Slink's Sketches [C&C Welcome]

[slink]

# Bio, short into (Can be skipped #

Hello guys, i've been doing digital 'painting' on and off for about a year now. I can actually tell you the date I did one of my first proper attempts at digital speed painting it was 11-06-2013. During this last year I have had an on an off relationship with art, quitting when it gets hard and always eventually coming back to it. I figured recently as I keep wanting to come back to it it must be something that is important to me.

I've feel i've matured quite a bit in these last few months mentally and understand myself better and what it is that motivates me and why I react certain ways in certain situations. These revelations have been made clear to me through meditation, which I highly recommend! It really helps me understand why I think the way I do and what I need to change about my thinking if I want to achieve goals.

At the moment I am actively focused on improving myself, understanding fundamentals properly (not just skim-reading and half applying) and my most favourite part responding appropriately to critiques. I really like getting feedback as an extra set of eyes is more helpful than anything - most of the time I know my work doesn't look great, but can't explain why. This is where you guys come in - thanks for all comments in advance, feel free to PM me if you ever want to critique me in private.

# END OF BIO #

Here's a catch up of some of the things I've been doing in July:





# 30 min study of glass. Not really long enough


# Drawing from imagination. I was quite proud of this one as my imagination is not very strong. 1 hour.


# Practicing my stroke confidence




# 60 second gesture


# Heads from imagination, pre-study


# View from my window. Study from life


# Someone on CA said I should carefully study heads and hands. Starting with heads, loomis obviously:













# Study of lotr still, didn't come out great. Need to spend more time on studies I think.



# Some imaginary heads from just now as a warm up



More to follow.

[PacaTatuCotiaNao]

You are on the right path, man. Keep it up!

I'm doing head studies as well, and getting a lot of frustration. The thing is to keep going. haha

[slink]

@PacaTatuCotiaNao: Thank you man, I checked out your head studies and they are amazing...I should be studying you!

This week:

# More head stuff:









# Some 60 second poses







# Imaginary poses after, needs work!



# Studying fat guys for the CHOW at CA.org



# CHOW WIP



# WIP 2



All in all a fair bit of drawing, not much painting. Feel like i'm making good progress with heads, just trying to remain patient and read through things slowly, applying them and understanding before moving on.

Areas where I feel like I am lacking this week:

I've never really studied rendering basic forms, which I feel like will help when I try to render things like my CHOW image before. So this is a note to do some of that.

Again my values feel flat and 2d, this is something I think I can address by tackling the point above.

[slink]

Stuff from today:

# Study of models head, didn't go great - lost the source sorry:



# 90 second poses to warm up:



# Imaginary poses straight after:



# Messing around doing random thumbnails. Found this quite fun and some of the later ones turned out ok



# Started drawing this, setting myself the task of taking it to completion.



# Studying pale skin for the drawing above

[Adzerak]

Nice load of work in here! Really sweet approach to do imaginary poses after some gesture practice, applying those studies while you're riding the flow!

In your latest study of fair skin, I think you could darken the parts in shadow more and make it a little less bright overall maybe. It really helps to squint at the image while doing this, since squinting your eyes can make reading and identifying values a lot easier, at least it does for me :)

[slink]

Started posting stuff again as I realized what i'm missing is feedback.

Wow! It's actually been like a full year since I last posted anything. I have neglected art in the last year or so, and now I have a full time job so my free time is being SLAYED (but hey I have money at least so that's something). Nevertheless I am once again drawn back to the ethereal monster that is concept art.

Here's some stuff from the last 3 weeks or so. Haven't got references for everything (apologies), I will make sure to have them for future posts.

Literally my first pic getting back into it. Left is ref, middle is my sketch, right is someone's elses much better attempt. Lined them up to compare values


Colour


Another


And another


Meow


Cyborg Samurai for CA.org CHOW


Frog ref and study




Anatomy doodles with no opacity pressure


Various gesture








15 mins head studies


Still life [about 5 hours total]


ref


enviro thumbs from ref


started doing the noah bradley 21 day challenge. pretty much just study something an hour a day for 21 days. i chose master landscapes cos i suck tits at landscapes. here's the past 5 days. no ref for these sorry. will include them from now on.

day 1


day 2


day 3


day 4


day 5


====

That's it for now! Biggest change I have made recently is changing the tip feel on my tablet. I'm a very soft drawer and have turned the sensitivity all the way down to soft. It has made drawing digitally SO much easier. I don't like to press hard, and now I get a fuller sense of value in my work.

At the moment my process for study is something like this:
1. Study and capture
2. Replicate from imagination
3. Apply to original work

I do a lot of number one. Not much of the latter two. I really struggle with laying down value in original compositions. Any thoughts regarding this are appreciated.

p.s: apologies for using imgur, tried using the attachment system and found it a slow

[slink]

Day 6 and 7 of 21. 1 hour each.





Samurai study



That's it for now. Not really sure how often to update this sketchbook. ?_?

[slink]

Christ sorry, didn't realise how big some of these images were. Won't do that again x_x

Days 8-10

[slink]

Days 11 & 12 and some value composition thumbnails. The value thumbnails are really fun to do and REALLY helpful.







Been using a shitty texture brush all day, should probably stop!

[slink]

Some more 1 hour master landscape studies from the past couple of days and some gesture stuff. Unsure if i'm getting better or not with these studies.

[crackedskull]

No worries slink, if you sow the seeds and work hard on growing them, every bit helps, even if at times you are unsure, if it does.

[slink]

@crackedskull, thanks man! I've just checked out your sketchbook, the progress you have made since you started is phenomenal. Great work ethic, keep it up :)

Update. Up to day 17 of my 21 colour landscapes mission. I feel i've made some progress. Mainly with the way I blend colours. I really like turning brush opacity down about halfway and gently circling in colours. Relaxes me and get a nice silky blend (which i like). I will probably do brush stroke economy practice after this and try to smash both these techniques together. (Silky blending + stroke confidence = :O)