Craig's Sketchbook

[Craig Paton]

Thanks Lyraina. You're right. Can't help but be drawn to the flatness of that stone, not that you've pointed it out. I should pay more attention to background details from now on.

Spent all week working on my basic drawing, doing figure studies and the like. Been a little frustrated at my limited progress recently, so I've deleted my Facebook to allow me less distraction from my work and studies.

[Jaik]

Oh snap. This last figure study. Thats where its at!
An exercise I sometimes do (normally at life drawing) is to exaggerate the light/dark relationships. It takes a while to get used to doing and is kind of difficult but it really helps to think about form and light patterns. I havent actually tried it from photos but you might want to give it a try maybe?

Were you procrastinating that much on facebook? Sometimes a site blocker might be a more effective means?

Keep on keeping on man, you will get there eventually. We all will :)

[Craig Paton]

Cheers Jaik, I'll give that a go.

Not got much done this past week, as I've been a bit ill. But, hopefully I'll be recovered enough in time to complete my chow for this week.

Here's a wip of Space Jesus Tinkerer.



Spent some time working on values, textures and edges again, with this Elijah Frodo portrait study.



Will need to move on with my studies and really begin to focus on areas I feel I really struggle with, outside the comfort zone kind of stuff. My next update will reflect that, hopefully. Feel free to harangue me over that if it does not. :)

[rafa zanchetin]

Fuck them latest studies are gooood. Please tell me you'll be able to finish the tinkerer!

[Craig Paton]

Cheers Rafa, appreciated. Sadly wasn't able to finish the Tinker in time, although I might just finish him up when I can anyway, was enjoying experimenting with the comic book style.



Been getting into still lives this week, and I really do suck at it. I guess I'm just going to heavy focus on the practice until I no longer suck at it. Getting good at this should really strengthen a number of my weaknesses.

I'll use the rubbish still lives I post this week as a basis to see how I improve over the next few weeks. Here's some eggs to start.



Did a couple of Star Trek themed caricatures last night. Kind of been going from fandom to fandom with these wee portraits, maybe I'll do Star Wars next.

[Adam Lina]

Great stuff man. That Frodo portrait looks amazing!

[crackedskull]

You paint some sexy bodies man, good job.

[rafa zanchetin]

Ah, shame you couldn't make it, but you should finish it anyway, it's coming out great.
I think the still life could use a little more bang on the values, it's not pushing that much.

[Samszym]

Nice painting and drawing dude! the caricature sketches have some nice variation in the proportions, but the faces are still pretty realistic looking. You could take them a whole lot further if these are caricatures. You could try doing a caricature of your caricature, that's a fun way to figure out what you're saying about the face and say it louder. Ah, and maybe try to avoid measurements that divide the face into halves, like spock's nose being right in the center between his hairline and chin.

[Lyraina]

Man, your rendering skills are just insane!
Good to hear you're focusing on studies/weaknesses now. Agree with Jaik though - there are some nice tools that let you block out certain websites (or all websites - not so good if you need to do research though) for a certain amount of time. Can help to focus when the urge to check FB/whatever is distracting you.

This sketchbook needs an update :)

[Craig Paton]

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates. October was a bit of a pain-in-the-arse month, I'm glad it's over with. Thanks for all the advice and feedback, as always.

Jaik/Lyraina - I think you guys may be right, a timed blocker of sorts might be the way to go. In my time away from Facebook I, kind of, realised how much you can feel removed from the whole art community. Feels like I maybe missed out on a bunch of things too, tuts, vids, advice from pros and the usual art community dramas. From now on, I'll just employ a blocker to prevent me from wasting time on Facebook uring hours where I should be working.

Sadly, I didn't do as much still lifes, or even studies focused on areas of weakness, over the past few weeks. It has been a bit of a struggle to accept that these are the areas that I'm weakest in, and that I shouldn't expect to have a proud and finished piece every time I sit down to tackle one. It's tough to get motivated knowing that the painting I'm about to do, won't be that good, that I'll need to do a repeated series of them, until I produce stuff I'm happy with. I guess it's just a hump I'll have to get over if I want to progress, and I'd best just deal with it.

Here's what I have been up to these past few weeks.

Finished my Tinkerer Chow (better late than never). Continued with the comic book style and Moebius influence. Not sure how successful I was with it, maybe I went to far with the level of lights and darks, and I feel some of the drawing is a bit weak.


My entry for this years self-portrait day.


Working on some thumbs and concept sketches to continue my Robert Burns project.




Was in talks with the WWE (wrestling) for a while, about doing some artwork for toys for them, based on my wrestling caracitures. Looks like it's maybe fizzled out now though, as I've not heard from them in a while. But, here's some sketches I did for them.





Some of the usual doodles and sketches.

[ShinOkami]

Really nice studies and control over values in those portraits, keep up the hard work ! : )

[CoreyH]

Nice studies man. That self portrait is insane!

[Craig Paton]

Cheers guys. Here's some more updates.

Spent some time earlier this year working with a local games company to make a game for the Children's BBC website, based on the TV Shop Deadly 60. It's called, 'The Deadly Creature Combinator'. It's a fun kids game, where you can make animals up out of various parts. Check it out on the BBC website, if you'd like (although, it only works in the UK, unless you have a VPN/Unblocker/Netflix-fiddler).





