The Velvet Revolvers
Book's Weekly Review:

This past week has been insane in all areas of my life, but despite this time of transformation and metamorphosis of values and behaviour, I've actually not been doing too badly.

I still managed to complete my Deathline goals, and start a new Deathline centering around perspective, and I've been watching quite a few Perspective lectures.

This coming week, I hope to be more proactive in terms of drawings.  I plan to primarily be working on my perspective goals, but I will also probably allow myself to break out of that mold and do some gestures and possibly value/colour studies.  My grayscale values in particular are fairly strong, so I want to use that and do grayscale study of a portrait/figure, and then do the same study in colour.

Also going to take tips people have given me in sketchbook and on the Revolvers' group in order to make better use of my studies going into them.  

All in all, I have a lot of time off this week, so I expect it will be very productive and a big step up from last week!  Grin Thumbs_up

Sketchblag

 Join our Study Group: The Velvet Revolvers!  Let's work hard together!
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Come on folks! Look alive At least!

Here is today's stuff. This day's still life was so shit man... I was bummed, You know whats bloody hard, is getting the values right on oils, i think that's the hardest. I think imma join that New Masters Academy, to check their painting vids.

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Hey mind if I start posting some stuff here as well?

Jesu:I think the apple looks pretty decent honestly, but whats the thing next to it? has a weird highlight on it but i can't figure out what it is.

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Sorry for the bad quality, these were done on a3 paper and the best scanner I have is a4

Picture of snake i did, took me a few hours, trying to get into a habit of drawing from imagination(though i used some ref for this) everyday for an hour or so, I study a shiton but my stuff from imagination is terrible and it turned me off doing it for a while.


Some anatomy studies the ones labeled M were from memory after the copys.




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Hey Trigger! come on Right in! The shit next to the apple was a little bowl thing. But by that point my brain was fried, and I just stopped. It wasn't working haha, the values were all fucked up all over.

Nice work trigger, I recommed you study figures, but simplify them into basic shapes. If you check previews posts in this thread, you'll see that i linked a video of drawing mannequins for figurative studies. I recommend you to do those as a part of your study regime. Watch out for proportions too.

And the rest of you lot... Whats up with you? No posts today? Book? Olooriel? Dont you DAAAREEE disssapear .. lol.

Today was low on output for me. I spent most of the day researching shit about oil painting.. I think im going through a face.. of oil painting obsession. Cant help it, its the priority now, it will probably be for a couple months.

Here is what i did today.
[Image: 21023058723_6e9b536d3b_c.jpg]

And another shitty apple... god is it bad. There is a huge frustration that happens when you know you can do it 100 times better in digital, but in traditional that's as good as you get... haha.
Love this struggle though...

[Image: 21456143900_7eaf5034b8_c.jpg]

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@Jeso
Your paintings are improving a lot with the amount of painting you're doing!
Your still lives and copies look much better than your imaginative work, though. I'm thinking you're probably copying shapes and colors more than you are light physics and theory... to buff up on practical light physics, I absolutely suggest two resources:
Light for the Artist by Ted Seth Jacobs
and
Practical Light and Color for the Artist with Jeremy Vickery by Gnomon. (This is expensive, you can find it online if you're uh, not the most ethical....)

Both of these are very easy to understand books that cover everything you need to know about light physics as an artist, they really help to solidify why colors show up as they do in different situations. The Gnomon video especially is great, I like them both in combination.

The other thing is paying attention to edges - almost all of your edges seem to get the same treatment. It is a painterly style, but to a degree the paintings begin to feel muddled and lacking some intention. I would like to see your paintings with some nice crisp edges on the outside of forms, and to differentiate cast and form shadows!

@Trigger
Welcome to the group!!

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(09-23-2015, 03:52 PM)Vicianus Wrote: [Image: 0vPNOod.jpg]
Picking up these again!
OH MY GOD WRESTLING DIVAS.... and blue collar boys <333 mmmmmmmm *O*

Master study -
[Image: luLxSSem.jpg]

gesture/expression -
[Image: xEH6vo9m.jpg]
[Image: abR4lTVm.jpg]
(I ended up mostly watching Kung Fu Panda 2 instead of drawing it....)

