Broadway's Sketchbook

[Broadway]

Hey guys, I'm new here! Just a dude trying to get better at concept art. I've been drawing/painting for a while but lately I've been realizing that I haven't been taking it as seriously as I need to in order to reach the level of quality that I want. So, let's change that! 

Critiques/paintovers/complaints/yelling/threats/mayhem/etc appreciated! Please tell me how I suck and how to fix it.

For the first post I'll do a dump of some of the stuff I've been doing the past month. First, anatomy studies (definitely a weak point for me), then life drawing, then some sketchy WIPs that I might update in the coming weeks. 


STUDIES












LIFE DRAWING









SKETCHES/WIPS









My current goal is to do some kind of study or some work on a personal piece every day so...
New updates daily! That's the plan anyway!

[insbox]

welcome, dude your stuffs are really cool. not sure if its your style but some of your drawing have a lot lines, which make me hard to see. but these are really awesome man. looking forward for more of your awesome stuffs.

[Broadway]

Hey insbox, thanks man! You are definitely right about the lines, I tend to scribble way too much. I'm trying to remember to commit to my lines while I do studies, but the habit is really ingrained :/... In some of the pelvis 
drawings from today I might have managed to reduce scribbling by like 10%, lol :)

Here's today's study page, spine and pelvis! I've been going through this Proko channel on YouTube: 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...QmZJH4__Zv



More tomorrow!

[Broadway]

For today's study time... MOAR PELVIS

[Broadway]

Yet more pelvis... now simplified in perspective.

Oddly enough I am having a tough time drawing the right tapered cylinder shape :/ And drawing ellipses within bounding rectangles is something I don't really have muscle memory for, need to fill up a page with those at some point I guess...

[Othrandir]

Wonderful studies! I like your paintings as well. Looking forward to seeing more :)

[RottenPocket]

You definitely do more anatomical studies than I do, and I like how you focus more on the curves of the skin and fatty tissue rather than block in the planes like so many instructors do. The curve of the eyes appears very much like renaissance artist's.

[Broadway]

@Othrandir: Thank you! More will be coming daily... gotta keep that streak alive!

@RottenPocket: Thanks! I've been doing a lot of anatomy for the past month, but then, I have done barely any for the 5 years before that so I need to catch up :). I'm afraid I'm probably leaving the planes out just because I don't know where they are, haha. In fact, that's definitely happening in some of today's sketches. Hopefully after I've gone through enough material, I'll be able to understand all the forms instead of just "faking it"...

Today's topic is rib cage. More rib cage tomorrow probably...

[Broadway]

More ribcage. Starting to touch on a bunch of muscle connections and stuff that I don't understand at all... which is good, that means I will soon understand them, I hope.

Also, man, ribs are the most irritating thing ever to draw.

[Broadway]

Started a value study as a quick change of pace. No color picking from the ref, trying to eyeball values. Definitely not very happy with this one, crits/pointers welcome. It's probably just because I don't understand facial anatomy enough, but I have mega trouble with likenesses...

Ha, I'm already seeing so many errors in this one. Welp, 1 crap painting out of the tube, 1 step closer to the good paintings right?

[Broadway]

Alright Edmure you bastard... round 2...

Got frustrated with the face so focused on it for a bit. I ended up cheating a couple times with some vertical/horizontal guides to help me reposition the features and make sure they landed on the right spot on the face. Takeaway: Apparently I tend to make eyes way too wide, I need to remember the visible eyeball is way smaller than the socket... Still not really satisfied with this but I think I will classify it ABANDONED and go back to anatomy tomorrow.

[Rhasdra]

Oh man! Awesome studies! You're doing pretty well

I just would like to see more personal stuff of yours... I don't know, you got some really kickass paintings there and also some really weird ones. Maybe with more of them we can give you better advice.

The only thing I have to say now is... Keep it up! You're working hard at the right things, and it's clearly working.

[Broadway]

Hey thanks Rhasdra!

Unfortunately I haven't done a lot of personal stuff over the past couple years. That's partly why I want to get more serious now. I didn't want to directly post a lot of old stuff in here because I didn't want to have people waste their time critiquing things from years ago. But if you want to check out some of that stuff:

The last piece I really finished was about a year ago (ugh... so long), promotional piece for a game I am working on:




And, there's a lot more of my (even older) paintings on my site http://www.john-broadway.com

Not to say I wouldn't appreciate crits on that stuff, I just thought it would be more helpful to get feedback on more up-to-the-minute work. I'll be working more on personal stuff, hopefully finishing some of the WIPs from the beginning of the thread, later this month.

Anyway, here's today's study... trying to combine all this spine/ribcage/pelvis stuff. Made some kind of egregious mistakes but I guess now I know how to be less dumb going forward :)

[Broadway]

Still plugging along... 

Not pleased with these. Looking at them now, a central theme is that I'm making the lower (lumbar, right?) section of the spine too long. Also I don't think my pelvis-to-ribcage proportions are good. Might try just doing a normal drawing and then drawing the skeleton "inside" it next time.

[Broadway]

Nothing impressive today... trying figure out designs for the underwater painting from my first post (the "underwater airport"). Thinking the ship will take shapes from the Osprey aircraft. It's supposed to be a passenger ship that people board underwater... at first I was thinking it would rise up out of the water and fly, but I'm thinking now maybe the top should just have solar panels or something on it and it just moves around half-submerged... dunno. I'm gonna try to think these designs through and finish out this painting in the coming weeks between studies so we'll see where this goes :)

[Broadway]

Tiny update today as I'm short on time. Just some quick poses from photos.

I kind of feel like the more I try to think about the skeleton and accurate construction as opposed to just drawing flat shapes, the worse I get at this, lol. Hoping that I'll hit some kind of saturation point and my quality will jump up.

[Broadway]

Trying for a quick landscape sort-of study with some characters thrown in. Lots left to learn before I can properly execute something like this...

[Aumes]

Hey, nice job with your studies. The technical side of drawing might seem daunting but it's how you improve visual memory. Repetition is key. I see improvement in your construction. Maybe you could try to use shapes too (as cylinders, boxes, etc) in the construction of a body, that might help.

Cheers

[Broadway]

Hey thanks Aumes! Yeah, I have been trying to hit both those things (repetition + drawing forms in 3d) but I guess I just need MOAR HOURS before it all clicks... I may do some generic perspective studies too, to make sure that I have that on lock when it comes to perspectiv-izing the more complex forms of the body.

Went back to this painting for some reason... not really a study at this point haha. I probably won't mess with it anymore, back to anatomy next time. Looks like the compression jacked with the values a bit... but it's not like it was incredible beforehand or anything so whatever :)

[Bookend]

Great work! I love to see lots of variation in studies, and you've definitely got that.

I'm looking forward to seeing you pushing a piece to the end. It's hard, but worth it... I myself have only really been able to push studies to the end, and even that has been taxing, haha.

I really like your landscapes-- There is something really interesting about them. Kind of like a mosaic.