Bjulvar's Sketchbook

[Blewzen]

man so many ideas and stuff, really cool, the gentleman kaiju is awesome :D. The last piece looks neat, and yea it happens to me too that it seems i take forever polishing but i learn stuff each time so is good even if it's stressful.

[chromaTinker]

Killer updates Bjulvar! With that last still life, make sure to really nail the perspective of the objects. The phone feels slightly tilted downwards relative to the table because the top left corner is a bit too low. And with the bottle, the ellipses for the cap feel like they're too wide given their context. The colors though are pretty great, and I think spending a little more time with the perspective will make them feel much more realistic.

[MrFrenik]

Great work, man, and studying machinery to get a basic "working" knowledge is a solid idea. It's the same concept as studying anatomy so that you can successfully invent your own creatures. It doesn't necessarily have to be 100% correct, but understanding the basics of movement, musculature and bone structures help you to "fake it". It's the same for machines. Keep it up.

[Bjulvar]

Ah you guys! I hope the struggle goes well for all of you!

Crackedskull
Thanks man! It might be part of something, but I'm not sure of it yet. We'll see in the future :D

Blewzen
Haha yeah I like him too. I'd never be able to punch him as a Jaeger! Yeah I feel the same way. Something useful comes out of it. Stuff that's good for future paintings haha. I guess that time shouldn't be an issue though since older masters spent years on their paintings. But they didn't have the internet so screw them.
Thanks for dropping in dude!

chromaTinker
Thanks for reminding me mate! I didn't even notice that before. But I can totally see both wonkspectives now when you mention it. I think that perspective is something I've held off from really studying for too long. Always feels too methodic (?), but I'm trying to get over it.
Thanks man! I know the color of my table by now haha!


MrFrenik
Great to get it verified. I suppose that's the most reasonable logic! It's a lot easier to guess if you know how things work.
Thanks man!

So a bunch of stuff this time. I went into a speedpainting frenzy after I finished up the last piece. Have to get that one painting out of my system. Made some compositions for another illustration though, but I want to research a lot more this time around. Go look at armors and maybe concept some characters.
It's weird, because I always paint a bunch of compositions. But the sketches that get turned into illustrations are always those spontaneous ones.

There's a little lich-y theme here, because of halllowweeen. Not because we celebrate it here in Sweden though. We're a sad bunch of Odin-worshippers.

[EduardoGaray]

We can trade your sweden's Odinism for Spain Catholicism any time of the week mate! xD

Now seriously, cool stuff! the thing i like the most in this update are the thumbnails, really. If you can manage to maintain all that movement and wild values in a bigger painting you will kill it!
The other sketches are cool too, the lady with the sword specially.

[MrFrenik]

I agree with eddy, those thumbs are great. Pick the best one, do a good line drawing for it, some color comps, and then grab some reference and go to town with some painting!

[Bjulvar]

EduardoGaray
Haha okay when you put it that way, I'd rather keep my Odinism! I'll die in an art struggle and go to Arthalla.

Thank you man! Appreciate the words! I'm glad you picked up on that since that's what I wanted with the thumbnails! I seriously hope that I can maintain it, but I'm doubt fills my heart sometimes. We'll see what happens :D

MrFrenik
Thanks man! I will definitely do that when I feel ready! I'm starting to ache for some fantasy painting! Good idea with the color comps too. I rarely do them and I think it shows haha.

Haven't posted in a while! There's been some IRL stuff in the way this week, and probably the week to come. But hopefully I can keep posting. I reached a point where there was nothing imaginative coming out aswell. Felt like everything became kind of mechanized. Trying to fight that.

Crappers



A quicker study, I tried to keep this one a bit broad in the strokes too. Atleasti n the beginning.



Three silhouettes taken further, having fun with these.



Another pose!



Something of my own



Self portrait day, hurray! I wanted to spend less time on this than last year. Because I spent the whole day back then. It kind of backfired in a way, since I felt like I couldn't correct some things. Some hard edges where they shouldn't be etc!
Getting sick of this orange colorpalette haha.

