Jed's Chicken Scratches

[Pictomancer]

Worked on the bracer and fixed the nose (yet again) a bit more. Finally decided to call it quits on the Ben 10 fanart and accept that it's done.

Hopefully whatever shortcomings I've had with this one I get to fix and improve on future stuff.

Comments and critique are very welcome.



Still have a long way to go with stroke economy, as well as learning and being comfortable with using texture brushes.

---

Also managed to come up with a NSFW(ish) pinup while doing studies on Joel Jurions femme's.



While doing studies on Joel Jurions style I realized I have a "weakness for curves"

Yeah... I mean "that" and the fact that my drawing style so far has been very angular. Even my painting style is angular and cross-hatchy, doing nicely drawn curves is a tough order for me.

I'm still, for a lack of a better term "not confident" with my strokes to do some really nice powerful curves. And I'm not yet familiar or used to drawing from the elbow; when I try it feels off and difficult considering my small Wacom Bamboo, working space and sketch pads.

Hoping that I can train the muscle memory in my wrists to do curves better without having to rotate/flip the canvas like crazy all the time.

BTW, hopefully nobody fins pinup of this sort particularly too offensive.

Again, constructive critique and feedback are appreciated.

[Ursula Dorada]

I wouldn't worry too much about curves, really, you're doing just fine. Doing it all in straight lines and adding a few selected curves is usually a very strong workflow.

Nice work up here, keep it up!

[Pictomancer]

Thanks Ursula! Hopefully I'll be able to improve on finding, picking, and doing those select curves so I can do some "soft" feeling pieces from time to time.

The past few weeks have been busy since I got roped into doing some graphic design work. But in the interest of maintaining at least 1 work/study/practice, was able to do this piece.



Hopefully I'm improving with my choices of color.

References were used for general proportions, and light placement.

In retrospect I probably should've added a 2nd/diff. ambient light source.

[DomSinkevic]

Really nice. I like the gestures. Try improving on line weight. In all, between your first and last post I can see enormous progress. Keep at it!

[Metatabi]

Great sketchbook going on! You have some good studies and appealing stylized work, really interested to see how your art develops :D

[ZombieChinchilla]

I love your painting style! Your Tyrion painting in particular I love. I'm also a big fan of your pencil sketches and anatomy studies, very inspiring. Keep it up.

[Pictomancer]

Really nice. I like the gestures. Try improving on line weight...

Thanks DomSinkevic, will remember to keep a lookout for good lessons and studies on line weights. Right now, my line weights are either placed arbitrarily(?) wherever it kinda looks good, or are the unintentional result of redoing a line work cause I just couldn't get it "quite right"

@Metatabi; ZombieChinchilla:
Thanks guys! Glad Tyrion is still recognizable despite some inaccuracies with the proportions.

And glad my style has an appeal to it. Although I really want to be more adaptable and try and reach a style that's a combination of my own and various artists I admire.


A few more quick sketches before the week ends:

Some no reference warm ups, and trying to see if anything new so far has been committed to muscle memory/visual library.


A few really quick rough studies of expressions and lips (another facial feature I have trouble with); referenced from illustrations by Shiqasu no Okina (NSFW) and Stjepan Sejic (aka nebezial)



And a quick sketch that I spent a little too much time on cause I had fun with it
(trying a slightly different style on the same character from a previous fanart; the lips took several tries to pull off)

[Wardy]

wow great sketchbook! i love your angular style of drawing faces, you get a great sense of character. your latest is a very different style but stunning, need to get practicing faces myself!

[Pictomancer]

A quick study/practice referenced from a portrait found on DrawCrowd by an artist named Xiao. and a quick draw from imagination wind down of a movie I recently saw.



Wanted to see if i could squeeze a quick study in before the week ended and 2.5 hrs. and 19 layers later I end up with this:



I'm noticing that I'm having a lot of difficulty eyeballing proportions and distance. It's like I have to draw it bad 4-5 times, and then keep adjusting it with paint overs again and again.

And even when I get it somewhat right, the moment I start to work on the finer details I end up displacing stuff bit by bit until it's way off again.



Sometimes the paint over and correcting gets too much that very little of the original is left. Like with the previous Ben10 piece, where much of the dynamic feel of it was gone as I ended up painting out exaggerations because I was (over)correcting proportions.

[Metatabi]

I can relate about the over-correcting and detail displacement all too much. I too always seem to lose the energy and precision of the initial sketch/lines when painting over them.

I personally find it more effective in terms of precision and time to do a very thin lineart and masks or lasso tool to color under the lines: keeps things from displacing and actually helps stroke economy. The trick is not to rely on the lines too much and make sure that the figure reads well without the lines. But that's just my way for working around the problem; don't know if maybe this method or something similar could be useful to you for keeping things from moving off?

[Pictomancer]

I can relate about the over-correcting and detail displacement all too much. I too always seem to lose the energy and precision of the initial sketch/lines when painting over them...

Thanks for the advnice suggestion, but that's assuming you're confident already with the base drawing.

Which is what i realized I've been struggling with. Probably a reason also why my light guide drawing eventually turns into a heavy lined rough mess of a sketch, because I still struggle to reach the "correct" base drawing.

I tend not to see the mistakes with my base drawing until it's substantially rendered(?) light shadow and such, and after I revisit it about a day later with fresh eyes.

Also another interesting discovery is how hard it is to unlearn old tendencies. Case in point is me revisiting and working again on the Tyrion fanart 2 days later (and resorting to overlaying the thumbnail outlines to finally see what was blatantly wrong; eureka moment)



Also some quick anatomy/gesture practices using a bunch of anime figurine ads I cam across.



And more playing around with sketches.

One of the Molly face-stomping a Sentinel pose was referenced from a Jason Chan illustration while the other was my attempt at coming up with something vaguely similar in theme/feel.



I wonder when I'll reach the point where my un-referenced figures are almost as good as my referenced ones.

[Pictomancer]

Long time no post. Been suffering through bad intermittent internet, and you'd think it'd make me more productive, but no. It did succeed ins lowly driving me insane.

Some really bad no reference sketches. My drawing (especially the no ref ones) needs a lot of work.



Some gesture/anatomy studies (it just feels like they always go side by side) based on illustrations by Shunya Yamashita




Intended drawing studies of photo referenced portraits.

I think I somewhat get now what Ursula meant by "Doing it all in straight lines and adding a few selected curves is usually a very strong workflow."

Was trying to simplify the portraits into lines and angles and trying to match em as closely as possible, and then slowly curve em out as I go forward.

Unfortunately at the moment I can only seem to get 2/3 of the trinity between scale/proportion, distance, and angle of those lines :\

The portraits only have a remote resemblance with the references.



Reference side by side and WIP:








And some thumbnail gesture studies for another intended piece.

Referenced from various pinup, illustrations and photos.

Right now I'm drawn to working with no 2, the lower thumbnails I like the idea, but I can't solve the anatomy/gesture properly in my head (the references are small, and not as clear as the intended gesture that I drew as thumbnails)



comments and constructive critique are always welcome.

[Forrestimel]

Hey Pictomancer, awesome work so far. I can see you're really dedicated to this so keep working at it.

As for some of the things your struggling with, first off, don't worry that much about it. Over time the way you work will change and morph into something that is more than likely completely different from how you work now. Like with the angular vs. curved lines, don't stress about it. Really, just remember it doesn't matter how you start an image, just the finished product is what matters.

But the reason why you're sticking with angular lines instead of curved seems more like a lack of confidence in what you're drawing. You mentioned before how you feel more confident with faces than with anatomy and that's just going to take practice. A lot of it. The IFX magazine anatomy is good but I really recommend investing (or downloading if you're low on money right now) in Michael Hampton's anatomy book. It's incredibly useful and breaks down each part of the body into large forms and then each part of the body part into forms as well. Confident lines will come with confidence in what you're drawing, so if you know the forms or shapes of something well then that will more than likely shine through with your lines.

Also try to stick to pen, it's gonna be a bitch to work with but it'll force you to think more. Not just in studies but in your imagination work. There's less room for covering up mistakes so you have to think back to how certain muscles work or what facial features you just studied.

Now for getting more confident with painting you really just need to paint more. Try to challenge yourself by not starting a painting with a sketch and just go straight to blocking in with paint and work from there. It'll be super hard and frustrating at first but just remember that it's a study, it doesn't need to look perfect for everyone on here, you just need to show us you learned something from it.

You're rocking it so far though so just keep it up :)

EDIT:

For your latest image that you're working on the poses seem really stiff right now. I think it might be the lack of confidence in painting the construction of the body, so try watching this video below and then do some gesture drawings for awhile. Do it with the least lines as you possibly can to describe the movement and apply that to your figures. Also try building the construction of the figure on top of the gesture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74HR59yF...2fwOxR6Zn6

[ShinOkami]

Hey there, nice seeing you again ! :)

Just wanted to say loving the latest portrait you made and all the studies, everything else i guess Forrestimel said it already

Just keep on working and try different stuff everytime ! :D

[Jaik]

Nice work, I like what you are doing here. So much work @.@ As Forrest said, it's all about dat painting mileage. Keep on keeping on :3

[Pictomancer]

@Jaik
Thanks Jaik, it's always good and comforting to be reminded that art mileage contributes a lot to improvement.

and suddenly I have this phrase "...your mileage may vary" playing in my head right now LOL

@ShinOkami
Thanks Shin, I'll try to remember to try out new stuff. With trying to improve my base sketches I've been drifting towards my comfort zones (portraits) which isn't so bad since I want to get that and figure drawing to an acceptable level before I venture into backgrounds, & composition.

@Forrestimel:
Thanks Forrest, really appreciate the feedback.

I'm sure lack of confidence in the brush/linework is contributory to the problem. It's a common critique I get, even way back when I tried taking art class in a local university.

At this point tho' I can't quite perceive yet the diff. between confident line/brush work and ones lacking confidence. I've read/listened to suggestions on what it theoretically is and how to pull it off such as longer lines vs. short broken ones, and trying to paint/sketch from the elbow instead of the wrist. Both really foreign to me at the moment, with the latter being a bit of challenge.

As for the anatomy, agreed again. I'm still in the place where I'm not sure how far I can exaggerate the human form, and it's muscles to make it look more animated without venturing into escher girl territory.

Probably why I like to base most of my anatomy studies from illustrators I like rather than real life. To try and replicate that animated feel, and then slowly temper it real life references.


As suggested, did some sketches without references or from very recent memory using a pen.



A quick portrait that ended up as a bunch of studies on various things instead.

Realized that my color choices tend to gravitate towards the yellow, red, or green sides of the spectrum. Can't remember why, but when I tried overlaying a subtle shade of blue the skin tone suddenly felt more natural than previous paintings.

Learning color is hard.



Will keep working on this one every now and then to see how far I can push myself into improving rendering/polishing with a more comfortable subject (portraits)

[Pictomancer]

Still trying to figure out what's making the pose I'm leaning towards come out stiff.

Playing around with refining, adjusting, retracing, redrawing, etc to try and make the strokes look better. And maybe stumble into how to improve my strokes.



Ongoing polishing and study in colors from last weeks portrait.



Still trying to struggle with that nagging at the back of my head that whenever I try to polish and correct something with the painting it ends up looking/feeling different from the previous sketch.

Stroke dynamism/life/vibrance seems to diminish with each polish and correction, and on really bad cases looks a lot worse than it's previous iterations. (this is probably a big contributor to the lack of stroke confidence)

Quick semi-realistic sketch attempt that I had to get out of my system after I picked up a series a friend has been recommending me for quite some time now.



Trying to reach that a point where I'm comfortable with my portrait, figure drawing and my brush strokes so I can start tackling backgrounds, integrating my figures into a background, and composition soon. Hopefully before or by early next year.

[Pictomancer]

3 Typhoons in a row, rolling blackouts, and incredible bed weather. There goes my painting time.

Took my sweet time in slowly tightening and polishing up the portrait from a couple of weeks ago.



Happy with the slight improvements from my previous attempts at polishing an image.

Still have to sort out that nagging feeling of the paintings dynamic feel, and "character" being chipped away with each correction and polish.

[rafa zanchetin]

Ouch, hope everything is ok with all that wind. And your paintings are definitely getting tighter, just a tip, on the last painting be carefull with the full blacks on the pupil, sometimes it's best to add a really saturated red/brown (with about 95% or 97% black), it's not that big but I found out that it takes the eyes away from... the eyes, lol.

[Pictomancer]

... just a tip, on the last painting be carefull with the full blacks on the pupil, sometimes it's best to add a really saturated red/brown (with about 95% or 97% black)

Thanks rafa, went ahead and used really dark saturated greens and red/brown with about 97-98% black for the eyes as suggested. Hopefully that made an improvement.

Also went and tried to reduce all the pure blacks, and some of the pure whites on the image.

Still having trouble with the hair since I'm drawing it from imagination (can't find adequate enough references to match the hair), and trying to learn how to give it that hair strand/clump of strands texture.



Wondering if I should push the values a bit further to add more contrast.

Feedback and paint overs are greatly appreciated

... and a bunch of (really bad) no reference sketches; it's still a long way before I'm able to pull off decent anatomy and poses without reference.