There's been an art forum shaped hole in my chest for too long and I'm not waiting for MB's forums to be renovated to fill it. Let's go!
I go by Enydimon on most other spaces, but tbh, everyone just calls me Eny anyway so we're sticking with that. I'm currently doing a mix of private illustrations and assets for animation in documentaries/shows, but I want to move toward work that feels more interesting to me. Sometimes I go really stylized, sometimes I go more realistic or abstract... I think working on something like Hearthstone would be fun for me and maybe I could just dig into my other styles in my own time. More than anything I think I just need to focus in on something as I've been a bit aimless for so many years and it leaves me with little portfolio work to use.
I think I have a pretty decent understanding of anatomy, colour, value, and edges. Enough to get me by and use them thoughtfully, but my gestures feel kind of trash and my forms and patience with rendering and larger pieces could be better.
Anyway, I'll start off with some pieces of mine. Some from this year, some a little older, but they should give you an idea of what I'm about.
Welcome it look like your work is becoming stiffer as it aged which can happen if gesture is left unanswered if you take the sketch that show your progress just by itself your right about gesture i would say.Maybe your just to concern with proper construction and proportion.But personally when i look at the rest of your content i am not really to concern about stiffness in your work.If you want to avoid stiffness always challenge yourself with more complexity and challenging view point.Draw people doing many different type of action such as lifting, grabbing, pushing or pulling,reading swimming,sleeping,fighting and other word that finish in ing.Gesture is one of the fundamental you can never draw enough of so it good to make it part of your daily warm up.
Yeah I would agree with that. My spatial proportions are not the best and I feel as though I'm a stronger painter than draftsman, so a lot of my attention in the last few years have been on accuracy at the expense of gesture in an attempt to fix it. I have improved, but I don't think it'll do me any good to keep putting gesture on the back burner. I did a Will Weston course back in Nov/Dec of last year and the sentiment was also that I needed to loosen up my lines.
I think I just need to find that sweet spot where my form and accuracy don't fall apart while doing that. I think it's going to be the first thing I implement in my new study regiment.
I actually did get to some gestures today but I'll wait until I have a proper and serious session to post. For now I'll just toss up the Will Weston homework + a painting experiment I did earlier this year.
Welcome to CD, Eny. I hope we can help fill that forum shaped hole for you hah. I'm really vibing with the variety in your work! It's a great skill to be able to be so versatile with styles (I really like the green topless man piece style haha) Accuracy over gesture is a trap a lot of us fall for, I think it's just a matter of getting into the groove of adding gesture into the forefront of your mind when drawing. I'm looking forward to seeing your gesture studies when you post them. Keep up the brilliant work :)
Man, I love the different art styles ! I didn't remembered any Eny on Permanoobs but Enydimon for sure ! Welcome here and i'm looking forward to see you improve and kick some asses !
Great work on the dynamism and different techniques in your sketchbook! Your ambition really shines through! Seems like you are on the right track, so I'm just gonna say Keep up the good work! And keep posting! : )
chubby_cat - Thanks and definitely! It's time to take gesture more seriously.
wld.89 - Thanks and hell yeah! Let's get it!
Zorrentos - Thanks, will do!
---
Got a bit busy with work stuff, but I managed to get in some gesture work this week. Using a mix of printer paper and newsprint for now. I did the post every day thing for a couple of years back on permanoobs and it was good for discipline but I'd rather just focus on quality learning than posting everyday, so I'll make my quota to post at least once a week.
I also used to spend a load of time commenting on sketchbooks and all that, but I'll probably cut back a bit to something more reasonable as it used to eat a huge chunk of time and I'm sure I used it as a way to avoid doing art. Definitely want to be active here tho, just wanna be smarter about it than I used to be.
Already feeling spiritually better about being back on a forum haha.
Nice! I love looking at orc concepts. Feels like the growth of that design language has been stunted for years. A bit difficult to break away from the Warhammer, Warcraft design mold!
Orken from sixmorevodka looks super promising though! Have you checked that out?
If you are reading this, I most likely just gave you a crappy crit! What I'm basically trying to say is, don't give up! ---- IG: @thatpuddinhead
Really nice start here - I'm loving your orcs - especially that first painting.
An interesting mix of styles here - do you think you will settle on one style in particular or carry on with the variety?
Also one thing I found useful with gestures was to copy a load of Michael Hampton gestures until I could remember how he indicates the major forms of the body and the landmarks of the body and then I would go off and do my own gestures from photo reference. This made my gestures a lot more dynamic and readable.
Hope that helps!
Keep posting!
“Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.” -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
John - Haha, interestingly when private clients ask me to draw orcs they're usually very clean cut and more green human looking than I typically like to draw them. I dig the Warcraft/Warhammer looks a lot but I do think as people borrow from them for their own ips, orcs get more and more gentrified as a design and people are afraid to go uglier or deviate from convention. I think Orken is doing a good job of coming up with interesting designs, I really like that yeti looking one.
zorrentos - I haven't been able to get to it in a daily fashion yet but it's still definitely more than I've ever done on a regular basis.
Artloader - I think for the sake of keeping myself from being bored I will likely continue to play in different styles, but maybe settle for trying to land a Hearthstone card and using that style professionally. At least for my current goals.
Yeah I have Hampton's book and think he does a good job of explaining gesture but I think I'm more of a fan of Bridgman's breakdowns. I'll give it another look. I've also been digging into Morpho and Stonehouse Anatomy books event just recreationally.
---
I got a bit distracted/busy and forgot to post, so here's a few studies and two Dudley from SF3 fan arts from the previous week. First one was too stiff due to a lack of planning so I tackled it again later after thinking about the pose more. Both probably clock in at around 2-3 hours. Some of the anatomy study references come from: https://twitter.com/kato_anatomy
I still have to get my head in the right space to just jump back into some bigger pieces, but I'll make it happen.
**Edit: oh yeah I forgot about the poster I made for a tournament I held this past weekend. Still pretty rushed due to time constraints but worth posting I guess.
I think the last few pieces are looking great! However, I'm wondering if the two female characters at the bottom of the last piece are a bit small? They disappear a bit in the hierarchy of the composition.
I'd suggest you experiment with scaling them up a bit.
Zorrentos - Yeah I think you're right. I'm not quite used to doing poster style stuff like this yet so I'll take it into consideration for the next one I do, which I should have more time to design.
---
I only had one page worth of gestures from this previous week and it's not that interesting so I'm just gonna skip over it for now and just post some private commission I did of some peoples' OCs cosplaying as fighting game characters.
I'll try to get to responding to peoples' sketchbooks when I can.
Sorry for poofing for a bit. Got real busy and didn't always want to draw in my down time. The only stuff I could show, I had no creative control over, so I wanted to wait until I had something more sizeable to show.
Haven't done much in the way of isolated gesture studies, but I am still trying my best to implement them whenever possible into my actual work.
Zizka - Nah, none of them are photobashes. The full body one is a portrait I did of my coach and the other one is a self portrait.
And thanks! That last poster is actually SNK and not Capcom, but I get what you're saying. I do have OCs that fit the fighting game mold, tho.
---
Lots of stuff from this week as I had more free time. I touched up that Homer drawing from earlier and have some random studies and other personal projects I'm starting.
cgmythology - Thanks!
---
Simplest explanation for me not posting for so long is just that life got busy and I had to drop something to manage my stress. Regularly posting on a forum seemed like something I could go without.
I have actually been drawing a lot the entire time and took another course from Will Weston last summer. From then on I just dedicated a lot of my time to working on portfolio type pieces. This April I ended up finally having updated things enough to get my portfolio reviewed by some working professionals and came away with the clear direction that I need to focus more on improving my perspective drawing.
I've attached only the artwork that I think make the cut for the portfolio and also some of the homework I did for Will Weston's class. I'm currently just focusing on work atm because it needs priority, but going forward I want to clean up my perspective and spend a longer amount of time on pieces instead of quantity. I don't know how often I'll update here, but I wanted to at least check in.
Edit: I nearly forgot, I also recently did a redraw of a redraw of a drawing I did 10 years ago, haha. I gave myself a limitation of 7 hours for them because that's what I did on the original. Just wanted to see how far I could get within that time constraint and see how my decision making has improved. Nowadays I would rather spend more time to make it look nicer than get it done quicker, which I suppose is a sign that I've developed better patience.
