The most abstract suicide note of all time.

[MarcCasper]

Hi.

I've recently decided to give up a lot of my social life, to get better at art.

Below is simply the stuff I've done in the last week or two, I figure going any further back is a waste of time, besides, the older the shit is the worst it smells, ey?

[MarcCasper]

Todays warmup/life study. Got my replica skull in last week to try to better understand the planes of the head, figured it was time to actually use it~

[MarcCasper]

A couple sketches I did today while gathering resources, refs, etc. for the Crimson Arena challenge

[Tristan Berndt]

Oh hai thar!

Looked through your sketchbook and you've got a nice start here.
I notice that you do a few things that I've done in the past and had trouble getting out of. Hopefully I can give you some advice that helps with that, the type I wish I had back in the day. (Sorry for this being kinda long)

One is that you don't push your values. I used to be super conservative with my values and someone on CA just told me that I should extend my value range. Once I started to do some photo studies with black and white images fully exposed so they had very bright whites and very dark blacks my values got a lot better. I did a lot of studies of 50/60's horror movie stills just because I like the movies and they have very nice lighting. I also suggest not having that grey mid-tone background. It's kinda boring to look at and it sets the standard for your values and it can mess with your head so you don't use a full value range.

I took the liberty of doing a paintover (at the bottom) on one of your studies so I can better explain what I mean and add a visual aid. I have to guess a bit of stuff in the paintover because it's a study from life and I can't se what you studied but hopefully it still helps

So one thing I notice is that you've now switched to a textured brush. That one you're using there is one I see very few people use. Only ones I know that use it are Rapoza, Hollowell and myself and the reason why is that it can give very nice results and it's super versatile and whatnot, downside is that it's not easy to use and have it look nice. I advice not using it for studies but if it works for you go ahead :)

So when it comes to how you painted that study there are a few things I want to bring up. I know it wasn't some super serious 10 hour study but there are a few things in how you went about painting it that are a bit of a downside when doing studies. One is that you need to think in (what I call) chunks. Think of each shape as a solid form that has sharp values. Blending can come later but just getting down the solid form first is important. All the values in that study are very muddy and my work used to be super muddy (still kinda is sometimes) and that happens when you don't paint in the chunks first. I have a set of brushes I call Chunky Brushes that go to 100% opacity fast with pressure sensitivity so I can get these solid values and worry about blending later. Changing your wacom settings so the maximum pressure sensitivity is lower can help with that.

In that study it looks like you added color later and it's something I recommend you don't do. The main reason is that you'll make more mistakes working directly in color and you'll learn more from it. You also get a nicer look if your brush strokes are directly in color.

What I'd like to end on is that you should paint what you see when doing still life studies. This is really important and too many people paint what is there instead of what they see. There are some big differences. An example is that when painting a guy with a beard, there will be thousands of hairs in front of you but when you look at him you don't se each hair. You se a big fuzzy mass that you can paint in big broad brush strokes and then just indicate some texture later. Also looking at him, you don't se everything in focus. His ears are probably not as sharp as his eyes because your eyes aren't focusing on them.
Painting the environment is also important because a lot of light bounces around and is effected by its environment a lot. You also se different colors and values based on the colors around them so it's important for that to be with when doing a study.

I hope this was helpful and not too long. Message me if you have any questions or whatnot, I'm always up for helping fellow artists. I'll be checking back to se some progress and maybe give you a kick in the butt if you should be working harder.
Any way, keep on working hard!

Here's the paintover

[MarcCasper]

maaaaaaaaaynnnne! I definitely appreciate all the advice and tips <3 I was actually just starting to think about over the last day or two about putting things in and out of focus a bit more, really happy it was brought up again to super cement it in! I never thought about just doing color if I want it to have color in the end, since I was so used to the grayscale > color layer thing, but I think that is really good advice to get better at judging tones and colors! I really like the brush , but i bounce between that one, and another more rectangle chalk one. Figured I'd work with both and just feel out what does and doesn't work!

