Beard Clippings

[rafa zanchetin]

Hey man you've got some really nice landscapes here! Really dig it.

On the portraits still need a bit of value adjusting, but you are already working hard on it, so keep it up!

[ZombieChinchilla]

Hey man, nice stuff!! I looove the 1000 portrait idea, I think you've already improved from your first one. I think you would benefit from doing some hair studies, too, to make those portraits look super great. Keep it up!

[Patrick Gaumond]

@rafa, any in particular that stand out? To me they seem fine but I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. And thanks, ive got another landscape coming up soon. Pretty excited about it

@Zombiechinchilla Yea its great fun! Learning so much by doing it. Definitely recommend it, but I feel like when i tried doing 3 a day I just got burned out on faces really fast so I had to tone it down a notch. Definitely agree about the hair. Its probably the thing I'm worst at right now among everything i do. I tend to just leave it simple in the studies to keep them short ish but I think I'll do a couple hair studies soon! Gotta find some good ref for it first

Edit: Also, 3 pages!! Wooo!

[rafa zanchetin]

Mostly in general, you have to be carefull with the full whites and blacks, they do stand out the most so you want to "save them for special places".

Tip: paint on gray background so you don't strain your eyes.

[Patrick Gaumond]

Hey thanks a lot man. I didnt even realize I was using full whites on his face lol. Did those relatively quick but I'll have to pay more attention to that. Also that would explain why my eyes hurt that day d: Totally forgot that was a good reason to change the canvas from white >.<

(sorry i didnt answer. I like to have more work to show before replying!)

Some relatively short hand studies. Think Im gonna do some of these for a whileThat foreshortening is kickin my aaaaassss






Continuing my wizard series. Just wanted to slap an idea down somewhere. Probably going to approach this in a more organised and thought out way if i end up refining it



Update on the python study




Alsooo some exciting stuff for me! Its always eluded me how to do an analogous harmony with a dominant hue. So i decided to just jump in and try it, focusing on styling and restricting colours. I also really like these loose sketches Ive been seeing around the place, so I tried to take some pointers from those artists to push my style and mark making a bit. Realllyyyyy happy with the results, especially on the second one. Absolutely going to do more of these, in different pallettes,

[Craig Paton]

Hey beard-brother.

Sketchbook is coming along nice here, some very definite and clear improvement and progress. :)

Hope you're having better luck with the Gumroad videos.

[Jaik]

Really nice colours in those last paintings. Really nailed the subtle hue shifts.
Keep up the good work, try thinking some more about the separation of light and dark. Some of those reflected lights are getting a little too light.

[Adam Lina]

That one of the chick on the bed looks really good.

[Heliux]

^word.
crazy progression! nice work! you've got a great sense for color! X)
and...you have the best name for a sketchbook ever(.)

[Patrick Gaumond]

@Craig paton: Thanks man, i appreciate it. I bought three tuts so far and the only i actually thought had decent information in it was Dave's, even though I already knew his process. Never get tired of that dave wisdom!

@Jaik: Thanks, I'll pay more attention in the future! Is there a painting in particular you're referring to? Or all of them ? Lol :D

@Heliux: Lool thanks! I've said it before but colour is my favourite part of this whole learning process. I devote a lot of time to studying it whenever I can! And damn... that beard box LOL. I gotta level up my beard its poop compared to these guys


Some studies

From imagination. Trying to get better at profile views which are the hardest for me personally


Some 15 ish minute hand studies


I realized this week that I have literally done about 3 or 4 colour still lifes in my whole life (theyve mostly been pencil/charcoal etc). So I think I'm going to get back on that and do around 3/week as warmups in the morning. Limited myself to around an hour each. The cherub took longer cause photoshop decided to crash :<






Took a ship from those thumbnails and did some orthographic views of it. Never done these before so it was a fun challenge!


I then made a box in sketchup with the same proportions as i establish in my orthographic views and tried to project it into a scene. Really new to this so if anyone has any feedback on the projection in particular id appreciate it. Its somewhat loose, as in i didnt necessarily go through the rigourous steps to mirror it all by i think thats negligible here.


