Lafii's Sketchbook

[Lafii]

Hi everyone! I'm a 17 year old student going into my last year of high school, and I'm planning to apply to art schools next year. I found this forum about a month ago, and the progress here really inspired me to get better before school starts.

I've been unable to post anything because I was busy with classes, but now that that's over, I have a lot of free time to work my butt off.

What I really need to work on:
- building up visual library of anatomy
- variations in people (face, body)
- gesture study and body language
- perspective *cringe*
- atmosphere and composition
- environments

These are some of the turtle steps I've been taking in the past week:

Screencap study, trying to observe how environment affects skin, hair. Also, I love Isaac Wright's face.


Face from imagination and skull studies


Crazy how different perception is from the real photo; need to keep working on likeness in color and shape


Another skin study


Didn't use any reference for this, and it's pretty obvious, haha. Wanted to see how far I could go from imagination only - WIP of Katarina, from League of Legends.


Brief summary of what I've learned:
- High point in saturation on edges of shadows
- Joints tend to have red-ish tint (especially noticeable in hands, feet, knees)
- The further away something is, the less contrast there is
- A bit on how light works on skin

[Lafii]

Finished up Kat, although I think I'll go back later and fix the duster and plunger. Also, a lot of things look off about it like the length of Kat's arm and the pose of her legs but I figure to notice the mistakes and then move on to the next painting instead of trying to fix it.


Studies to come!

[BenFlores]

the katarina image looks great, looking forward to those studies!

[Lafii]

@BenFlores: Thank you so much (your work is such an inspiration shadjkask)

Note to self: stop stockpiling work into a single post, split it up ok. So long.

Here's what I've been up to this past week; I started studying basic human anatomy like the landmarks and the major structures, along with the head. Below are a bunch of gestures, some with the head, ribs and pelvis and some without. Gotta do more.




More of the same done digitally.



Head and face feature studies and application. God, skin and aitbrush is hard.


Some style and color practice.


Varied up my process for this one; I usually do a very rough sketch and go straight into the painting, but this time i did lineart > base colors > shadows > highlights > fixing stuff. Not sure if I like this process, but it was much more time efficient than what I usually do. Turned out looking graphic, which I like.


Some shape concepts done on 3 silhouettes, and later used in a WIP. Had this idea for this fantasy forest creature with antlers all over her costume.



I'll be doing more skull studies and gestures with structure the following week. Also challenging myself to start on muscles - emphasizing on the male figure since I keep avoiding it.

Feedback is greatly appreciated, thank you for looking!