Zaulta's Sketchbook

[Skeffin]

These are some great studies , I especially like the plein air paintings

[Zaulta]

@Skeffin
Thanks <3, I really enjoy your colors in a lot of your paintings

Dumping a lot of stuff heh









ew






painting studies with sketches for later






master study of thomas moran and a doodle



a study for later too



The three pieces below was part of my submission for the scholastics portfolio contest : ^) The theme was Sen. Finished up this doodle from awhile ago.



A continuation of that doodle, tried to apply some of what I learned from Framed Ink here



I redid this from a dropped project from like a month ago and I'm glad I dropped it. I think this is my new best piece UoU. Making these three pieces made me fall in love the character <3



here was the original from October, don't know why he's so yellow and his pose was wrong and didn't like the way I started this, so I redid it from scractch



I had to write an artist statement to submit so I'll post it here too. It has his backstory more in depth.
My portfolio is based on the main story points of Sen and his interactions and relationships with another character, Kumira. I was first inspired by another artist’s illustration. As an outcome of this influence, characteristics of sharp, hard masses that protrude out of the skin were used in my work. I created the concept of Sen as a result, but as Sen became more developed I started to ask questions such as: why does he have a mask, why are his clothes torn, and what happened to his family?
Kumira joined the ranks of the royal family long before Sen was born. Kumira was appointed by urgent need from the royal family to fill the rank of General: Magician. At the time, the city Sen’s family governed, Koshigan, was still in its infancy. The main task of this rank is to keep up a magic barrier out of fear that other cities would attack and fight along with the rest of Koshigan’s forces. She did her job impressively well, and as a result, was accepted to stay within the royal family’s ranks. Even though the royals hardly did a background check on her beforehand, the royal family could not deny what she has done for them and Koshigan. 
When Sen was younger, he never thought much of Kumira. The generals were all close with the royals with the generals living with them. Kumira carried herself stoically and always seemed to be somewhat cold and indifferent to Sen. That changed when Sen was exploring the palace as he would usually do. He was able to get inside Kumira’s lair to see a sneak of her conniving plan. Feeling threatened by Sen, she launched her attack on Sen’s city earlier than planned with the troops that she has secretly been recruiting for many years. She succeeds in her coup d'état. Out of spite for ruining her perfectly scheduled plan, she kept Sen alive with a curse, which at its surface is a skull mask. Sen is now on a journey to seek his revenge with the curse that Kumira has cast on him.

[Zaulta]

Back : ^) I got some pretty good news. I got accepted into the art schools I wanted to go to, VCU. It's extremely cheap compared to a normal art school and has a pretty good reputation, so I won't be drowning in debt at least and I really like a few of the professors there.





plein air painting, this was the first painting I ever sold <3






warm up sketches in the area















Dec 2020 - June 2017 : ^)







mirror self portrait



another plein air, took about an hour cause it was cold.






some studies environment persp is still confusing.

[JosephCow]

Dang, that self portrait is looking bad ass! Nice legs bro!
Haha, seriously though, you're getting good. Your colors are starting to really read as naturalistic.

Congrats on getting into VCU, what program are you going for? My own degree program was kind of disappointing, but hopefully yours will be better and you'll get what your are hoping to get out of it.

[Zaulta]

@JosephCow
Haha thanks Joseph <3, I think my lighting has improved cause I know how to see color just a little better irl : ^). With the school stuff, I'm going for the bfa communication arts major there. As a while, it pretty much lumps in anything 2d drawing that tells a message or story like concept art or comic art, but you get to choose your focus. Yeah and also hoping this program lives up to its name and isn't an art school horror story that's everywhere online.


master study of Thomas Moran on the bottom left. Was trying to pay attention to his color harmonies. Pretty insane that almost everywhere he gets the chance to there's coolness in the warm areas and warmness in his cools. Also found his exaggerated blue shadows in the front to be amazing uOu



Thought I would share a study of the same thing from April. Learned absolutely nothing from it then lol



festive still life,



birthday present for a friend, need to get this done by tomorrow late afternoon. I can probably fully finish it by then xd



Starting sometime in January, my plan for art time is gonna be mainly learning from Framed Ink and Light and Color by James Gurney. Will try to read and then apply what I learned individually and then combine the two from imagination : ^).

[JosephCow]

Yeah VCU seems like they have some pretty good teachers, and Comm arts seems like a good fit. I don't want to shit on your new school or anything, it could be awesome. I do think a lot of times schools will kind of sing a different song on their recruitment and promotional stuff than they do once you are enrolled. I know when I went to school it looked like it would be one way but turned out to be another. And there could be professors that genuinely do have good skills and experience, but the teaching program might not be something that really offers a foundation, and unfortunately that's easier to judge in hindsight.

But I don't want to discourage you, I hope it will be a great experience!

[Zaulta]

@JosephCow
Nah you're alll good, I'm thankful for your concern though. I am confident that this school will meet its expectations because I had a family member tell me their experience, Noah Bradley gives the school good words, and I reached out to another graduate from there : ^)

Managed to finish in time aha



I was starting to feel a little burnt out doing the next two images, decided to relax and work on things I want for awhile I found myself pretty much working the same amount; I think I was feeling that way cause I was assigning and forcing myself too much. There's just a lot I want to work on : ^).

Starting today gonna start study Color and Light by James Gurney. Process is gonna look like reading, study (from image or other artist), then something from imagination. Gonna try work on the book for about 3 days during the weekday and will try to go out for plein air painting once a week if I can. Will try to go through everything in the book in a few months maybe.






First environment from my head : ^).



Studies yeah, studied the image on the right before idk where it is. I'm a little blind to saturation u_u



Some sketching, left is my family getting a facial, right more armor studies .



failed gouache studies from an area inside my house, I think I was too impatient with mixing colors, I could also blame it on being very dark lol



character design concept



trying to explore her face



was gonna finish this but nah



Worked on this for past 3 days, gonna put this as a side project. This is also one of my friend's characters, I put them in Sen's story : ^).



Her main idea is that, she becomes Sen's journey companion. She was kidnapped at a distant village by Kumira's army and was forced to be trained as an assassin. Tessa always felt out of place in her new surroundings, but was still good enough in her job. During the throne room scene, she finds her chance to escape. After a while, she sees Sen being sent off from the city and captures him but after being together for awhile, she begins to trust him and finds out that they have similar goals. She wants to find out what happened to her village and her parents. Hope she doesn't become another Sakura B]



small crit for my friend

[Zaulta]

study day, on the left was experimenting with some new brushes : )

[Artloader]

Great going in here Zaulta, your latest stuff is looking much cleaner and more confident than your earlier stuff - all the hard work is paying off!

Also congrats on the place at VCU!

[Zaulta]

@ArtLoader
Thanks a bunch <3

left- study from Justin Donaldson's work, right- doodle
pussied out doing something from my head when I did this heh



stuck to my schedule of a plein air painting per week, went to my old elementary school this time and took about 2 hours






Thought I should redraw something from a year ago before I started working with color and digital stuff. Tomorrow's gonna be fun cause I need to decide all the colors for the rest of the project B]. This one is gonna be a big test for my sense of both outside and indoor lighting. oh no



the thing being redrawn

[Zaulta]

wip #2 : ^)
not sure if i like the colors or not, but will have to see. noticed that the colors seem like something I would do if I was working in gouache : ^).

[Zaulta]

oopsies haven't been active for a while :p time for a big update post.







finished the thing








couldn't have done this without some help :). One mistake is that I didn't look at any natural references, which made me lose the atmosphere on the outside environment but I had it right in the beginning stages @-@.








some doods








some planning for a future project for my senior 'mural' for school . probably gonna go for the top left one (inspired by some runeterra art)








went to this huge park 20 minutes away on MLK day, failed painting :(. It was too cold, i had shorts on and wanted to go home lol. definitely going to come back and paint area again someday






one of my friend's dad passed from covid recently. thought i should do something for them.