More wizards!


aaand ENB got back to making videos . Got me excited for souls games again so I made some Demons souls fan art for funn. Not quite done with it but thought id share anyways
The Penetratorrr! Silliest boss name ever

[Heliux]

cool! I'm working on color myself atm what are you doing for studying in particular? -like any particular exercises you'd recommend? O_o

[Patrick Gaumond]

Wall of text incoming. I hope this proves that i love colour lol :D

Tl;dr: Study photos, apply immediately. Observe life. Read books, watch videos, learn about colour theory. Ask yourself questions about colour while you work, so you can repeat them in your own pieces. Chromatic grays are cray cray. Treat yourself to the eye dropper from time to time. DONT TRUST THE PHOTOSHOPS COLOUR PICKER! (at least read that part)

I don't really have anything original to recommend as far as studies go. The usual photo/life/master study is pretty sufficient in terms of exercises. Its also useful to analyze colour when you're not painting. When you're just out and about see if you can identify colours, their temperatures, the colour of the light source, how that affects the local colour of an object etc.

One thing though: in my opinion (im going to emphasize that its strictly my opinion) colour studies need to be applied to a personal work almost immediately, more so than any other study I should say, because it is easily the most complex of all the things you can study, since it basically encompasses everything you can learn in some sense. Its also vastly more complex than say learning grayscale, not only because it incorporates grayscale, but also instead of working with just ten values , you're now working with millions of combinations of colours. All of which change based on the combination of colours beside it or surrounding it.

I would highly recommend investing in some colour theory books or videos. Gurney's colour and light is a solid start, but its not the end of your knowledge journey. Also recommend this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErNasMLHr7I

Watch the whole thing as soon as you can cause I think youtube might delete these eventually. Theres also this

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/p...9Q7afldV6s

Which you can easily find elsewhere if you cant afford it.

I also like to ask myself some questions while working on a study.
What hue does it LOOK like? Whats the temperature of this hue? Value? Saturated or desaturated? Is it acting as a shadow, a lit area, a fill light area, Cast shadow? Is it really a reflection of something? How is the colour of the light source affecting the apparent hue of the surface? (think orange light source on blue fabric.. its tricky). If I can repeat that same thought process in my own work I can have a better chance of selecting the right hues when I work without having to look at reference.

While I'm studying, if I make a decision, after asking myself those questions, to put a colour down and notice its wrong, I'll either keep going and assume its just missing adjacent colours to make it feel right OR i'll ask myself this question, which opens up a whole new realm of colour: Is it really just a chromatic grey masquerading as a different colour? For instance if most of your image is done in yellow, orange and red, a highlight that appears blue could actually just be a very desaturated red, orange or yellow. Its good to experiment with these greys to see what kind of wacky shit they do. Its really surprising honestly.

I usually allow myself AT MOST 2 colour picker eyedrops in a study. And only if I'm really stuck. I like to compare what I picked intuitively with what is actually there, and try to figure out what i got wrong. Some would argue that will slow down your sense of colour, but I argue precisely the opposite. I think it speeds up your development because you gain insight into how complex colour really is, and you consequently expand your knowledge of colour into a realm that you might have taken months to really discover just by eyeballing it.

And lastly a couple things about the colour picker in photoshop that are super helpful to keep in mind. Ive added a picture to make a point



1. The value bar on the left side is misleading. You probably already know this, but the top right corner =/= white or anything even remotely close to it. Most of the time its a value 3-4 or less, nowhere near white. The only exceptions as you can see are yellow and its adjacent greens (dipping into cyan). But even then they are more like value 2-3, not white.

2. If you want to check your values while you're working DO NOT, i repeat, DO NOT check them by desaturating your image. The first row is a series of colour picker screenshots in grayscale by going to view>proof colours. First go to view>proof setup>custom and set it to working gray dot gain 20%. The second row is the exact same three colour picker screenshots seen desaturated. As you can see, it totally kills the actual value of that specific hue at different saturation levels.

Its also useful to keep in mind that warm colours when desaturated become cooler, and cool colours when desaturated become warmer. Good to keep in mind when


Hope that helps. Theres a lot more I could say about colour but I'll leave you with that for now. If you want me to continue or have questions, by all means go ahead. I looooove colour!

[Heliux]

-holy crap that was a lot more helpful than I was anticipating! Ironically I was waiting to finish the Richard Keys dvd before reading this post! lol
I read Gurney's book a while back, but its one thing to read it cover to cover and another to apply it with exercises which is what I think I'll be doing for the next series of studies. :P
Dunno if you came across this post in your studies, but I've found it pretty helpful. There's some great nuggets in there:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthr...-and-Toast-!

Hmm. something particularly that comes to mind is when in Photoshop when you blend two colors they drop in value and saturation, so if the way a color normally blends in nature by a additive color wheel is up when you're mixing 2 colors in light, how do you get them to properly blend up in value/saturation? is photoshop always working against you? I feel like everything I paint/blend is always getting greyed down. ;\

[Patrick Gaumond]

Hey glad it helps. I love sharing knowledge I come across but rarely find the opportunity to do so without being like "hey heres some shit I learned." I have an ultimate goal to make free videos for people on art subjects, of different topics, but I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough yet. Anyways...

