I have been lurking here for a little while. Yesterday I finally got the motivation to learn digital art. My first painting made me realize that I have a long way to go. I am a traditional art junkie. My favorite mediums are ink, pastels, and gouache. I have always found digital art to be very frustrating and challenging. My goals is to learn how to paint digitally and to learn and grow as an artist. The traditional painting and ink drawings are older.
My dream is to become a concept artist/ Illustrator. I want to design fantastic world and terrifying creatures!
I plan on using this sketchbook to keep track of my progress. Feel free to critique my work. Any feedback helps!
Hello there, welcome to Crimson Daggers. Glad to see another traditional artist here, hehe. I would agree with what Gliger said, getting a tighter grasp on perspective should help you. Along with his recommendation, an excellent place to start with perspective is Ernest Norling's book, Perspective Made Easy. It should help teach you some of the basics, particularly concerning the kind of perspective you were going for in those paintings.
Anyway, I must say I do rather like those paintings of yours, they have a nice, slightly raw quality about them that I think would look brilliant if you worked on refining them a bit more. Those ink drawings are nice too, particularly those leopard drawings.
Good start, so be sure to keep posting when you can!
(06-26-2015, 12:02 AM)Gliger Wrote: WELCOME :D
I'd start by learning basic perspective, check out sycra's videos on youtube. ;)
I will definitely check out sycra's videos. Thanks for the advice.
I love your character designs in your sketchbook.
(06-26-2015, 01:01 AM)StardustLarva Wrote: Hello there, welcome to Crimson Daggers. Glad to see another traditional artist here, hehe. I would agree with what Gliger said, getting a tighter grasp on perspective should help you. Along with his recommendation, an excellent place to start with perspective is Ernest Norling's book, Perspective Made Easy. It should help teach you some of the basics, particularly concerning the kind of perspective you were going for in those paintings.
Anyway, I must say I do rather like those paintings of yours, they have a nice, slightly raw quality about them that I think would look brilliant if you worked on refining them a bit more. Those ink drawings are nice too, particularly those leopard drawings.
Good start, so be sure to keep posting when you can!
Thank you soo much for the compliment and the advice.
I am glad that I am not the only traditional artist on here. I read the entire book and it helped a lot. I struggle with perspective a lot. After reading the book where would you suggest I go from here? I am planning on adding more perspective studies to my routine.
Sorry about the quality my sketchbook is too big for the scanner. I don't have any digital art this time. I will next time.
The first couple drawing is perspective practice. The first is a vehicle from imagination. There also some chest and muscle studies. The purple pen drawings are animal gesture drawings and longer studies. The rest are drawings from imagination.
I meant to update this sketchbook earlier. I am going to start posting in the morning or at night.
The thing I am struggling with the most is scheduling and time management. I want to start spending at least 5 hours a day drawing. If anyone has any advice or could share their study schedule I would really appreciate it.
crackedskull- Thank you! I needed to be reminded to have fun with my art. Sometimes I get so determined to improve that I forget to have fun and to remember why I started drawing in the first place. I spent a lot of time at a cafe today just enjoying creating things from my head.
I tried digital painting again. The painting was from a still life in my room. I tried to paint the apple again.I am still not used to digital painting. I have a lot to learn but its a start.
The page in my sketchbook is from imagination. I just sat at a cafe for a couple hours just having fun drawing. The creature near the girls head was supposed to be the girl's personal demon or gremlin. It somehow turned into a Chinese dragon. I have no idea how that happened.
Here is the stuff I worked on yesterday.
I worked on the landscape for an hour. I also did some 2-minute landmark gesture drawings, studies from Hampton book. One point and 2-point perspective studies, and some drawings from imagination.
Any advice anyone can give me on the digital painting? I just used the basic brushes. I am tempted to do a gouache painting because digital painting is frustrating me.
Your gestures are really good, and your perspective is improving by the day! In regards to digital painting, ctrlpaint.com helped me out a great deal, especially the free brushset that's on there. I'd suggest working in pure value before moving onto color, and continuing to work from reference.
vornag- Thank you! Your advice helped a lot. I need to watch more ctrl paint videos. I am going to start digitaly painting in black and white. only doing traditional paintings in color for now.
I did not get a lot done yesterday because I started late. I did some 2-minute landmark gestures and started to add 3d forms. I also did a perspective exercise where you rotate a box in space. I struggled with this exercise, but I did learn an easier way to draw boxes. Hopefully today will be more productive.
Looks good so far. My advice on the subject of digital painting is to first get good at drawing digitally. If you can get a solid drawing, the painting part becomes much, much easier. Focus on line and get a nice and clean block in. Also, take it slow. It's better to go slow and get it right rather than to go fast and get three bad paintings. Make sure you care about each part of your painting (in your last painting it looks like you just wanted to get it done rather than spend the time needed to carefully paint everything)
Some extra advice is to be very opaque when painting. Use high opacity settings and if you need to, change your Wacom settings to make it easier to do a 100% opacity stroke. A lot of people overlook this but I find it very helpful to get that traditional "feel".
Hey man, great studies you're doing here, I agree that you should start painting b&w to get a sense of value and depht you wanna achieve in a piece, coloring can come later.
Tristan Berndt- I did rush that last painting out of frustration. I usually am a slow painter and I have been rushing when I paint digitally. I have been using pen pressure. I am going to start painting more opaque I didn't think about that until you mentioned it. I am going to spend more time on my studies because I feel I have been rushing. I am going to work on my drawing digitaly. I decided to start drawing gesture digital for now. Thank you soo much for the advice it helped a lot. Also, your sketchbook is amazing. I can't wait to see more.
ShinOkami- Thank you! The bad thing about digital painting is I feel confident using it traditional, but I am struggling using color digitally. My next digital painting will be in black and white.
I didn't post yesterday because I felt I should have done more anatomy studies. Luckily I made up for it yesterday by spending way too long drawing the back and chest muscles. I am going to start timing myself doing studies. I also started drawing my gesture digitally. I don't post these gestures usually because I consider it warm up for drawing. My goal today is to draw entire figure and do more muscle studies.
I was away on a trip so I did not get the chance to update my sketchbook or draw a lot.
I feel like I am spending too long on studies and not doing enough figures from imagination and full figures. I am going to work on that today and do a couple of these studies traditional and digital. I have been struggling with my schedule. I need to have purposeful practice with a time limit. I usually don't focus on time. I am getting close to finishing my sketchbook.
crackedskull- Thank you! I love hampton book and I feel I am learning alot.
Vorag- glad to be back! Even though it feel like I am slowly getting back into the drawing habbit. I am more used to drawing animals than humans so I am trying to learn as much as I can about human anatomy before I go back to school.
I didn't do much yesterday. I worked on proko's robo bean approach and anatomy. These sketches are from Monday. I am writing out my plan of attack here because I am still fine tuning my schedule and it helps to write it down. You can skip it if you want because it more for me and to keep me on track.
I am going to fill 5-10 pages of human anatomy in my sketch book a day. I feel this works better for me than to set a time limit. I am going to count 1 long study( 1 hour or more ) as 5 pages and a study for 30 to 45 as 2.5 pages. I need to do more still lifes and color studies.
Gestures are looking good. While I'm still starting out on color, working from reference helped me out a great deal as a guideline for color choice. Pushing their underlying values helps to get a more finished look, too.
vornag-It is always hard to see your own improvement. I need to hear that thank you!.
I used reference, but the colors turned out weird. Thanks for the advice. I will focus on the underlying values next time.
I did not get much done since the last time. I did work on hand gestures, a wip still life painting I might go back to, and some drawing from imagination. I missed working in ink.
