Olooriel's Practice Blog

[Olooriel]

More master studies, I was told that I need to pay more attention to forms in these, so I decided to keep it simple and do stillife ones to focus on that:



Infection Progression (exercise for concept cookie):



Page from my sketchbook, mostly people sketching on the train (yeah I know, they're a couple months old, I still have to take photos of the newer ones):



I don't do figures much, but here's some 30 second gestures (need to do more of those):



And another overpaint of an old portrait I did from imagination:

[Olooriel]

Some of last week's vacation sketches (sorry for the bad photos, I don't have a working scanner)...

Edinburgh:



Rhino in Natural History museum:



Study of a plaster cast in the Portrait Gallery:



More Portrait Gallery:



Think this one was from the National Gallery:

[Olooriel]

Master studies (I think that's enough values for now):



Shape Challenge for Concept Cookie, because I was bored with my studies and needed something fun:



Some Hampton stuff from my sketchbook:



Some 30 second gestures in mypaint (I like the infinite canvas, but I still need to find the best brush for these) and then some longer ones:



Another overpaint of an old portrait from imagination:

[Olooriel]

Leyendecker study (I want to learn to paint fabric and folds like that, holy shit!):



Sketchbook page drawn while on the train, top from observation, bottom from imagination:



Left drawing is from one of the Loomis books, I coloured it at the right. No idea if that's even a good exercise, but I had loads of fun with it for some reason, and that's been a rare thing lately:



Eye study from photo:



This was for a contest on Concept Cookie, kind of missed the point of the assignment though:

[Olooriel]

Master colour study:


Some Hampton from my sketchbook:


Some proportions from Loomis (not supposed to look pretty):


Shading a white and a black sphere for an exercise on Concept Cookie:


Original illustration (used reference for the wolves):

[Olooriel]

Quick Master Colour Study:


Some Hampton from my sketchbook:


Material Studies for Concept Cookie:


A bug traced from a photo (that exercise was recommended on ctrl.paint for learning to think in form):


A face from imagination (cloth from reference):

[Olooriel]

Another master colour study (this one was fun!):


More Hampton from my Sketchbook:


Another bug traced from a photo (stupidly, I find these _so hard_ to do...):


And some warmups from Dynamic Sketching - they don't look it, but they took me a full hour to do:


Halloween contest entry for CG Cookie, based heavily on Tim von Rueden's vampire painting:

[Olooriel]

The latest master colour study:


A sketchbook page of eyes and noses from Hampton:


More "Dynamic Sketching" warmups. Apparently day 1 broke my pen, so I got ink all over me, and then I had to use a way too big cheap one I had until the new set I've ordered arrives. So far, this is not doing a very good job at making me like traditional :-P


Some basic form shading practice:


Character bust from imagination:

[Olooriel]

Master Colour Study:


Hampton from Sketchbook:


Nose studies for a CGCookie exercise:


Screenshot study (x files):


Face from imagination:

[StardustLarva]

Nice work on that portrait from imagination. Only thing I would say is that the area around the chin looks a little too thin. Could just be me, though.

[Olooriel]

@StardustLarva
Thank you! I think you're right, and my BF said the same thing, so it's not just you ;) I guess I have a tendency to make the chins too narrow, I'll have to watch out for that in the future.

I haven't posted in a while, so just to update, I finished my old entry for the Witches' Sabbath challenge on Permanoobs.

Process:




Final:


Card:


And while I didn't enter this one, she was sort of inspired by Aryanna Thesk from the second forum contest over there:

[Olooriel]

Here's a bit more of what I did in the last weeks...

Another master colour study (Thomas Moran):


More Hampton from sketchbook:


Another shape challenge for Concept Cookie:


A skype group challenge thing (pose from reference, rest from imagination):


Silly alien head for fun (painted over a mirrored photo taken from google search, you can probably still recognize it in there):

[jeremygordon89]

Seeing some pretty good improvement in here, and that latest alien-looking head is pretty cool!
I'd suggest for now to keep doing lots of grayscale value form studies. Try even limiting yourself to using only black, white, dark gray, and light gray to force you to see the correct value ranges and where they're placed. Keep at it, you're doing well!

[Olooriel]

I'm way behind on uploading my work, life's been busy.
I guess I'll start catching up with my sketchbook pages from a recent London vacation - mostly master studies from a variety of museums, and some people in a pub.

[Olooriel]

I'm so bad about uploading... *sigh*

Here's a bunch of figure drawings I did from photo reference. Made me realize that I really don't know what I'm doing :/

[Olooriel]

These figures were done at the same time, so they'll have the same flaws, I'm still not caught up with everything...

[fauxfresh]

Hey thanks for leaving some advice in my sketchbook!

Your stuff looks great, the alienhead looks so cool! 

I'm a beginner so I can't offer any meaningful critique, but I did have a question.

What do you think is wrong about the figures you've drawn? Is it the proportions or the contour lines or something else? I haven't done too many figure drawings so I don't really see any problems with them.

[cesartalves]

I think nailling down the proportion of the figures should be your top priority - skip modeling the forms with tone for now. Also be careful about focusing too much on the contour lines. The sillhouettes are all closed and there is no overlapping on the lines of the limbs, making them look very flat.

[smrr]

Hey Olooriel!

So good to see you still workin' hard :D

Hmm, when you are drawing a figure, are you thinking of the underlying structure first? It kind of looks like you're just drawing the contour, or outside of the shapes.
I found it really really helpful to try and visualise and then mark down where I see joints connecting/bone length, etc - after I've completed my gesture for the figure. You're trying to build a 3D form on a 2D surface after all and structure = everything for this to really work.

I also found that this sort of exercise work especially well with larger models, because it's more difficult to determine bone structure and muscle structure, therefore, if these issues aren't addressed earlier on in the drawing, these body types will not look as if they have that certain *weight* about them.
If you get me?

Anyway, I hope you found this helpful in some way and that it's not just rambly crap haha.

Have a good one and keep it up! o/

[Olooriel]

@fauxfresh
Thank you! :)
Yes, as cesartalves and others elsewhere have pointed out, the proportions are off (I tend to make the legs a tad too long), but I wasn't even aware of that until it was pointed out to me... what I meant when I said that I don't know what I'm doing with these are indeed the contour lines... I knew that they flatten the form, but I didn't know how else to construct a figure, so I tried to combat the flatness with shading (needless to say, it didn't really work).

@cesartalves
Thank you for the feedback, I know that I focus too much on the contours, but I find it very hard to get away from that (years of doing it wrong I guess). Any tips on how to combat that?

@smrr
Thank you! :)
Well... I _try_ to think of the structure, but I have a hard time with that, so I always end up putting emphasis on the outline anyway. Thanks for the tips, I'll give them a try!

After the last figure drawing attempts I showed, I tried to learn it from the bottom up by following an online course. I'm still not sure whether it's helpful or not, but here's the simplified skeletons I started with: