What ImSkeptical learnt this week (Sketchbook)

[ImSkeptical]

8/10/12 - Reuploaded these early guys so you don't have to login to view.

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I made a promise to myself that i wouldnt make a sketchbook for at least a year, as i didn't see that much to gain from uploading learning and practicing the basics, and I knew this would waste alot of time at the end of each day. In the end I was convinced by somthing Dan said on his stream, that i needed my stuff up somewhere so people could easily judge my skill and thus offer any advice if i sought it. So heres the stuff from the past few days, and ill probably post every day now that ive got this up. Please offer any guidance as to my approach to study or the images themselves.

[ImSkeptical]

lots of painting today, need to finnish tommorow.

[ImSkeptical]

not enough work today

[ImSkeptical]

i wanted to go to sleep so i quickly painted the highlights of the still life for the instant gratification.

[KyleScary]

Great work so far, looks like you've got a great work ethic. My only suggestion currently is with your painting studies, you're doing lots of faster ones and the values are looking good, you should try taking some of them all the way to full completion. Really spend the time locking in those shapes and forms.

Looking forward to seeing more!

[ImSkeptical]

Thanks kylescary, i think ill take your advice and set aside 5 hours on rendering fully a smaller life study. I think the one i setup was far to complex for me. Plus my cat messed it up so good excuse to drop this one.

[ImSkeptical]

Went to a friends house to play some guildwars 2 and streetfighter, i did some traditional in my physical sketchbook, but im probably never going to be bothered to photo anything in there. I managed to get a bunch of really good reference for the bloodsport in the end, which ill try concentrate on this week. Geodesic domes and hong kong slums, Johnny Mneumonic and Neuromancer were great reads if anyone is thinking about it.

Furthermore, picking up another bit of wisdom from listening to streams, it seems to be a bad idea to post everyday, as I was already feeling the trap of just rushing through stuff to post. So I now plan to make this either weekly or bi-weekly. Probably weekly. Lets say each saturday from now. Ill still probably post everything, good and bad, to keep myself honest and also because its very easy with the batch image processer in photoshop.

See ya in a week sketchbook.

[ImSkeptical]

Horrible week, had to go to doctors cause sound is muffled in one ear, which still isnt fixed, computer was screwed for half the time so I had to install a new power supply, and I got distracted watching streetfighter which i discovered i couldnt watch and draw at the same time.

So alot is traditional due to the computer issues, I won't bother photographing them unless anyone really wants it. Tried to get the bloodsports going, but i doubt ill be able to finish anything reasonable tommorow. Hope next week is better. Need to remember to revise animal anatomy and really work on cleaner drawings. Probably do alot of perspective stuff to try attack that.

[Nimao]

awesome amount of work =O

[ImSkeptical]

Thanks Nimao.

This week started quite depressingly, as in roughing up the molly piece for the bloodsport, i realised i was being far too ambitious so early in my learning. I still hadn't thought about simple things like the floor and how specifically to convey the inside of the dome as a coherent background. Furthermore, i needed to do other stuff like sketches of the guys in the background and a full character rendering before putting them in such a complex enviroment, especially since i still haven't even done a full imaginative character render in any form previously. So I ran away from the challenge, figuring i wasnt going to learn much by guessing my way in rendering it out. Also, i didn't like how much i struggled getting that figure drawing of Molly in that pose I posted at the end of last week; it took quite abit of figuring out, and I would rather the construction be a little more confident.

So i have a new goal, stronger emphasis on practicing construction, take a little break from too much rendering. This is untill I can produce some simple imagined character/ enviroment sketches that are clean and with detail or at least detail in mind. As such, I also picked up a little 3d modelling, and will be using that to help in my undestanding of complex forms. Hope next week I get closer to that goal, so i can eventually return to the Molly piece and kill it.

[ImSkeptical]

Wasn't sure whether or not to update, but decided to be regular about this. This week I had already promised myself 6 months ago when i first started learning to draw that I would take a break when Diablo 3 came out and play with my friends. This was somewhat to encourage me to work hard, and not play other games on my own time, only really street fighter when going out once every couple of weeks. So, this week was Diablo 3 week, for those interested I got up to inferno with my friends and we killed butcher, which I think is a nice place to leave it. Yes we like to play games somewhat competitively xD. But with that, comes my commitment that no more Diablo be played for at least a week, and then only if playing with a full group for attempting inferno bosses or hardcore runs on a weekend or somthing.

This doesn't mean i didnt draw this week however, but sadly, my hardrive seems to have broken in the middle of the week. Not only did I have to redownload Diablo, I lost my videos and music, lost photoshop, and lost 4 months of digital practice work (being all i've done since beginning). Im not too concerned, as the way in which it has malfunctioned, im sure the data is still in there, but this does mean I can't post the work i did on the computer this week. Of course, i still did traditional stuff, but like I said, too much effort to post untill i have something i really want to show.

So thats this week, going to reinstall photoshop now and get back to grinding that experience. Sorry for the blog post in what should be a sketchbook.

