The Velvet Revolvers

[Jeso]

Hey book! glad you remembered the weekly review, I think last sunday all of us forgot about it lol.

WEEKLY REVIEW

So, This past week I finished my Dwarf piece, which is good, I just need one more portfolio piece to feel ready to apply to a couple RPG companies I've been planning to apply too. Also my obsession with oils has just grown and grown. I might start 'trying' to produce portfolio pieces in oils instead of digital following the same genre. I know magic the gather LOVES to hire traditional artist for their game, If i could pull that off, I could potentially double my earnings since I could sell originals at that point for twice the commission rate payed by wizards. So Everything is moving a long nicely. I do think that I could be working more though, there are days where I'm so stressed and tired that I let that feeling just get the best of my and i will just lay down and watch the walking dead... This shouldn't happen. Clock is always ticking and I need to push through those feelings of laziness.

[Richie]

Thats a good point Jeso, Pete Mohrbacher and the one fantastic week crew are always on about these multiple streams of revenue. I think it's every artist's dream to have their own stories out there.

Ahh i've been super lazy with consistently posting these up! But here's my second week of the Michael Hampton book.
Next week is heads study. Ok next week try to post at least every other day and give feedback!

In order of execution:

[Lordminkx]

Weekly review

Well this week I was working on anatomy structure, inktober and amit mentorship. I tried my best but I couldn't finish all the anatomy work just 12/25 but quality over quantity, right? Hope to do better this week with heads. 

So..  

Inktober sketches..  

And week 2 of amit mentorship so far.. It's very moddy arg and perspective in the first one is all wrong.. Gonna work more to get something valuable... 

[Jeso]

RICHIE-  Boy those structural studies are looking sweet! All that stuff is realllly gonna pay off in the future when you try your go at a portfolio piece! You are really getting better at nailing the pose at its core!

JOSE- Nice ink drawings bro,  Loving the Frazzeta study one!  The mentorship stuff, Yea, I feel like I cant comment much on that, looks too unfinished, the two of them. Just keep putting more time into those, remember to keep an eye on them values.

SO! You guys remember my Dwarf right? Well, I spammed the shit out of reddit with it, and Voila...  I've gotten like 10 people come to me asking my rates and shit. probably will get 2 commissions out of it, PLUS I met this dude who is doing a kickstarter of his on RPG and wants me to work on his game as the only artist, Doing covers, in book art, and pretty much all art for it I guess. SO!

Velvet Revolvers  -01       Failure - 384752     Lol  

Haha but its an improvement...  Feels good folks... Feels like hard work paying off.  I'll keep ya'll posted on all that stuff.

On the mean time, work form yesterday.

[Bookend]

Lord Minkx, I love the ink stuff you've done-- Wow.  Looks like Conan the Barbarian graphic novel material, haha.  Keep it up!

Everyone's doing fantastic figures, and awesome work on your oils, Jeso. Congrats on getting client work! That dwarf is still amazing in my books, haha.

I've been..  Uhm..  Well, I'm finished doing assignment 2.  But, I'm really disappointed in myself.  I feel like such a failure right now, haha.  Jeez.

Anyway, feel free to rip me apart and paint over my crap. I need some solid understanding.  I've pushed it as far as it would go, and it feels like I'm halfway there, but I'm missing something.

[Bookend]

Working on my lady, thanks to Jeso for inspiration.  

[Jeso]

Hey Book! Work Dat woman!!! Work it!!! A little tip for values under overlapping masses like her hoodie, you can use a soft brush BEFORE you paint in the fur on the hood, that way you'll have nice contrasts between the low value skin and the light value fur without having it look choppie . You can use that technique everywhere where there are overlapping masses.

As for the value sketches from the mentorship. I'd say spend more time on it. I know you've been having a rough time bro, and it shows on those value sketches. they feel rushed and just done for the sake of being done with them. A tip for those kind of situations is, get out and do something outside that will lift you up, right before you go back into your studio and get to work on that stuff, that why you actively try to put yourself in the best state of mind for you to get work done smoothly.

Here is Today's work, minus some studies and concepts on client work I did today, Im not sure the people im working with are cool with me showing that stuff.
I like how the oil painted figure came out today, I will work on it more tomorrow, to try to add some face details when the paint dries a little, same for hands and feet. I gotta figure out how to paint decently when the subject is tiny, when the paint is wet as fuck, and my brushes huge in comparison.

[Richie]

Hey Jeso,
congrats on the commission's! also which subreddits are you on for concept art and illustration?

The latest figure work look good with the colours but watch out for the legs looks a bit out of balance, you can give this method a go, http://lavenderhillstudios.com/wp-conten...Volume.pdf 

here's for week 3 of the anatomy course Heads, messed up with the 2nd head drawing a different angle on the face, so hard not to go into details.

[Triggerpigking]

Nice work on them faces Richie, maybe try and make it a bit cleaner though like put the oppacity down on the less important construction lines, thats a minor nitpick though :).

Also congrats on the commisions Jeso, do you have a link to the kickstarter?

More body constructions, think i'm getting a bit too complex with some of them I seem to mainly do that on the muscular ones, also some shapes and stuff, having problems with rotating the cube and cylinders, cubes are fine up until I have to rotate them in 3/4 view, then it gets more tricky.
Also tried to measure the legs better on these.

[Jeso]

Richie-  Yea man you are right, I ran out of canvas down there and I wasn't able to get a good feel for balance, the figure is indeed leaning looks like its gonna fall over lol.
I really dig your structural head practice man, that technique is from Hampton right?
Watch for the proportions though, you dont have to try to get the likeness perfect, but its clear that the proportions are not the same as the ref.

Trigger-
 Hey buddy, The kickstarter inst live yet, Its gonna go live by the end of next year, So we are working to have a presentable package by then, which is where I come in.
Good work on them constructions dude, Cant say much except, I saw some way to small heads, and some short lower legs again. Maybe you could try drawing the legs longer, and then when you think its long enough, add a couple more length to them, and see how that ends up looking just for shits, maybe you realize something who knows. haha.

Yesterday I study some lizards, tried to work more on that oil chick, and started a oil portrait practice that I'll upload tonight or tomorrow morning.



I need smaller brushes...

[Jeso]

So You guys know brad rigney right? I was watching his tutorial Hostile take over" And, He says that he doesnt use reference at all when he paints, he does a ton of study mind you, but he never keeps a reference open when painting. That I find... just I dont even know how to call that, like how do you achieve that, the dude doesn't use reference and he paints hyper real shit, out of his ass pretty much.
Were im going with this is, I should try it, make a finished painting with no reference open, see what happens. Study a shit load just prior though. And when studying, try to push shit to a finished lvl. I think that was key, during Brad's training.

Here is an arm I painted using his smudging technique. The next step would be to do that from imagination, but i was stupid, I didn't manage time well today, at all. Been depressed really, loneliness does that to you. I'm just here at home, and all I do every single day is, draw, eat, watch some tv. Paint in oils, and sleep. Repeat, I see my family, but, I dont go out, meet new people, do shit, thats wearing me down a lot lately. But fuck it, Trying to push that shit aside. I digress... Here is the arm, haha not that impressive though.



And This stupid painting, that is taking me forever. I dont know why, I think I worked on this at least 3 hours today. My second session, and still a ways to go. I need to make a rock solid schedule for my life.

Now this is all fucked up right now, I know that, mouth is the worst, but fuck it, lets see what I can fix tomorrow, and be done with it. move on to the next one. You gotta fail to learn.





Also where the hell is everybody?

[Richie]

Here the head drawings I did for this week. Think i've kind of got some of the shapes memorised but need to go for more copy accuracy.

[Jeso]

I Want to reiterate something real quick. Please dont just post work and move on. Try to comment on other peoples work as much as you can.

[Triggerpigking]

Richie:Good to see you doing so many faces man, you're missing the likeness with alot of these but I think it's the kind of thing that'll get better with just quantity then anything else, if you have a mirror try to do some daily self portraits as well, they'll allow you to see the form of the face alot better then photos(though you'll probbly dip in accuracy a bit as trying to measure because difficult).
also if you're not already doing this flip the canvas more to see mistakes set a button to it as well for flipping sideways and up and down, if you get into the habit of flipping regularly it helps to correct alot of mistakes.
And lastly try to keep your linework cleaner I think, it helps me out with figuring out detailed areas like the eyes and nose anyway, by all means go in sketchy on a first pass but once it looks generally right, lower the opacity of that layer and draw cleaner less scratchy lines on another.

Jeso:Yeah i'm jealous as hell as to what Rigney can do XD, I know Chiu does the same, when I used to go to his streams he'd be posting these mostly blank bases for faces and telling people to draw from imagination but really try to visualize every line first, did'nt really work for me but I will try to draw more without ref once I get better, atm my visual library is so bad that I can't paint realistically even with tons of ref, I get slaughtered without it XD.