By all means please kick my ass if you see me starting to slack, I am essentially dedicating the next 6 years to just having no social life and studying my but of painting, sketching etc. At anyrate;


quick morning sketch yesterday before I had to go to work. Nothing really to note


Today's study

[Percival]

The first and the last piece you made are amazing!
Keep up the good work.

[MarcCasper]

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Today's study ( still using those boring grey backgrounds! ), trying to push my values more. Don't do many dudes, so I figured I could do some buff back thing, i don't know.

The rest are sketches and scribbles for the crimson arena thing.

[Setah]

Looking really good so far! I look forward to seeing more of your studies ^^

[MarcCasper]

Thanks! Yeah, been trying to do a lot of studies to get my anatomy/rendering a lot more solid for my stuff.

[Tristan Berndt]

Hey good to se you're pushing those values. Don't be afraid of really separating things with clear value changes. Also values look a bit muddy sometimes. Slowing down and making sure everything is blocked in really speeds up the rest of the painting process. But They look like they're getting better so keep at it!

Anyway. Keep studying and keep pushing your values,.
And if you don't... <3

[MarcCasper]

Thanks man, I definitely need someone to kick my ass, the last week I got really hyped for Diablo 3's expansion, so I got both that and the original ( since i never played d3) and just played the crap out of it, wayyy to much. I still did a bit of sketching, some studies of my hands and whatnot, but I am now getting back on track since I completed the game, and all thats left would be to grind for gear haha. Hopefully will get some studies up tomorrow.

latest digital sketch/simple thing I was doing, was watching a lot of D3 streams, wanted to do a Witch Doctor for one of the twitch.tv streamers.




Time to watch more anatomy vids/do studies. GOTTA GET GOOD GGG

[MarcCasper]

Man, take a week off of studies to play diablo sure made me slow haha. Good to know I still make a mockery of painting, digital or otherwise, though.




Next time I post I'll make sure to have a couple things to show instead of bumping this dumb crap one piece at a time ...

[MarcCasper]

Studies, and a semi 'personal piece'

[MarcCasper]

Continued work on muh poop. Will be doing, and uploading a study tonight. First it looks like I am goin out for a bit ( what is social life? ) and then hit the gym afterwards.

[Nika]

Great seeing you in here! I admire your motivation. Your gray values looks really nice! Your line quality with the Diablo fan art is really awesome, Keep it up. I can't wait to see more!

[Tristan Berndt]

Keep on working! Don't play Diablo too much, it's too easy to get stuck playing a game all night long. Personally I just setup a timer and allow myself a short period of playing dark souls 2 before going back to work. Kinda depends on how disciplined you want to be but getting used to deciding how long you spend on things will really help you later when you get client work and have deadlines to meet.

I think you should lighten the grey background. Looks like it's getting in the way when working in values. Also try to keep the values solid and "chunky". In a lot of your images you can se that it's painted in a low opacity and that always comes out really weird.

Do me a favour. Download Sergey Kolesov's (Peleng) brush set and do a 2 hour study using his square brush and a soft brush. Using that brush, you'll better be able to correctly show form and I think trying that out would be good for you to get a better grip on values and form.

Keep on pushing! Maybe some figure drawings next would be good to see.

[MarcCasper]

Thanks for the continued feedback! I am not worthy ;.;

I lightened the background, tried the brushes, etc. I really like that square brush, it seems more, i don't know 'greasy' maybe, which is really nice.

Will be working on figure studies this week!! I will make sure to post them.


And finally got James Gurney's 'Color and light', after much ass kicking from a friend, considering I really don't understand either haha. Hope to have much more to share soon.

[MarcCasper]

Today's small batch of life drawings I did before work. I started taking wayyyy to long on the first one, so I limited the rest to 1-10 minutes ( closer to 5-8 minutes ). I work the next 3 nights, so I will do these the next few days before work since they don't take much time.

[Jonathan H]

These looking good man

[MarcCasper]

Thank you Jonathan!

More figure drawings.