[Jaik]

Good job so far with the sketchbook, sorry to hear about the hard drive, that can be so frustrating. Hope its all still there. Anyway keep up the good work :)

[ImSkeptical]

Didn't actually get to practice much of what I wanted this week, because my dad gave me a semi-job at his company, which I felt obliged to do considering my parents have let me sit around drawing for 6 months with only their trust in me that im not wasting my time. It wasn't entirely unrelated, as it did involve creating a magazine advert, but it was kind of just a graphic design thing. I learn't abit of typography and approached it like a concept job, researched other ad's, thumbnails, made 4 roughs and then pushed one to finnish, but it was pretty basic and I feel bad because towards the end of it I kind of slacked off, drew sketches during work time instead. And the final result didnt look as good as I would've liked. If anyone in the crimson daggers is a graphic designer and reads this and feels like critiquing it, please contact me ^_^ . The job was 10-5 though, 5 days, so that sucked up alot of time.

I also discovered that with my hardrive being broken, I also lost all my settings and my sketch brush and my painting brush i kind of adapted from others. If I need to backup anything I realise, it is these things. I ended up scrapping together from sickbrush's pack a painting brush I had experimented with previously, and a basic sketch brush modified from some other brush in the pack. I blame the first horrible crayon lookin painting on getting used to the tool xD.

I still got some nice stuff done though, a huge load off my chest with 1 study, where I tried to rotate a painting. Although not accurate and took afew hours, it still addressed the worry I was having that I was simply copying photo's and not actually learning anything, which I knew was kind of silly but still pressed on my mind. I also forced myself to avoid hatching over everything and use value to cover up bad lines. I think I was using it too much as a crutch, and need to concentrate on smooth linework for abit.

[Othrandir]

Hey man! Glad to see you doing the work. Keep pushing and it'll happen :)

[ImSkeptical]

Feel sick so going to bed early. In my quest to stop hatching over everything studied jana's method of outlining the anatomy. Also probably never getting that hardrive back for along time, as data recovery is far more expensive than I realised. Backup your files people! Tried afew random brushes trying to find a new workhorse, planning to settle on 2/3 and sticking with it for as long as i can.

Hopefully much more stuff next week.

[ImSkeptical]

Busy week, but managed to get a decent amount done. Went to my graduation ceremony, got to wear the cool academic robes and everything with the square hats. Now officially B Science majoring in psychology and history and philosophy of science. Also got to take some pictures of the uni which I never looked at too closely before being into art.

While in the city got some supersculpy so starting to learn to do that. My goal is eventually to model a good ecorche figure, like the ones you can buy from the anatomy tool site. But right now, struggling to model anything. It was way easier in z-brush with auto symmetry. I'll take pictures next week, i forgot for this week. Hopefully i'll have modeled a good face or somthing

Other things are trying out new gesture approach and starting to do the new bloodsport. Hope I actually do it this time and don't chicken out. Lets hope the next update includes my finnished submission xD

[JonHop]

You have some excellent work in here and a great deal of it to llok through, it really shows how you've progressed and improved , great job. Keep up the good work!

[ImSkeptical]

Yay 'finished' the bloodsport and thus my first imaginative piece! It's better than i thought it would turn out, especially when halfway through I once again discovered my chosen lighting was overambitious and required under lighting faces and stuff, which I haven't ever really studied. I kinda just fudged the lighting forward for a better scene anyway. Furthermore, I think i could've made the lamp in the back better with a real reference, but I ran out of time. Lessons to learn in the future, involve not being afraid of selections shapes and lassos, because hand painting the bottle and letters was kinda silly. So i plan to do some mechanical and modern architectural stuff to force myself to use those tools.

Anyway, I'll undoubted look at the piece tomorrow and once again revert to thinking its garbage. Hopefully this will happen less with future pieces and bloodsports!

[ImSkeptical]

This week started off well, till my body decided to die on me again. I lost like 3 days of my life i will never get back due to some kind of flu; sneezing blood, feeling like i would never be warm again, sweating so much i lost weight, mouth dry as desert, etc. I feel really bad too because i got a good crit from Isra on my bloodsport piece, and wanted to work on that, but now it seems like I hate his advice. Hopefully I'll work on that tomorrow. I also don't advise anyone to get inspired while being sick. I listened to the Marko interview while lying in bed, and felt like i was well enough to do some drawing. One hour later, shivering in bed, dizzing headache, feeling like i'm going to die.

So yeah, this is what i managed to get done before that horrible ordeal. Was trying a new method of face construction, and also a new regime of tank study, consisting of studying the orthos and 1 isometric, then trying to remember as much of the iso as possible afew hours later, then the next day. Next week i plan to revise the face thing, and then, as a exersise for character design, see if i can draw the same face multiple angles, same costume multiple angles. I wrote down the specific details of my goal on paper, but i can't be bothered to get it right now, i will show the results next week xD.

[ImSkeptical]

Just a quick update before i go to my friends place to sleep in his house for the sydney workshop. Cya's in a week, ill probably write about it when i get back.