The Lama's Sketchbook

[The Lama]

Hey guys,
I'm a 20 year old art student and was recently studying 3D Animation but decided to leave the course to focus on improving my concept art skills and make portfolio pieces.

I've been taking Anthony Jones' mentorship for the last couple of months and my art has improved a lot in that time. Though since i've left school i'm missing the creative environment and my motivation tends to dip at times. Hoping that becoming part of this community will help with those issues.

Here's some of my recent work:











Would love to hear any feedback you guys have,
See ya round!

[The Lama]

Some more stuff i've been working on this week:





Gonna be colouring these guys in soon.

[The Lama]

Made a bit more progress.



And coloured Mr.Floatybot in. It looks really off to me but I can't figure why. Maybe i've just been staring at it for too long. :/



Thanks for looking, any brutal critiques would be appreciated :)

[StardustLarva]

Hello there, welcome to Crimson Daggers. Some rather nice little pieces you've got here; I'd say that from looking at these you seem to have a fairly good sense for crafting interesting looking characters. Your use of variation in shape is what I believe contributes to that. Aesthetically your work reminds me a bit of artists like David Feiss and Jhonen Vasquez. For now I'll just say that maybe you could make some of your lines a bit heavier, it might work a bit better for the kind of characters you're drawing. Anyway, post more when you can!

[The Lama]

@StardustLarva: Thanks for the feedback man. I tried making the lines thicker in certain areas on these guys, seems to make them feel a little less flat.



So i've finished colouring and comping these guys together and I think i'll call them done for now. The cleanup took a while so I think I need to be more careful with my colouring. Probably will save me a lot of headaches in the future.

[CoreyH]

I love these designs. I get a crazy FLCL feeling from them, all those flowy shapes, especially those bots.

[The Lama]

Gonna revive this thread, with some ugly study stuff! Started trying the 18 from ref/ 18 from imagination thing that I heard Dave Rapoza talking about. Been stagnant in my anatomy study so thought why not give this a try.

From Ref


Imagination


A few extra


Cheers!

[The Lama]

Some new sketches:







Purged my facebook account and i'm ready to get into some hardcore studying hopefully
Cheers for lookin, any C&C is super appreciated

[Ambiguity]

Really great shapes and line work man, and no worries about the "ugly study stuff", I love seeing people "working it out" :).

[Bledley]

Hey man! really like your designs. There's an interesting flow of energy about your sketches  - that extra bit of lineweight (as suggested above..^) really makes a difference! :)

[The Lama]

@Ambiguity Thanks! Yeah I love seeing other people's study stuff as well, I just keep assuming no one would want to see mine :P

@Bledley Thanks for the kind words man :) 

Alright so here's Day 1 of my Deathline challenge, did a bit extra

Fundamentals (Arm Studies):




Study Sketches (Pistols and Diving Helmets):





Exploration Sketches(Random and some based off Diving Helmet studies)





Cheers!

[The Lama]

Daily sketch stuff

Fundamentals:
Really rusty with gestures man, need more practice


Studies:
Some fishies 


Exploration:
Just random techy stuff, seems to be my comfort zone at the moment


On to the next ones!

[The Lama]

Daily drawings for today.

Fundamentals:
Some drawings from a Steve Houston video


Studies:
Medieval Helmets


Free sketchin:


Got really inspired by Walents sketchbook so I decided to try some more brushy work. Clearly need a butt load more practice but it's really fun. Leyendecker will definitely be someone I need to do more studies from.

 I'm feeling pretty scattered in terms of what i'm drawing at the moment but since i'm going for making it a consistent habit I guess it's ok as long as it's fun to do. More structure would be nice though so thoughts about how to achieve that will be swimming around my head tomorrow during class.

I also noticed while drawing the helmets that I really have no idea how to do any material indication, pretty much all my stuff looks like it's made of matte plastic, gotta practice that too. 
So many things to focus on, design, anatomy, draughtsmanship, materials. Phew .Sorry for the ramblin' for some reason I feel the need to vomit my thoughts onto the page as some kind of release. Til next time

[The Lama]

Fundamentals:
Aaaaarms

Study Sketches:
More knight/medieval stuff


Free Sketches:

[walent]

Hey man, thanks for flipping through my sketchbook, I'm glad you got inspired.
I you ask me, there are 2 ways of improving:
1. you choose 1 subject, get good at it, then go on to the next one and so on. This way you will get good at some things pretty fast and you'll be able to keep your motivation up.
2. you make a list of all the things you want to get better at and work on them all at once, practicing each of them every week - like you mentioned, anatomy, design, materials and so on. Problem is each of those require loads of stuff to master, anatomy for instance is nothing without the gesture, you'll have some very stiff anatomically correct figures. Also, while practicing a lot of things at once, you'll need a lot more time to get good at something, BUT once you get there, you'll be good at all of them.

I chose number 1, and started learning anatomy. Spent some time (not enough though) studying each section: torso, head, neck, arms and legs. And now I feel I wanna get to the final level and I'm studying them each again. Started with the upper body, torso, going really deep into details, like different pose situations, what happens when the muscles are flexed / relaxed, fat deposits and so on.

I would say take your time and have fun. You don't have to do 2 min gestures if you feel you can't get them right. You can go to 5 min, or 10, as long as you don't get carried away and start rendering stuff. Keep your main goal in mind.

But before anatomy, I'd recommend looking for Glenn Vilppu gestures, or even Proko, the figure drawing videos, you need to build the base so that you can have something to place anatomy on.
And it's good that you keep posting, make a habit out of it and you'll see improvements soon.

[BjorkJT]

Great sketchbookso far! Your lines and shape language are awesome!
Regarding gestures I ditto what Walent says. It's also good to do some pretty short ones to get good at capturing the essence of the pose or the line of action as some call it. http://grizandnorm.tumblr.com/ These guys have some really good tips on gesture drawing

[The Lama]

@Walent I agree it's probably better for me to focus on one thing at a time, I think my brain retains information that way and helps keep me focussed. I watched some vilpuu videos today and i'm finding his method really useful for feeling the form of what I'm drawing. It definitely clicks with me more than other methods :D Thanks for the advice, i really appreciate it!

@BjorkJT
Thanks Bjork! I'm gonna print out some of those griz and norm pictures and keep them on a pin board to reference while I do studies. It'll help a lot, so many good nuggets of information on them. I've started going through some of Prokos figure videos too so those should help with the gesture.

Drawings for today:

[The Lama]

Daily Sketches

[The Lama]

Daily Sketches:

Focussing on the landmarks of the body now, seems to helping with laying things out


And some birds from ref


And some imaginary birds:

[The Lama]

Daily sketches: