Elderscrollers Sketchy Stuff

[Tygerson]

That's a crazy sketch! I can't imagine trying to keep track of all those tentacles. Definitely a favorite theme of yours, so you've worked up to it. Nice overall wave/spiral shape you constrained them to.

[Elderscroller]

@Tygerson:  Recently I´m a lot into demonic/tentacly stuff because of my client work which is all about demons. The things I´ve seen in researching.......:)  
The tentacle, chaotic "hair" mass is actually not that hard to do. It is just like every complex image: Break it down into simple forms and go from general to specific. First I did the motion/gesture with just 2 lines, then doing the bigger tentacles on the edges and some inner one. From there you just add and add until you´re satisfied :)


Trying to be a bit more loose in sketching. I just took a geometric form and turned it into a face. Not necessarily human...:)

[Elderscroller]

Some more commonly face doodles:

[Elderscroller]

Just practice today, no doodling. First is anatomy practice (3 from imagination, 1 study) with basic shading and the second one is shape design practice. It´s the same as with the faces earlier, but for characters. So basically pick a shape (triangle and a tapering rectangle in this case), draw it and create a character from it, trying to stick close to the base shape.

[Tygerson]

The troll priest looks great with all the blocky shapes.

Yikers, those inquisitors look a little like the KKK, although that definitely gives a "bad guy" sense to them.

The anatomy practice looks great!

[Elderscroller]

@Tygerson: Thanks! Big pointy shapes always have that evil/bad vibe...I guess thats why the KKK uses them, Though I doubt they are aware of that :)

Felt like I need to draw a harpy....

[Tygerson]

For some reason that looks like a before and after! It would be cool to give a harpy (or something freakish like that) the same jewelry as a beautiful character on the left...

[Elderscroller]

@Tygerson: That´s actually a great idea :) Here´s an update:






Lots of eyes in this update.....

[cicakkia]

Woah cool stuff there. It seems you always just have an idea to put in on your drawing. Care give some tips how to be like that? 

[Elderscroller]

Woah cool stuff there. It seems you always just have an idea to put in on your drawing. Care give some tips how to be like that? 

Thanks! To answer your question is not that easy/simple :) I can give you some insides on how I go about when sketching, but I´m not sure it will help, as everyone is a bit different and prefers different approaches.
 
When sketching, one of two things happen before putting the pencil to paper. Either I have a clear idea or I don´t :)
To get to a clear idea, just look at lots of stuff. Pictures on the web, your environment, read stuff, movies, games, anything that inspires you and ideas will pop up in your head. It´s best to draw them immediately when that happens as they will vanish quickly, even if you try to remember them for later....if you can´t draw right now, write down some words of that idea, it really helps!
I also used a random RPG generator in the past (there are lots out there for all kinds of genres) and even made my own, which generates a character and randomizes everything. Somewhere in my thread here there are samples of that. That´s also very helpful, if you have no idea at all.

If you are sitting in front of a blank piece of paper with no idea, that´s a bit more difficult. First thing is to get rid of that blank paper! That´s really important. Don´t think in front of it and try to come up with something, start to put down soft lines and random scribbles without much thought (which can be erased easily) In about 95% of situations like that, I start to see something in those scribbles I can then flesh out (it´s like looking at clouds)

Once you have the basic idea, start adding to it by coming up with stories of the character/thing you draw and try to show what you have in mind. E.g. your character is a nibble thief living in a large town somewhere in the desert. So going with that story, his clothes should be light and they shouldn´t hinder him, maybe something a bit tighter, so he won´t accidentally get stuck with a loose sleeve while stealing...

Hopefully that´s somewhat helpful. Feel free to ask, if you have any questions

[Elderscroller]

@cicakkia: The process of my new sketches below was just the idea of drawing opposing characters, didn´t have anything else. Next I doodled and started doing a dwarf and thought, ok so elf would be the opposite character. But I got bored of doing a generic dwarf, so I thought I´d add something newish to it. I haven´t seen many water dwarfs recently, so I started designing that which ended up of course with a fire elf on the other end of the spectrum

Concepts of opposite characters

[cicakkia]

woah thanks for the time to wrote all this. That was very helpful. I never thought about using random generator. Will try that useful method :)

[Elderscroller]

@cicakkia: No problem, always happy to help a fellow artist

Doodling silly stuff

[Elderscroller]

Doodling faces, trying to go into a more caricature-ish style and that guy suddenly ends up being a convict....

[Elderscroller]

Painting practice and pencil doodling, also trying out a cartoonish look

[Elderscroller]

Portrait sketching

[Elderscroller]

Some portrait sketching, enhancing it with reference afterwards

[Elderscroller]

Some paladin (I will paint a paladin propaganda poster in th near future) and some faces that turned into popeye and olive oil while drawing

[darktiste]

Would be fun to see you explore different cross hatching approch.

[Elderscroller]

@darktiste: do you mean different types of shading? I might try that in the near future

An RPG situation of my latest RPG session: fighting the cliche ratswarm :) An some sort of allegory of seamanship