Flo's sketchbook

[Eyliana]

I think for the pillars, try to practice flat washes and gradient washes. http://watercolorpainting.com/flatwash/2
Try trick is to get a nice bleed throughout the whole pillar instead of stripes. Just make sure you have enough water and paint on your brush.

And about the forms; Sometimse I have the feeling that creating forms is more drawing then it is painting, as in preciscion wise. Try to make various lines/line widths with one brush. And most of the time a bigger brush is nicer to make nice lines/shapes because the bleed becomes better. It is more difficult to control that you don't paint too much though.

Just my thoughts, still struggling as well :P

[nutriman]

hey guys,

this will be the last digital upload for a week. I am going on holiday to mallorca. I hope you have a nice time!

amazing stuff!! Great render :)

Mallorca..bet there's some nice spots for on air painting but I don't know if you're in for that on your vacation.

[Flo]

@Nutriman oh, I am indeed in for that as you can see below ;) but having a small kid with me, the time spend on each painting is quite limited.

@Eyliana thanks for the helpful crit, I will try it out. And also thanks for the link to the website, I have a look at it. What brushes do you use (haha no for real) do you ever use one of those water - tank - brushes from pentel? I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot, trying to learn to control that thing.

So here are all the images from my trip to mallorca. Most of them were really quick, trying to capture the only the basic shape, seperating light and shadow.

All in all I can say, Mallorca has really surprised me with its beauty and atmosphere. We already decided to come back some day, this time during the warmer months since there still is so much to do and see.

[Eyliana]

@Eyliana thanks for the helpful crit, I will try it out. And also thanks for the link to the website, I have a look at it. What brushes do you use (haha no for real) do you ever use one of those water - tank - brushes from pentel? I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot, trying to learn to control that thing.

I started out using round brushes only, thinking that I didn't need other ones. I have the sizes 20, 12, 8, 4 0, 0000 I think. Still looking for one in between 20 and 12. And for portraits round brushes work fines and they are enough. I recently started to try landscapes and there flat brushes are also really practical to create sharp edges for rocks. I have one big flat brush (5cm) and two small ones because they came with a standard set. The big one I use for painting larger surfaces like skies, but by tilting it it can also be used for smaller objects.

It are all synthetic brushes, because they are so much cheaper than brushes from animal hair. Except the round 0000, that one was squirl hair I thought. But that is mainly because they didn't have that small brush with synthetic hairs. I use the really tiny one only for details in the portraits to finish up. It is too tiny to do anything else with it, but it holds an amazing amount of water.

I bought this weekend on brush with a water tank, because I was curious. I have this one: http://sakuraofamerica.com/images/com_me...Brush1.jpg
I did use it to make those swatches: http://pre06.deviantart.net/7638/th/pre/...9tfqlh.jpg

That worked pretty nice, because you can control the water amount pretty good which made it a lot easier to get an equal amount of water on each swatch. I haven't used it for other paintings though, but I can imagine it can be a bit tricky to press the water reservoir and painting at the same time. I'll have to try :).

I think it is easier to get started with normal brushes, figure out how much water you need to paint surfaces or shades of that color. And always have some kitchen paper at hand to get rid of excess water on the brush or painting. If you are struggling to control try to make flat washes, gradient washes, cubes or those swatches work as well. It is boring stuff, but it is good for brush control.

[Flo]

Eyliana thanks for the extensive text considering your working materials. I should stack up on brushes after reading this. At the moment I stopped using water tank brushes and only use one beaver-hair brush. Also I am reading through a water-color-learning-book and do the exercises in it. I realized that my colors were really dirty and I started to clean my brush more often and used more paint. Also I am finally learning how to make gradients and turn form better.

Loomis figure sketches




water color exercises





digital sketches

[Flo]

Stuff from today and yesterday

Bargue plate no 1


Comp that will go nowhere


Digital sketches



Gestures 60s




Potrait study


Interface KIT for Shieldstorm (formerly Base Conflict)

[Flo]

weekend's sketches

all from life, one from the dead O.O

[Jonesoda]

Those Bargue plates are sexy, nice job on the gestures - really dig that second watercolor of the last post too

[Flo]

jones thanks, man, glad you like it :)

still life - roughly 10 h and mostly done with the hard round and soft round brush

[Flo]

http://drawabox.com/lesson/2

and a naked guy

not much else to say, doing da grind!

[Flo]

doing research for mech-concepts





these are the concepts


and more watercolors (from imagination)

[Flo]

portrait of a friend and mechs

[Flo]

moar stuffs,

doings some relaxing monster painting on the side

[crackedskull]

Thats a cute cliff!

[RickRichards]

Good stuff here! Perfect practice makes perfect.

[Flo]

crackedskull Thanks mate, glad you like it. Feel like I overdid it though.
RickRichards Thanks man. Hope I practice perfect!

Here some concepts and a quick study

[BenFlores]

The watercolour in #527 of the statue is awesome man. Dat warm tone vs that cold grey. I've been doing watercolours again too, always refreshing to get away from the tablet.

Definitely seeing improvement again!

[Flo]

hey ben, thanks for the kind words. The temperature-interplay was purely random haha will try to keep an eye out for that in the future.

here a comission I did yesterday and today. not super happy with it, I think there are some anatomy issues.

[Flo]

more drawing exercises, gestures and 5th week's assignment for the mentorship. We had to paint the same scene during different times of the day.

[Flo]

doing gestures again after watching Proko the Great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ktfwayByRU

also some quick portraits and anatomy stuff