Knight's sketchbook

[dimensional-knight]

@VorpalBug Thank you!

The first requisite to succeed in any attempt is... trying. xD
When things get so bad you don't even try then it's a 100% rate failure by default instead of 50% or 80% or whatever. So I'm always putting conserving my ability to try new things first place.

@JosephCow I'm glad to be back! I get that "running out of time" really well, heh. If it helps, you're still young and you're doing fine (I just checked you sb, daaaamn)!

--

Hey, a question for those more knowledgeable in traditional materials: What can I use to get blacker blacks that won't smudge?

I don't mind some smudging at the level of nB graphite pencils, but I just tried charcoal pencils and while I'm in love with the texture and depth...




Lmao. The drawings won't survive a week like this. I don't feel like putting extra effort and $$ into varnish to set just sketchbook stuff if it can be helped.

I also got acrylics to do warm highlights, here's a test on an old page:




As I feared the premixed paint is drying in that container, I'll have to source something with a better seal if I want to include it in my sketching routine.

And my latest page spread. I had already wrapped it up when I got the charcoal pencil, so I just sneaked a black here and there to see how it goes.

[darktiste]

The problem isn't necessarily the medium but the surface.

If you want to protect your drawing you can also use a fixative spray that seal the charcoal to the surface.The medium itself otherwise won't stay unless the paper allow for a a better grip of the medium which mean it less of a smooth flat surface a rugged surface tend to grip medium to a higher degree.

[Leo Ki]

Your starting a portrait from a skull sketch for the structure makes sense to me, but that turns out a tad bit scary when you do the same with your sculptures and add the flesh onto it :)

I'm impressed by your extremely detailed knowledge of anatomy in the advice you provide in other threads. And how you use it to bring the results you want. All this self-taught?

To counter tendon pain, have you tried painting with full arm motion on a large canvas instead of moving the wrist and fingers?

[dimensional-knight]

@darktiste Thanks for the advice, but changing paper isn't throwing the baby out with the bathwater? I have zero attachment to charcoal, and all attachment in the world to my sketchbooks, plus an intense dislike of coarser paper textures.

I've been thinking of trying conté next, or finding some good quality soft black color pencil. It just sucks buying material I've never used blindly in hops it does what I need it to.


@Leo Ki But creepy sculptures are so fun! Hah, usually I don't sculpt from skulls, this was to see if I could. I just grab a neutral face (ahem, actually the nearest file, usually my latest work) and change it into the new subject.

Yes, I'm self taught. I'm not that good of an anatomist, I'm an okay bullshitter who spent an unreasonable amount of time mostly on heads. My limbs knowledge is puny! I really have to find the time to fix that because it's so far behind getting embarrassing.

In any case, internet makes resources easily accessible. It'd be better to have a teacher guiding your studies and correcting your mistakes, but in case of no access books, prerecorded courses, 3d scans, they all  can plug that knowledge gap with a little extra effort. About employing that knowledge, it's not very different from colors, edge work or something else. It's a matter of understanding how that bit of real world works, getting good enough at representing it, to then exaggerate, add it where it doesn't belong or omit where it ought be, all with the goal of manipulating the viewer senses, thus emotions.

About the tendon pain, it seems most of mine comes from death grip. XD

- My pencil grip greatly improved with daily practice without really trying. I can tell that because leads rarely snap now, only when I accidentally let half cm out of the mechanical pencil.
- It's very hard to get pain from 3d work. There's a lot of movement variety, mouse and tablet back and forth. Ensuring I have enough desk space is usually enough.
- However, I still get pain from digital painting. I suspecut it's due Wacom pen shape. It's too heavy, thick and conical, the way the nib works forces me to hold it vertically because I get shit control when gripping loosely at an angle. I'm not sure how to counter this.

---

So, updates. I think I forgot to post this? It's not very exciting or pretty, nor a breakthrough because I didn't have the time to further explore it yet, but...

I'll be painting a lot of natural landscapes for that prospective comic, so I need efficiency. It's been a while since I painted forests thus I did a diagnostic painting. Something without much planning or refs, just to identify where I go wrong and what sort of aids I need to make them good but less time-consuming because it's just background.



I won't list everything that went wrong or I'll be here until tomorrow, but major points: 1) I have a weak vegetation visual library, 2) Colors and values all over the place when I should simplify them to make it readable, 3) I really dislike foliage brushes. Tried and discarded the results a couple of times. The lack of control, wrong perspective and lighting makes using them for foreground details more time consuming than helpful. You just fall into a stroke-ctrl-z loop trying to get the correct results that sucks.