Animal Studies for Creature Design -
[Image: c2X6VQ6m.jpg]

Everything but the central figure here is imaginative figure -
[Image: hbfiBqNl.jpg]

It's not perfect, but I'm getting much closer to the result that I want!!
Also I'm feeling MUCH more comfortable drawing boys!! After I started drawing some body types that are more "my speed" I got way more into it.

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(09-23-2015, 04:23 PM)Vicianus Wrote: @Jeso

Your still lives and copies look much better than your imaginative work, though.
You know what, I have always gotten this.. always..  It drives me nuts, cause i dont even know why, That's the exact same thing People used to write on my CA.org sketchbook thread 4 years ago. I have definitely improved my imaginative work since then, But something still lingers... Maybe it is what you said, I will check those resources out and get to the bottom of this bs haha. Thanks for the critique Vici, I really needed some sort of feedback on that.

You figures are improving Vici! those divas and dudes with their dicks hanging out... haha they coming out great :p How much of that is from imagination?

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Hey all decided to throw my hat in the ring here too!
Was chatting on the stream with Jose and both decided to go through Michael Hamptons course/book and stick to a weekly schedule. First week is 100 gesture drawings so stretching that out for the week, here what i've done so far from 1 min to 5mins mostly from youtube and added a couple of scribbly drawing from the imagination too.

Jose where are you reveal yourself :P





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WELCOME RICHIE! To the VELVET REVOLVERRRRAASARSRASRASRASR!!

Jose goes by Lordminkx, Hopefully he'll post soon >: )

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Richie: Welcome to TVR!  Haha.  Your figures look great-- Glad to see you're starting to construct the figure from the inside out!  Grin


Here's my progress with the Environment mentorship (I almost wrote Enlightenment...  I'm guessing this is foreshadowing? Wink)


Attached Files Image(s)




Sketchblag

 Join our Study Group: The Velvet Revolvers!  Let's work hard together!
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I’m still alive! It takes me so much time to post.

@Triggerpigking Welcome and good drawings man! Good to see you working from ref and then trying to do from memory.

@Vicianus Cool figures. Looking forward to see more stuff coming.

@Richie Hey Rich, I’m here haha. Cool gestures, Neither you nor me do what Hampton says I think that’s good, taking knowledge from others and then do it our way keeping in mind the knowledge.

@Jeso Yep posting right now Xd You are improving in your oils paintings :D

@Bookend Aww so jealous you’ve already started with Enviro assigm haha It looks so much fun, I’ll do some today and post them tomorrow. Good stuff man.

Well some gestures.. I think you can’t barely see them, try to zoom in clicking on them to see something xD
[Image: EtTRNNu.png][Image: wkLbwhm.png][Image: yT3sn8M.png][Image: eimbABY.jpg]

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(09-23-2015, 08:03 PM)Jeso Wrote: You know what, I have always gotten this.. always.. It drives me nuts, cause i dont even know why, That's the exact same thing People used to write on my CA.org sketchbook thread 4 years ago. I have definitely improved my imaginative work since then, But something still lingers... Maybe it is what you said, I will check those resources out and get to the bottom of this bs haha. Thanks for the critique Vici, I really needed some sort of feedback on that.

You figures are improving Vici! those divas and dudes with their dicks hanging out... haha they coming out great :p How much of that is from imagination?

Thank you! n_n
For the stuff I'm doing digitally - very little of it is from imagination. Sometimes I find a photo I like but part of the feet is cut off by the photographer, a logo, etc. and I'll try and make it reasonably accurate using what I know. :O Other than that though, I'm always using a photo. I want to practice drawing things in a way that will look more accurate, so I'm trying to draw only using tools that I could feasibly use from my head later on/practice different treatments I could use based on something that happens in real life... does that answer your question?

