René Aigner's Sketchbook

[Suira]

Damn! Awesome sketchbook you got going on here! I love the still lifes and your imaginative work is really refreshing. Awesome tecnique, comps and palettes! Really diggin this :D

[Eraiasu]

Wow this is good. Absolutely stunning work Rene!

I really love your brushwork. It feels very organic and yummy.

Makes me excited like a little school girl! :D

[ReneAigner]

thanks so much!


I hardly get any spare time these days. But when I do... I practice drawing nature with J.D. Harding's "Drawing Trees and Nature". It is an exceptional book- the language is antiquated (it is a victorian-era text book after all), but the content is well worth the effort- both the lessons and the excellent plates. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to draw Nature in pencil. What I'm doing here is copying Harding's drawings of trees and trunks. This is the process recommended by Harding: first copy the drawings to understand the means with which one can endeavour to draw foliage and such, and then, once those methods have been learned, turn to nature.

[ReneAigner]

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[Janos]

great tutorial René ! thanks for taking your time to do that :)))

[ReneAigner]

Thanks Janos! Hope you find it useful.

[ReneAigner]

If you're interested about reading a bit about "The Frostrune", a project I'm currently involved with, check out these two interviews; one with jake Powning (who is a blacksmith and creates concepts for the game) and myself:

[ReneAigner]

After discovering "On Drawing Trees and Nature", I searched for other instructional books by Harding and found "Lessons on Drawing". It starts with very basic stuff (measuring and copying angles), but I went through it for the sake of being thorough and completely understanding the method. Harding relies a lot on striking verticals and horizontals/ working with plumb lines. Quite different from a purely constructional approach. Here are my first 4 sketchbook pages working with the book:

[ReneAigner]

More Harding:

[ReneAigner]

ref: https://www.google.com/maps/views/view/1...98&fovy=69

[Suira]

Man I just keep getting more impressed every day with your stuff. I see it on facebook often and I always get my mind blown. That tutorial was excellent, and I had henver heard about the Hardin books before, I'm generally really skeptical about master copies ( lazy would be a more appropriate word), but I think I'm gonna give this a try, thanks for the inspiration! ;)

[ReneAigner]

Thanks Suira! I'm also not that big on master copies. I've done a few of Sargent that I really believe helped me with brush economy. A few of other masters as well- I think the important bit is not just to copy mechanically but to pick something specific about the image that you want to learn about- composition, brushwork, colours, whatever. They can be truly beneficial that way.

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Every other month I put away my sketchbook, close PS and dig up the tons of video tutorials on Z-Brush that I have on my harddrive. And every time I'm hopeful that this time, I'll stick with it and resist the temptation to do a life painting or something else in 2D. Let's see if I can manage to stick with it this time around. Here's the result of today's Z-Brush studies: Meet Jonathan. He's an alien (I think). But he's a nice bloke.

[StardustLarva]

I'm liking the segmented jaws. That creature design reminds me a lot of angler fish.

[ReneAigner]

thanks stardustlarva!

[Suira]

Oufffff! That enviro is BEAST René! Loving the textures on the rocks and the subtle green light coming from the magic beam! Also the atmospheric effects are top notch, great job , really man. The zbrush creature is also pretty cool, not my kind of stuff, but really nice concept and well rendered, did you use keyshot? or just painted on top of the sculpt? Great job in any case.

By the way , I took your advice and started with master studies, really helpfull if you don't freak out with getting them looking like the original, thanks for the tip!

[ReneAigner]

Thanks Suira! Yep, i use keyshot (different passes that I composit together in PS + additional painting by hand).

Godd luck with your master studies, let me know how it goes =)

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Another day spent learning Z-Brush. Decided to try a bit of hard surface stuff. Bad idea. Turns out that I don't have the necessary command over Z-Brush yet to make it do what I want it to do- learned lots about h-polish and trim brushes anyway though. Will come back to hard surface modelling after I've learned how to control Z-Brush better. So, here's today's sculpt.

[Farvus]

Damn. Every single piece is solid here. You obviously learned foundations a lot :).

I wish I was so consistent with level of finish.

[ReneAigner]

Thanks Farvus!

[buxu]

very neat man, your stuff keeps evolving in a way or another, loving all your recent experimentations,

the last one is brilliant, colors are lovely, but theres one thing bothering me, is the background and foreground, seems like the background is more detailed then the middleground, or as much as detailed as the other parts, maybe it would look more artistc if you would loose some edges there, i guess thats a matter of personal taste.

anyways great stuff as always.

[Suira]

Ouf René..OUF!!! That last enviro is looking tight!! I just don't know how you do it man, the textures, the colors, the subtle sunbeams reflection on the stones ahhhhhhhhhhh! Brain meltdown incoming!

So great, sooo great! I don't have any crit coming to mind seing this piece. I would say that the character needs a bit more of value variation or texture, but I think that was deliberate cause you want the environment to be the focus, not the guy, so great job sir, you've done it, once again! :)