Amaral's Sketchbook

[Amaral]

Hey, thanks for stopping by! Here are some of my recent drawings, which quality will hopefully improve with time and practice. :P

Darkseid fan art


Sketches from references


Material/Value Studies

[Patrick Gaumond]

Looks like a good start, cant wait to see where you go from here :D

[darktiste]

seem like you put a lot of effort to render i also like the line weight you have

[Amaral]

Thanks a lot Beardley and darktiste. Yep, that helmet study was a pain in the butt, I never rendered anything so much like that.

It's been a while since I last posted... I've been doing mostly traditional stuff that isn't worth showing, so here are some digital farts I did recently:

[Olof]

Hey!!

Loving the samurai drawings, they're really clean!!

Your painting needs a bit of contrast and hard edges I think, but it's definitely going the right direction.

[Amaral]

Thanks a lot Olof! Yeah I totally need to practice those 2 things more, I always end up with crappy values and weird edges.


time to dump some trash
beep beep beep





Critiques, advices or anything that might help me improve is super welcome!

[Amaral]

Happy new year y'all! I hope that everyone achieve their goals and dreams, or at least get stronger and closer to them.

To say goodbye to 2014 I'll dump here what I've done recently, even though is not much.

Goblin painting I did for a dA contest, and the card template for fun:





Head studies (still have to finish some of them):



Value studies:



First sculpture attempt in 10 years:
fun stuff!



Some dude sketch I did a couple of days ago:




I think I didn't progress much/anything these last months. I'm a loser. I'm not working hard enough.
This year I'll stick to a schedule, kick my own ass and h̶o̶p̶e̶f̶u̶l̶l̶y̶ 2015 WILL be my goddamn year!

[Amaral]

hey daggers!
The year started pretty well, did my first freelance job until the beginning of this month, then the laziness struck again ahah.

here's some sketchbook stuff and a concept wip:














C&C are more than welcome!

[Se7enLives]

Hey buddy, I think you're doing great, lots of potential here! I like the value and head studies. You probably know this already but that kind of work pays off. So my advice is to keep studying but also draw for fun whenever you can and look at stuff that you really like and inspire you on a daily basis. Stay positive and the more you practice the better you'll get. Cheers!

[Amaral]

Thanks a lot for the words of encouragement my friend :D really appreciate it!

Time to update...
I don't have much to show right now, since I'm mostly tackling anatomy, perspective and all that boring stuff traditionally.
But here are some sketches







and a painting I'm about to call finished, but not quite happy with the result, so I'd like some critiques/opinions on how can I improve it please. Annihilate me!

[AngeliquevdMee]

Hey amaral really good job on the last piece... you wanted critiques so I did a paintover cause it's easier to explain. Now this is just my take on it you don't have to fix it if you don't agree :)




Ok so... While I was browsing through your work I found 2 things that maybe could use some work... your edges and also use of color. Now I don't know how old the other posts were, but if i scrolled a bit up your colors looked very desaturated. There is an improvement though with he last images, so good job :)

The focal point of this image is the face - or so at least that's what i think xD - so I worked around it a bit mainly with using dodge tool on the fur cause the fur you've drawn looks really soft and there is no real texture. I also sharpened things around the focal point. So what i've done : used dodge tool with a streaky texture and made strokes to highlight some parts, then with hard round smudge tool made some extra hairy bits. Fur is rough and doesnt follow a particular pattern so you can go nuts with it really. The sharpened (fur)bits I did using smart sharpen filter > filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. on 37% I believe, but you gotta play with it a bit ^^ I feel like you can add even more texture but stay away from too much cloudy bits/ mist underneath the character, though this is a personal thing i think it devalues the piece a bit cause it looks blurry/ messy mainly because you cant really see the fog, but it is there nonetheless. Last thing I did was incorporating the blue of the background in your character. I feel it suits better with all paintings, but you don't have to do that. If you want you can get it by throwing a gradient on it - i used the blue/orange default in the gradient tab.

I hope this helps... Gaining skill in rendering and color never stops though, but keep pushing :D

[Amaral]

Thank you so much for the overpaint, it's very kind of you!
I always struggle with those (edges and colors), especially colors. Maybe it's because I don't do many color studies, haha, will do more of those! I'm glad you see some improvement though, I feel like a snail sometimes.

Indeed the focal point was intended to be the face, with some smaller focal points being the umbrella and the lighter/cigarrete.

As you suggested, I used the dodge tool with a fur brush to get it brighter and with a bit more texture, subtly to not draw the eye too much to the fur because I don't want it competing too much with the face. :/ ALSO, the smudge tool is great for this, I don't know how I didn't thought of that hahaha. To add some texture to the image I added some dust near the lights and did what you recomended with the sharpen filter and the gradient map.

Thanks a lot once again, I really appreciate the help! Hope it looks any better now.

[AngeliquevdMee]

Yeaaahhh!!! great work :)

[Amaral]

Update:


sketch of Jon Bernthal as the Punisher



fanart sketch of Skull from Skull & Shark



yours truly, my first self portrait



illustration for a personal project I might develop in the future, called dWARf - tales of Fire, Thunder and Witchcraft



a post apocalyptic King of Spades card for a facebook group activity



Wolverine fanart



portrait of my girlfriend



portrait of Richie Jackson

[Brian Hermelijn]

Feel like I have seen your stuff somewhere not sure where, but none of the less good update. Wish you were posting more often :)!

[Bookend]

So much great work here! I really like the portraits, haha. Stay on that track!

[Agerkvist]

Dude, fantastic progress here - I'd love to hear more about how you going about studying.

Great stuff, looking forward to more ☺

[Rhasdra]

Dude, you improved incredibly fast! o-o

I too would love to hear how you approach studying!

Really awesome stuff man, keep it up!

[RottenPocket]

Brilliant selection of your artwork, your progress is astounding.

[Amaral]

@Hermidraws Thank you so much, I will post more now (at least once a week), since I kinda woke up to life and realized  I really, REALLY need to improve!

@Bookend Thanks a lot for the kind words, I'm glad you like em! 

@Agerkvist, @Rhasdra and @RottenPocket I don't think I improved much but it's really refreshing to know that you think so, thank you so much!
I will gather some studies that  I have scattered all around and start posting them, even though I don't study or practice that much/as much as I should due to being a coward and a slacker, but I try to learn the most I can by just observing things around.
I will be more specific about this in later posts.

Thanks once again for the very kind and heartwarming words! Love you all <3

Here's some more junk:

A skull study that I had forgotten about, the ref is from this great website http://www.anatomy360.info/skull-sketcher/



A character concept I never finished and probably never will



Pointy eared boys band



Some portraits I did for clients






Self portrait I did for the self portrait day



Saitama fanart



Some mixed media sketches



Some kind of evil Santa turned troll (?) that I never finished due to not knowing how



I really need to improve, so any kind of feedback/suggestion/anything is very welcome! Don't be afraid to break my heart (I don't have one). :)