René Aigner's Sketchbook

[ReneAigner]

Thanks Eraiasu and Kaffer!
Another animal study:

[ReneAigner]

[ReneAigner]

ref from http://www.freshdesigner.com/figure-drawing-reference/

[matkaminski]

Looking at your method is really interesting.

Is there a book that you've learned this method from?

Also... does this method hurt or help when it comes to doing your own imaginative work? I would imagine it would only really apply well to photostudies, but maybe I'm wrong.

If you didn't know already: http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice-t...l-drawing/ <--- tool for animal drawing as well :)

Anyway, nice work!

[ReneAigner]

Hi mat!
What I've done with the last study is a much more observational approach than my usual (contructional) approach. It relies on a plumb line and then contour drawing to copy the visual field, focusing mainly on 2D shapes and measurements (vs 3D form). I guess it could be descirbed as a more european, classical way of doing a figure draing, I think the Angel academy in Florence teaches methods like this, focusing on the visual field. It is indeed only suited if you work from life or from references whereas constructional approaches (which is what I usually use for all kinds of studies) also helps to create objects from imagination.
However, no matter what approach you're using, you're always using both observation and construction, so it's useful to practice both skills.
Thanks for the link!

[ReneAigner]

[ReneAigner]

[Tygerson]

Thanks Eraiasu and Kaffer!
Another animal study:

Your owl looks heavenly! Like an angel transformed into an owl to visit us lowly mortals! The sweeping pose, intense eyes, and beautiful light--you've got it all!

The deer looks like some sort of forest spirit--very lovely as well!

All your work is just beautiful!

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When you do these studies, how do you invent the light? Sorry, I'm not sure what the right question is to ask exactly.

I don't know what the original refs looked like, but no photograph turns out with such lifelike color and luminous glow to it, so surely you must have breathed the life into it yourself. What sorts of things do you study to learn this?

[ReneAigner]

Thanks tygerson!
You're right, especially for colours, photos are pretty useless as refs. Even good photos don't contain the amount of colour-information that our eyes pick up which is why I get secretly annoyed when people use "this looks like a photo!" as praise- like photos are the gold standard for realism or anything. They don't even realize the multitude of colours in front of their eyes. It's not even like you have to paint colours that don't seem to make sense, the colours _are there_ in reality, the camera just doesn't pick them up because camera sensors are crap compared to the human eye. If you work from photo ref, you have to "re-imagine" those colours that got lost in the photographic process- the only way to learn that is painting from life unfortunately. If you can't go out to paint digitally, you can always paint still lifes inside which also helps. Plus, walk around with your eyes open and observe colours, even if you're not painting.

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A little bit of perspective 101 practise, transferring scale and station/measuring points. I usually don't show this kind of stuff since it's dead boring to look at, but several pages put together so everthing gets tiny and a little bit of cursive handwriting makes it almost look like you're doing serious rocket science there :D Thought I'd share something like this for a change.

[ReneAigner]

[ReneAigner]

[ReneAigner]

[ReneAigner]

A wyeth study that turned into something more elaborate.

[ReneAigner]

[morie]

sir, i'm crying over the epicness of your works ;A; SELF-TAUGHT!? jeez, i'm self-taught too, but i doubt i'll ever achieve your level. keep up the good work tho!!

[ReneAigner]

Morie; thanks a lot, but don't loose heart, of course you can reach my modest level of proficiency. Just keep at it, practise learn the right things (fundamentals) and you'll get there!

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[ReneAigner]

Sorry for the recent lack of updates. I've decided to start building my portfolio- it's less than a year until I graduate and most of the stuff I show here isn't portfolio material (studies, perspective exercises). So, time to produce some portfolio-worthy pieces. That entails longer research and generally more time spent on pieces, so I won't be able to keep up my usual pace. Here's some vehicle linework- Feng Zhu says in one of his vids that linework is appreciated in portfolios, so that's one of the thing I'll get to first. If you have any tips/advice, please leave me a comment Cheers!

[Adam Lina]

How are you so awesome?

[ReneAigner]

Thanks a lot!
Jackal, you're giving me too much credit. I'm not "there" yet I fear- as I said, I've only just started building a portfolio and I still have some way to go. Hope I'll manage in less than a year... we'll see.
As to guides, have you senn my video on form building/perspective? That is one of the key elements that I'd say you need- fundamentals.

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Okay, vehicle number two- I guess that's one page of the portfolio (contemporary military vehicles in linework) done.

[Jackal]

Thanks for the tip, I'll check that out. But I didn't actually mean tutorials on how to do actual stuff (perspective, color, values, design etc) but a guide that tells newbies what's important at all. For example, I fell on my ass when I realized perspective wasn't all about drawing boxes and crude architecture but about everything in 3d space. What I'm having in mind is a guide that tells people what's important and actually convinces them to believe that (ending the entire brush/sofware/hardware mania to begin with) so that they know what they need to learn to get better. A school does that for you without you even noticing what's going on. Kind of like a curriculum and basic mindset for beginners.

Other topic: If I may give you a crit, (which I hoppe I may :D) then I'd tell you to give yourself tighter specs. You did that with your marine zombie thing and the spider queen (edit: is that Elise from LOL? If you did not know her, good job, but you could make it more coherent by making her face look more sinister, it's in total contrast with the hands) in your portfolio, but in most cases, they are not really there or not explicit enough. I do like how you can tell that some of your vehicles are amphibious, their forms and parts give away what they do. But in others, for example the humvee surveillance platform, I've no idea what's going on, it looks like a jeep with a submarine bridge glued on top of the roof; others look like simple form explorations. Also, your forms look a lot like Scott Robertson's and the one thing with the blue circle looks like you ripped off the spitpait sparth did a while ago.
I think if you are not getting hired yet, it's not because of your technical skill (which is really great and should be good enough for any concept artist since all the forms read perfectly), it's because of your designs and because you don't really know what you want. If you want to do illustrations, practice telling stories in your images. If you want to do concept art, give yourself tighter speccs (design after a book you read, write stories and design for them etc) and make your designs pop out. (edit: actually, practice both :D) Give them a story, too, imagine a whole world around them. Also, try to find your own form language. I tried out the creature generator in this forum and I will be making a creature soon, but to make it good I need a lot of preparation (study bugs first, understand them) to make the design interesting. I'm planning on taking the shapes from the bugs, not from other artists. As a final remark, I think you shouldn't be so agressive to put your name and site and everything so hugely on your images. It looks like agressive advertising and people don't like that. Just put only your name decently in the corner and people who like your work will find you by taking action themselves and looking you up (which is what I always do when I like an artist. I have never seen professionals hinting at their sites in that way. Just make sure your name + illustration/concept art will show up in google)
I hope this can help you a bit, I'm not where you are in technical skill yet but I think I'm good enough at reading images (a remnant from my academic studies :D) to tell you what you might need.
Cheers!