This is the second in my series of character illustrations based on the poetry of Robert Burns. Cutty-Sark, the witch from Tam O'Shanter. Hope to get a number of these done by early next year, so I can begin to try and take the project further, perhaps get a book or app on the go.



New book cover art, for David Moody's Strangers (good book). Tried my hand at a bit of photobashing for environments here, not sure how successful I was, but it seemed to work out okay for this project.


A number of people on Facebook were asking how I made by black and white portraits, so I made a gif of the process of putting this Peter Capaldi portrait together.


Really need to move on to getting more colour studies and portraits done, and still haven't made much progress on my promise of doing more still life studies. :s

[pnate]

Diggin the detail on that Burns character. I know nothing of his work, but it sounds extremely Scottish and I'm sure he would have been proud to see your interpretations. Book cover came out great too, keep killin it.

[Craig Paton]

Forgive me daggers, for I have sinned. It's been to month since my last update. ;)

@Nate - Thanks, man. Appreciate that. Your comments are always encouraging.

Feel like I don't have much to show for the past two months of work. As well as Christmas and all that stuff, I have been taking a bit of time away from my work. Not entirely sure why, but I do feel like I've been mossing some direction of sorts, and am not really sure where I'm going with things. I've also had trouble with feeling almost angry, or with a sick stomach feeling, whenever I sit down to draw. Which, mainly, I think is due to some frustration over not being good enough, or as good as I hope to be.

Hopefully the time off will have done me some good. Maybe I was facing burn out. But, I'm ready to get back into my working routine again.

As is becoming almost an annual tradition, I will say that I hope 2015 will be the year that my work begins to show some major improvement. :)

Here's some stuff I've been up to over the past month or so.


Sherlock & Moriarty, or how I picture them.


Sargent study. Every digital artists favourite master.



Cover illustration for January 2015 Mensa Bulletin. Not to happy with my drawing in this one, bit of a style experiment disaster. They did a good job of making it work as a cover though.


A Christmas gift portrait for a friend and his wife.


Made some pencil sketch portraits as gifts for family members.



General sketching and doodling.


A portrait of your man from the new Star Wars John Boyega. Gave up on his hair, it was of a texture I really struggled to replicate.


Also made a update and reorganisation of my folio page, have look. Let me know what you think. craigpaton.com

Hopefully won't leave it so long until my next update.

[Minksy]

Your sketchbook is full of good stuff, really inspiring to look at! I also like the style of some of your illustrations, too, saw some of those on your website as well - looks great btw. Have you thought about placing the links to your work first and then have the social media links?

Looking forward to seeing some still life in the next update then, the ones you did for the Sickbrush assignment seem really great, so, keep them coming!

[Craig Paton]

Thanks Minsky. I really need to get a move on with those still lives I've been promising for ages.

Here's a small update. Not done a lot this past few weeks, the usual 'art grumps' have been plaguing me, again, leaving me a bit lost and directionless.

I have been experimenting a bit with a more comic book like style, almost as an extension of my caricature stuff. Not sure how successful my experiments have been, however, may need a bit of work and study.

A detailed figure study.


Master studies, Picasso. (Thought this might help a bit with my colour worries.)


Made these wrestling 16-Bit pixel style drawings for the Royal Rumble the other week.







Some portraits of my Dragon Age protagonists, one from each game in the trilogy.



Not too sure where I should turn my focus now. Should I be looking at doing more studying, looking at things like Noah's Art Camp/CA.org's Level Up, master studies etc? Or, should I be focused on creating more finished looking folio pieces, via Chows or fanarts? Maybe I should continue working with the comic/caricature style, and seeing what develops of that? I'm not sure, what do you guys think? What seems like a more sensible road to making progress?

[Veneq]

Man... killing it as always. The WWF (I'm not calling it WWE - screw World Wildlife Federation ... It will always be WWF as mandated by my childhood) stuff is fun as hell. I haven't followed since about 2000? so I don't know anyone but Sting and Nature Boy, but I'll be damned if the other two aren't Taker and Hacksaw.

Anyway, stuff is looking lovely. And on your ponderings:
"the usual 'art grumps' have been plaguing me" - I hate that feeling. I wish I had an elixir for that. One thing that has worked for me when I know I should be drawing is to find a way to bore myself to death and have paper and pencil available; basically trying to recreate all of my grade school years in which I drew because math sucks.

On the stylized stuff, it's extremely hard for me to judge the success of that type of stuff other than by asking whether it looks cool or not. And yours does. It's clean and clearly rooted in realism and actual functional fundamentals. Maybe try to find some realisms to break a bit more or something just for more flavor?

And on your current/future plan, is Art Camp still going? I thought he was stopping it after this most recent one? I think you've seen the 21 day thing lots of folks have been doing on his suggestion. Master Studies are always cool (that's what a handful of folks seem to be focusing on anyway). I have ethical issues with everything that CA currently is so I can't endorse that, but that's just me. Whatever aids improvement is worthwhile. I feel like I can't really answer any of your questions firmly -- I feel like I'm constantly asking myself a similar set of questions. So in replying to you, I'm kind of replying to myself as well right now. What needs to happen, is pick a direction and go. Make changes on the fly and just follow your heart. Anyway, didn't mean to bomb your sketchbook. I've just been so inactive on forums lately :/

Anyway, cheers dude!

[BrandonStudio]

Love your dedication, your work is really paying off. You have some nice art here.