SamSzymSketch

[Samszym]

Thanks for the comments guys!

@Cyp hey, thanks for the link! This guy is definitely good :0 I've been looking at Tom Richmond's blog and picked up his book, planning on digging into that for a few days before sending in the app. I'll do some studies of this dude too!

@foxfire I manage my time really poorly outside school! I
m terrible at building structure for myself, without school or a job or something I really will watch cartoons and play video games. don't be like me DX working on fixing that though. I'm just finishing up my second year taking online classes at TAD, think I'm done with art schooling for now but I really wish i could be in an in-person community of artists
And MLAATR's design rocks so @_@ just picked up the art book and loving the art deco and Fleischer influence, such an awesome example of taking inspiration from sources nobody is looking at to make your art feel fresh.

@Lyr: Thanks! Ya starting to work in pen has been great, working in pencil first was really making me worry and not be free. (but now I never post anything with good construction or solidity...so there's a balance to be found)
I've been using felt tip pens that my dad had around his office, the specific brand is Flair by Papermate and you can get a box of 12 for around $20 on amazon, so they're not super expensive..but more than I'd wanna pay for doodling pens. I'd recommend a felt tip or rollerball, something that's closer to a marker than a nib so you can glide the pen over the paper and make a mark instead of needing to use any pressure. I also sometimes use sumi ink and a watercolor sable brush, harder to control but that's part of the fun.
reward system sounds good...giving myself contained break time should help me not goof off

For today's update, a ton of quick sketches! dang XD need to do more longer clean drawings, realizing that this pile of not portoflio worthy doodles is all I have to show for the week was pretty shocking, I need to be using my time to make actual pieces as well as learn. gotta find my balance :/

last couple images are studies from Jack Davis

[meat]

Have I told you how much I love all the different kinds of character faces you can come up with? I'm still slave to trying to make things look "right", and could not at all purposely draw droopy eyes, long noses... etc.

[Metatabi]

Really love all the energy and stylization in your work: great control of silhouettes and hard vs. curved edges. Loving what I see here and eager to see more. One critique I might make though is that your color combinations and hue/saturation variations could use a bit of color theory.

[Samszym]

thanks for the comments guys!

@meat: thanks dude! My thinking on that is that when you learn how to draw, you can draw things right. And everyone in the industry can draw right, and usually learn to draw like what's popular and like everybody else. So even though they have the skills and make effort to make everything look right, their work won't stand out or be remembered because it's the same as everything else being made. Break out! Do stuff no one else is! WOOOOOO

Metatabi, thanks for the compliment! I have no idea what you mean by that critique. I'm just finishing a 16 week course in color theory and I can say for sure it's a pretty huge subject, "using a bit of color theory" doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps you mean I need to be more definite with choosing color schemes, triadic and complementary etc? Or balance saturated and desaturated colors more? Please expound.


Some character development for a comic idea with pointy aristocrats and round peasants. Need to do a lot more research and work to hit a look I want.


and some gestures and dragon ZTRdsDC.jpg[/IMG]

and some work for a commission that's taking way too long to do. Noticing some proportion issues now that it's scanned in, fix fix fix!


and a photo study?!? wtf is that doing in this sketchbook


gotta do some longer constructed drawings and paintings, too many doodles and sketches, I'm getting all loose with everything and have nothing to put in a folio

[Metatabi]

Color theory is indeed a really huge subject, my bad and sorry for the vagueness: I' not too practiced in giving critiques and need to learn to be more specific/thorough S:

In your image of the clown pokemon trainer - if you observe the saturations with the color picker - though you did a good job of picking colors equally distanced from each other in the color wheel, they're all very high in saturation and give the eye little room to rest. Adding more variation in saturations would add more interest to the image and pop out your main color. You can have multiple colors in the image but if they're all scattered throughout the color-wheel without saturation variation the viewer doesn't know what color/mood to concentrate on. You could for instance, keep the oranges saturated and de-saturate the greens and purples to give more unity to the palette. The more saturated color would also add interest to your main subject which should in this case be the trainer.

Here is a really great video tutorial that explains how to calculate saturation depending on how far you are from your main color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kQllLy_X4I

Also, on your image of the pink lady in the yellow background: if you colorpick and check with a colorwheel the 2 colors are approximately 120 degrees apart from each other in the colorwheel (1/3 the distance). The image would have more impact if you made the 2 colors be polar opposites of each other or added red to convert it to an analog color scheme or added blue to convert it to a triad color scheme.

The shadows on her skin for the most part are also closer in hue to the background than they are to the local hue of the skin. The skin should take in some of the bounce light from the environment and therefore the hue, but the hue of the shadows should still be closer to the hue of the skin than to the hue of the environment because the shadows are still part of the pink skin.

