Olooriel's Practice Blog

[cesartalves]

I usually try to think of the structure of the forms, noticing which ones pass in front or back of each other and indicating that by overlaps or line weight. Of course this is much easier to do if you have a good understanding of anatomy.
I'm sure if you search for foreshortening on google you will find something helpful; if i'm not mistaken burne hogarth's "Dynamic Anatomy" has a chapter dedicated to that.

[ZombieChinchilla]

Nice stuff, your figures already seem better with the last post! Focusing on construction is something I too struggle with sometimes, and I think yours are looking pretty good. Keep doing them, though. I challenge you to do 50 more of those, all from reference, then try your hand at doing 50 more from imagination!

[Olooriel]

@ZombieChinchilla
These latest look worse again I'm afraid, so I should probably go back to the skeleton things... definitely gonna do a lot more figures, that's for sure.

I'm kind of feeling that time's running out right now and I'm not learning fast enough, probably that time of year (it's my birthday...) And these latest figures and feet are some of the worst I've ever drawn. I'm just not getting the wrapping lines at all.

[Gliger]

Don't do a million wrapping lines, do one line that shows the whole contour, what you see and what goes behind, and then make more, if you don't get what I mean, it's like if you wrapped a ruber band around a transpared form, draw that rubber band, make sure it feels 3d.

[Olooriel]

@Gliger
Thanks for the tip, I'll try it that way next time! :)

First master colour study in a while, and I had to chose one of Moran's Yellowstone paintings - I must be crazy. If you're looking for a challenge though, I can recommend these 100% - so many colours.


Some anatomy from Hampton:


Value form study:


For some reason I liked this figure drawing back when I made it, so I coloured it (digitally):


And another alien head for fun (based on mirrored photo):

[Olooriel]

The latest master colour study:


Some anatomy from Hampton:


Lighting direction exercise from Concept Cookie (sketch of the head was give, so it's not mine)


Hair practice (head base by Bobby Chiu, not me, I just added the different hairstyles):


Head from imagination:

[Gliger]

Last head is sweet, maybe try giving the dress some texture, to the wholes I mean, like, smaller shapes.

[GabbyTaylor]

Olooriel, you're really, really good at showing emotion and movement! And your colors have improved 1000x over! And your faces.... I can't wait until I can draw a face like you can! It's all so beautiful, keep up the good work!! :D

[Olooriel]

@Gliger
Thanks a lot! That's a good idea, I might try that - the holes are the part that I wasn't happy with.

@GabbyTaylor
Thank you, I have focused a lot on colours and faces recently :) Emotion and movement on the other hand I still think are my greatest weaknesses, I tend to go for a boring frontal pose and blank expression a lot - really need to fix that ;)


Haven't been feeling too well, so there's not a lot, but I did study some hands...

Drawing Tutorials Online:




Just trying to analyse pictures, not sure if this was actually helpful:

Same for feet:


And some from Loomis:

[Olooriel]

Going over the simple skeleton again...

Poses from DTO video:




Poses from imagination:




Trying to see the landmarks in a photo (ref from croquis cafe)... I think the joint of the left femur/hip looks wrong, does it?

[GabbyTaylor]

The skeletons in the second picture look like they're dancing! If movement is your greatest weakness, I'd love to see your greatest strength. Keep it up! :D

[Olooriel]

@GabbyTaylor
Aww, thank you! I'm trying :)

I wanted to try to fix the hip, but I couldn't find the original ref, so I drew over mine in red and made it more confusing XD
Not sure if it even makes more sense now...


Random dude from a photo in a cosmetic studio ad that was lying on my desk... because I wanted to try using a mechanical pencil. Unfortunately mine is broken and the lead doesn't come out properly, so I kept scratching the paper and the result is terrible. Nono, it absolutely can't be my bad art skills, I get to blame my tools ;)


This hair study I did a while ago along with a cg cookie stream, wanted to try out his technique of starting with a soft brush... it was an interesting experiment, but it's not going to become my style, looks too airbrushed for my taste:


New colour masterstudy. Interestingly, although there is green elsewhere in the picture, the bushes to the right should have just been a dark desaturated brown. Could have sworn they were green :/


This was supposed to be an application of the previous colour study, but somehow this happened instead, probably because it was late last night and I was tired...

[Punk-A-Cat]

Oh my gosh I /love/ your hair studies, and your landscape studies, that last one is just gorgeous.
I'm inspired to do a bunch of hand studies now too :D

[Olooriel]

@Punk-A-Cat
Thank you very much! :)

Just some older sketchbook stuff for today, still trying to catch up:

Top left guy from memory after I saw him at the bus station, so the pose got rather stiff. Children top right from observation on the train, both portraits are the same one from different angles, and I know that the perspective on the baby buggy is a mess, need to learn some perspective. The woman with the pointy nose didn't actually look like that, but her shadow did. The guy to her left noticed me drawing him and changed seats - mucho awkward. I took to practising circles after that...
The bottom ones were done a different time, on vacation. We were driving past that church, so I did not have much time to make it look better. The portrait is from an ad in a magazine, way too photoshopped, but I did not have any better reference. Bottom right is my own hand from life, for the same reason.


From the same vacation, some stuff from life (didn't have enough time for that fountain):


The thumbnails at the top are from a train ride, trying to find a good composition in the landscape passing by (which is generally pretty boring). Then more circle practice.
The bottom half was a sunny day that I took my sketchbook out to draw people and pigeons by the river.


Left this one out of my Edinburgh vacation sketches when I posted them earlier, because I didn't like how it turned out:


And some buildings, top one here by the river again, bottom in Edinburgh from a cafe window while having my breakfast:


And for the record, I hate it when people on the street ask me stuff like "Do you paint, or is that a hobby?" Eh... what?

[Olooriel]

Hands from imagination:


Hands from Loomis:


More hands from imagination:


And more hands from Loomis:


Dug out that ref again, more detailed study of that skeleton:

[Olooriel]

Painted the left cherry along with the CG Cookie livestream yesterday:


This might be a good chance to post some other stuff I did for their exercises and haven't posted yet, even though these are a couple months old:

[Olooriel]

Hands from imagination:


Hands from Loomis:


More hands from imagination:


Playing with the latest master studies and applying the same composition to a different subject matter. Was a fun experiment:

[Olooriel]

I've been working on some design practice thing the past few days - it's a "Crimson Dagger" :-P


I'll get back to the grinding now, but I'll use this post to show a bit more imagination stuff that I've done lately...

For CG Cookie Contest "The Rose Princess":


For Outcast Odyssey contest on DA (I know the dragon anatomy is downright terrible, I need to work on that):


Overpaint of an older imagination portrait I did:


And a new one:

[Olooriel]

Skull study (from photo reference):


More skull studies (from anatomy book):


Hip studies (from anatomy book):


Hand studies (Loomis):


Hands from imagination:

[Olooriel]

Today's warmups to practice my line quality (finally started using my new pens, feels good to not get ink all over me while doing these:


Hands from Loomis, I've been trying to force myself to hold the pencil the proper way and draw from the shoulder without tensing up, because the last days my hand has been hurting... not sure if the drawings got better or worse through this, but my hand feels better today.


Hands from imagination:


I've never been taught perspective, and I've been putting off studying it because after a couple failed attempts to "get it" on my own while growing up it scared me (probably unnecessarily, because the books I had access to back then were rubbish). This is the first one-point perspective exercise of "From a cube to a cathedral":


Trying to fix the skeleton after some feedback, hips still look off though: