Meatslurps sketchbook - What I do to get better and have fun

[Meatslurp]

Hey dude, nice start here, I like your linework and your imagination already. I'd be interested in how you intend to improve your designing from imagination skills as that's an area I'd like to work on myself.

As for lighting, could maybe try incorporating some core shadows and reflected light in your paintings, checkout this awesome vid from Proko:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3WmrWUEIJo

Good luck!

Glad you like some of it and thanks for the suggestion! 

I guess you really see your lazy when people point stuff out to you you clearly know, but don't apply in your actual work. Really gotta work on just putting everything I know into a drawing/painting. Thanks for pointing it out.
I plan to read Scott Robertsons How to Render in the near future, so I think that'll probably also shed some light onto how I should approach painting/lighting/rendering.

As far as drawing and designing from imagination goes:
Most of the stuff I draw is purely from imagination, so I feel like that generally allows me to get a better and better grip on it. I already showed a good bunch of stuff but I also turn out a boatload of terrible drawings (though the frequency of those is getting lower).

I've also found Automatic drawing as explained in this video to be incredibly useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJYGFwGhHnA

For me it's basically designing forms, shapes or just lines completely without pressure and the more you know how to generally draw in an appealing way, the easier it becomes to let lose and let your intuition take over. If nothing else it made drawing more fun for me and took my fear of the blank page away.

Then I also just do a lot of quick drawing studies most mornings. I used to do a thing Feng Zhu once recommended for a while where you do 10 studies of a certain subject everyday and every week you pick a new subject and slowly increase the complexity. That helped me immensely and I really want to get back to doing that.
He talks about it in those two episodes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5nvzsslajk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLqWX7onVmU

There are a lot of design principles that are super helpful I'm just starting to learn about. I have a bunch of old books on graphic design that are great for shape design.
Industrial design principles I really want to learn more about, cause the little bit I know already really helps. Like thinking about ergonomics, materials, manufacturing. Just designing objects that could really exist. 

Doing master studies is also something I want to do more of over the year. I never really copy drawings that I like, but I think I could learn a lot about design/composition/draftsmanship that way.

Observing everything around me and trying to imagine drawing the things I'm seeing around me is something that I just started doing and it really keeps your brain constantly active. The information you take in is especially great, because your usually very aware of your surroundings. So when you look at something you know it's relationship to you. You don't have to guess the eye-level, you know the weather that is causing the light to fall a certain way etc.
Which is also why I find life studies more useful than drawing from pictures.

And when doing studies I have multiple techniques to remember what I'm learning:

- First a thing that Dave talked about a couple of times: To just draw one thing 18 times from reference and then 18 times from your imagination.
The 18 is a bit arbitrary, but it's basically a combination of repetition and active recall which are both some of the best proven ways to retain information long-term. I do this especially for base information I really NEED to always know, like anatomy and basic human proportions.

- Added to that is spaced repetition. I never just study a thing and leave it. I study it, test myself on in, study it again, correct myself, study more etc. This is especially useful over longer periods of time. I've found if I study something and test myself on it for even just 10min everyday for the following week, I don't ever really forget it again completely.(have only been doing this for like a year so we'll see how it holds up long-term heh)

- Break things down into simple shapes. We all hear it all the time, but it's really the holy grail of retaining information. Like a mnemonic that just jump-starts your memory. Also allows you to play around with proportions far more easily.

- Break things down into simple CONCEPTS. This one is huge for me, because I cant really picture anything in my head when closing my eyes.(Though I'm trying to train it and am getting better) I cant visualize things, so I break things down into concepts or rules. Like for head construction: The head is 5 eyes wide, the idealized figure is 8 heads tall etc. and I really just try to make as many observations or rules like that as I can when drawing. So When drawing a car I know a normal car is roughly 6 wheels long and a bit more than 2 wheels tall. You know what I mean.

- Try to think of as many things as I can to apply what I just learned and just play around with it. Exploration is a thing I feel a lot of people coming up leave out of their regimen because it's not as intent as a study or doing a proper drawing. Feels like your wasting your times sometimes, but it's really, really crucial for me. Again great for repeating a concept you've learned in your mind and that's how I feel I'm building my creativity. Lot's of little ideas adding up.
Like studying animal skulls and thinking: I could use them as a mask, I can push the shapes to draw believable cartoon versions of the animal, I can decorate primal looking scenes with it, I can use the shapes of the bones to design armor, mechs, architecture etc.etc.etc.

- Learning very few things thoroughly instead if trying to learn too much. If you know how to draw one suit of armor, understand it's layers, why it's shaped the way it is, it's not that hard to invent another one. So instead of just drawing different armor a thousand times, get more focus. Generally your brain has a very easy time when creating/connecting synapses to ideas that are already established. So if you add more and more information to one neural pathway that is already solidly ingrained, it makes for a more reliable and efficient thinking process. It's basically like building a good infrastructure in your brain instead of just placing random bits of information into your head that aren't connected to anything. (I will probably take some time at a later date to explain a bit better and more thoroughly what I mean... It's late and I really need to think about it more to be able to put in on paper properly)

- Applying everything I learn/ always looking to solve a problem when studying
Kind of goes together with most of the stuff I already said but: I don't just study armor to study armor. I study armor to be able to design armor and knights, so that's what I try to do after a study. Sounds pretty straight forward, but I see a lot of people doing studies of things they never actually use, which is still good and leads to improvement, but again creates a problem with focus.


So the tl;dr being:
Learning more on how to design in general through books, videos etc.
See how the problems I'm facing have been solved before e.g. masterstudies
Learning how the things I want to design really work
Practice drawing them and experiment with my knowledge/ test myself constantly.
Apply what I learned.


Hope there was something interesting in there for you. Felt good to just get some thoughts "sorted" a bit. So thanks again for asking a good question heh

Cheers!