I hope those resources help you out! I mean, there are some really definitive things that are missing in your imaginative work that makes it seem like you haven't studied it enough - like certain material treatments, your reflected light seems more like a second light blob than a secondary light wash... with skin and material like is on spider man's mask, you get a saturation in the core shadow caused by sub-surface scattering... your imaginative color tends to lack that saturated "pop," and you tend to just go straight to a darker and less saturated version of the same colors in the shadow which makes it dull and lifeless, versus using tried-and-true light/color logic. That book/video should cover everything you would ever need to think about, but since you also seem a little confused about why your work gets that reaction, I wanted to maybe point out some of the specifics. (Overall, it just lacks a "trueness" or authenticity to how light works.) I would definitely just study up on light physics/theory, and then do some quick material ball studies, and that will probably help a lot!

@LordMinx
Welcome back!
Nice volume of work on those gestures.
You seem to be using a lot of extra lines when you draw your figures, giving you that scratchy/hairy effect... especially in fast drawings, every extra line you make is time wasted, and these lines don't seem to be helping you find accuracy of form, either. I would like to see you do more concentrated gesture studies, using mannequin forms to depict the major volumes (Head, rib cage, and pelvis at least)

Something like this:
[Image: 5ceb149fcc7e9cdc74dd60fb0c79f0eb.jpg]

While you will improve a bit just through sheer pencil mileage and from looking at photos of people, with a lack of focus and some tools you can use to think about how to construct a figure, how to maintain forms, etc. exercises like these become largely (in my opinion) a waste of time.

Keep up the hard work!

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Jeso:Cheers man, I actually have been simplifying the figure alot actually, just was'nt noticeable there as I was erasing all the guide lines, btw do you still do daily streams at all? checked at the time you put on the front page but you were'nt online(slacker :P), oh yeah and i'll check them links out you mentioned.

Richie:Welcome man!, micheal hampton is great, helped me more then any other anatomy book.

Lordminx:thanks for the welcome and yeah my short and long term memory is terrible with this stuff XD, defineitly worth studying. Also I agree with Vicanius about the lines, the later ones look a bit smoother but the 1min and 2min ones have alot of scratchy lines, I had the same problem with gestures lol was wrecking my brain trying to figure out what to do with the time i had left and even how long I had left, i'd scratch out the entire figure and relize I had like 2 mins left XD.
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Something from imagination, started off as something completely different then I made it into fanart of margeret from no more heroes, http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/orig...oncept.jpg
might try and go off doign fanart for a while actually, love doing it but I need to try and make some original ideas and I don't usually do that, plus in the case like this drawing the costume just becomes too easy and tedious as it's already planned out(though trying to shift perspective was a good challenge).


And heres some stickmen turned into construction drawings, I followed a tutorial by Jazza, not usually a fan of his work but I liked the idea of drawing the poses as stickmen first to simplify them and then constructing them(though I doubt this'd work for more harder poses like foreshortened ones).


Attached Files Image(s)




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(09-24-2015, 11:39 AM)Triggerpigking Wrote: Jeso:Cheers man, I actually have been simplifying the figure alot actually, just was'nt noticeable there as I was erasing all the guide lines, btw do you still do daily streams at all? checked at the time you put on the front page but you were'nt online(slacker :P), oh yeah and i'll check them links out you mentioned.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU   you got me.... lol Last night i suddenly woke up at 3 am... cause you know... bodily functions.. and Afterwards i just couldn't get myself to sleep for the life of me. I ended up going to bed like at 7 am, woke up at noon, so...   BUT! tomorrow, for sure. Stream at 11 am CDT
Also here is the shit from today. The daily still life, and The dwarf I've been working on.
[Image: 21045846924_af6b360f19_c.jpg]
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Lordminkx:  Good work buddy!  Figures are looking good!  Remember to figure out where you're gonna place your lines before you place 'em.

Triggerpigking: Great stuff!  Have you thought of constructing the figure from the inside out?  Grin  Place the pelvis angles and stuff?   Looks like you're starting to, and it strengthens the integrity of the figure really nice.  Keep it up! Thumbs_up

Jeso:  Dwarf is loooking soooo awesoomme..  Is it from imagination?  It's just awesome man.  You could totally 'folio that! Grin  Thumbs_up  Awesome oil study.  Really great use of values.

