What ImSkeptical learnt this week (Sketchbook)

[ImSkeptical]

Flo - Thanks buddy. And yeah, edges are probably me getting carried away with the smudge brush ever since i messed around with a bunch of different brush settings and found I could use it everywhere xD

vatteh - Thanks! Yeah notes are the best, gotta make sure you're thinking! Most important. And yes memory studies are great! I spend the first 30 minutes of each day drawing random things on paper i can remember from the last day before i do morning things. I feel like i got a lot better when I started doing this.

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So took it a bit easier this week. Much more random sketches of future things i might put more thought, planning and time into. Here's the stuff.







Randumb sketches just testing imagination/memory, being a weakpoint of mine. I should've sized them lower they look horrible large :(. Stealing Aaron Becks ideas for robot. I'm planning to do something with those char designs at the end though. Gonna do a set of 6 designs, cloth, leather, plate fantasy archetypes but 3 realism and 3 stupidly impractical. So currently having fun exploring. Probably gonna have to look at more ref to bring it out from me just dicking around.




Sketch for CGMA contest (http://www.cgma2dacademy.com/contest-2013/), and WIP for my Aria fanart. Slow going on that :(



Quick 1hr Richard Schmid study for brushwork and water.






And I went life drawing for the first time! It was fun, but personally now having been, I think its not as necessary as most people seem to claim. I'll talk more about it on my blog.

Thanks for lookin, see ya next week :D.

[Wolkenfels]

Love the sketch with the gondola very much. Great composition and i am curious about the story that is told there.
Agree on the lifedrawing - did it too and it was fun but i have not renewed the course as i wasnt getting from it what i hoped to get.

[ImSkeptical]

Wolkenfels - Thanks man, I really tried to improve on my composition for this one. Sadly I think my drawing is going to let me down towards the end of it, hopefully i can execute on the perspective and cleaning it up.

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Post'n random stuff done during the week



Closer look at Long Ouyang, badass tech guy




Developing on my exercise to improve drapery/photo realism. Mostly failure so far, I get the feeling I finally need to learn to use the lasso tool and not just clipping masks and lock transparency :(. Hopefully poor results are a good thing because it gives me something concrete to improve on :D. Maybe I'll go into detail what I mean on my blog.



Working to improve drawing more, this is some of the digital stuff i did.



More progress on the Aria fanart. I might just dedicate this week to finishing this off, I feel like I avoid putting work into it :(. Also need to do more random imaginary sketches.

That's all this week, thanks for looking.

[ImSkeptical]

Stuff thus week







Lifedrawin - fun





Studyin - trying new things with edges



Sketchin - fun to do a quick something with no planning/deep thought. Am going to try do somthing like this once a week



Finishing - I'm really bashing my head against a wall on this one. Next week is the last week i waste time on it

That's this week! Thanks for lookin :D.

[JakeB]

That drapery excercise is awesome man, great idea :)

[ImSkeptical]

Jake B - Yeah dude, i need to get back to doing that xD. Stuff is hard.

Here's thus week, probably the least in a long time. Mainly because of this guy




And some water studies along with it. Finally done with it, didn't turn out as good as I was hoping but it's certainly the best illustration I have so far so I can't complain too much. Its going to be awhile before I ever put that much time into somthing, I think its better to go through the start phase more. I think. Working on my sketching and stuff. Which leads to this page.



Bunch of random sketches. Very experimental, very rough, extremely rough. Real 'sketches' not those 'sketches' people post that make you want to cry :(. I'm not bitter at all. I think the fact they look so damn ugly is telling about something i'm lacking right now. Probably the kind of precision and deliberateness of more experienced people. But yeah experimenting with how to start something for myself, as I realized I need stuff like that. Something I should've learned from Brent, just be able to churn out something that looks good on demand.

So because I won't do it otherwise, I promise some zbrush animal anatomy studies next week. I delay it like every day, but i'm gonna look at plates and just sculpt some cats and horses, bones, skeletons, limbs, and hopefully whole bodies. See ya then.

[RockOnGuy]

Your fanart looks awesome! As for the water studies, keep an eye out for the waves' shapes. The studies look great, but you might be able to add some form to it.

[ImSkeptical]

RockOnGuy - Thanks dude, but yeah I'm defiantly missing something with that water, I have a feeling its me not being careful enough with the shapes like you say. Think its the same problem I had/probably still have with leaves.

So here's the digital stuff this week, back to not being bothered to photograph traditional stuff xD. From finishing the fanart, My feeling that my biggest issue is once again drawing, so i'm really pushing myself, especially in the imaginative/sketching stuff. One of the ways to try do that is using this wetedge brush i see the chinese guy hgjart doing, where you have to be accurate and deliberate with all the shapes you place, so we'll see how that goes. All very trash but I want to post it because I don't want to get into the habit of hiding away what I hate from sketchbooks. I'm trying to think of a cool idea for the bloodsport, I think I have one, so hopefully I can get that done next week.

studies





sketches from imagination






Thats all, see ya next week.

[ImSkeptical]

I feel a little food poisoned so gonna just post n run :(.

Bloodsport 13








Studying Faces

Ref


Memory/Imagination



Cya next time

[ImSkeptical]

K, not that much to post this week. And this time it wasn't laziness, although that was probably still part of it. No I went and tried to up my memory and drawing skills. Learning to use a brush pen more too. I won't bother posting it all because i'm tired right now. Also most of it looks trash. I quickly took a photo of some of the results at the end of the week. This page is all memory/imagination, no ref.



Here are some studies focusing on detail. I have a whole new appreciation for people like linran now. Before I did somthing like this, I always had this stupid idea in the back of my mind that I knew was probably false, that if i just spended heaps of time on a study with a good photo, I could get somthing half decent to compare to linran. I was right, that was extremely false.




And here's some prep work for the new Bloodsports. I might only get somthing half decent by the deadline, but I realize now that I have never done any character art / card art pieces before, and considering I want that job, i need to be getting to do more of these. So if I like where there going, I'm defiantly pushing till i get my best pieces yet. If not, I need to brief myself and get some out there.






That's this week, see ya's next week.

[Sickbrush]

these are great man, wonderful improvement!

[Lumens]

Bond and frazetta, two of my favorite things!
Your portraits are getting pretty darn realistic..i'm looking at them edges in awe.
keep em coming.

[ImSkeptical]

Sickbrush - Thanks man! Your sketchbook was always inspiring to run through, helped me put in the hard work :D.

Lumens - Thanks dude, but tbh you seem to have a way better mastery of edge. I'm always envious of your mark making xD.

I've been using this program for the past 2 weeks and abit, I think Tida? posted it on facebook https://habitrpg.com/ . Its pretty good, managed to get me to stop snoozing most mornings and read facebook every few minutes in the middle of the day. I used to be one of those WoW addicts, so its right up my alley, give it a shot :D.

So this week. Here's the bloodsports.







Still not done with these, or at least the character one. I screwed up the lighting amongst other things, so some tweaking and polishing and hopefully it'll make a nice port piece and I can finally get some work.

As for the new bloodsports, I'm so not sure if i can do it. Theres so much I want to do, like animal anatomy which I still keep only doing like once a fortnight. Dan and Dave had to get fucking Wes Burt didn't they. If I come up with a good idea, maybe i'll try squeeze in somthing simple but done well. Otherwise, I think i'm going to give myself permission to miss it.




Revisiting anatomy. Going to be doing a lot of back to basic information type stuff. Latin names and connections revisited, make sure i pick up all the info i have forgotten/ failed to pick up the first go round.





Doing these new 2 hr timelimit sketches. Got carried away with the last one, put another couple hours into that, but i'ts definatlly forcing me to face the facts. I still have shit all visual library/memory for detail outside the face which i just did last week. But I am realizing me getting heavy into film and all that anime I watched is more than enough in terms of illustrative storytelling. So here's to putting in the work and memorizing what stuff looks like.

Cya guys next week.

[JakeB]

Nice work on the bloodsport man, and those two hour sketches look sweeeeeeeet :). Keep it coming, you're doing awesome :)

[MonoOrder]

I went through your entire sketchbook and read your teamliquid post and I can't believe how much you've improved in just over a year. Your hard work and efficiency in learning is inspirational! I'm just about to hit the 1 year mark and you made me rethink my entire approach to learning and study.

Please continue posting and detailing your thought process!

[ImSkeptical]

JakeB - Thanks dude, same to you. You've been getting steadily better since Dan's mentoring, good to see you keeping up the hard work!

