Vornag]

Good god your stuff's looking beautiful. Wonderful pencils you got going. You mentioned playing in an rpg group, which game are you playing?

[meat]

You have good design ideas, and your character designs have that classic, Boulder's Gate feel to them, which is nice in a nostalgic, classic way. Also, that Christmas card illustration is store-shelf worthy, just like what I would buy in a card store, lol!

[Elderscroller]

@Vornag: Thanks! I play lots of systems, mostly some german one (Das schwarze Auge, Splittermond), but also Cthulhu, D&D, sometimes Starwars and recently a not yet published RPG called Arx Temporis

@meat: Thanks very much! Don´t praise the christmas illustration too much, it´s design is not directly mine. I used an image from google and changed it slightly to try out painting with acrylics. But the original is really a nice image

If anyone is interested in my workflow when doing a character sketch from imagination, below these sketches is a detailed step by step tutorial. Feel free to ask, if you have questions.




Steps 1-5 are done with an HB pencil, 6 uses a 2B and 7-10 alternates between the two as needed

1. Establish a horizon and a basic perspective grid
   
2. Gesture: Here I either have a concrete image in my mind or I just try out different gesture poses until I find something I can work with or that gives me an idea about a character. In this example I wanted someone jumping and with this pose, I got the idea of somekind of assassin/thief jumping down with a dagger
   
3. Building anatomy: here I correct errors and establish a basic anatomical model with a Loomis head
   
4. Once the anatomy is ok, erase everything slightly, so it is barely visible. Now the fun part begins. I mostly start with the face and try out some basic design ideas. The base clothing is established
   
5. Detailing and design step: here I put everything in place designwise
   
6. Cleanup: the lines are cleaned up and some line weight is incorporated
   
7. Base value step: here different values for materials are done. I only have 2 values in that example,but it can be more elaborated depending on how detailed and realistic you want the finished drawing
   
8. Basic form shadow is applied
   
9. Cast shadows are applied
   
10. Occlusion shadows are applied and some more detailed shading to finish the sketch. A cast shadow below the figure keeps it grounded
    

[Elderscroller]

Here´s some digital portrait and a quick landscape speedpainting. For the portrait I tried some different approach this time. I used the same workflow as for traditional oilpainting with the glazing technique. First I applied an underpainting made in blueish tones. Then the body of paint was applied in a layer above and after that, glazing layers of paint were applied. I also used the mixer brush this time as it is nice for blending and has kind of an oil painterish feeling depending on its setting. As in traditional painting, the cool underlayer shines through, giving the skin a variety of hues

[Elderscroller]

I have many artbooks at home. And while they are very inspirational and of course beautiful, I rarely use them in other ways. So I decided to integrate them into studies/sketching. In the future, I´ll go through all of them and sketch out the figures/designs etc. mostly in a quick drawing (not sure if I´ll post them all). I´m not going for complete accuracy or a finished look here, but more a deeper understanding of design and concepts ( to also broaden my visual library). I started with a concept art book for the creatures of Harry Potter. The first few sketches are proportional studies of Bargue drawings

[AlCo]

Woah, I seem to be repeating myself in everyone's sketchbook, but amazing works! I completely loved the breakdown process of the thief :D I still feel not ready to take on complex illustrations, but I'd love to so bad :(

I'm just trying to think about render out things (I should do instead), but I seem to have no patience. It really shows how you build up values, can you explain a bit more how do you approach cast shadows and occlusion? What do you mean by that? Is there any resource online to learn it and study how to apply it?
Did you use some reference for the clothing design (or for the other details)?

Sorry for the wall of text/questions and thanks for sharing that step-by-step, looking forward to see some more :)

[Mechanizoid]

Hey, great SB man, there is so much cool stuff I'm kind of overwhelmed right now. I'll look through it more tomorrow. :) But, I'm wondering, you wouldn't happen to be the same Elderscroller as is on Permanoobs? Elderscroller's Sketchbook of the Damned? Or is it just a coincidence?

Anyway, looking forward to your next post!

[Elderscroller]

@AlCo: Thanks very much! Just keep at it! Draw every day, do studies and then sketch them from memory. Draw from life, photos and even other artists (old and new masters) (this helped me a lot, when I studied drawings from Alex Pascenko. it gave me an instant boost in understanding how to apply clothing and accessories) And have lots of patience, there is sadly no way around that. Try to enjoy the the process of actually drawing more than the final result. That will keep you motivated.
As for your questions, here is a blog entry where I explain the shadows a bit more:
http://elderscroller.blogspot.co.at/2016...h-and.html

As for sources, I can recommend Scott Robertsons book How to render. It is a bit more on the technical side, but explains everything nicely.

Regarding reference: I try to not use it when doing imaginary sketches as I want to see how much I remember from all the studies. For clothing (or any other subject), you have to do lots of studies (these can be quick 5 min drawings) to build up a visual library. Once you know how e.g. a dress from the renaissance era looks like, you can draw it from memory. But you need to get it into your head first. Once it´s in your mind, you can twist it, combine it and be creative about that even when not using reference. As a starter in arts, you should draw from reference heavily! It takes time, but one day you wake up and say: I can draw renaissance dresses....;)

@Sagittarius-A-Star: Thanks! And yes, both Elderscrollers, one and the same :) I have multiple instances of my sketchbook on different site as some (*cough* conceptart.org *cough*) tend to be offline or even loose posts....

Some more artbook sketching and a digital portrait done in painter, finished in photoshop:

[Elderscroller]

Some more sketches and artbook design studies from Witcher 2 and Harry Potter

[Elderscroller]

Some face practice. Haven´t done those for a while...and more artbook study sketches