[Samszym]

Thanks Metatabi! That all makes a lot of sense, I'll try using Sycra's method a bit. I do contend that fully saturated colors that are opposite from each other can work pretty well and make a really loud and jarring effect that still looks cool. You have to make sure the fully saturated colors don't contrast much in value though.

Some doodles, a commission, a doge. Trying not to lose the gouache skill I built up, and still not managing my time well enough...It's weird knowing I'm all done with my education. Gotta go wherever I aim to by my own power and effort now, because the world will let me just exist and go no further in life if I don't choose to.

ah, sent in the application to the caricature job the other day, hoping that works out.

[EduardoGaray]

i regularly see most of your stuff via other sites, but i will keep commenting here to tell you to keep posting good stuff so i can keep getting inspired myself. :)
I specially like the 5-10 min figures you posted, seems like you managed to add all the structure without losing none of the energy and gesture, really good man!

[Samszym]

thanks ed!

quick update, some studies and sketches and blah and some life sketches from walmart and a couple WIPS, gonna finish up the sketch with the spider lady for illustration portfolio and the principal's office one for visual development folio
PEACE

[Cyprinus]

Lovely stuff as always. Your updates are always so full packed I love scrolling trough all the sketches and studies!! Really curious to see the finished pieces! <3

[Samszym]

Thanks Cyp! Hope I can get em out soon XD

WIP on the spider lesbian illo, did some more sketches and thumbs. Landed on something that I think will work on the sixth thumbnail but there's more work to be done. Wish I'd been more daring with the compositional possibilities sooner, the first 4 were basically just moving the camera around. Composition is such a different beast than character drawing! I'm way out of practice.
What I'm going for is a first read of a seduction going on, but then when you look closer you see the girl is about to be tied up in web and there are some other tied up bodies in the spider's lair that the girl doesn't see, I want to get drama from the character being unaware of the danger.

[Jaik]

So lively. So so lively. Keep pushing to get to finishing those pieces. While its great to start often, finishing some strong pieces will give you milestones to look back on and go 'fuck yeah, look at all that juicy improvement.'
Very important for the motivation.
Nothing else to say really since you are going so well :D

[Samszym]

Thanks Jaik good advice...I've got to make myself on to finishing stuff, and frequently!

Unfortunately, no WIPS on actual pieces today cuz I'm a lazy jerk. Ah, sposting this daily chart I use to keep track of what I'm doing and how much time I'm wasting. t\The danger is I get lazy enough to just not fill it out and goof off.

[clockodile]

Your sketches have great shapes and gestures, everything is so lively. The design feel your costumes have is really nice too. The only real crit I have echoes Jaik about finishing more stuff really.

Good luck with the time management! Recording what you get up to is a good idea. I don't know how much it would suit you or help, but one productivity thing I do is make a list of studies I'm working on at the beginning of the week (with a box or marker on the high priority things) as a prompt to make sure I always have stuff to do, since many studies are kind of ongoing rather than things that just get crossed off. Everyone seems to have their own techniques though, so I hope you figure out a system.

[Samszym]

thanks clock! I had somethign like that setup when I did habitrpg, mayebe I should get back into that :/

WIP on the spiderthing, just a rough. Trying to solidify the composition and everything before getting into the finish.

[Cyprinus]

Yay, go go go! I already like the wip a lot, digging the expressions.
I also love that sketch from post 292 right above the Otto Schmidt study, it kind of has such an intense feel about it and I like how you did the clothing/movement. It's good you are drawing and painting spiders it reminds me of that one cover wip which is already rotting away on my drive...

and aww yeah, the time management thing...it's terrible. I really feel you, I find myself often enough pondering about what I actually did at the end of the day >:

[Samszym]

Thanks Cyp!

sketch update, not much serious work to show. I decided to scan in the pencil, ink, and final of a fanart drawing I did, not sure which version works the best, I like all 3 of them as finals. Happier with the inks before I colored them I guess, but I feel like a finished image needs color. Not really how finished to take my work, that's the big problem I need to confront..

[Craig Paton]

Love the energy and motion in your sketches, brilliant.

This is the first time I've seen your sketchbook, not sure how I've missed it before. Great stuff here.

[Cricketts]

Really like all the pencil work. Very nice.

[Jaik]

Ahhh that big spider thing piece is looking great! Cant wait to see that finished.

You really have the dynamics of the human body down and your story telling is really coming along too since the beginning of the sketchbook. Its nice to see the improvement in areas that most artists find difficult to nail.

Keep up the good work :)

[Doolio]

aww yiss, those saucy stylized croquis!11