Pablonotpicasso's Little Sketchbook O' Fun

[CoreyH]

Environment studies are looking great man. Seems like you are approaching them correctly too, and not just copying the image. A good tip I learned from a Noah Bradley tutorial (great artist to look up) is to flip the photo vertically as to abstract it as much as possible. Makes it hard to start copying the image without thinking, I find it really useful, maybe you will too. :)

[PabloNotPicasso]

Sam- Thanks! Yeah, I'm just a little TADpole starting out now, but I hope I'm getting some good habits formed. I'm out at the unofficial San Diego studio, but I've still spoken with a few students in other places like the KC studio. I'm going to try to be at the Winter Workshop so hopefully we'll meet then!

Yann- I hadn't heard of Clive Barker before, but I just looked up his work. Damn, impressively freaky stuff. Loved it, so I'm glad my beginner scribbles remind you of his pieces. Also liking the little story for the chicken dude, it would be cool to do a whole series of characters in that vein of real life gone slightly twisted.

Corey- Thanks, man. Yeah, I've learned that copying solely for the sake of it does little to improve your abilities. I'm familiar with Noah's stuff, but I never knew he flipped the photos he used for studies. I mean, environments are abstractions in a way, so that's a unique way to go about doing a study. I'll have to try that out for the next few works.

[PabloNotPicasso]

Alright, haven't posted on here in far too long, blame a combination of schoolwork and me being a lazy bum. Currently at the studio I'm starting to use oils for learning color theory, "drawing through" the form of an object to construct it in three dimensional space, and practicing some art center techniques for improving line quality and sketching in general (these consist of just lines, ellipses, and shapes and as exciting as those might be, I won't post them here). My main focus on the side right now is getting comfortable with mechanical forms, hence my cruddy robots, but other goals are improving at everything from environments to clothing. Now here's a big ol' sketchdump, and I would greatly appreciate any critiques in regards to glaring issues you guys can see. Cheers!

[PabloNotPicasso]

One more photostudy. Watching James Paick's environment videos as well as feedback from everyone here at the studio has helped immensely. I'm going to begin trying an imagined environment, as painful as that idea might be, I can't just do studies and nothing else. Also need to focus more on characters and costumes. Still, that's why I love this field, you never run out of things to improve upon.

[PabloNotPicasso]

From last night's figure drawing session at the studio. I need to learn to shade faster because the notan took forever to put in on this.

[crackedskull]

Thanks for the lenghty comment.
Doing good so far, try to up the workload to 3-4h a day if you can.
As for advice, try to understand forms in 3d space, for that you should learn perspective and Vilppu.
Theres tons of more useful tips Feng Zhu can give you. Here's a link to his youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/FZDSCHOOL/videos
He has a ton of toturial vids.

[PabloNotPicasso]

Some form exercises from class this week. The idea of constructing every object three-dimensionally is odd at first, but damn does it increase your accuracy. For someone who wants to be a concept artist and anyone in general who wants to make representational art, it is a necessary skill.

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Crackedskull- I hadn't heard of Vilppu before, but a quick search shows the man had some impressive instructional materials. I'll definitely look into him more in-depth. And I love Feng's videos, but even he mentions in one that he tries to avoid elaborating too much on fundamentals because that's what his school is for. Can't blame the man for that, but aside from a few tips here and there, I don't find his videos too instructional, but they are definitely great to watch and see how a master approaches a piece.

[PabloNotPicasso]

Whoa, so I completely neglected this sketchbook the last few months. Instead of a massive work dump of studies and scattered paintings, I'll restart with what I currently finished. It's the first "painting" I've done where there's an actual composition that's meant to show depth, and now that I've finally crossed that bridge, I want to try to crank out far more of these in between studies. As always, c&c is appreciated.

[PabloNotPicasso]

I'll get back to more studies soon, I just wanted to do one more personal piece. Here's a work in progress screenshot of it, for final touches tomorrow I want to add more varied colors to the background (get some nice warm bushes at the bases of the trees), more varied colors to the figure overall so he doesn't look so cut and pasted, see if I can tackle a basic profile view of the face without over-rendering, and fix up the banner so it doesn't look so flat.

[PabloNotPicasso]

Generic viking! Touched up the guy from last night (phrasing) and now I'm waiting on some feedback from school friends before calling him done.

[PabloNotPicasso]

Eh, I need to be more active on here. Can't let school get in the way of posting regularly. Small sample of some sketchbook pages from the last few months as well as studies and pieces.

[JonHop]

You're making some great progress since the first page especially with the last few environments, keep posting and pushing yourself :)

[PabloNotPicasso]

JonHop- Thanks! A lot, if not all of the credit goes to the teachers and fellow students of the studio, it's one hell of a motivational learning environment. Always gotta keep pushing to get out of that comfort zone and try for more.

So here's an update with some work for the Crimson Arena challenge. It's intimidating to say the least to be throwing in my stuff with the other badass artists in the challenge, but I can't ust be a lurker forever on those contests. Plus, it's forcing me to do things I'd never tried before, like character design and making studies and thumbnails before jumping into a painting. Overall, a good artistic workout for sure.

[PabloNotPicasso]

Just wrapped up the Crimson Arena painting, here's the final. Overall, it was a fun challenge. I don't have much experience painting so I feel like with every piece I'm learning a lot.