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Annnd here's my assignment from the environment mentorship, annnd a portrait colour study. Grin


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Sketchblag

 Join our Study Group: The Velvet Revolvers!  Let's work hard together!
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More stuff!

@Vicianus Yeah I see what you mean, I'll keep it on mind for the next gestures. About using mannequins..well I don't feel confortable using them.. Thanks for the tips :D

@Triggerpigking I know haha the first ones looks so hairy and shitty because of the brush (i wanna think that xD) Btw the stickmen turned out quite nice! You are improving so fast! Keep working ;)

@Jeso Wowow Jeso your dwarf looks amazing I belive it's from imagination if so, more awesome. Although the axe (Or whatever it is) looks a bit weird for me, probably because of the perspective. But don't listen to me.. haha. 
About your oil paint, it looks nice! Just try to work the edges avoiding to blend with the background. i've never try oils so I don't know if what I'm saying is easy to do..

@Bookend The mentorship assigment is lookig so good I envy your 3/4/5 values haha I lost count of the values I was using in mine lol. And your face is looking amazing, looking forward to see how that turn out at ther end. I see improvent, Trust me.

So yeah a bunch of gestures...
[Image: DgPo2zX.png][Image: 7tpNExk.png][Image: E7Xmh2i.png]

And a few of notans and the other assigment. I ruined it and I did more values that it should but who cares? :D [Image: nPUlZo5.jpg]

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Jeso:Nice work on that dwarf dude, whats the weapon gonna be though?, is that just a placeholder or is it something else.

Bookend:Yeah generally i'm trying to set the head down first, find the neck then roughly put down the pelvis and shoulder angles before building.

Lordmink:nice, gestures are improving since last post already, some of them still look a bit scratchy but it's improving.

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Going to a friends tommorow for a few days so not gonna be able to update again till maybe sunday or monday(Watching the next episode of dr who, anyone here watch it?)

Anyway here's me messing around with Sycra's twisting forms method, I was'nt very focused today, kept having to fight the urge to go play mgs5 more XD so these are'nt that great and i'm not sure what I think of the overal method, but it does appear to work well on the reffed drawings even the ones that are'nt really twisting so i'm not sure if it's simply a lack of anatomical knowledge thats holding me back from using it well in imagination drawings.
reffed ones


some from imagination


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Hey Guys, The dwarf is from imagination yes, Its supposed to be my next portfolio piece. The axe looking thing is that.. an axe looking thing.. haha. Its gonna be rendered as though is a sharp axe like thing he can whack opponents with.
Here is today's shits. Studies from the stream, and mega painful 4hr session still life, which i haven't finished.. cause.. fuck it im tired and its 1 am.

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(09-23-2015, 10:21 PM)Bookend Wrote: Richie: Welcome to TVR!  Haha.  Your figures look great-- Glad to see you're starting to construct the figure from the inside out!  Grin


Here's my progress with the Environment mentorship (I almost wrote Enlightenment...  I'm guessing this is foreshadowing? Wink)

Hey Book, About your progress on the Ammits class thing. I really dig the black and white mass studies, But there is a major fault happening on the value studies you've made. You gotta separate your scenes on 3 chunks of space. Back ground, middle ground and fore ground. Each of these have their respective value range division. In your comps, there is usually only 2 value groups, foreground and middle ground. Your value range is all mixed up between back ground and middle groun is the same range. So, you can lower the background value range to add depth to the comps. '

Keep em coming.


JOSE- Watch the values budy, you'r value issue is a tad different from Book, There is only the one value study you did of that landscape black and white. You have blobs of black all over the thing, regardless of back ground or foreground. You cant have such dark values in the back, its gonna flatten things out. Just pay attention to the values in the squarish mountain or whatever the heck it is in the middle ground. There is no black in that, but yours is ridden with blacks. So just watch out for values.

