since im struggling so much with the chloe pic, i decided to try it on digital to see if i can even do it on digital; so i took one of my previous drawings and started mushing it around in digital, running into a lot of similar issues to when i was working traditional. This feels like one of the hardest things ive ever done as an artist; i guess because my eye is so developed that im hyper sensitive to proportions being off. I think in the end this will be really beneficial, even if i do a bang up job as the final product.
Just coming back to do life drawing, im so much more observant and get a lot more out of the subject its nice. And doing 3d art, i appreciate how theres so much more room for experimentation and error, but in portaiture, every centimeter counts for a likeness, its insane. I envy people who do (want to and do) things like creature design and environments, i wished portraiture and figurative work could be done at a high level with more creative freedom, and they can in many ways, herda derp derp
Don't get stuck with it to long. Sometimes you need to scrape evething and build it from the foundation up, meassuring the proportions and blocking out the mass. Sargent used to do that with his comission all the time. Just so you dont get lost in the details and stuff.
Also it's very low contrast, any intention in that?
Moscito: thanks, i decided to abandon that piece as it was stressing me out too much and i feel like its out of my league at the moment.
For the past week ive been really sick; spent most of the days sleeping it off, really miserable. now im finally getting back to work a few days later, and ive decided to shelve the chloe piece and come back to it when im more prepared for it. I found this nice reference of lydia deets and im getting a much better likeness much quicker. So ill set my goal to do a painting of this.
Also signed up for a month of watts painting, after watching just a few videos i had a hundred questions answered. I wasnt really able to process a lot of that stuff before, since i wasnt looking out for certain things. Now i have a much better idea of where to go when painting, like how thick to lay things on and a shitload of other stuff. Bought also a bunch of 3d assets/kitbash to help with mech design for when i get around to that, so im looking forward to it.
Still can barely muster enough energy to draw as much as i want but im getting there; will probably keep tweaking this piece tomorrow, mainly the eye which is bugging me, but not much else at the moment. sooo yea
When it comes to painting and things like, how thickly you paint, it's really down to how you want to paint. It would probably be best if you tried to familiarise yourself with many different ways of doing things. The only real answer to something like "how thickly should I paint" should always start with "Well it depends". With the watts people you'll get their way of doing things and that's usually a very modern, very american way of doing things and if that's exactly how you want to paint, that's great but there's a lot of cool stuff to painting out there and it's a shame to not explore it.
With the drawing, I'm thinking that it's maybe not the best approach to point to examples and say "this needs to be this way, not like that" because we're sort of in a cycle where the core issue isn't addressed and maybe it's stressing you out like that previous drawing?. Like if we fix the overall shape of the face, we didn't fix the thing that caused you to draw it incorrectly or the thing that kept you from seeing it, you know? So we have to figure out, what is causing these problems and I have a guess for at least one of the causes..
My guess is that your face is too close to the drawing. Just guessing here, but I suspect you're like a meter away from the drawing at most and if so, yeah your mistakes are going to have more to do with big stuff rather than small details. Human beings are just not very good at judging the overall shape of things when they take up a large portion of our field of view. So you're putting yourself at a disadvantage by being so close to your drawing, unable to confidently rely on your visual judgement and just having to hope it's correct. So step back, at the very least you want to be able to cover the entire drawing with your outstretched hand, and even further back is better. This is where your eyes and brain are better suited to judge the overall shape of things. It can help to place the drawing and subject next to each other so it's easier to make comparisons.
There's an attitude I've found of some people thinking they're too good to step back from their work. Like, that it's some kind of cheating or you're not a hardcore serious artist if you do it. I don't know where it comes from but it often happens that people have weird prejudices against simple things that would drastically improve them as artists. Solomon mentions this in his book how he encounters students who think they're too good to look at the negative shape of something. Personally I see it as a kind of chad move, only caring about big stuff, not being the looser who needs to detail their drawing/painting in order to make it look good (at least that's how I like to imagine things). Don't worry, it's not a crutch, it's a practice that will improve you in a fundamental way, teaching you what qualities to pay attention to and which not to. You don't have to make learning any harder than it already is.
Also, you mentioned Cornelia earlier. She was one of my drawing instructors when I first started. I don't remember exactly how she painted, we had one or two of her's on the walls, but I do remember her drawings and they were always very soft and smooth. At times we had fairly different views on technical stuff and it made discussions both interesting and confusing.
mr berndt: Alrighty... so I have stepped back from my drawings but it was usually later in the process to check the values, and ya you are right in most of those i was working about a meter from the drawing. For this redo i just set it up with a printout of the reference and tried to stand back quite far, until, as you said, could cover the drawing with my hand. I found myself doing a very similar process id learned from Amaya Gurpide at a workshop i was a model in. She would hold the pencil and do uniformly horizontal lines, step a few feet back, observe, then do a few more lines. I found myself doing an envelope of the contours as she did, using large blocks for placement and trying to capture the overall read of the image as opposed to the individual features. Due to the overall masses being more accurate, the features fit into them easier, and looked more accurate because of it.
This really like simplified things, and the image looked stronger from earlier on because it seemed to be following the logic of the image itself. The likeness ended up much better, plus fitting more on the page albeit not the entire photo. I spent less time trying to hold my pencil a certain way and more time trying to make the horizontal lines make certain shapes and let them look the way they did. Everything was in service of the impression, and i was surprised how little detail was needed for things to read.
So yea, thats a great way to do things, cant say it was difficult or frustrating at all. Still dont think i could do the chloe pic, im just sick of trying it, and yes staying up too close to an image ends up this endless cycle of something is wrong, then something else is wrong. I guess the extreme of that would be working on one feature at a time then wondering why it doesnt all fit together... I mean if someone was willing it could eventually work but its just unnecessarily difficult.
As far as jeff, i really love his painting and sketching style; he teaches alot of different oil techniques like umber pickouts, alla prima, soft scumbling, drybrush, etc. I grew a lot as an artist upon finding him and the reilly lineage is something i find very beautiful and useful, but it, like anything, requires repetition and attention, as its more geared towards figure invention and design, which is something im very interested in doing. However for pure observation, the standing far back thing is genius, yea fuck.
Artloada: Yes they are similar in many ways; for instance, you have to pick the right values, dilute or sharpen edges, it helps to step back or zoom back from the piece. However, when you mess up in traditional, it costs you money, not the case in digital. You have to plan remarkably well for traditional, but the bonus is that things come out a lot more interesting, since you can mix and dip into colors you wouldnt anticipate, and find cool effects with just the gravely tools youre using. that and... you can sell it! but for getting in the entertainment industry, digital is a necessity, AND 3d
Past while ive been doing lots of oil painting and having a blast; got some new brushes and they are holding up much better. Still struggling with keeping the proportions locked down from the drawing, which is expected but im still getting it right here and there; i think the biggest thing im struggling with right now is,
1 drawing a nice head on a figure drawing (or at least one that doesnt look really stripped back and generic)
2. fitting the whole drawing on the page (i've been making progress on this though)
3. maintaining the drawing to the end without things getting stiff or too wide
4. stubby legs
5. maintaining good red to yellow color balance with a zorn pallette. (shading with white or black)
The girl with her hands over her eyes is an oil painting for a show i did; i had this idea to put some real earrings through the canvas and it ended up really cool. I had a curator and a few artists throw me some unbelievable numbers of how much the painting was worth, and that really made my day, or my week rather. i have a gallery show on the 23rd, even if i dont sell anything, im very grateful to have people into what im doing.
In other news, for when i have to go back to town to do caricatures, i got a really cool banana costume with some feather boas and some cool rave glasses so it'll hard for anyone to resist me lol
having a great time studying the figure, fixin stuff, tweaking this 3d thing for about 3 hours today. Was surpisingly productive, i wished everyday could be like this
I think when you're creating paintings that seem to focus on a lot of mood and feeling, it opens up a lot of interesting opportunities when it comes to technique that maybe aren't so optimal in more naturalist paintings. You see this in a lot of symbolist paintings (Stuck, Böcklin, Maxence). The painting is built up in interesting ways where the paint itself and how it's layered can be very expressive to heighten the desired effect. It can be worth thinking of techniques that could help heighten the experience of the painting.
I think the main issue with the painting is the drawing and when there's so little stuff going on, nailing the drawing becomes especially important. If you're having trouble drawing while painting, consider getting a maulstick to help steady your hand. If you want to paint with a more free hand, you can try to use a medium that seizes up the paint so it doesn't slip away if you brush over it later . A mixture of equal parts oil, turpentine and damar can be used to make a medium that gets tacky after a while, so what you've painted sort of "sticks" in place and you can more easily work over it without stuff becoming muddy. Just use as little as you can manage since damar is a resin and like all resins, can cause problems if used too liberally. Another method that works very well is to draw with charcoal on the canvas, then line the marks using something like a fluid raw umber, let it dry and then you can paint over it with thin scumbles and the drawing stays put and you can focus on the colors and values.
