Back to the basics

[calebartist]

I definitely see you're improving here. What course did you/are you taking?

Also, I think everybody has tendency toward over blending or under blending when painting, smoothness or sharpness. I think you are probably in the over blending/smoothness camp. I was just recently going through my notes from various tutorials and books, and one of the things I had written down was that overly smoothing results in generic roundness, while defining surfaces into defined planes makes them more specific and characteristic of a specific form.

Thanks and yeah I definitely have a problem with that, for now I've been taking art camp 2, but gonna start craig mullin's digital painting soon, besides that just studying from books, reference and practicing from imagination. I definitely am in that camp, hopefully the lessons will help me improve in that regard (over painting/blending etc), tbh my end goal is a more painterly style with visible brush strokes and stuff. For now it's all self taught, so I'll have to find critiques elsewhere.

I also used to not do traditional art at all for a few years, and over relied on digital I think, so it's like relearning from the beginning lately, really learning how to draw well, perspective, etc instead of relying just on painting alone will help me improve considerably I think. Been also learning to draw directly in pen, it's been a learning curve so far 

-Anyways here's some recent sketches/practice. (Digital & pen + brush pen)