Artloader - Sketchbook

[Artloader]

Added some tones and a few details.  Still need to work on her hands.

[Artloader]

Sorted out her hands and made some general refinements.

[BjorkJT]

Hey Artloader!  Nice sketchbook, I'm hoping you'll be able to do that comic one day ;) 

Your recent character is looking pretty nice, who's the Comic book character you're redesigning? There are a couple of things I think you could work on. Firstly, her anatomy is a bit off, Her shoulders are too broad and her arms a little too long. Moreover you could definitely push the colours (for example in her face) and also the allover values which would definitely give her more life. I made a little paint over to show what I mean a little clearer, hope it helps!

Keep doing what you do :D

[Artloader]

Wow - thanks for dropping by and taking the time to do a paint-over BjorkJT!

Thanks for the assist on the values and anatomy - something for me to meditate upon.

She is Lady Umia Yulon, professional winged-panther rider from Suborea!

Here the latest picture of her (I'd done this before I saw your paint-over BjorkJT):

[Artloader]

Switching over to landscapes again.  Here's one done from a reference photo.  I colour picked the colours but I had a look at the HSV values as I did so - I'm hoping after a while this will help me get a feel for values and colours.

[Artloader]

I've realised that master studies are the way to go.  I did a study on one of Fenghua Zhong's pieces and then had a go at this female head.  Learned a bit about multiple light sources.

[Artloader]

Carrying on with the lighting and value study.

[Rhasdra]

Great studies man!

On your value studies, I think you can push the dark tones even further. It'll be clearer if you do them in black and white. I suggest you do some of those! You will quickly notice that your value range is a little bit too short.

Keep up with the great work! \o//

[Artloader]

Thanks for dropping by Rhasdra, great feedback - I will do that next time I study values but I'm changing approach a bit today after having a lightbulb moment.

Before I focus too much on rendering I want to improve my drawing.  Beginning with human anatomy and gesture drawing.  I've started on Proko's figure drawing YouTube course tonight.  Here's the first few:

[Artloader]

I've been doing some more gesture study and investigating what the benefits of gesture drawing are.  My conclusions so far are:

1. Your brush strokes become more natural and fluid.
   
2. Your figure drawing become more natural and fluid.
   
3. They are a good way of warming up your artistic muscles.
   

Here are some more of my gesture sketches.  I think the time limit on these was 60 seconds:




And the time limit on these was 30 seconds - I struggled a bit here - I think I need to strip these back more:

[Artloader]

Pressing on with the 60 second gestures - I'm going to do 10 of these as a warm-up each time I sit down to do my art studies.

[Artloader]

I recently discovered the cool study technique of anatomy tracing on Proko's YouTube channel.  I'm hoping this will level-up my anatomy drawing skills.

Anyway enough for tonight - don't want to risk burnout.

[Artloader]

I've gone right back to basics with anatomy - studying the skeleton.

[Artloader]

I'm trying skeleton tracing for a while - see if it helps me get a good feel for the underlying structure of the human figure.

I just did a sketch from a photo and then traced in where I thought the bones should be (this is after studying diagrams of the human skeleton for a while).

Hmmm - I don't think I've got the pelvis right here - I haven't left room for his genitals ... something to work on for next time.

[Artloader]

End of the week so I'm trying to put what I've learned into a piece from my head.  This guy is a character from my planned digital comic - an Acolyte-Warrior Of Mymosule.

[Artloader]

Did some warm-up 60 second gestures and then carried on with my imagination piece.

I've found the gestures work better if I use fast, energetic strokes instead of attempting to be slow and steady.

[iCi]

Hey man, glad to see your anatomy understanding is coming along nicely :)
When doing those gesture studies - maybe you can try breaking up the inside of the figure with an indication of where the hip line, spine or ribcage are. Those lines can help you solidify the proportions and the balance of the figure, and later, when you feel like you don't need them - you can drop most of them :)

[Artloader]

Hey man, glad to see your anatomy understanding is coming along nicely :)

When doing those gesture studies - maybe you can try breaking up the inside of the figure with an indication of where the hip line, spine or ribcage are. Those lines can help you solidify the proportions and the balance of the figure, and later, when you feel like you don't need them - you can drop most of them :)

Thanks for the tip iCi - I tried adding some more construction lines but kept running out of time - I think I'll try extending the time to 2 minutes and see how I get on.




Here's some back anatomy I tried from imagination:

[Artloader]

Extended my gesture time limit to 2 minutes but found myself relaxing too much and running out of time again!

[Artloader]

Carrying on with skeleton tracing - not sure how much this is helping at the moment but I will persevere a while longer with these.  Where my memory gets a bit sketchy I look it up in my Stephen Rogers Peck book.