Craig's Sketchbook

[Cricketts]

Killer sketch book.

[Craig Paton]

Two Charles Bargue drawing studies. These took a while, but were quite pleasant to do.

[Jaik]

Ah, these Brague studies are great. The last head s a little too wide, which is the problem doing them side by side like this. If you have monitor real estate try doing one under the other for a couple of times.

Nice improvement though, loving the work. Keep it up :)

[Craig Paton]

Yeah, Jaik, you're right enough. He's a bit chubby looking. :)

I was thinking of placing one ref aside and one above, may try that next time.

[Craig Paton]

Alphonse Mucha drawing study.

[Samszym]

Hey Craig, thanks for the comment! The studies are looking nice. I feel like you might not be going into these studies with a definite goal in mind, I think if you went in with a mindset of trying to learn something specific you'd get more out of the study. In the latest Much study for example, it looks like you put a ton of effort into getting all the shapes accurate, but did you learn anything concrete about mucha's compositional arrangement, or his use of line width? That's what I'd have studied him for, anyway.

good luck! Awesome stuff

[Craig Paton]

Thanks Samszym. The purpose going into my Mucha study was just general drawing accuracy, it was part of an assignment for Noah Bradley's Art Camp. Not sure how successful I was with that goal though. You are right, I do have a tendency to just get lost in drawing, and forget what my original purpose and goal was. Need to have a bit more focus as I work, and pay attention to what specifically I can learn from a study.


Tomorrow night, on Twitter, I'm going to be sketching quick caricatures and portraits of wrestlers during the WWE 'Money in the Bank' show. I always draw during movies and sports events, but normally I just scrap them when I'm done. Not sure if funny caricatures are really my thing, but it's just for fun. Perhaps this exercise will improve my confidence a bit, and maybe help me speed up my sketching a bit.

Here's a few I've made already.




I'm @CraigPaton on Twitter, if you'd like to come watch.

[Jaik]

Niiice. I like them! They have a really nice life to them. I think using Twitter like this is a really good idea. Let me know how it goes!

[clockodile]

Nice caricatures, I like how you are pulling the expressions off on them, especially around the mouth structures. Great play on the chin shapes as well. Not a crit so much as a suggestion, but perhaps it would be worth experimenting with exaggerating the proportions of the vertical divisions of the face (eye-nose length, nose-chin length, and the like) more - I see a bit of it on the bottom right one, and he looks awesome. It is totally down to your style decisions though, I know not everyone does it.

It looks like it is going to air too late for me to see, but I hope they go well!

[Craig Paton]

Cheers, guys.

I made a collection album of all my live portrait sketches from Sunday night. It went well, I think.



Reworked my Foxbane cover artwork based on some of the feedback I have gotten.



Recently finished work on this movie poster illustration, for a short film named The Alibi. Likenesses had to be pretty much spot-on, so some of the painting was a bit of a chore.

[Craig Paton]

Some more wrestlers I sketched the other night. This is turning out to be pretty useful for promotional proposes, gaining a lot of new followers and inquires about commission. I guess there's probably not a lot of cross over between pro-wrestling and art, so good wrestling artwork is quite rare, and that which there is is appreciated by the fan communities.



Have spent a lot of time (and money) on Gumroad tutorial videos. I know not everyone is happy with the whole concept of Gumroad tutorials, but I think they're great.

Have watched a number of them, and tried to paint along with as many as I can.

Have found Anhony Jones and Dan Luvisi's videos of particularly great worth so far.



Value portrait studies.

Working on skin textures and edges, also trying to incorporate some things I've learned from the Gumroad tuts.

[rafa zanchetin]

Loving your face studies man, got something going there.

[Tygerson]

Wow, Foxbane! Good advertising--it's so mysterious and striking, I just have to know more. What is it for? If that was on the cover of a book, I'd pick it up on the spot.

[Craig Paton]

Cheers guys! :)

Here's a few doodle dumps, which include some studies of scary looking Nazis and men with scarred faces.





A character concept, for fun. A steampunkish, gentleman adventurer version of Charles Darwin.

[Patrick Gaumond]

Solid studies in here


Those tuts look like they really helped you a lot man. I've personally been a bit disappointed in the ones that I bought so far, but I know lots of people have found them useful.

Also if you ever have to do another poster illustration with portraits in it, just know that most, if not all, the big movie poster guys, drew struzan included, traced to get likenesses easily. Just a thought, its always good practice to get a likeness but if you're on a tight deadline and they've given you reference aint no shame in using it d:

[Craig Paton]

Thanks Beard.

I've found sitting down and trying to emulate pretty much everything done in a tutorial video pretty useful. Requires some patience, at times, but helps to get the most from your videos.


A few more doodle dumps, mostly fast and rubbish. Trying to do more full body studies, instead of portraits all the time. And trying to speed up a little too, I'm very slow.

A few more Gumroad tutorial drawings in there too.






Have had a lot more free time to devote to studies and personal work recently. Going to put some time into trying to develop some good personal projects to help strengthen my portfolio. I'm thinking of something along the lines of concept art and promotional work for a mock game, and perhaps character concepts and illustrations based on old Scottish stories and poems. Hope to have some development along those lines to show you within the next week or so. :)

[pnate]

Fantastic as always. That poster just kicks all kinds of ass!

[Suira]

I don't know how I missed this sketchbook until now! Really awesome and ass kicking stuff man. I agree with pnate, the poster is awesome, you might have felt like doing a chore but it paid off big time. I specially like your value control man, it's real good. All sorts of stuff that would drive me crazy you pull it off no problem.

The faces are also great, tons of dedication and personality going on in those. And yoou even have the patience to go for master studies and even beyond the legendary-patience-required Bargue!

Tons of hard work and improvement, really.

On crits, just a tiny one. You tend to do characters too short ( or too wide, depending how you see it), I don't know if it's because you build the head first and then focus on it and lose track or if it's just a tendency. In any case, the best advice I can give is to try and make them "too tall" in your eyes for a few days, it sounds like a dumb idea but I has helped me correct issues like that in the past.

Anyway, keeep the awesome stuff up mate ;)

[Craig Paton]

Cheers, Nate. Enjoyed watching you stream and chat about drugs the other day. :)

Thanks for the feedback Suira. I think you may be right about my guys looking a bit too short and squat, I think I might be subconsciously doing this because I'm kind of a short person myself. I'll try your 'too tall' plan for my next character. :)

Think I'm going to do a video of me live sketching more wrestler caricatures, and put it up on YouTube. Summerslam is coming up soon, which is perhaps the second biggest date of the year for wrestling fans, so that could be good for a bit of promotion.

Some of my sketches and studies from this week. Focusing on strengthening my linework a bit, after having watched Dave Rapoza's Bogwitch tutorial. Feel a lot of my line drawing is a bit weak when I don't have paint to hide things.







Going to have to really start working on my colour stuff soon. Been studying values for ages. I think working in colour kind of intimidates me a little, at times, not sure why.

[Jaik]

Nice dude, saw a lot of these on facebook. They are really good. That cover came out great, as did the movie poster. Always love coming back to a sketchbook after a short amount of time and seeing all teh work people have done. Really motivating.
With the last tattoo chick, be sure to rotate the canvas so you can compare alignments and make sure everything is in order on her face. I think one eye is a bit better than the other and the mouth isnt exactly parallel to the head.

Keep on keeping on :)