MonoOrder - Thanks man, means a lot to hear! Hopefully you don't rethink it too hard though, because its better to work too hard and not think enough, than to think too hard and not work enough xD. Not that thinking doesn't help immensly... :D

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So here's week. First off, things i'm going to tell you about and not show xD. I've started doing heaps of pencil stuff nowadays, mostly memory stuff. I find its helping me concentrate on forms and drawing a little better. Mostly its studying Kim Jung Gi's sketches, you can buy his 2007? sketchbook on ipad, and its amazing, im pretty sure i've mentioned it before. Really concentrating on handling of drapery and detail. Not showing because i'm to lazy to photo and upload. Secondly, is relearning anatomy. Approaching by a lot of labeling skeletons and painting echroche's on top of photos. To prove i'm putting in work, achromium process, anubrium, anterior superiror illiac spine, femur, were things i was having trouble with, but I just wrote them down there from memory. Yes i didn't know what the femur was called :(. Not posting, because i'm not proud of, and don't want to encourage the methods of getting high quality education for free. Totally unrelated to that, support this man http://www.scott-eaton.com/ , he has an excellent anatomy course and I have purchased his anatomy app many months ago on the ipad and it is extremely helpful.

So here's the stuff I will show.



Some more figures testing workflows for sketches



Self-portrait I did on a whim. I was actually disappointed when it zoomed way out, some of the values round the mouth merge together and it looks weird. Makes it a less than ideal facebook profile pic but it'll be awhile before i bother to change it.





15 minute color studies. I find the time limit quite meditative, its sometimes way longer and sometimes way shorter than I expect. At any rate, I'm amazed it took me this long to find this director. If you can recognize it already, congrats :D, but for everyone else its Makoto Shinkai, and the anime movie i did the studies from is called Byousoku 5 Centimeter. I've seen a few of his works now, and they are all visual amazement for my personal tastes. Every single light effect is exaggerated, bloom, lense flare, color bleed, and his palette is almost designed to maximize temperature contrast. Looking at my Aria fanart, its pretty much what I was trying to accomplish unknowingly. So yeah, it would defiantly not be a waste of time to check him out.



Finished with this for portfolio. Hopefully i can finally get some work off it. I think i really just need to work on sending out more emails? I sent out a bunch, but I'm thinking I just don't realize the amount of work i need to put in in not doing work to get work.

That's all this week, thanks for looking/reading if you did, see ya next week.

[kaikaisushi]

some insane updates man

[ImSkeptical]

kaikaisushi - Thanks :D!


So not that much this week, slacked off a little. Thought I was just getting randomly depressed for no reason, but thinking it over just now, realized it was probably not seeing any friends for a week. Solved that :D! Most of the time was spent mindlessly doodling while watching every episode of Community again. I seriously questioned watching the 4th season, and I think i regret watching it so far. I feel like you can defiantly feel Dan Harmon being missing, but it could just be because I have so much respect for the guy. Btw if you haven't seen the series, you're missing out on what I think is one of the best tv series of all time, or at least the most well written. If any series shows that the only thing that really matters in storytelling is characters, and the interesting use of them, its Community.

So here's this week




So i tried to study http://mojgan.cghub.com/ , because i kinda wanted to understand how that sort of effect he does with the color chose works. And I think I kinda understand it, it involves the darkest dark's being highly saturated, the reflected light being highly saturated cool against a relatively desaturated complement, and in the lights same kind of relationship between the speculars and the local, except more pastel than the shadow side. It was working out in my study, but I found the more I worked it the more it broke down. I have 2 ideas how that happened, either I lost concentration, and so started putting down colors to try to 'fix them', as opposed to trusting my theory, or it only works when kept to broad strokes and shapes, or the theory is wrong. I need to try again, make sure it wasn't an execution error.




More 15 min color studies. I think I'm slacking off with these. I think I'm letting myself be really bad while just giving the excuse that the time limit will mean they look crap. Need to step it up.



More sketches ~2mins-2hrs. I think its starting to be detrimental to learning, I'm not good enough yet to make a 'finished' sketch in the timelimit, which is my goal. Need to think about it more, perhaps do some small stuff I can 'finish' fast, then see how fast I can 'sketch' it. That sentence probably makes sense to no one but me xD. I'll probably consult Anthony Jones's streams again to think about this, he has good ideas about speed I think.

That's all the digital stuff, for the pencil, just imagine a bunch of bad copies of kim jung gi sketches and dark souls designs :D. See ya next week.

[CoreyH]

This is freaking incredible. Really motivating.

[JakeB]

Doing great man, the monk study looks awesome, you're really applying that colour thing well :)
That portfolio piece looks fantastic as well, really nice how it gets all dark down at the bottom, really pushes the focus up top, great work.
I'm no expert at getting work, but I can't imagine you'd have too much trouble getting some if you send your portfolio to the right places, your stuff looks good enough to me. No real advice though lol.

Keep it coming :)