Broadway's Sketchbook

[Broadway]

Traveling today... quick portrait from ref. Again has lots of structural problems but one more bad portrait out of the way I guess.

[Bookend]

Hey, nice work! Glad to hear that you're open to trying new things to get better. Just do it at your own pace and discover what works for you.

Just keep pushing that envelope, and eventually, money will fall out, haha.

[Bookend]

Cool photobashing man! Looks good. It's always fun to get out of our comfort zones and try something new. Now keep going!

[Vornag]

Bash looks great, but it's a bit too big to do the character justice. He melds in with the environment way too much, which is probably the idea of clothing like that, but it doesn't really showcase the character all that well.

Loving your early paintings, though, especially the magma/volcano/don'treallyknowthestorybutit'ssupercool.

[Bookend]

I agree with Vornag-- The environment is blending in with your character. I think maybe it's the lighting-- If you were to make it at night, and have the character lighted more than the background somehow (moonlight?) then maybe it'd pop more? I dunno, but it still looks great! You're great with environments, man.

And keep working at your figures! You're improving a lot.

[Bookend]

Hey, that dust cloud isn't actually a bad idea-- Maybe spread it over the tree a bit and make it look like a dervish. Haha. Just a thought-- But, it does make it read a lot better. Good call, even if it was a quick and dirty fix.

Nice body on that lay-day. You're definitely thinking of poses the right way, I think, but also try to think about which leg the weight is being distributed on. I know you noted that it was a weight-bearing hip, so maybe that's a minor distinction, I don't know. For gestures, it may benefit to emphasize the weight-bearing leg more for the dynamics of it. I'm not sure, just airing out some thoughts, haha.

Keep going! You're doing great!

[ZombieChinchilla]

For the character in the painting, I don't know much about photo-bashing, so my crits are from a painting perspective. But, I think focusing on how you present the middle, fore, and background would benefit the piece. Try to lighten the background some to add atmospheric perspective, and maybe blur the mountains. I think some foreground elements would help, too, like having a tree in the corner or adding some dark grass.

Ctrl+Paint has a great series of videos all about composition, and he goes over all this in one of them, but I can't remember which one, hahaha. It's the fourth collections here: http://www.ctrlpaint.com/library/

Keep going, dude!

[ZombieChinchilla]

So I did a very quick and dirty paintover to emphasize what I was trying to say, hope it's okay.

I opened it in photoshop, made it greyscale to get a better idea of the values, and used the color dodge and burn tools to quickly change some values. I darkened around the bottom of the image, lightened and blurred the mountains and trees, and then added a second tree on the right.



It's pretty messy and the values could be refined a lot more, but that's the basic idea. Again, this is all from a painting perspective so photo-bashing may be different. When making environments focus on making basic shapes instead of details. The mountains are one, the fields are another, then the trees, the ground the character is standing on, and finally the foreground elements. Each have a different value.

Hope this helps!

[Broadway]

@Bookend: Thanks man! My intent for the "dust cloud" wasn't technically for it to be a cloud, although that is how it turned out, haha. The plan was just to bump down the contrast in the BG behind the character... but it definitely ended up looking like dust lol. I guess I should have spent more time preserving the details behind the char while just clamping the value range... instead of using Mr. Radial Gradient Tool and being lazy :)

You're 100% right about emphasizing that hip tilt more - the videos I've been following always say the same thing. I'll try to keep that in mind going forward!

@ZombieChinchilla: THANK YOU for the paintover! Paintovers are ALWAYS welcome. I've seen a bunch of Ctrl+paint stuff before, that guy is the bee's knees. Although I don't know if I've seen the ep you're thinking of... As for the painting vs. photobash thing, not that I know the first thing about photobashing (this was my first one), but in theory the principles should be the same between painting and photo stuff. So no worries there. I definitely agree that the FG/MG/BG separation is lacking. Your suggestions are on point, especially the extra FG tree and bumping up the atmospheric perspective on the mountains. Definitely helps push things forward/back more! I don't know if I will go back to this piece at the moment but if I do later, I will incorporate your suggestions! And please feel free to throw down paintovers at any time :)

I think I kind of just screwed up the BG by making it with the character not in the frame and then trying to insert him... The left tree is sized such that the char can't really be that big in the frame without the scale of that tree looking broken... so lesson learned, if I do a BG after the fact, plan it carefully around the character :P

Anyhow, today's study was head unit measurement... next up is that neat-o cranial unit measurement which I think I will like more. But, figured I might as well take a look at this system, too.

[Broadway]

Today started attempting some kind-of-clean lines on the girl warrior... but I think I've already messed up the angle of the head so I'll need to redo that part. On the plus side, added some Roman single-shoulder armor to the visual library - turns out a single strap from shoulder to waist probably wouldn't hold a shoulder pad on all that well :)

Also, man do I have NO idea what's going on with hands. 

[Broadway]

Trying to redo the head and get the construction right... I think I need to do a bunch of head studies and draw in the planes properly.

[Broadway]

Getting there slowly but surely...

Also I recommend looking up "baldric", tons of sweet belt/buckle/greeble details
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=baldric

[Broadway]

Figured it would be a good idea to do some studies of the sorts of stuff that will appear in this character... so, pants!

[Broadway]

Didn't post yesterday because I started on this one and then BSODed and lost like 30 min work and had to throw a small temper tantrum.

Anyway, i liked the new CHOW prompt ("Rusalka") so I started a sketch... dunno if I will actually finish it out, but fun to mess around a bit. Thinking about having 2 guys or maybe 1 guy, 1 horse in the FG... horse from that perspective will be difficult though :)

[Bookend]

waawww, amaaazing concept sketch for the Rusalka, man. You've gotta finish this one! It's so dynamic and fun!

[Punk-A-Cat]

Oh yeah, you /gotta/ finish this, looks wicked!

[Broadway]

@Bookend: Thanks man! And great prompt BTW, it's a perfect - evocative but nice and open ended too!
@Punk: Much apprectiated!

So I decided to keep going with this for this week and if I feel like I got far enough by the weekend I'll post in the CHOW thread... 

Today though, not going totally well - decided to do a study for the rusalka. I wanted to give her a floaty white dress and have that and her hair floating around like she was underwater (even though she's floating in the air... spoooooooky ghooooosts....). So I was gonna do a study of a girl underwater... but then got distracted by the face, which is not what I was supposed to be studying anyway. So the face didn't turn out well, AND I didn't really get a ton of information about the dress or the hair :(. I do think I -hopefully- figured out the dress well enough to be able to do it in the CHOW... we'll see though :)

[Bookend]

Okay, the awesome, great thing about this study, is that you nailed the general size and shape of the hair. And, I mean, the colours are all there, you just need to apply them, so you've got the work mostly done on the hair, really. It's just down to the tediousness of the brushstrokes, which isn't really necessarily what you need to do if this is just to pin down the values and shapes.

I think I see where you got caught up on the face/head, though. It's not that important, since that wasn't the point of the study, but I think it's because you needed to bring the jaw out more. If you were interested in nailing values of the face, you could take note of the line between her lips and the pupils of her eyes (Pretty close to black).

But, yeah-- this was a good study, man. I think it may really help when you take Rusalka to colour. It may be really interesting to take more note of the fabric in the water, because I think that hair tends to act a lot like fabric in the water, and you could probably play that off of each other for a neat, ethereal technique.

ANYWAY, the long and short of it is: You rock. So keep going! I really can't wait to see what you accomplish with this CHOW. I think yours might be the best preliminary sketch I've seen so far.

Don't forget to post your WIPs in the WIP thread!

[Broadway]

@Bookend: Thanks, you're totally right on all counts! I though about going back to the study to try and fix the face (bad idea, would be a waste of time at this point but I don't like things being "wrong" lol) but since it was a drawing error, i'd basically have to start over again... gross :). But, you're right, it's already helping me with colors. And that's a great point about "blending" the similar hair/dress shapes, I may try that and see if it gives a better ethereal/ghostly quality once this is a bit further along...

Today, starting with color! And trying to make the girl a little more gaunt and ghost-like. Totally color picked from my study so it has already served a purpose :P

[crackedskull]

Cool lighting scheme in the Rusalka illustration, waiting for the finished one :)