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Night scenes are tricky. If you take pictures of out there at night, you get a black rectangle. If you try to go out and study night scenes in person, you can see a lot more subtle shapes going on, but you can't see your canvas. If you're not near country side or large park/cemetery, the only way is to study other people's night photos.
Shadow skin tone sort of depends on what kind of light, and ethnicity... from what I remmeber, white people get bluish green. Dark brown and black people get warm purple. Lighter brown/asian skin in shadow... I think is warm greens. ... no other way to confirm than go stare at people at cafe like a creep! Good luck and don't get arrested! :D
The first 2 value studies look washed out... why did you cap the scale at mid-grey?
Darn good job doing all those studies! Man wish I can do screen cap studies too... how on earth do you do all these???
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Suira: Thank you! Good idea, I'll get a character in there, but first I have to figure out how to go on with those constructs anyway D: Oh right, too dark values! I always forget to not do that, thanks for the reminder. 'Lady' is fine. ;)
meat: Ah well, looks like some more targetet skin studies are in order (again). One day I'll get a grip on it! For the screencap studies, I wanted to study different light schemes, so the first are high key and mid range or something like that. Problem is probably that while the first one was very high key, it still had some darker shadow accents under Alice's skirts, so now it looks washed out. Similar with the tangled shot. So the problem is probably my selection (but I also didn't want to browse movies for longer than I painted..). At least I learnt that, at least in movies, extreme high key without accents is very rare, and hard to find. Also, to get a happy and soft atmosphere like the tangled shot, values could go a *bit* darker than I expected as well. Also, yes, screencap studies are fun! You should try to find the time to do some if you want to work on composition and stuff :)
random/warmup stuff
Also trying to stop hiding my lack of drawing ability behind paint, and also trying to get better with digital lines. With thin lines I feel like I have zero control over anything, but I hope practice will help. Thanks go to Master Nate and Master Rafa for letting me leech knowledge from them.
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Wow Lyraina! Huge improvement! The anatomy/gestures are so yummy, the face on 05/08 is just perfect. The weight on the painted lady walking is spot on, just keep doing that and you'll be even better!
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Hi Lyraina, my mind is blown by how many stunning and beautiful images you produce so quickly! It's really inspiring to go through your sketchbook. It's also reassuring, in a way, to read that you struggle with thin digital lines as well <.< The ones above are looking pretty tight though ^^
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Woah, those warmups are awesome! Wish my warmups look that way, I specially dig the black woman portrait and the tiny enviros, truly cool. And incredible amount of work in the human figures. If you keep this pace you're gonna be owning every single one of us in no time.
When I saw the nude of the girl walking something came to mind. Maybe you could get better edge work in less time using one of these . They really have helped me out a lot. I only use a square hard brush with those settings and a soft round one and you can get pretty solid results combining the two in little time. Althoughyou might be going hardcore and just using hard round default as it is, but I recommend you give it a try, maybe it'll help.
As always, cool, inspiring stuff! :)
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Yessss! Linework is brutal, but good to see the focus on the drawing skills. And nice composition on that landscape, the perspective really creates that sense of depth there. Keep pushin woohoo
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Always a pleasure to meet another Stormlight Archive fan. I favourited your Shallan illustration on DA, great work. Would love to see your take on Dalinar.
Very cool studies going on there too. Your figure study line drawings are very impressive, I'm currently working on similar studies so I can appreciate the challenge there.
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rafa: Thank you. Glad you like the gestures. I hope they'll get a lot better soon :P
Jyonny: Thank you very much! Drawing digital is such a hassle, but then again, I just prefer painting no matter which medium.
Suira: Thank you. With that girl, I didn't really concentrate on edges to be honest, more like... using big and confident strokes and getting the weight in there (kind of the opposite of the linework struggle). I think I've already made one of those brushes in the video you linked, but I can't find it anymore O_O
pnate: Thank you! I should be drawing so much more, but somehow always end up painting D:
meat: Funny, I would have expected a lot more orange on her chin, but the grass seems to be a lot more reflective than the shirt. Thanks for all of your help with skintone :) The giraffe is a joke I drew for my sibling, she was explaining something about "Moll-Griffart" (something about a violin grip in minor tonality) and I kept reading "Giraffenart" (meaning giraffe species). And since minor tonality is often used for sad/moody songs I was thinking of a sad giraffe species :P
Craig: Ooh you're reading it too? Cool! Glad you like Shallan! I'd love to do Dalinar, but I'm so busy with other stuff that I don't know when I will be able to do him :( Did you read anything else from Sanderson?
Woah I'm becoming a slow poster. :( I don't know where my days are going!!
Not sure how to tackle practicing perspective and architecture stuff... so I'm experimenting a bit
there is something wrong with my edge work and I need to figure out what it is
uh oh
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I've only read his Stormlight books. Started reading the Mistborn trilogy, but struggled to really get into it. May give it another go, as some of the style and designs in it sounded really cool
Pat Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle is really good, and has similarities to Brandon Sanderson. You should check that out, if you haven't already. :)
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Craig: I loved Mistborn, read it after Stormlight (which is even better, imho). Especially since it made me dream awesome stuff (flying, magic!) even weeks afterwards, haha :)
Yeah Pat is awesome as well, I wish he wrote as quickly as Sanderson...!
screencap
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Is that from Prince of Persia?