Sorry to hear about your life issues btw, i'm in a similair situation for the most part but I have a friend I go to every few weeks or so(We just binge play games for a whole day or two.) and a gaming group I talk with regularly on skype.


If you're depression really gets that bad though I would suggest going out and doing stuff atleast 1 day a week, hell if you can find a local drawing group it'd be like killin two birds with one stone but even if you have to take a day off every week or two it'd probbly be better for you and your art if you're mentally fine.
________________________________

Sorry for not uploading the last few days, been tired as shit and I ended up sleeping practically all day yesterday(massive sleep issues) got a new iphone alarm that should help, makes you leave the bed and walk around with a pedometer....got me out of bed but the fuckin pedometer does'nt work with my phone it seems, so had an alarm going off for 30 minsXD but I found a way to get it to work in a different way with a side feature it has.

Anyway did more cubes, cylinders and more foreshortened figures, gonna do some more from imagination soon but I figure the more I first understand basic shapes like cubes and cylinders(especially in extreme perspectives) the better.
I've also relized it seems to be the overlapping or really extreme foreshortening that gives me issues, stuff like crouching or a hand being reached out far, general up or down shots don't give me too much trouble so i'm gonna focus my efforts on the former two.

[Jeso]

Hey Richie, Good job on the heads, In some of them I can already tell you are improving in proportions, and the structural drawing is attaining that likeness from the reference.  Good job on that front, If you wan to push that further in the likeness area, try guidelines, take longer on each head, use angular and parallel guidelines to nail proportions. Getting the likeness of somebody on a drawing is all about proportion and spacing of features.

Trigger,  Yea man, Im not really depressed, I mean, Its just loneliness wears you down sometimes. Yea, I gotta get out of the house and see people now and then. I found some live drawing groups in the city, but, $, gotta see about that.
Thankfully I live with family so im not like 100% isolated and shit. My sister throws parties sometimes, I get shitfaced... and its all good, haha. 

Hey nice shape drawings of cubes and cylinders. Good foundation for your figures.  Your actual figures though, Not bad, but, I think the fact, that you are trying to bust out several of them at once, its hindering focus. I would suggest, just do 1 or 2 figures, spend at least 1 hour on them, think, focus, use all that structural knowledge you've been attaining for the past weeks. Push it, try to make it look good, in all fronts. I would just suggest doing that every now and then, instead of constantly drawing a lot of rushed figures. (Which are also good)
Overlapping and foreshorting... yea those are tough, its like in the advance area of figure drawing haha. that shit gives me a lot of trouble too. Its been in my mind for a while, gotta study that. But man once you get adept at foreshortening, your illustrations are gonna look 10 times better if you use that correctly.

Ah, Today was... Productive.. did some studies, worked on client work, and oil painted. Not bad I'd say. I should try to produce at least this much every day. '

[Bookend]

Hey everybody!  Great work Rich, and awesome productiveness as usual Jeso.

Today I made a tree to test pixellize feature in Krita.  This is before the pixellization.

I'm working on a project with my sister.  We're remaking Gabriel Knight 3 to be 2d like the 1st one.  We'll see how it goes.

So this is the tree. Annnd... I took the photo myself to study from today on a walk. Woot.

[Jeso]

Hey Book, I dont know about pixelate and krita software. But, this study feels too rushed, feels like just scribbles, Maybe that was the point? Kinda just blocking in quickly? Other wise it just feels a bit odd, just blobs everywhere.
Which I cant say i do better, haha, my film study from today looks like that.. just shitty blobs of color everywhere.



Just showing what I can show today, client work stays under the rug as usual. :)

[Bookend]

Jeso: I'm so jealous of your productivity, man. Your work just looks better and better. I hope to get back on board soon. I'm making really rushed/sloppy/messy work right now. I'm just not focused. Having some serious ADD problems. I know I can do better, though-- I am capable of doing so much better.

And I plan to... THIS COMING WEEK.

BOOKEND'S WEEKLY REVIEW:

So, this week sucked. I did a horrible assignment #2. I'm not ashamed to say it-- It was ghastly. It's partly my lack of confidence and frustration with my work, and partly my fear of really trying, I guess? I don't know.

I just didn't really feel like I could push it the way everyone else did. The majority of the work for assignment #2 really shined, and my work was like crude, children's drawings. I know it. And there is a very dark side of me that's saying that I will never be able to successfully do well, that I will never get better with my imaginative works. Especially last night-- I was at the bottom. That rushed tree painting made me feel like I was banging my head against the wall.