Triggerpicking-

Buddy that's some good practice right there. Structural mannequin like studies, that's gonna help you a ton down the line.

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Hey guys! No Posts today!!! O: Shame on you guys... :' (

Here is my shit from today.. wasnt much, but fuck it.

[Image: 21532415130_ed4abe4ac8_c.jpg]

FINISHED that stupid still life i was doing before... That whiskey bottle looks so shit lol.
[Image: 21099338143_94ace80dc9_c.jpg]

And a progress shot of the Dwarf
[Image: 21694280316_db5e764ec9_c.jpg]

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@Jeso
Nice to see edge variety in the still life!!!
Nice metallic feel on the dwarf.
Nice foreshortening, construction, proportion and active poses on those figures!! (Where are you reffing from? :O I'm about to start more interesting poses)
Sick colors on that tennis portrait.

Hmmm. I hate to crit the foundations on something you've sunk so much time into, but the gesture to the dwarf is really lacking. I think you probably noticed that your imaginative figures can get really stiff and that's why you're doing such dynamic figure studies? :O
Anyway, I think it's mostly a storytelling thing - Like he's shaking his fist towards some unseen enemy off in the distance, but his entire body is shifted flatly more frontally from the torso, to the pelvis, to the back leg and hand. It gets that kind of ancient Egyptian feel where they always drew certain parts of the body forward/profile to show it at it's most "true" pictoral state. Anyway, definitely something to think about in future pieces, which it looks like you're probably doing anyway.

Also the Axe... esp because you haven't really rendered it yet; the fact that it isn't totally clear that it's axe-like or even weapon-like is problematic. It feels really basic compared to the dwarf, like they don't quite belong together. It kind of looks like a triangular math straightedge you use in middle school glued to a stick.
One of the big problems with the axe design is simply that it isn't enough - it doesn't look like a finished weapon design. At the very least, you need to clarify the attachments of the metal to the stick at the top.Right now it doesn't look like they go together at all - a crude craftsman might secure the metal to the stick by just wrapping and re-wrapping leather around the connections several times. You could add cool doohickeys hanging from that part.
He looks like he's from a more refine society, though, so really the metal should be more clearly fitted to go around a pole. It needs to have some sort of crafted connection meant to go around that pole. Also - I'm just assuming the stick is meant to be round because of the rendering on the hand, but you have a lot of flattening elements where you should have ellipses, especially against the triangle and at the bottom of the stick, but also where the leather wraps go around. Because of the current construction of the weapon, the base of the weapon appears to be a flimsier yardstick type piece of wood.

Here's a quick paintover of some notes on the dwarf -
[Image: 5F6nHbSm.jpg]

Just some quick things - I like the "triangle" theme, but I think you could reinforce it some more. Some good places to do that might be engraving the triangle on some of the metal, especially on the hand greaves (? sorry, I don't really know armor teminology), adding a design to the clothing... But I think an especially great place to do it would be his hair. It's already somewhat triangular in shape, but right now it's kind of just random, haphazard. It's fine, but it doesn't help the design. If you created a triangle-ish shape from the corners of his hair and beard, it will enhance the feeling by a lot.

You can do whatever you want with the weapon, but these are just the quick things I thought of:
- I imagine using an equilateral triangle for a blade would be like constantly JUST missing your mark... curved blades that are wider on the side have a better range, and add some "variety" to the design of the weapon. It will also enhance the axe feel.
+ if you keep the equilateral triangle in the middle, it keeps that same design congruence!
- If you add a tiny diamond on the top, he could use it as just a stabby thing in closer range; not super useful, but a helpful addition to a weapon.
- You have leather grips at the bottom of the weapon... so I assume he swings this two handed (also because it's huge) but in any case, you'll get a nice design feel if you also add leather grips at the top where his second hand will tend to grab the weapon.
- This weapon is really top heavy, and in order to swing it properly, you're going to need some kind of counterweight at the bottom of the weapon. Otherwise it just feels pretty impractical.

Anyway, nice work! These are just some of the things that came to mind.

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