To prep the painting for selling it, it can be good to make sure it's properly keyed. You can prepare a dust cover on the back. You can write relevant info on the folded canvas like catalogue number, date of completion, medium and/or anything that seems relevant. Since it's so new, you probably want to use retouch varnish on it.
With the other paintings, they're really messy. How often do you clean your brushes when working? Me personally, I always work with a paper towel in my left hand so I can wipe my brushes clean after every mark where I paint into another color. With the palette, you need to make sure you don't pollute your mixtures with the paint on the brush. If you don't keep your materials clean, things will get a little more muddy after every time something is polluted, and while it isn't as noticeable as it's happening, it's a boiling frog kind of thing and after a while, the colors you're painting with are mud. This is one of the most important things to pay attention to with limited palettes. By being clean, you can use earth pigments and still make a very vibrant painting.
Hope you sell something at the show so you can buy some real brushes and a clean palette!
mr. berndt: many thanks, see now im aware of dirty colors, which is something i cant unsee. Its true, i got carried away not cleaning my utensils on those figure paintings. The green painting has issues which im extremely aware of, but most the folks ive shown it to dont seem to notice, and they more experience the painting for its graphical elements than any technical flaws it has, which is great! for years ive been a huge fun of Malcolm T Liepke and his super thick brush stroke style, so i may do some studies of that soon enough.
But yea, thanks a million for the tips, I know this photos a bit blurry but i really tried to clean my brush more and mix with the palette knife and it came out a lot cleaner. also this charcoal thing, doing these figure studies daily is a lot of work but very beneficial. Im also low key doing some caricature studies of grigor, whose a beast, check his stuff out, hes a killer fine artist as well
artloader: thanks! didnt sell anything, but none of my peers did either since they didnt put any price tags on our paintings, no one knew it was for sale!
Been doing a lot of studies and things of portraits on a very small scale paper, another oil practice in the works and some 3d leg studies after a ton of 2d leg studies. Im getting a lot faster and more comfortable in 3d, its fun; just do a little everyday and stay focused and you'll get those chops up efficiently. Might do some feet and torso on this tomorrow, and maybe try to make a machine or something
Cool to see you doing some 3d stuff and having fun with it, Fed. Just be careful to watch your proportions as you go - a lot of it is either looking too long or too short.
Use front orthographic view while laying in basic body shapes when sculpting to make getting proportions correct easier. Perspective view can mess you up when you start moving around the mesh.
Chubby/coinhero: ahh yes, the eternal struggle of proportions! it will always be what we as artists are trying to solve, specially me :/
Holy moly, 3d is frustrating... But i am figuring it out. So im seeing the strengths and weaknesses of blender and 3dcoat. 3dcoat is terrible for sculpting humans and beings that arent completely blobby messes; but great for hard surface. Reason being for 3dcoat is that it has great brushes that slice the mesh really crisp and look mechanical quickly; also has really cool 3 way symmetry tools that can greatly enchance the process of figuring out mechanicall looking gizmos.
Blender, isnt great for mechs, but is great for humans and simple creatures; its sculpting is similar to zbrush in that you can smooth and sculpt intuitively and quickly. Sometimes it even feels like the software is helping me get things in the right place. In 3dcoat, the brushes are really gentle and fuzzy, its extremly hard to get defined features on humans, like lips or eye creases. In Blender, they pop up right away.
I'll leave some tips for a me from the past if i ever time travel.
1. In blender, it helps to go to layout on the top little plus button, then add with shift A a new UV sphere to morph into a body part. If you dont do this, and say, sculpt a detailed head, then try to mush the bottom down the grab tool, it gets really destructive and blender just refuses to open the file.
2. shift D duplicates things since you cant quite use the symmetry as simple as in 3dcoat.
3. Use the dynomesh in blender or else you wont be able to add details to your sculpt and it gets all triangley and impossible to work with.
4. I havent figured out how to click on a different object in the sculpt room, but if i need to change the part i just go to layout, select the part, then back to sculpt room.
5. Dont try to become an artist, its too goddam hard and time consuming, i could a fucking doctor by now.
to blend 2 layers in the sculpt room so you can smooth them together, you gotta use the boolean modifier, set to unify. So since i did that, sometimes it works in a non destructive way, but now theres this weird fimly stuff all over the sculpt and when i wire frame i see it but idk how to get rid of it, so i'll either start a new sculpt or try to figure out how to get rid of it.
melting my brain, but it becomes more and more intuitive the more i plug away and just fight through it; Also gives a great opportunity to dig out those proko 3d models and see where im fucking up on like connection points in the anatomy, which is super interesting.. always coming back and being humbled by anatomy over and over
