Hi everyone, my name is Kristian Agerkvist. I've got a sketchbook at CA aswell, but I've seen a few of my buddies leave that place and start sketchbooks here and I must admit it looks like a really good place, so I decided to join them. We have a Skype and Hangouts going where we help each other out and keep each other company so that's where I spent most of my time, but I will try to follow these forums abit too.
I'll give you the short version of who I am: 34 years old, two kids ages 1 and 4, lovely girlfriend, house, mortgage, I full time job that is ok but not fantastic and a burning desire to make a living as a freelance illustrator.
I've been drawing on and off my entire life but only about a year ago did I realize that I could actually make a career of it if I practice and work hard. Now my fear is that this realization came to late and I can't find enough hours between my regular job and taking care of my family, but I've taught myself to not let doubt and negativity dictate how I feel so I draw and paint nearly every day, also on the bad days. I have about 2 hours every night and more on weekends and I try to make them count.
Character illustration will be my focus and after hearing from Marc Brunet over at cubebrush I've been working on my linework and in the coming months I will be doing focused anatomy studies with Michael Hamptons book as my main resource.
To get started here's a few line drawings I did recently and the painted version of one of them. Honest critiques and escpecially advice on how to progress are very welcome and appreciated. Also a painting I'm working on even if I'm taking a break from it right now. Colors are done super quick just trying to get a feel for it. They're all wips and I'm still deciding wheter to color the orc or just leave it greyscale.
Greetings and welcome to Crimson Daggers. A nice little start here to your sketchbook, I'd say your lines are well defined in those drawings. Perhaps you could experiment a bit more with weights in your lines.
Thanks Stardust. Line weight definately wasn't much of a priority when doing this one. Originally I intended to do a cleaned up version of the lines, but decided against it since they were to be painted over anyway. Next time I actually think I want to try to do my line drawing with very little variance in line weight, just a thin line to use as a guide. I think that will make the painting phase easier, but we'll see :-)
@Pindurski oh yeah? So is that your polite way of telling me I need ALOT more practice to get anywhere? :-P Or can you simply not get enough haha? :-D Thanks for stopping by man.
I'll be honest tho, I paint or draw every day but time is limited so I usually prioritize that over updating sketchbooks. But also, since the ork I've only been drawing traditionally and scanning stuff sucks.
Minksy - hey man! Rali van Minks from CA yeah? I haven't deserted CA completely, I just don't spend much time there.
So, been drawing heads lately - constructing a lot from Hamptons book lately, but havent had time to scan those since there are quite a bit, so here are some photo studies from the last two nights:
That big one was done without reference at the end to see if I could actually draw a proper head from imagination.
Did the same sheet of heads as last night, but tonight I did them without looking at reference - just took a quick look to know the angle of the head and then tried to figure the rest out for myself.
ooo very nice bargue studies, super clean. Heads are the worst, I've been trying to improve at em lately as well. Slowly becoming more fun though thankfully.
Good job man, you are definitely getting better at heads! We just have to put the time in and not get carried away with imagination stuff too much (i am guilty of this.) Keep it up!
Quote:Minksy - hey man! Rali van Minks from CA yeah? I haven't deserted CA completely, I just don't spend much time there.
Yup, that's me :o)
Great job with all the head studies. Hampton and Bargue are superb for that purpose. The application to imagination is also really great - keep it up with these, improvement is certain :o)
Yo, nice studies dude! Head construction is a tough problem to tackle, I think you're doing a really good job. I'd recommend more drawing from photos/life, paying special attention to the way the head is turned. I sometime draw a head-shapes box in perspective before starting the head so I can look back at is and remember exactly what orientation the head is in, that affects everything else.
I'd say one of your most common problems is getting the relationship of the face and the side plane of the head, seems like you foreshorten the side plane too much. A general rule of thumb I use is if the nose is close to the breaking the contour of the head, the ear will be inside, And if the ear is breaking the contour the nose will be inside. It varies with people's anatomy but it's a nice way to keep in mind whether you're drawing a 3/4 view that's closer to a front view, or closer to a side view.
If you get a hand mirror to look at your own head or a webcam to take reference shots that might help you out a lot. Try taking a look at your imagination drawings against references and finding errors in the drawing, that will show you what you need to work on. Good luck!