[Jaik]

Awesome thumbnails mate.. A sentence only socially acceptable in the art world...

THe portraits looking good. Would be good to see a comparison with last year.

You are really getting better :) Play around with edges a bit more (I know its pretty much the same advice you gave me, but I swear, its not a cop out :P )

Keep up the good work.

[devin]

Good stuff man! I think a lot of your images could stand to use some greater contrast, especially some brighter brights.

Keep going!

[Bjulvar]

Jaik
Hey man!
Haha yeah otherwise people might think you're talking about my manicure!
Sure I'll put up last years portrait now then!

Thank you :D I should! I kinda get used to my nice little favorite brush and spam it :P But no mas! It's fun to get similar critique back to be honest, I probably projected it unto you!


Devin

Thanks Devin! Yeah I think so too! I need to sort out my values and highbright it all. :D


Here's last years portrait just for comparisson! So depressive and moustaschy



Valuestudy. Tried a different approach by deciding on 5 values that I would stick to. Not sure if it simplified it enough. But I liked the method.



Weather Demon Spitpainting!



Dock Crane spitpainting! Had to do this twice. Came out so bad without perspective lines. I never learn :P



Quick colorstudies



Quick thingie, really dynamic pose I promise



This is the thumbnail I'm going to continue on. Had a hard time deciding, but this reflects my initial idea the most. Trying to shoot for an action-scene here with movement.



A little portrait I've been working on for fun

[MrFrenik]

Good stuff, man. For your value studies, you might be better of actually sticking with 4 or less (Howard Pyle stated that your image isn't good if you have to use more than 3 values to make it read!) But try it with 4: 2 lights and 2 darks, and constantly be thinking about planes. Treat your painting as if you're sculpting, always aware of your side/front/bottom/top planes. Remember that for any 3Dimensional object you'll only see 3 sides of it at any one time, such as with a box. It also might be helpful to do value studies of simplified geometrical objects before you really hit hard with your complex forms. Keep up the hard work.

[Bjulvar]

Ah that makes a lot of sense! Howard pyle was a god damn genius though, so that's not fair haha. I just started studying that chapter of Vilppu's drawing manual with the different values that objects have and I suppose that 4 should be enough if you go by him aswell. Seems to me that his atmospherical light is very similar to the half tones. Depending on lightning situation I guess.
Should definitely study simpler forms but I always forget. It's on a post-it forever now.
Thanks Man, you're the best.


Did some quick gestures today. Always try to identify the best and the worst of the bunch before moving on. I decide purely on how it conveys the pose, if it's readable enough!






Longer gesturestudy




Here's some sketches I did while watching the opening ceremony of Blizzcon. Ultrahyped!








A comission I did for a friends youtube channel. Tried doing it quicker with less really rendered stuff.




Wanted to join the viking pageon ChoW but I ditched it, daamn!




SPitpainting - The prophet

[Blewzen]

The xcom piece is cool and like you said looks cool with not alot rendering I have to try that because I always end rendering everything til I die D:, keep working hard!

[Bjulvar]

Thanks man I'm glad you like it! Not really sure about the outcome, but it was good practice. I also do that a lot haha, but I'm starting to think that it's more important to have it readable and clear than to have every scratch rendered out :P
(But I'm still gonna render the hell out of my next piece)

Facking two-day migraine going on! I lost a lot of hours because of it, but atleast it's not my own fault so I can live with it.

Started studying armor, then I realized that I had to apply everything. So I did. But it came out pretty crappy. Just goes to show how mindless I can be :P






Did the same with simplified planes of the head and went with only 4 values this time. Some might have blended though but the idea was to stick with it. All thanks to Frenik!
Doing these really helped me on how I view the face. Hopefully that knowledge will stick :D



My best spitpainting ever, astronaut wizard!



And colorthumbs for my next piece thingie. Not sure which one to pick, might make more.

[Bjulvar]

Scabloosh
Heya guys, how's it poppin'
Valuestudy from this morning. Didn't restrict myself this time. But I wanted to both find the gesture and most of the values, atleast in a broad sense. Then there's the application!





Armor and facestudy. I was kind of interested in the subtle yellow atmospherical light that came into play opposite the more blue-ish direct light. Atleast that's how I saw it! Didn't quite hit the mark with the apply here.



Haands! I guess I can include the ref too.





Some spitpaintings. Half man half egg, dark portal and atlas. Tried doing something diffrent than I usually do with Dark portal, ended up pretty warcrafty again.







Update on the illustration. Going to shoot for diffrent colors than usual. But the action part is still the focus.



Had to do more orcs, this is Kilrogg Deadeye from WoW's new expansion. Sketchystage.

[kikindaface]

nice sketchbook man ! when painting from photo, you shouldn't try to find the exact same values or colors, but exagerate them a bit, because most of the time, the photo is either warm or cool, either overexposed or underexposed, even if there are a bit of improvment, but copying the values and colors won't help, but understand your subject, and try to come up with a solution that would make it real !

[Bjulvar]

kikindaface
Thank you man! Really good tip! Goes back to Vilppu's philososophy of never copying anything! The funny thing is that I've almost only restricted that to gestures, so it's good to hear that the same goes for value and color. Makes a lot of sense aswell. I went ahead and tried changing the values of a study here below. It came out really crappy, I'm sure that's because I'm focusing on understanding it :P
You rock dude!

This is what I'm talking about. Totally failed the likeness, t'was a challange to try and follow the forms but change the lightning situation.



spitpaintings, shield generator and destruction of statue. Plus bionic eyes







Kind of a color and gesture study and then an apply of it. Have to say that I didn't experiment much with the colors.





Finished this dude



Sketched up the next warlord, not sure if I'll have the power to do them all. But it's a fun thought.



Studied some rubens this morning. Very handsome boyman. And applied it in a slightly diffrent position.





A space-trooper-marine dude for a boardgame thingie.

[VegardS]

Nice job on the orc! And it would be cool to see that last illustration with the fighting scene fully finished aswell. Anyways... just keep pushing dem skills!

[Vasburg]

I just wanted to echo, what my previous speaker already said - good job mate, especially on colors.

Question: Have you tried to invest several sessions, maybe even something up to 10-16 hours of concentrated work, in one piece ? You evolve nicely, but your latest work might need a bit more love to be fully finished. I, for myself, learned a lot from pushing concepts, which were good enough as concepts, into illustrations.

Anyway, keep painting!

[MrFrenik]

Hey, you're a busy bee, mofo. Great works. You seemed to have a bit of trouble with altering the value structures in you orc sculpt image, so I did a quick demo of how you can go about that.

First off - SIMPLIFY. 2 value structures are great for this. Think about it as if you went into photoshop and put on a filter that reduced the image to simple shapes of light and dark. So I did that here, reducing the image to only 2 values, lights and darks. And it's interesting how that's really all you need to describe a form - it's why cartoons work as well as they do. It's worth noting that I'm not trying to get a good drawing or likeness here. The point of this is to break apart an image and try to reconstruct its value structure into manageable terms for yourself. With 2 values we can get various different results - full contrast/full value scale, low contrast/high value scale, mid contrast/low value scale, low contrast/low value scale. (Some people refer to these as full key, high key, low key lighting patterns, but I think addressing what range of value as well as how much contrast is in the image is important to describe.) If we introduce gradients into the image, we can get even more variations.

Moving onto 3 values, you can easily see how quickly we can get tons of different variations on the same image. Blocking these out will show you how your final image will read, and they're so quick to do that it's invaluable before you start an image so as to not waste time at the end by having to fix these fundamental problems.

One thing to say about "sculpting" an image is that your brushstrokes should act as planar strokes - big, blocky, single, opaque strokes. Don't worry about rendering, especially at the beginning. When sculpting, you slowly chip away at the larger masses. The least amount of strokes you can use to describe a form, the better. However, don't get too self conscious about it, just realize that that's the ultimate goal of any painter.

I know this was a lot of rambling on, so if anything seems like it needs clarifying or (even more likely) it's just garbage that you don't want to listen to, let me know. :) Keep it up.