Artloader - Sketchbook

[Artloader]

Here's my 4th master study of that rim-lit lady painting. In acrylics and this time I ventured into the realm of colour. Wow it took ages to mix the colour! 






And my final result alongside the ref.

 

I need to make sure that I include a feedback phase in each of my studies so that I am actually learning lessons so here goes with some self critique and lessons I think I need to take forward to the next study:

1. My values are way too light in general.  I need to be bolder and push the darks.
2. My colours aren't bold enough, they need to be more saturated.
3. I tried to block-in the fingers individually, perhaps I should just block-in the whole hand as one big shape and then re-find the individual fingers.
4. Keep mixing the paint in one dollop until I get the right colour instead of starting again in a different dollop.

And as always if anyone else has and critique, I am always grateful. Thanks :).

[Artloader]

Been wanting to do some figure studies for a while so here goes:

[darktiste]

I advice to avoid to taking bodybuilder as reference.Because they often use unatural tan and oil there body.

I advice you take mma figher during there being weighted or during fight if you want to study realistic muscular people.

[Fedodika]

bodybuilders are what people wanna see, they are idealized, comic artists didnt make a career drawing athletic body types, they made their career drawing over the top idealized bodies

[darktiste]

bodybuilders are what people wanna see, they are idealized, comic artists didnt make a career drawing athletic body types, they made their career drawing over the top idealized bodies

Yes he can take bodybuilder but he should avoid those with unatural tan and oil.

[Artloader]

Yeah I aim to study a variety of body types, skin types and gender types (male and female in case anyone was wondering :) ).

[Artloader]

Went back to the animal drawing tutorial on drawabox because I want to load up on sketching from basic forms again:

[Fedodika]

vary your line weight more, see what you can get away with not indicating ;)

[Artloader]

@Fedodika:  Yep I like your thinking mate - leave some detail to the viewer's imagination - thanks.

I painted the little guy in for some painting practice.  Tried to lose some edges on his back leg using the smudge tool.

[Fedodika]

it def looks better, i mean you can always render it to hell and maintain that focus but its up to you if you feel thatd help your progression :)

[Riley Stark]

Nice sketchbook, Artloader! You can definitely see some great improvement from the first few pages through where you are at present. (Heck, I'm actually learning things reading other critiques you've gotten for stuff. This is awesome!)

I agree with Fedodkia about mixing your brush edges up. When you incorporated some softer edges into your work, the general quality/look of the studies jumped up the skill scale quite nicely. 

The various incarnations of the master study are looking spiffy, but it has to be a bit scary to attempt some of them traditionally. I can totally see how you need to push the values a bit more in retrospect for the color one, but it has to be difficult trying to do this with mixing paint values. (I've only ever painted digitally and it's hard enough to do it correctly even that way sometimes!) I'd love to learn to paint traditionally some day. Do you find you enjoy it more than digital art or do you like doing them about the same? I'd just think there would be something very satisfying about actually pushing the paint around the canvas and also having a physical copy of something when you're finished. (Regardless of whether it comes out terrible or amazing in the end.) Digital may have the benefit of being very forgiving, but sometimes the intangibility of it feels a little disappointing, I think. (My two cents.)

Anyway, nice job so far and keep going with the studies! I'll be sure to check in regularly to see your progress! :D

[Artloader]

@Fedodika:  Yeah lost edges are cool man - thanks for the push on the line-weight.

@Riley Stark:  Thanks for dropping by :).  I like to swing between traditional and digital.  Traditional does feel great when you're moving a brush around on a canvas but digital is a lot quicker.

Here's another figure study, proportions are a bit off again ...

[Artloader]

Some studies in line:

[Fedodika]

just keeep correctin mayne ;)

[Baldgate]

Love the structure of your drawing, how well you define planes ! The lizard is really cool ! I think you have a really good, structural drawing .

I think your painting lack a bit of contrast and the color aren't vivid enough compared to the reference. Do you invert color temperature between light and shadow?

[darktiste]

Your correcting but i think your also idealising i don't know if that intentional or not.You made is head smaller then it really is.The ref was more accurate than the correction in my opinion.

[Artloader]

@Fedo: You're right dude, even my corrections still had some errors, I can see that his upper back is wrong still where I think it is the teres muscles and latissimus muscle that is peaking out from behind his deltoid and tricep.

@Baldgate:  Thank you for the kind words friend :).  Yeah I can see that you are right about the colours, more saturation I tihnk.  No, I did not invert colour temperature between light and dark but now that you have given me that tip I will try that in my next painting - thanks :).

@Darktiste:  Good spot - no, I was not intentionally idealising - I'll stay more alert to that - thanks dude.

OK I've been saying to myself that I should invent more as doing so is good for highlighting weaknesses so I forced myself to sit down and invent a figure sketch without ref. tonight.  Sure enough, I found some weaknesses to focus on, and please feel free to point out any others - I'd appreciate it :).

[Fedodika]

while the face is aimed in the right direction proportion wise, the style is not appealing, like the long lips and the squinty eyes are not attractive. remember the bicep on both the inside and outside go from a large to a narrow shape, look at people flexing those well developed muscles and youll see it. Your forearm shape on (his) right arm is good, the other, again close but make sure you feel those forms out as straights and curves.

The poses is stiff, the abdominals are going up all the way to the bottom of the pec which is odd, ive never seen that before. Im not sure why the form line on the bottom abdonimal muscle goes into the form instead of wrapping on top of it. Also (his) left deltoid has some strange shapes, like its floating on top of the bicep instead of attatching to it. Youre closer on (his) right deltoid, but the left one feels like symbol drawing, and i know deltoids are confusing as hell :)

[Shinkasuru]

I like this study. Pretty good coming from your imagination.

I think on a man this size you would see more flaring of the lats from the front. Your guy looks like he is undeveloped there. I don't think you need massive wings, but I think the developing the lats a little more might look better.

Also, with the man this size, I would think he would have a little more mass on his forearms. The muscle that runs down the forearm looks a little small in my opinion. It's just a thought and I'm not sure I'm correct on this, but I thought the area I circled on the photo here would look like one big massive, bulky muscle. Although if your guy is super cut and shredded then you are probably okay.

Cool drawing and I like seeing your construction lines. I always love construction lines.

[Artloader]

@Fedodika:  Awesome, thanks for feeding back mate.  Out of all the things you've pointed out, I think my biggest concern is the stiffness - you are right - I will tackle that first I think.

@Shinkasuru:  Thanks for stopping by mate.  Yeah good point about the latissimus and the forearms, I'll probably do some studies to build my visual library for these.

So to combat my stiffness, I did some gesture sketches:



And then another sketch from imagination, this time I started from a gesture sketch instead of from a construction sketch to try to get rid of some of that stiffness.  It's interesting because when I dipped back into my Hampton book, he starts from a gesture and then builds in the construction on top of the gesture.  I obviously forgot all this from when I went through the book last time!  Again, any crits. most welcome: