Baldgate Sketchbook

[Baldgate]

Hello everyone,

Here are some recent studies that I did last week.

Not really confident about the environment study yet but i'll keep going ahah !

[Baldgate]

some awful environment study , some anatomy  and a couple of personal work I did. Still feel fragil overall on anatomy, but I kinda like the guys with his fan.

[Artloader]

Great start here Baldgate.

I love the simplification in your paintstrokes, big painterly strokes that give just the right information. Skillfully done dude.

Nice going with the figures, were they from reference or from your imagination? They are not up to the standard of your painted studies in my opinion. You've probably heard of it before but you could try Proko's YouTube channel for anatomy if you were interested - really great free learning there.

Keep posting my friend :).

[Baldgate]

Yeah, there are from imaginations, and I agree they lack ... well a lot of thing ahah. Yeah I know of Proko, I watch it from time to time, really good stuff :) !
Thanks you for the paintings, I like the painterly style a lot because its very straightforward. I'd like to improve my edge though, still have a hard time painting soft edge while keeping my texture on some subjects.
Not much to post today because my painted studies are not finished yet and drawing studies are on paper. I drew precisely 36 time the patella and the Tibia, took me more than three hours lol. Will probably take some photo of it later on.

[Baldgate]

Here are some new studies. Its mainly on paper, I drew the patella, tibia and fibula on three angle, front post and lateral. Still have the median to do to get a full 360 degree overview. Also did the front arm bone with clavicle and scapula.

And some dumb monster sketch because I was going crazy drawings all theses bones.

[Artloader]

Wow dude, that's some serous repetition! You should be able to draw those bones in your sleep now! Well done :).

[Shinkasuru]

Very nice studies. You give new meaning to the expression, "Repetition is the mother of all learning." The question is, did you learn something from all of those anatomy drawings? If you are more intimately familiar with the bones after all those drawings, then it was worth the time spent. You remind me that I need to get back to studying anatomy. There is just so much to cover and I embark on this journey to become a better artist.

[Baldgate]

Artloader : Thanks you for the kind words ! Some of them yes, but not all, I have still have a hard time with every nook and cranny. I dream of bones now...!

Shinkasuru : Thanks you ! :) overall yes. Each time I drew the bone 18 time from the model, then tried to draw it from memory and corrected it after 18 time too (Picked that in one of Dave Rapoza video ). Having to draw so much time the same thing, you have to find a way to simplify it and to be faster because its take a long time and it can become pretty boring .

 Its helped me to understand some of the shape . Some bones have subtlety in the curvature and I didn't immediately grasp everything from the illustration plate (I used Paul richer book for theses one) and drawing them made me understand better the overall pattern and forms. 


But... I don't see myself using all of that in imagination drawing, unless I do an undead skeleton. I think the most interesting part are skull, hand, feets and  joints (elbow and knee) because this is where the bones protrudes. Also the clavicles and the scapula, but the other bones, I wonder if its super useful to study them indepth beyond there general shape. I did some hand, forearm and arm today, the hand was very interesting, I was surprised by many thing like the way the thumb attach and some small bumpy bones like pisiform.

Well that was a long post !To sum its up, I think what I'v done might have been a bit overkill, but I got some nice thing there and there from the bony area. Here are today studies. I apologize for the poor quality, I will probably edit the photo with another tomorrow when the  light is better, it was difficult to get a good overview shot. I treat this mainly as a landmark for today work. Also a quickshot of one of the few bones hand study I did

[Shinkasuru]

Overkill or not, it looks like the repetition paid off. If the exercise gets you to think about the shapes and analyze the forms, and you can leverage what you learned in your drawings, then it was time well spent.

[darktiste]

Every object as 6 side in essence if it can fit in a box the only thing that remain is to know how to rotate that object in space and how to construct and subtract from that cube.If you understand this you can draw anything.Repeating help but i think the concept i am sharing here is what really the secret: understanding form rotation in space.But it require to approach thing with perspective.Copying is useful but limited you because it require that you ingrave that form into your mind compare to using the box method.The only problem is that you might find my explaination kinda abstract if your not familiar with constructive drawing.You can DM me if you don't know what i am talking about.

[Baldgate]

@Shinkasuru : You're probably right, thank you, its fulfilling to think that way. :)

Darktiste :  I'm not  sure i'm fully grasping what you are saying, I'm used to construction and I did a lot of perspective drawing but I find it sometime a bit hard to apply to organics shapes or to life drawings. Going to DM you , thanks you for the information !

Here is a life study I did today, of my cup of coffee. I did it with my eyes only, I didn't find a way to setup a proper perspective because the object was so close (about thirty centimeter of me) and I couldn't find how hight the horizon line should be etc. does anyone know how to setup a persp from life?

[darktiste]

Like i said all form can be boil down to a box the contruction of sphere and cylinder in a box aren't expection to this rule.Rock are just treated as a cube with substracted volume.Aslong as you can approch a form as if it was made out of glass you should be able to rotate it in any position.Perhap you heard of scott robertson if not you cannot ignore is contribution to this method.For organic form what i would say are 3 essential concept is to understand wrapping line and the x y z axis and how to construction a mankin you can add form on top.

Sorry this an advance subject that is still challenge my own capablity at being explained clearly since in my opinion it require visual example.

Sadly at the moment of this  message theattach file doesn't seem to work i could only manage to give you this example by copy and pasting.

[Shinkasuru]

It's a nice study you did here, Baldgate. I fell the composition is a little strange, and perhaps that is for the reason you already gave (being so close to the object). It seems to distort the view a little big. I would prefer to see the handle of the mug either a little more back and to the left or back and to the right. I feel it is a little too close to the viewer and for some reason this is a little less pleasing to my eye. That might be only a personal opinion, but I wanted to mention it to give you at least one viewer's opinion.

I like the painterly look you achieved with this still life. I never tried my hand at a still life before, except for one time many years ago in a color theory class I took at a local university. I would really like to try my hand at it.

[Baldgate]

Darktiste : Thanks you for refreshing my mind on the fundamentals, always good ! I'm actually quite used to it and I read Scott robertson. I still have some hard time combining everything together, probably because of I didn't study enough yet.

Shinkasuru : Thanks for your feedback, I'll be more careful with my composition and distance next time.
Would be cool to see your still life ! this one is my first in digital painting, felt awkward before starting it but it turned out fun !


A couple more studies. Gotta do more environment practice

[Fedodika]

hey baldgate, you requested some tips on finding the vanishing points, so heres my little informal way of describing it.

Practice finding the tops of surfaces and make sure in a drawing that the objects youre drawing all show the tops as truly s they appear in real life. Before investing a lot of time into a finished still life painting, be sure to spend a lot of time drawing stuff around your house instead and simply finding the perspective its sitting in. I know it isnt some complex equation scott robertson would use, but this is what perspective is, just positioning things.

So take like a phone, and rotate it, put it on top of things and draw it in those different angles and the things its on top of. Then youll start to see how the VP thing works. Everything is a simple shape that fits in a cube, once you draw something in perspective on your desk, imagine it on its side or some new object next to it then draw that. But yea finding the tops of things should help, i struggled with this concept for years trying to draw a skull on my desk, I should have not painted that skull but drawn simple objects in line instead that would have helped more i imagine

[Baldgate]

Fedodika : Thank you for your insight, I'm going to practice drawing a lot more still life before attempting to paint them ! I'm actually quite happy its a method that lies more in training than in a complex equation, would be hard if you had to draw a sick grid everytime you do attempt a drawing.

[darktiste]

Fedodika : Thank you for your insight, I'm going to practice drawing a lot more still life before attempting to paint them ! I'm actually quite happy its a method that lies more in training than in a complex equation, would be hard if you had to draw a sick grid everytime you do attempt a drawing.

Well that depend if you work on paper or digitally there easy brush you can use to law a grid in digital anyway you don't need a crazy grind unless you have multiple object because you simply put it inside a cube.The import thing is to find the x y z axis of the object so that it fit inside the cube.The bigger problem is estimating the vanishing point it can be tricky.If you don't want to draw them inside cube you can only do the ground plane of the cube it should be enough so that you can visualize it inside the cube and it help draw ellipse.Sometime if the object is seen from the top it better to use the top plane.

[Shinkasuru]

@Baldgate: I like your last two studies. The one of Leonardo Dicaprio looks great. Was the lighting on his neck casting a yellow light like that? I wasn't sure if the neck looks too yellow and jaundice, or if your reference photo looked like that. Anyway, I think you did a really good job on this one. Really captured the character.

I like the second one as well. Really interesting painting that says a lot about this young man. Nicely rendered and some nice textures you incorporated into the painting.

[meat]

Good work with all these studies, keep them up and you'll go places :)

[Baldgate]

@Darktiste : you re right, I could get it from a cube. I could also try to trace a perfect ellipse and get a perspective from it. I'm a bit afraid of it though because if the first cube/ellipse is wrong, everything is. But i'll try that, thanks you for the feedback !

@Shinkasuru : I'm glad you recognized him, I felt like I missed a bit of the likeness and was worried nobody would identify him ! The original photo was more peach, mix of yellow red and grayer hue, it had more contrast too. I realized afterward that a warm filter was probably used on the photo ref because I found the same photo with coolers colors. I couldn't match all the subtle hue shift of the photo though
Thank you, I tryed to go a bit more into details, for the second one, first time I did a tatoo too !

@Meat thanks you  !  I hope I will !  


I decided to study bridgeman for a bit and I'm currently copying all his "constructive anatomy " sketch. here is the first part, till the hand and fingers.  my scanner isn't the best, so some of theses are slightly cut on the right and some lines were losts .

Edit : I decided to compile all the bridgeman sketch into set of nines, because they take too much time to load. Hopefully it ll improve their readability too !