Hobitt-hole

[neopatogen]

The skull is great! You`re lucky to have a skull at home as a ref! And.. can`t wait to see a creature in those feathers!

[Riprap]

Hey there, was just reading about your concerns on the last page and I'm in the exact same boat as you. It's good to know I'm not the only one that feels this way haha. I've tried many different ways to help with my anatomy (which I still suck at : P) but I've had the most success with the way Alex Negrea showed in one of his gumroad videos. I've done a few in my sketchbook, where you draw a figure from reference and then hide the pose, try to recreate it blind, and then repeat the process a couple times.
Your values seem really strong! I love the pieces you did for the monster hunter challenge, are you planning on bringing any of them to finish? Your characters are lookin' good too!

[Hobitt]

@neopatogen Thanks! i got the skull fairly cheap from amazon its a plastic cast i think they are still around, i am exited to try to render something thats very texture heavy

@Riprap Thanks! it can be tough, but need to push through it! Yeah these sketches are just to figure out the design ill do the finished ones probably tommorow and the day after.

Ok imaginative drawing start to feel a bit less overwhelming now ill keep pushing i think this is exactly what i was missing.


The  design for the creature, quite happy with how it turned out ill jump to doing the finished version, not a creature designer but this is fun.




Still life not too happy with this one, do not be fooled these busts are tiny smaller than my palm so getting accurate with them is rather hard but i do it once in a while to train my eyes




Will have something to show from zbrush hopefuly tommorow and perhaps the final design sketch for the hunter maybe even the final depends on how it will go.

[tinDeer]

I actually really like the character design from yesterday! Especially his dynamic pose and those cool artificial limbs.

[Hobitt]

@tinDeer Thanks its supposed to be armor of sorts but ill indicate it in the final more

Still trying to get a grasp of zbrush so nothing to show





Ill probably clean this up more and call it done





upside down skull,still life.

[Flow]

Hey dude,

the Skull looks like it was really fun, proportions look good on this one!


One tip I would have is: use more light and thick marks (like really blunt/flat pencil marks) where you can't really concentrate on the outline/contours and need to focus on placement and proportion. Or do figure studies with a 'textury' brush of your liking in only one size. Like "one stroke an arm". That could help getting figures, animals and so on a little better in proportion and movement. I didn't do that really often for too long but when I started it all began to be much easier, and WAY more FUN for me. :)

Keep pushing, we're moving fast!

[Hobitt]

@Flow thanks! yeah currently studying a bit of animal anatomy just out of curiosity

The crucible is fun i highly recommend it.

[Hobitt]

Here is a drawing from imagination im doing a lot of these now,fun times!

[Hobitt]

Alright after the CC decided to try to move towards painterly style.

studies

[Hobitt]

Alright time for some ramblings.

So after finishing the CC i felt that in those 3 weeks i improved a lot and why is that? because i drew a lot.
So here is not so clever analogy i made up. Two people want to learn to draw hands person A studies all the books about hand anatomy, gesture etc person B also studies a book or two on hands, now what sets them apart is that person A draws maybe a full page of hands from imagination and says "well crap these look bad i guess i didint learn my fundamentals" so he returns to the books, videos and delves into medical anatomy! meanwhile person B fills pages upon  pages of hands hundreds of them and along the way he glances at a book to correct a few repeating mistakes. I think in the end person B will be a much better artist because he actually practiced the thing he wanted to do. Ive been person A for more than 4 years. Time to stop if i had taken the other route im 100% sure i would be a better artist now. So what im gonna do about this? a few things first thing is set the amount of time i must draw in a work day ( more on days off). When real life interferes cant do much about that.
that is about 8 hours so everyday im gonna track the amount i did, BUT thats not all in a day i must do 5 drawings in various states of quality from page of thumbnails or a start of a painting ( that will count as 1) the reason for this is that i think with repeated effort to do it ill improve ( i was about to go on tangent how art is like sports and tell a story about how i learned certain things there but thats too long and boring). Also a reward and punishment system if i manage to do  5 drawings everyday for a week ill get to watch a movie or something, if not the punishment i wont get to read before sleep (still trying to figure this bit out).

Also ill stop obsessing about working at some dream job ill start now. Listened to a lot of videos by Feng Zhu and his ideas on how to build a portfolio so in between the crucibles ill work on my own projects and treat it like an actual job,and commit long term to one project really concept out everything (depending on the type of game i imagine it to be). (some people can come in the thread and be art directors and tell me to do a last minute change so ill have to adapt, since that happens in concept art right?!) So the goal is presentable concept art, and not "fan art" of concept art

And my first project is a H.P Lovecraft story turned into a video game the story is "Shadow over Innsmouth" and game type is sort of limited open world RPG (think gothic 1 and 2 games which are great btw)with horror elements.Ill look at some art of books to look at presentation. I might do paintings not related on the side of the project those will count too, i will put aside an hour to study things i really need to. probably...

So here are todays stats and drawings dont really want to post these, they are horrible but i think falling flat on my face is an important part of this.

