Olooriel's Practice Blog

[Olooriel]

Hello Daggers! :) Thought I'd create a little sketchbook here as well, especially since CA seems to be having problems at the moment, and I normally update my sketchbook there on a friday... so by way of an introduction, here's some stuff I did since the start of the new year:

Armour study:


Skintone Practice (no ref):


1 minute poses:



Faces from imagination:

[Heavenwill]

Glad to see you here !

[Olooriel]

Thanks Heaven! :)

Good good, so the Crimson Daggers forums are up again... I should celebrate that with an update.
Just... speedpaintings.

[gdsworld]

Great thread Olloriel. Thanks for stopping by today. I love your brush work.

[Olooriel]

Thanks gdsworld - was another fun event yesterday!

[Archreux]

Nice stuff ya got here. You're paintings are looking good, especially those armor studies.
Keep an eye on the colors you're using in future paintings, as some of the colors you've been using, I noticed, are pretty desaturated.
I'd also suggest taking a closer look at how you construct your heads. You've nearly got the placement of the features right, but the features themselves are lacking in their own construction. When you're doing gestures perhaps take some time to study the faces/heads of the people you're drawing. One more thing about heads. If you haven't already looked into Andrew Loomis, Drawing the Head and Hands book, I strongly suggest it. I've been reading through it and it's been a tremendous help in that department. :]

Hope this helps. Keep up the good work.

[Olooriel]

Thanks Archreux! (hey, you got an even more complicated name than me! ;) )

Too desaturated? Really? I was told to watch my saturation before, but since that person didn't specify, I assumed that he meant "too saturated".

The features on those heads above are obviously not very refined, but I was mainly worried about the proportions - I've painted very detailed and defined heads in the past with proportions that were completely off, it was a textbook example of uncanny valley.

I have studied Loomis a bit a couple of months ago, but at the time was told to leave the books alone *shrug*. I picked them up again just now, as I intend to push my studies a lot more, so I should get to some head studies soon.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Olooriel]

Some figure drawing, some Loomis studies, and some quick scissors from life.

[Olooriel]

Loomis, Loomis, Loomis.

[Olooriel]

Loooomis, gestures, and a 60 minute photo study:

[Olooriel]

Wolf studies, a fold study from life, and sunday's speedpaints.

[Olooriel]

Well. This was a pretty long absence, from painting as well as from this forum... I stopped my daily practice entirely, and haven't really drawn or painted much at all since February. I thought I would be fine just occasionally doing fanart as a hobby and _not_ striving to get better at painting anymore, but really, I'm not... I keep thinking how much better I could have gotten at this in this time if I stuck with it, but then again... I don't know. So, I might pick up the daily practice again for a month or two, just to at least finish a couple of things that I had started or planned. Probably no more than that, but who knows. So far, 'continue doing it just because' hasn't been a particularly good motivator...

Anyway, here's the bit of stuff I did this past half year. Portrait referenced from a photo by Markus Schwarze, tried to get his permission, but got no reply (he probably didn't even see my comment on that old picture, so unless I hear otherwise it's probably not a no and I'll show it here anyway - it was an attempt at painter originally, but my PC hated that program, so I finished it up in Artrage). Childrens proportions copied from Loomis, the lying lady was an attempt to turn a black and white photo into a coloured study, and some simple fanart stuff in digital ink.

[TNiznet]

Hey Oloo, the last updates takes quite a leap from your previous work before your absence, so I guess you still have been pushing. I would recommend you to work a lot in a traditional point of view, continue to do your Loomis studies in pencil and not digital, learn to accurately see and don't just copy, it seems like you are just copying the pages, take your time to learn it and apply it from imagination instead of doing things like painting a knight's chest guard and applying that from imagination, that work habit will not benefit you, instead you should be copy anatomy studies and then applying then from imagination, perspective will also take you a long way mate. Good Luck.

[Olooriel]

Thanks for the comment, although I did not quite just copy the Loomis studies, and I also did try to apply the anatomy I'd learned into imaginative work, which I haven't shown here yet because I never finished anything. I also did some attempts at learning perspective, but the results were not encouraging, lol. The only reason for the "leap" you think you saw is that the last posts before my absence were mainly done from imagination, and nearly none of the recent ones were.

Also, I don't see why it would make any difference whether I practise with digital or pencil, and if there is any difference it's that digital helps me to loosen up when sketching, I used to draw a lot in pencil years ago, and the move to digital actually helped me loads. Whenever I try pencil now the results are still much more stiff, more generic, less dynamic than anything I would manage digitally.

[mat04art]

Maybe for perspective but also observation training try out the tutorials on ctrlpaint.com. They are really short and very easy to understand, but help a ton in a lot of ways. Give it a try, if you like to. :)

[Olooriel]

@mat04art: Thanks for the tip, I'll have a look at them!

[Tygerson]

Great work! I really like that black and white image of the guy standing near the shore.

[Rognoll]

wow! that's a really wide range of studies! You can totally see the improvement from the first one to now.
Just a tip: When doing gesture drawings, try to get the motion, not the contour. Proko and Sycra have some excellent videos about that.

[Olooriel]

@Rognoll: Thanks! Yeah, I know I'm doing gestures all wrong. I've been trying, but I keep reverting back to stiff outlines somehow. I'll check out the videos you mentioned, maybe they'll help.

So here's my recent stuff, mainly perspective practice. I figured out some things, but there's still a couple of problems I can see but can't fiigure out WTH I did wrong to make it come out this way... if someone who understands this sort of thing could tell me I'd be _very_ grateful!

Also, a couple of attempts at scaly skin texture. The top three are the last things I did a couple of months ago before I got so frustrated with it that I wanted to quit... complete failures at what I was trying to do (hint at the scales without actually painting every single one - yeah), but I figured I'd show them anyway. The left one is a quick one with an oval brush that actually looks kind of nice, the alligator leg is just painted with a chalk brush and actually my favourite. Well, guess I learned something.

[TonariNoPunpun]

Nice seeing so many studies, especially from Loomis, those help a lot. Potraits are looking good!