But, I know that what I'm telling myself isn't true. If I'm capable of doing excellent, precise and accurate studies, then I'm capable of doing this same work in my imaginative studies. I just haven't practiced the latter enough, and I can't let myself be afraid to. I have to carry this into all areas of my work.

So, the last two weeks have been really grotesque in terms of my improvement, and I know what I should be doing, but haven't been doing it.

A part of me just wants to work at my work and maybe not even show it for awhile, until I tackle these areas that I know I'm having trouble with. It doesn't seem fair that I'd waste other people's time critiquing my work when I'm giving myself the exact same critiques.

But, regardless-- I think that drilling the same thing in your head over and over again is a pretty sure-fire way to learn.

Anyway, sorry for my lengthy review, especially since I haven't accomplished much this week. But, I'm considering this a kind of blog post to air out my thoughts on my work, or lack thereof, and try to come to terms with it, and move forward.

Like my wife often says-- Nothing to it, but to do it.

[Jeso]

But, I know that what I'm telling myself isn't true.  If I'm capable of doing excellent, precise and accurate studies, then I'm capable of doing this same work in my imaginative studies.  I just haven't practiced the latter enough, and I can't let myself be afraid to.  I have to carry this into all areas of my work.

So, the last two weeks have been really grotesque in terms of my improvement, and I know what I should be doing, but haven't been doing it.

A part of me just wants to work at my work and maybe not even show it for awhile, until I tackle these areas that I know I'm having trouble with.  It doesn't seem fair that I'd waste other people's time critiquing my work when I'm giving myself the exact same critiques.

But, regardless--  I think that drilling the same thing in your head over and over again is a pretty sure-fire way to learn.

Anyway, sorry for my lengthy review, especially since I haven't accomplished much this week.  But, I'm considering this a kind of blog post to air out my thoughts on my work, or lack thereof, and try to come to terms with it, and move forward.

Like my wife often says--  Nothing to it, but to do it.    

Hey Book, Seems like you had your own answer for your problems up there. 
"But, I know that what I'm telling myself isn't true.  If I'm capable of doing excellent, precise and accurate studies, then I'm capable of doing this same work in my imaginative studies.  I just haven't practiced the latter enough, and I can't let myself be afraid to.  I have to carry this into all areas of my work."

This ^     Bro fair just ain't real, tackle that bitch.


Now this is where you wrong man:  "A part of me just wants to work at my work and maybe not even show it for awhile, until I tackle these areas that I know I'm having trouble with.  It doesn't seem fair that I'd waste other people's time critiquing my work when I'm giving myself the exact same critiques."

This is why we are here, in the group, to show the shit, we produce. We are not here to post pretty drawings and get an ego boost. We here to improve, and showcase our journeys from noob to pro. There has to be shit drawings all along the way man. If you dont show them here, you are just negating the process. Imagine months down the road, some noobies will pass thru this thread, and be like "Shit, that guy Book used to suck balls, but damn he good right now, he real good."  You feel me? So dont be afraid to post your shit.

[Jeso]

today, I didnt work too much, you know... Sunday... I did some studies, and worked on client work, but no oil painting, no film study. I had planned to do all of that today, but mom wanted to take us all out to the movies, went to watch Everest, alright movie, kinda long, a bit boring.

Weekly Review

So, this week, was the best so far, I think, in my very young career, since I made contact with a client that wants me to illustrate his whole upcoming RPG game as the sole artist. Which is gonna keep me busy for a while, which is always good. Hustle them dollars. So yea, that's pretty much the big thing since last Sunday, all week I've been working on that, and doing studies related to that job, oil painted a bunch, but less than before. There has been a few days where I cant afford to oil paint cause I gotta keep up with my client.

I feel like I got lazy though, fuck, I started re watching the Walking dead, and I just cant stop, sometimes I watch 3 episodes in a row, and it feels gross man... to know, that I've wasted 3 hours doing shit. I gotta pick it up again, Sometimes I forget that I have less than a year to become awesome other wise things are going to go south real quick. (Issues with life, country borders, etc)

Regardless, I worked hard, made some portfolio pieces, And now look at me, I got this bad ass freelance long term gig. There is the proof you work hard and eventually something good happens, I wish I could tell this to a younger Jeso, so he would work his ass off like he should've in art school.

That's it folks, gotta keep moving forward, always.