Always a pleasure to watch your sketchbook.
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nice gestures lyraina, its really cool to look through your sketchbook and see the huge improvement! ;)
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Lyyyyyyyrrrraaaa.
Nice work :D good amount of updates. Good to see you arent slacking off.
With your edges, the problem may be that you only have two. Super soft and lasso tool hard. THere doesnt really seem to be an in between. Especially on your environments.
You are improving so quickly though.
For getting better at lines I would recommend doing all of the skecthes in your physical sketchbook with ball point pen. I have been doing this for a few months now and it is really helping. Not day to day, but I used a mechanical pencil again the other day and I can really see the difference. It's like a different hand is doing them now.
Anyway, keep at it :P
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Wow, these last couple portraits are looking awesome. I really admire when people get faces to look convincing without rendering the shit out of them. I think you're starting to find a good, simple way for your brushwork, keep it up, it's working :)
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Damn, great stuff! Those figure and architecture studies are looking really good. I'm really liking the strokes in that one figure study up at the top, the colors in all of these are really strong as well.
In terms of your edge work, I think could convey a better separation of the planes. There's a few places in these studies where edges blend together in a way that keeps different ground elements from being separate from each other. I would say it's just a simple matter of cleanliness. This recent screencap study is a pretty good example of that. Everything in the face reads, and you've got a good variety of hard, soft, and lost throughout.
Keep up the good work! :D
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Whenever I visit CD I always love to check your sketchbook :) progress you're making is so constant! Your colors improved the most, I love all experiments with showing through under painting on landscapes, really pleasant effect!
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Great sketchbook! love the movie still :)
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Wolkenfels: Yep, that's Prince of Persia! Thanks :)
Renato: Thank you, glad you see improvement.
Jaik. Jaaaaaaik! Haha, I actually feel like slacking off all the time -_- Yeah I think in the environments, the problem is the hard edges everywhere. Need to find a way to soften that without going all muddy and confused. I've switched to ballpoint pen/ink a while ago, that's actually why I don't have any traditional stuff to show haha xP But it is quite fun.
Suira: Thank you. I probably wouldn't even know how to render the shit out of faces (or anything else) so I'm glad you like it this way :P
Archreux: Hmm. Planes. Now that is something I should think about more often even in environments, true... thanks!
Madzia: Thanks so much! Love your stuff, so this makes me doubly happy :)
Angelique: Thanks a lot!
Soooo... the initial plan was doing those digital sketches daily no matter how hard it is, until I see improvement in my (digital) drawing/lines. But as much as I would like to ignore it, since a few days I can't deny that my hand starts acting up again -_- It is not even a matter of "oh I painted for 12 hours straight and now my wrist hurts", but it is more of a "just got up, barely checked my mail and my hand is already going numb"... so I wonder if it is not the actual drawing that is the problem, but something else, like bad posture. I'm taking breaks, stretching and try to sit somewhat healthy, so this is what I suspect might be a reason (from thinking about it and googling):
- Cold desktop (glass) cooling my hand, arm and wrist even in summer whenever my hand is not on the wacom (The last 5 years I worked on wood)
- chair too low/wrong angle/wrong posture
- some emotional crap making me too tense
- my beloved magic mouse. (it is lovely, and scrolling in all directions and sweeping motions are great, but it is somewhat flat, not good to rest the hand upon)
So now I am wearing a sleeve at all times now, sit on a cushion (higher), borrowed a sexy gaming mouse from my mother, and try to not worry about stuff (lol). Also trying to do only the least straining / most important motions (so, no digital drawing, 'cause it hurts). From a scientist's point of view, eliminating one potential reason after the other would make more sense, but I just want my hand to feel normal so I try to fix whatever the reason might be and then look what is was. This shit is fucking scary :( Anyone knows if a normal doctor can help me with that (I need a vaccination soon anyway so I could ask for help at the same time) or if I really need a specialist if this won't improve? I'm not too fond of visiting doctors as long as I'm not half-dead, especially when there's a possibility that I am just imagining shit, but in this case I really don't want to fuck this up.
On a side note, I'm officially a Master of Science now! Barely 8 months after submitting my thesis I finally got my degree, haha. It is completely unrelated to art, but I'm still happy, and better end this post on a positive note, right?
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Sad to hear about the hand and wrist pains :( You should definitely tell your doctor about it next time you go in, or schedule an appointment for this. That kind of thing ain't no joke! There's enough stories of the pros suffering through it that we should learn from their mistakes :) I suspect the doctor can probably give you a good referral to a specialist as well.
Really sweet environment thumbs. Which class are you taking right now? (And is it free to join? :D) A crit I could offer is that I'm not really feeling a sense of scale that I think that these pieces could convey. I think it might be that for some of these, it only feels like there are 2 levels to them, rather than 3. Like if you just added that third plane in the middle, it might add some more distance and breathing room/depth to the piece. But your instructor could offer you a better crit, I'm sure!
And congrats on the degree! It's still a massive accomplishment. And now we both have non-art related college degrees woohoooo
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![[Image: sketch152.jpg]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/nj04ujwo139fl3u/sketch152.jpg)