this one was my first attempt for thee above : ^)








another failed on location painting, this time of my room, and a short still life on the same few hours. shame that i didn't do the still life in paint; the blue light from the window would've made an amazing mood














some doodles and exploration of Sen









some fig drawings







doodle and wip of a study






more planning for a project for art class, theme was to illustrate a section in Einstein's Dreams






got an easel for my outside painting and wanted to try it asap :). it's so much better than sitting down and finding a flat place to sit and no bugs going in my pallet.






it was snowing today, somewhat uncommon where I am so painting today was a must B]






gift for a friend's birthday today cause they're horny






i think that's everything in order : ^). might also need to take a break from art cause my grades are ass LOL. virtual school and senioritus is B^]

[Zaulta]

My art is class is assigning two big projects, so gonna try to do my best on them for the next week or two.

Study from Leroy van Vilet : ^). He's probably one of my favorites now UoU. This was really different from how I usually render and do my colors heh. Also noticed that my colors tend to be pretty brash. 



Art class project wip of my characters <3. Trying to apply how i rendered to here.






I said I would try to study out of books since I've been doing more projects than usual, but looks like that's not gonna happen for a bit </3. I'll get to it eventually though.

[wld.89]

very good sketchbook ! you made huge progress concerning your values ! looks way more solid now ! keep it up :)

[Zaulta]

@wld.89
Appreciate it :)

Time for a dump B], been procrastinating on uploading but then stuff starts to pile up

Finished the art class project, took awhile to do



haven't worked on this in awhile lol, finishing the right character took forever @-@, but might just start this over in the distant future



doodle page



another doodle page of an old character



studies im probably not going to finish



still life, really want to get into learning how to paint metal



mirror self portrait, fairly happy with it since I see some improvement from the last digital self portrait



some quick movie studies




only plein air I was able to do past few weeks @-@, but found this cool spot after the snow melted in my aunt's backyard forest



Doodle page, left is an old character, middle is just a character idea. Later want to try to make a bunch of character thumbs since there's a lot of directions to choose from : ^)



Gonna try to fill this sketchbook up with hands and feet by the end of June when school is out. Goal for now is one page or more a day. I usually try to fill the book during class but I'm too tired @-@.

[Zorrentos]

Great stuff! Looks like you are putting all these studies to good use judging from the imaginative pieces! Keep it up! :)

[Zaulta]

@zorrentos

Thanks a bunch^^ work's paying off I guess lol

Been going through some art envy lately : ^), found a bunch of 15 year old who piss me off haha

Tried making some characters based on my last post. Restricted myself to standard front poses for the first 3 and I shouldn't have </3. Anyways, might make some sort of side story within Sen's timeline with one of them.



The occasional redraw : ^). Not sure what I think about it.



More hands. Been struggling to keep up with a page day. 



Observation stuff when I was out of the house. The trailer started out good, but perspective was off towards the end.



Figure drawings in pen from yesterday. This made me realize how I really like to speed through everything : ^). Gotta work on being patient..



Today's study stuff. Wilustra's stuff is amazing uOu

[JosephCow]

That original for the shirtless guy redraw was from 2017?? Dang dude you've come a long way since that lol. There's a lot of good here, you've made a lot of improvements!

[Zaulta]

@Josephcow
Thanks uOu. I'm pretty proud of it but idk there's always a feeling of being impatient out of habit with almost all of my work lol.




Plein air painting from yesterday, left about 2 hours? and right 30 minutes






My neck was starting to hurt from kind of looking down at the screen tablet, so switched back to the pen tablet. First thing I made with it in 6 months. I remember it being really hard to use but it was easier than I thought.



Had some of my friends pick some of the characters. After this, is done, probably going to work on my commissions sheet then maybe go back to studying art books: ^)

[wld.89]

man your work ethic is incredible ! there are some improvment in your selfportraits ! but it feels like you're rushing your studies/ not making the best out of it ! Something that i see happening quite often is this kind of studies




it doesn't seem like you really putted strong thought into those studies, you just copied a few shapes ( quite poorly imo) but you could have done way more with one thoughtful study instead of rushing and doing plenty of poorly executed ones ! quantity is great but you shouldn't sacrifice quality ! The goal of studies is to observe and understand, asking why and how ! hope to see more stuff soon !