AfricanVoodoo's Sketchbook

[AfricanVoodoo]

Alex: Thank you so much! Your thoughts are very kind!
  I honestly have to remember that 3 years is a very long time, I just need to have faith in myself and just chill out. 
I got the reference from Croquis Cafe Photo Gallery so to answer your question, no, those were not from live sessions. The only live session place I know of is in Orlando, FL. Which I can definitely go now since it is the summer and I have lots of free time now. And I need to enhance my speed of doing gesture drawings anyways and I feel like the time limit will help.

Fedodika: Thank you! You guys are making me blush too much!!

Thank you guys again! :D




13 days? Okay, I know I take at least 3-5 days to update my thread but this was a very long period of time.

 There are two reasons why I haven't posted. Reason uno of why I was gone was because I moved into a new house and I needed to focus on moving.  Reason dos is that I was also focusing on the things that made me enjoy entertainment in the first place. Let's just say I got burned out of all the drawing and bullshit and I never gave myself anytime to just chill and be a teenager y'know? I watched my childhood anime, Naruto, again and I didn't notice how exciting the action sequences are in that show. I read some Sailor Moon comic books that I didn't read in a year. I kept on drawing, just not a whole lot. (Also I am finding a job while working with my family members and I have virtual school so...)

(Art): Just a whole bunch of circles for a warm up. I was ultimately trying to remind myself to use my shoulders when handling with medium to long strokes like these. 

I was looking through Hampton's anatomy book and he suggested some warm-up exercises that you can do everywhere. I did that "Varying Spheres" one, where you have to create a circle in one stroke. I should go ahead and do more complicated exercises since I always rely on the easy ones.









(I apologize that these lines are so light, I had to use my scanner with no contrast adjustment options on its software. Ugh...)

(Art): More on the naked girls series that I am doing. I honestly do not like any of these except #7. On the last one, I noticed I got too fatigued at this point and started to quickly sketch unconsciously. I might redo #12 because this was honestly not something that screams "Me!". Also my faces look like they are trying too hard to look like faces and the proportions just look weird on some of them... I am not stressing though, first time I did this kind of stuff.






After reading Hampton's notes on gesture, I tried to incorporate his wisdom it into my gestures. He said that likeness and proportions were not exactly the focus when doing gesture. When I read this, I suddenly felt heavy weight coming off of my shoulders because when I do gestures I alternate from the figure to the back at the paper to make sure every single angle of that specific pose to correct. I always knew how tiring and straining that is but I always thought that was the process. I look at Hampton's gesture sketches and they are so loose and free. (Something I STILL have trouble doing.)  Even though I do not know what the reference is on his end, he still manages to tell a story in the figure and he is not afraid to just use whatever curves he needs in order to make the rhythm read well. Notice how he sketches the lower leg sometimes? Literally just two excessively concave lines and that appeals to me so much.

I also studied how he constructs the human form when doing quick gestures. All he does is draw two circles for the rib cage and pelvis and connect them to create a cylinder (For me, I try to imitate the hourglass shape for females and the cylinder for males). He then lets the gesture line and rhythmic lines do all the talking from here on out.

He also stresses to exaggerate the figure to avoid overly stiff figures. There are some figures where I overdo the exaggerated pose but I feel like a lot of people have this problem as well.

And I use too many lines. Although I do not worry about how many lines I use most of the time, when I have to do 10 second or 30 second gestures in the future, I do have to understand the concept of catching rhythm and gesture in a quick amount of time. Unfortunately with male models, I am more distracted on how the anatomy affects the figures (since that is what is mostly prominent in male models most of the time) rather than their movement and flow which causes me to add more lines. Not only do I need to focus on the movement and story on the figure, I need to start timing myself to force myself to hurry the fuck up. (Oh yeah, I wasn't timing myself with these.)





So I wanted to do a character sketch, right? It was a tribal man with a tiger, the man looked okay but then I drew the tiger and I couldn't stand how dumb it looked so I did some studies on kitties!

(Art): Just tiger sketches. I actually went on Youtube and looked for videos on tigers. I slowed down the video by 0.25 so I can VERY carefully study their movements and how their limbs work (I was somewhat proud of myself for doing that. I feel like an animator now). What I learned was that tigers look very chubby, they have a lot of flab on their legs but I never capture that consistently for some reason. Their front legs bend forwards like an actual human being's arm would. I thought that was more common sense than anything because tigers aren't flamingos. They are very long kitties, I catch myself making them too short sometimes. If a feline is walking, I have to vary their leg's poses to not make them look like they're doing the two step dougie but at the same time I have to make them look like they are walking for real.






(Art): At the top, I was figuring out where he wanted his characters. He describes the cover as the three main characters walking off with their backs turned. All of them aligned on the midline of the canvas while taking up the majority of the horizontal space. They will also be in a white silhouette against a black background (I genuinely did not like that choice but it is his book...). It was kind of boring to just draw them walking off normally so I tried to add some variety among them. 

The big figure with the wire frames up there is suppose to be Sorn, a machete-wielding mercenary who obtains pyromancy later in the story.  He will just rest his blade on his shoulder as he conjures up flames with his other hand.

The other two are at the bottom. Garius has the power to control earth, so he is just chillin' on his rock. He is also very short so I see him riding around on a floating rock all the time like Goku with his cloud or Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Arron has a giant bookbag that contains his most prized possession, his homemade mecha suit. Maybe I should draw him slouching or his back can be almost 90 degrees because he is holding all of that weight. I feel like that would add more personality to his stance in the cover and his character design in general.

So... the characters are actually searching for a blimp that contains this dictator evil bad dude who is making the land shitty and stuff and they want to kill him. So what I wanted to do was to put the blimp on the upper horizontal third part of the cover in front of the characters (they will be in the middle third while the title will be on the bottom). Without the blimp, the cover suggests that the characters are just a group of journeymen that are going on a journey. Nooo, they actually have a goal! But at the same time, the story is very character-centric (despite the writer being a total novice on character writing) so having them in the spotlight is not that bad of an idea either.

Maybe I can still put in the blimp, but because of atmospheric perspective it will be darker and therefore not the main focus. Meanwhile, the characters will be in full white and they will not suggest that there will be a blimp anywhere because this is their story!

... Yup.




(Art): Anyways, I am now designing a new character for him now. This is Morgan, a half-human half-bird who has an impressive adeptness in this world's magic. She is basically the mage of this group. She is proud, assertive and a little aloof and unforgiving. 

On the first page was my first take at her design (and another kittie!!!), which he approved except the beak was not to his liking. It was suppose to be wider and bigger and now that I look at it, I don't like the small beak either. I referenced an eagle and I used that for her beak. The one yelling on the second page is honestly the best expressive face I have done in months.



(Art): And I drew her in a cute dress that I just made up on a Friday night. I dunno why I did it though... just felt like it I guess. Exploring more expressions too.




(Art): While I was doing other things, I did these two tiny sketches. On the top is Sailor Moon, the baddest bitch in town! And the bottom is my character Darius, who will be in a comic I want to do very badly (and no, he doesn't wear a T-shirt, the story takes place during the medieval times. Unless there are t-shirts in medieval times.) (Actually, now that I mentioned him. Remember when I said I was doing a character that was a tribesman and a tiger? You're looking at the tribesman.) 




(Art): So... remember when I showed off the pig sketches? This was the character design that I wanted to complete, and drawing a pig's head was killing me so that's why I sketched out those pigs. I LONG forgotten about this... but it's cute.




(Art): Some dude I drew while watching a stream. I liked the sketch very much so I tried to add color. Honestly, if I kept on going it would look pretty cool. But at the time, I was not pleased by this painting style so I left it alone. I don't think I should of done that... (is it me or is the head pretty small...)



(Art): And... A quick sketch of Garius. His eyes are considerably smaller than the last time I drew him...

Okay. I am done. That was all the things I have done while I was gone. Bye now!