Good point about the gurney stuff. I must admit I'm guilty of just reading it lol. Then again I bought when i was still in my artistic infancy so now that you mention it I think I'll give it a reread!

That resource looks great by the way. I read the first few lines to see what it was and it already seems interesting. Probably gonna read through that this week.

As for photoshop, its essentially trying to be like real paint, but not quite doing it right. Dont remember if it was mentioned in the richard keyes thing, but real paint is subtractive and tends to grey out or neutralize, but usually thats only with complementary pairs or when you add black/white. When you do that with real paint, theres a nice progression and a great deal of control when you actually mix them. You can easily just add a tiny drop of green to red and suddenly come out with this nice dark crimson colour. Photoshop isnt as precise as real paint, and so to compensate you reallyyyyy need to be careful if you decide to blend colours. It does an ok job. Its much harder to control than real paint, and so I personally just memorize certain colours that I know work together in the colour picker. If your memory isnt so great you can make swatches of them and adjust them as you work to match your current picture.

Since we're talking about real paint, theres a pretty nice swatch that comes with CS6 i believe that replicates real paint colours. Give it a whirl if you've never worked with physical paint. its a great learning experience to learn how to work with limited colours. Or just try real paint lol. I know the masters and most professional painters tend to plan out really precisely their palettes before hand, mixing all their colours onto an actual palette and working from there. So a swatch set in photoshop would essentially do the same thing

As far as I know, the only way to work additively is to go to Window>color and in the little drop down switch from whatever the default is to RGB. It wont change how colours actually blend on canvas but it will allow you to make colours the way they form in nature. I have read some tutorials on it and cant personally wrap my head around it, but I know Alex Negrea uses it to great effect. You can also switch from the "H" option in the colour picker to 'R' 'G' or 'B'. I have 0 clue how those work though so I guess you'll have to fiddle.

All that to say, I dont think there are any PAINTING programs that work additively, as in on canvas. My brother is a colourist for films and I know their programs work additively, but theres no painting involved whatsoever in that. In other words, yes photoshop is working against you in that respect, but it has good intentions trying to be like real paint!

[clockodile]

Oh wow, you have been busy in here!

Regarding the hands, good call with the contour lines, they're a good way to keep track of the cross sectional shape that is so variable in the hand and fingers, and you seem to be learning the 3D forms with these studies. Keep going with them, and pay close attention to how things overlap.

On the colour studies, I can really see you are paying attention to the reflected light and how it affects colour! You might want to consider giving the shadows a bit of a stronger push if you can, especially the cast shadows, to help put the realistic feel. Overall great job with these though, it looks like it will help a lot.

Nice to see the progress from the thumbs too! They seem to work as consistent 3D forms. Mech is not my speciality, (so ignore at will), but one thing that stands out to me is how the side thrusters don't appear to have a clear construction of how they connect to the body - if it is meant to be ultra high tech then this isn't much of a big deal since you can basically do what you want, but perhaps they could interlock into the curved hull of the body more. I like how the side engine-things resemble lobster claws in the projection actually, it is a pretty neat way to extrapolate the thumb. You've done a good job of getting those abstract shapes working as a believable form overall too. If you want to tidy up the projection further, a very nitpicky crit is to perhaps move the vehicle so it isn't forming so much of a tangent with the platform too. Good to see you are enjoying experimenting with this stuff!

Keep up the great work!

[Patrick Gaumond]

Thanks for the crits man. Yeah its gonna be a long battle with hands. In my sketches (not studies) I've started grouping together fingers in 2s and 3s for some poses and its helped a lot, for now. That overlapping is just killing mee. As for the contours, I really only do them cause I'm not a particularly good draftsman. I've seen people like Alex Negrea and actually a whole lot of other artists, professional and amateur alike, do really great studies just with outlines and basic overlaps and I cant for the life of me good results with that so I tend to gravitate towards contour.

