O'Donnell's sketchbook

[Piotr Jasielski]

Some really nice stuff in here. Keep this up :)

[Bookend]

Latest piece kinda reminds me of Gotham's season finale, haha. Your work is looking very rich, man. It's awesome that you've got a job! Good luck with it and work hard.

[Xenzo]

Thanks a million Piotr!

Bookend - haha awesome and thanks very much man :)

Been inactive for a while back in college now doing the last year of the HND in Animation. So i've been pretty busy with college work. In the meantime i've signed up for Schoolism's course with Dice tsutsumi and Robert Kondo it's really cool so far. 

The first of 5 Still life studies in a diffuse light setup 


Then some stuff from college, we went to the Pearse Museum and had to do some colour concepts after some onsite sketching
 


A sketcharoo for a new personal piece

[Xenzo]

Hey guys been awhile since my last post, been pretty busy with college. I've a ton of work to post on here that i'll catch up on eventually.

Got a bit of a chance to continue working on this piece, there's a few more things I need to fix(foreground character, values on girl, guys at the back, smokers face, ground/stones) but almost there, this one is taking a long time, it's a huge challenge for me ! As always let me know what you think and cheers for looking! :)

[Xenzo]

Got to do another bit of work on this, almost there! Crits/suggestions welcome as always :)

[Xenzo]

Sorry for the spam I meant to include this in my earlier post.

So yeah I recently bought this book which came recommended from Maciej Kuciara and Ash Thorp, and HOLY FUCK BALLS it has been an eye opener!! So the compound effect is about making small smart choices every day which over time will result in radical differences to your life. I'm only about half way through the book and it already opened my mind and eyes to different things, one thing; some bad habits I have that are distracting me from my goals in life. 

For example the main one was playing stupid games on my phone which I would procrastinate with instead of doing college work and free up more time to paint. It became such a habit that I didn't really think about it. 

So for example i've to get two buses to college and home again every day which can take anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours each way depending on traffic. I'd always play games on my phone for a good bit of the journies. If I summed up the gameplay hours for each day it could be say an 90/120 mins altogether. I'll sum it up with 2 hours a day 5 days a week and then say another two hours at the weekend. So 12 hours a week , in a month - 48 hours, in a year - 576 hours. I've been in college two years so - 1152 hours. And I could probably play those hours over the holidays too. That's a ballpark figure of time wasted that I could of been doing art related studies and watching tutorials etc. So yeah you can have a negative compound effect too! 

So this is just one of the ways i'm trying to improve my lifestyle. Darren Hardy said he interviewed a lot of successful people and the one thing they all have in common is they all have really good habits. Something I really need to incorporate into my lifestyle.

Anyway enough of a rant from me, I figured people on here might like this book and get something from it :)

[Adam Lina]

Hey great stuff, man. One thing on that last painting. The guy smoking looks a little odd. The perspective on his feet doesnt seem to match the scene. Could just be me.

[Xenzo]

Cheers Adam , had another look at the feet and changed them hopefully they're correct now.

I think i'm finished the piece now 

[Xenzo]

I posted awhile back that i'd gotten my first big concept gig, well here it is. I've been allowed to share it.
Some concept work I had the pleasure of working on for an undisclosed project. A lot of sweat and tears went into this one!
High Res: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZPPaX

[Bookend]

Wow, congratulations man! Great work! And congrats on your first gig!

[Xenzo]

Thanks Bookend appreciate it :)

Had to fix a couple of things on that last image

And got some time to do some work for the schoolism course

[AlCo]

Man-machine-drawing! Keep those coming man, really loving the last piece you finished (but you conquered me with those Roberto Ferri studies on first page, he's probably one of my favorite painter ever :) )

[Xenzo]

Thanks very much Alco! Love Roberto Ferri's work he's unbelievable :) Here's a study from life the other day! A very challenging one :)

[Xenzo]

Hey guys! It's been awhile since the last post so taking a big art dump to get things back in order :)

So first up I did some caricatures at a 40th birthday over christmas! It was very scary and challenging but so glad I did it, I had a ton of fun. Here's a couple from the night


I've also been trying out finger painting on the iPhone with Procreate, here's a study looking out the window of a bus around Galway and the second is an imaginative piece


Also trying to get back into the daily spitpaints so here's a ton of them

This one is a couple of hours study 

Some college work, had to try and make a hyper realistic drawing and a sketch from life drawing class 

And lastly here's a commission i'm working on at the minute , the idea is quite simple it's about this guys girlfriend that loves nature and exploring etc .. Still very much figuring things out :) Any thoughts i'm all ears!

[Xenzo]

Hey guys, so i've taken that last image to final. Not sure what else I can do to make it better. Any last suggestions? And also we way do you prefer it, girl on the left or the right?

[Eyliana]

Lovely painting! I really enjoy the colors of the sky and the atmosphere it creates.
I think the girl on the right is better. I once heard something that Western culture prefers to have people/figures look to the right because of the reading direction and that for Asia it is the other way around.

I didn't make out it was a girl though, because she is turned to us with her back and has short hair. And I would expect hat mountain lakes/rivers are quite deep in the middle, especially when the water is that calm. So I would expect her to be further into the water. In your previous post the river looks a lot less deep because of the stone and the sand on the side of the river.

And I don't know where you want to focus, at the moment it is on the horizon because it is the brightest there.

I hope it is helpful. Keep up the good work!

[Xenzo]

Hey Eyliana, thank you very much for the feedback. I took another look at the piece with your tips in mind :)

So i've been quiet for a while due to college work, good news is I'll be finished in 3 weeks and I cannot wait. My long term girlfriend of 3 and a half years and I also broke up, so there's been a recovery process for this aswell. It's taken a while to get my head straight. So with college almost finished for this year I'm dying to get back into some personal work and finish my Schoolism course. I'm also going to THU in September with some buddies so if anyone else is going be sure to let me know :) 

So this post will have college work/spitpaints/life drawing & painting/gouache plein air studies/modo study/commissions

Also some work that I got completely screwed on, I trusted a 'friend' and did a chunk of work for him and he just decided not to pay me the sum we agreed at the start. Valuable lesson learned, ALWAYS get an upfront payment.

Other than that things have been good in terms of art.

[Xenzo]

Hey guys! Quick update, finished college now for the summer. I'm finished up with my higher national diploma in classical and computer animation in BCFE, Dublin, Ireland. I've gotten my place in the degree in Animation for the next two years. So we'll finally be working on some movies which I'm excited for.

So over summer I'm going to be finishing my schoolism course and try and do another one if I get time. So here's some works from the past week studies from life and a couple of spitpaints at the end. Also a sketch from a character design workshop, i'd like to work this one up into a portfolio piece when I get time. I also recorded a couple of the schoolism still lifes and have them on youtube, I'll pop them in here and here

[Xenzo]

Hey folks, another quick update! Been continuing on with the schoolism course, moving onto week 5 now. Also started Jama Jurabaev's Intro to 3D Concept Design. So i've been learning some 3D Coat and Keyshot, which has been fun. Also did another couple of caricature gigs.


These were the two images I decided to work up from the keyshot renders, might come back to others and another stage. They really are a great starting point though :)

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[Xenzo]

Thank you Marian!
I've been working on a new piece this past week, trying to get one more out before I head to THU this Sunday.
Let me know if you guys have any thoughts/crits