5.40 / 8 hours
 4/5 drawings (all bad or unfinished)

Random sketch




Unfinished






bad photo study





Onward towards this fun venture!

[devinn]

Also ill stop obsessing about working at some dream job ill start now. Listened to a lot of videos by Feng Zhu and his ideas on how to build a portfolio so in between the crucibles ill work on my own projects and treat it like an actual job,and commit long term to one project really concept out everything (depending on the type of game i imagine it to be). (some people can come in the thread and be art directors and tell me to do a last minute change so ill have to adapt, since that happens in concept art right?!) So the goal is presentable concept art, and not "fan art" of concept art

Wow, Hobitt; very good points. So good, I think you may have inspired me to participate in these crucibles! I just want to improve and actually try my hand at an illustration for once. You rock, man.

I was going to critique you on your method of studying until I saw your CC pieces: before, you really shotgunned your studies...they were real varied in subject matter and I couldn't tell what it was you were exactly trying to improve upon in each study. However, ever since you began the crucible challenges, you began pumping in more work in very SPECIFIC studies towards a verrry SPECIFIC goal and yaaassss: you leveled up accordingly. :))

Thanks for inspiring me and good job on your pursuits!!

[BrushNoir]

@Hobbit exactly what I'm working on right now, own projects as if it was given by a client. Seems this works best to get better. I'll drop by and try to give some crits (even though I'm very bad at giving good crits since I make lots of mistakes myself :P)

[Hobitt]

@Jaktrayter Thanks!, and youre welcome!
@Brushnoir Thanks

Life sure can be funny. Just when i decided to be productive got horrible food poisoning so i did draw in my sketchbooks and did a space marine painting that i will show.Will work on the crucible now, unless life decides to drop some more surprises...

[miracoly]

Loved the post about your new goals, I'm in a similar situation, still figuring out how to learn best and what works best for me.

I'm looking forward to your next posts!

Keep it up!

[Hobitt]

@Miracoly thanks

More warhammer 40k

[Hobitt]

A painting. Don't think it works because of lack of planning, composition etc. Will try to do better next time.

[BadWoolf]

Hey! Great sketchbook. I really love your goal to create a portfolio centred around a core project and to treat that like client work. It's something that I'm thinking about a lot at the moment. I spend a lot of time creating fan art and thinking about other people's creations, but I'd like a portfolio full MY OWN cool stuff - so - I'm now writing a novel and illustrating it as I go to create portfolio pieces.

A thought on your recent paintings: I think it would be great to see you play with colour. I'd like to you throw in some select splashes of increased saturation, and that would help tell the reader where the focus is (just like adding more contrast - which is something else you could play with - really ramping up the contrast on a small focus area). At the moment, I feel like the saturation of your colours and the contrast is pretty level across the whole image.

For inspiration on what I'm talking about: 

http://6kart.deviantart.com/art/Journey-...-610815898
and 
http://6kart.deviantart.com/art/Alpha-RaptorX-553569636

Overall there's already loads to like about your paintings, but I just thought that might help to push the atmosphere and bring out the focus :)

[Hobitt]

@BadWoolf  Thanks!

 IM BACK!

Decided to go into a self imposed exile for a month to work on my skills, studied a lot of stuff and i think im on the right path now, but i do need to process the information ive learned, this is the more interesting stuff i did in a month(posting it all would be a waste of space and some of it was not that good unsurprisingly, not that this is good.) It could be better but whatever. I was learning as i was painting so a lot of experimentation was going on, onward towards more improvement!

A few noteworthy studies learned a lot from these







Paintings i did in chronological order













And i reworked some old pieces i liked, learned a lot of from this and how flawed my approach was.







And this was supposed to be my CC5 entry, but its not good enough design wise and overall its a weak image





Looking forward to improve even more.

[Hobitt]

A few studies i did, i feel like im approaching a point and a method where i can draw in the way i envision.....

[smrr]

Hey mate,

Saw this dude and thought I'd suggest some things




The angle of the eye didn't meet with the angle of the head too well, even though the nose was positioned in the somehwat right angle. His facial feats were a bit too small(?) for the head size - to rectify the past two issues I liquified quite a bit. Don't be afraid to use liquify/other PS tools to fix problems. 

You also seemed to be emphasising parts of the skeletal structure too kindly in order to make a convincing portrait. E.g. his cheekbone -- get in there and put some darker values in to make it apparent. Seriously, valueeessss <3

I get that your orig idea was having the head twisted and angled a bit - hence why the sternocleidomastoid is twisted a bit - but it doesn't look natural. If you were twisting your head up and to the right, the neck muscles wouldn't pop out like that.

Lastly, his pose seems stiff and unrealistic. Especially the when you have a head that size with scrawny arms. Remember the angle of the ribcage when standing - there's an angle to it - the torso tapers over this angle before receding to the hip-region.

Probably more emphasis on the beautiful necklace could help the piece - but I'm out of time

Hope this helps in some way. Do what you will with it <3