I'll keep in mind the shadows for later, I've had a history of exaggerating them too much so lately ive been lightening them up. I personally like the way they look but I think I'll keep tweaking them since multiple people have pointed them out. Also all 3 of those still lives were done on overcast days. Natural light was quite dim and the ceiling lamp was too so maybe thats why they're softer? I dont know, I'll use at least one stronger light source in the future. Loving them still lives

As for the ship, its a good crit. Connections are my biggest weakness at the moment. I think I should do some vehicle studies to improve that design sense. And damn, I'm usually pretty strict about catching tangencies, but I didnt even notice that one lol. I'll definitely clean that up! Tangents are just super awkward

[Patrick Gaumond]

Hey Daggers, long time no post, and not for lack of wanting to paint..
Between having a bout of sickness (fever, nausea, fatigue etc) for about a day and a half, arm pains and study sickness, I haven't been particularly productive in terms of mileage. Since i couldn't work for extended periods of time, i took the opportunity to push a piece a bit further than I usually do, which usually takes longer and requires more shorter sessions for me to finish so as not to burn out on it. I'm slow painter when I'm not crippled so this (the last painting) took especially long to finish. I'm quite happy with the result!

I did squeeze in some studies when I needed a break from it though. Some still lives, more hands, a photo study, a piece for the Brainstorm challenge where I experimented with colouring techniques and its colour study, an update on the "shrimp/lobster" ship in a scene and of course the Penetrator Fan Art.

I also took some time to do other activities like some reading, watch some movies (including my favourite disney short Mickey and the Beanstalk, Guardians of the Galaxy which was fantastic and tried to watch Once upon a time in the west but the Blu Ray I ordered was defective so I had to return it.) Also managed to find a really inconsistent workaround to my PS3 not reading game discs, so I revisited dark souls and you can expect some fanart of that soon too!

Lastly I've started doing some yoga to help with bodily pains. Its helped me an awful lot more than doing more conventional exercises to alleviate back soreness, help with the arm pains and just gain energy to keep workin and such. In the future I'm going to have to incorporate more breaks and stretches while I work. Really NOT fun not being able to work as much as I want, although I appreciate being able to do other things

Still Lives



Hand Studies


Brainstorm


Squid Study


Update on the spaceship scene


Penetrator

[Patrick Gaumond]

Some studies and sketches. I've been doing a lot of gestures and small thumbnails of ships in my real SB. They literally take about 10 times as long to upload so I generally don't bother, since they aren't that interesting. But they're available if anyone actually wants to see em, just gimme a shout

Colour/anatomy


Old Man. This one and the next one were both done from grayscale photos and then practiced colouring workflow afterwards





Sketches

[Amaral]

Really cool studies here, especially those damn colors! Your "Wall of text" was very helpful btw since I'm not very confident/comfortable with color yet. Looking forward to see more stuff!

[Patrick Gaumond]

@ Amaral : Thanks and glad it helped you! It's just a matter of practice and patience, with a side of stepping out of your comfort zone and a dash of theory ;)

Been a few weeks since I updated. Partly because I went to New Hampshire for a few days and also because I just needed a break from the interwebs as much as I could. I no longer go to any sort of school so I now have the whole day to art as much as I can, which usually involves 5-8 hours of actual drawing and the rest of the day is spent taking care of the house, excersing,reading art books, reading intellectual type books so I don't lose my ability to think and studying game design a bit on the side. I've had a much healthier/happier lifestyle balancing all these things rather than going full ham with art for 12 hours a day, which honestly just depresses me very quickly.

But enough talk! Wheres the art you say, well it's right here

Some 15 min landscape studies. Left panel is from photos, right is from imagination/memory. The bottom left is 2 hours, the bottom right ones are from imagination and are 1hr30 and 30 minutes for colour .


A portrait/colour study from photo. The lighting was a bit too soft contrast but I only realized later for some reason. There were a lot of interesting colours though so I ended up focusing on those in the end.


A colour head sketch applying some things from the last study. Trying to be more creative with colours


Still suck at doing heads from imagination though so I did some 20 minutes head studies. The last one is 30 minutes from memory to apply info


Hair/face study


Some more still lives. Still gotta work on that fabric.





My submission for brainstorm challenge 7 "Grand Cheese Valley"


A Sketch I'm currently working on, going to try to take this to a full finish in the coming weeks!


Aaand a character design that I just finished. I worked on this on and off for a few weeks, and lo and behold, another more famous artist than my lowly self just happens to release a tut for a character design with the exact same name only a few days before I finished it. QQ me, but oh well. He could have done more with the idea than he did, in my humble opinion. Not saying mine is better but I like the direction I took the name in for the helmet design. Not sure about all the rest honestly, especially the robotic bits. Might revisit it in the future.


AAnd lastly (almost forgot about this!) Got some great feedback on my penetrator piece from some folks,concerning the rendering of the bottom half and also the blurriness of the knights in the back so I decided to revise it and here's what I came up with. Much happier with the end result!






And as always feedback/comments are always welcome!