Yang's Sketchbook

[yangdaniel027]

[attachment=68637]Hey everyone, Daniel here

I've been doing digital painting for a roughly a year now and am really just looking for advice/critique to push my work to the next level.


Thanks for taking a look :)

[yangdaniel027]

Time to get myself some portfolio pieces. The second one is me trying to figure out the kind of lighting I wanted. Next up is figuring out the color scheme I want to go with.

[yangdaniel027]

:/, I always feel like I'm overworking these pieces

[Gliger]

Not really, they actually look quite nice, specially the last one, I'd recomend doing some drapery studies, and focusing more on the smaller 3d forms of the cliffs and mountains.

[yangdaniel027]

Thanks Gliger :), yeah the robed figures were hard because I couldn't find any sort of reference for exactly what I was looking for. I ended using some jedi references but they were only mildly useful.

[smrr]

Hey Daniel!

Woah, only a year!? You're kicking butt already! I can't wait to see what 2 years does for ya because your concepts are great already!

Hmm I'm liking the colour scheme, ^ ^ can't really provide feedback just yet,

Keep working hard :D

[yangdaniel027]

Thanks smrr! :), Really I've been drawing my entire life but didn't take it seriously enough until 3-4 years ago, mostly because I didn't know I was supposed to be practicing fundamentals and everything. Although, all those years of drawing really helped me pick up things quickly when it came to anatomy, life-drawing, and anything pencil related, but I began to realize there was a extremely big gap when it came to color, light, value, etc. Thus I began my journey into digital painting about a year ago :)

I've been feeling stuck lately about what I need to work on, and figured it was partially composition, and also moving away from so much organic shapes and doing more architecture and perspective based paintings. But idk, it's a work in progress.

[EduardoGaray]

Hi Daniel! terrific perspective in those pieces, i love it.
Nothing to critique just yet, so keep posting. :)

[marjoriedavis]

heya welcome to the daggers! :)

looking good so far
one thing i see is that value-wise things could be separated just a little more.
like with the guys by the bridge. if you put some mist behind them to push things back a bit more and make them pop a little more.

other than that keep it up!
cheers

[crackedskull]

My greetings, to you, newblood. You give off a nice sense of scale in your paintings.

[yangdaniel027]

[b]marjoriedavis, thanks for the advice. I would agree, I think the values for the rock/bridge shadow are too close the range of the value the robed figures. [/b]

Thanks crackedskull, scale has really been something I've been trying to work at. I just love pieces that have the epic and grand feel. :)

Anyways, new piece, I call it Morning Light. For some reason I really regressed at the beginning of this one and almost gave up a couple of times. I spent almost two days doing nothing other than moving paint around and not really accomplishing anything. It was quite frustrating, especially because I couldn't even pinpoint why I was so frustrated. I think I was just lacking confidence in myself or something.

Good thing I broke out of it though, finishing it took roughly 12ish hours.

[GabbyTaylor]

You're growing by leaps and bounds, and it's only been one page! I think the only thing I can critique on is the sky in this last image: I see a night sky, but I'm not sure if the lighter blue is a wave crashing over the rocks, or a cloud. It has motion, so I would guess wave, but I suggestion clarifying what that is either way. Otherwise, you're doing great! Keep up the good work!

[yangdaniel027]

Thanks I appreciate the comment! :), to clarify the night sky part you're talking about is actually supposed to be clouds, but I thought it would be a nice effect to have the clouds also be revealing the stars. The lighter blue is just the regular sky, but I mean I like you're interpretation too :P

[GabbyTaylor]

Thanks I appreciate the comment! :), to clarify the night sky part you're talking about is actually supposed to be clouds, but I thought it would be a nice effect to have the clouds also be revealing the stars. The lighter blue is just the regular sky, but I mean I like you're interpretation too :P

Ah, ok, that makes sense. You're right, it is a really neat effect!

[yangdaniel027]

next project

[KurtJeremy]

cool stuff you got here! i see much improvement from the first one with your latest post. specifically in the perspective cos i thought in the first painting the perspective is off with the buildings and stuff. anyways in your latest one its pretty clear the composition and the perspective.

i would suggest is keep going with the perspective stuff cos once you master it you can go on with the colors and stuff where its just simply studying how other artists use colors (in my own opinion)

can i ask what school you got in those past 4 years? and would you recommend anything with life drawing? cos unfortunately i dont have the luxury to go to a life drawing class right now. can you suggest anything to practice at the moment in using pencil/charcoals to get good at seeing forms?

hope i dont get too overboard with the questions XD

[yangdaniel027]

Thanks Kurt :)

I'm going to school for animation at the moment (I'd rather not mention the name ><). Unfortunately, while I love watching animated movies, and even enjoy animating, I found that the whole 3d process wasn't exactly for me.

I would recommend tons of life drawing. If you can't attend an actual workshop, you can always just go outside and draw what you see. Going to a zoo and drawing animals is always a bunch of fun too :)

I found a video a while back that was really good at talking about form, unfortunately I tried to find it for you and failed. This is the closest I could get.

http://www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/form-not-shape

Also, what I did a lot when I was trying to nail down form was draw boxes, cylinders, etc in perspective. I would look at objects around me, simplify them down to the most basic forms and draw that. I would also draw objects, and try to draw the form lines that would wrap around those objects. I would practice perspective alongside form, because they go hand and hand.

If you need more resources, I would recommend taking a look at some of the books listed here.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthr...ading-List

[GabbyTaylor]

 would you recommend anything with life drawing? cos unfortunately i dont have the luxury to go to a life drawing class right now. can you suggest anything to practice at the moment in using pencil/charcoals to get good at seeing forms?

Sorry to hijack your thread, Yang, but I had a suggestion for Kurt I wanted to share real quick: for life drawings, if it's not too weird, try asking friends to pose for you (not nude, of course!). If they're impatient, that's ok too-- you'll learn to quickly capture gesture, pose, and general form. Either way, you win!

To get good at seeing forms, my school used to make us use charcoal to draw simple 3D shapes (cubes, spheres, cones, whatever) and render it so it's almost a photograph. Another, more advanced, option is setting up objects and rendering them. Still lifes are boring as hell (for me), but there's no denying they're worth in learning to art. :D

[yangdaniel027]

lols, no worries Gabby :P

Maybe I just need more practice doing buildings, etc...but this one just isn't coming out how I imagined :/ roughly 5-6 hours of work so far.

[crackedskull]

Nice to see you pushing out new work, looking forvard to seeing where you take the last one.