After giving it some thought, I did a quick experiment. An alternative way to get sharp leaves, but with correct perspective and superior baked in lighting:






It's promising. Super quick to use, great artistic control! I'm looking forward to trying that in a full forest after tackling the other issues.

Hmmm, here's my sketchbook output from last week. I'm feeling confident enough in values to start allowing myself to stylize some shapes now.




Lastly, some grunt work I've been doing to be able to invest more on the art side of 3d sculpture art:



It's a faux chainmail / alternated patterns generator. It doesn't stand close scrutiny but is okay enough for dressing bust sculptures in armor with ease. I'm still setting up controls, organic rotation randomization is missing from this preview.

[Dominicque]

@VitorCardoso Thank you!

I've got a bunch of other sculptures already, but they need a final pass or hair. I'm working on a way to make hair easier to setup because it's a nightmare, easily taking over half the time spent on a bust and doing a vague sculpted mass + strands on top of it like in the first doesn't look good. This is time I want to spend on art, not pixel-pushing.

Oh, how I wish I could do great pencil work like you! Are these from imagination or reference/studies? How long do they take on average? Your sculpts look nice and 'painterly', too.

@Dominicque I'm so happy the sculpts look painterly because sometimes I chisel a lot of planes that shouldn't really there to capture that painterly energy through the light. I'm glad it's coming across!

Most are studies, but it's better to call them from reference for reasons expanded below. Each portrait takes 20-50min on the average, usually on the upper bracket. However, when larger or darker they easily take up to 2 hours. I don't keep track of time, I only set a time by which I need to put the pencil down and start my day because getting anxious about my sluggishness won't make me more efficient. I'm not slow because I'm getting lost on details or something, I need every one of these seconds.

Sometimes I can't believe how far my pencil work got and will leaf through my sketchbook to convince myself, haha. A couple of years ago I had accepted this skill was beyond my reach, period. That was something for good, real deal artists, not my inefficient lazy ass.

~~ Long rant about art improvement and motivation strategies ~~

I'll babble now but I hope it helps! You sound like me these years back, and I saw you also struggle with speed and expectations.

What turned it around for me and made my art objectively improve was figuring how to make it comfy and pleasant. Years berating myself for not being as good as I'm supposed to be did nothing for my skills. There's being disciplined, and there's pointless punishment. Being constantly disappointed in yourself falls into latter; It won't make you a better artist, it just makes you miserable. So I accepted that while there are aspects in which I might never be good at, I can still enjoy the ride. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The cool thing is that chasing this enjoyment counts as practice, whether you meant to practice or not. Practice which brings improvement, whether you're looking for it or not. Leveling up happens as if by black magic, all by itself. And all you need is reframe and be kind to yourself. This kindness is not only about going out of your way to shut down your brain weasels when they're acting up ("You're too slow! You can't get the values right! It looks nothing like the ref!"), but finding what makes a drawing personally satisfying. You'll have to identify your own happy places. As an example, mine are:

- Faces. I just love them. They don't need to come with a body attached, because that's costly and turns a happy thing into a stressful thing. So if it looks like a person, not necessarily the person I was drawing, I'm already happy.
- Rendering. Making the end result pleasant-looking makes me happy. Sometimes it means value-crunching or deviating from the reference, and that's an acceptable loss to me if that keeps my spirits high and momentum going.

They're the key for me coming out from a drawing happy even if I fail at whatever I was studying, so I place them higher in my priority list than the study. It's my secret to avoid burn outs. "True, I couldn't capture the forehead plane like I wanted, but it looks cool!"

I found a time slot to draw that works for me, as I down my morning coffee, and now I draw every day. It's okay to do a shitty drawing when you have the sure opportunity to do something better tomorrow, plus a bad drawing among many okay ones just fade into the background.

I budget my stress carefully, making the point of picking no more than two things to study a day. Any aspect that stresses me out also counts as a study subject: Larger drawings, full bodies, darker shading, likeness, and such. I don't take them for granted or mandatory, I make room for them in my energy budget. Rather than trying to not overrun in time, it's important to not overrun my stress budget. If it's a bad day, I can simply not consciously study anything at all. Whenever you spot a fish, that's a day I just wanted to chill. ^^'

I also follow my whims. I don't need to devise rigid study subject schedule because the brain weasels constantly whisper where I failed and how I failed. I can simply approach one of these points of failure when I feel ready, or when I feel like it. Some weeks I might try noses, others larger drawings, others I don't focus on a subject at all. Following your whims is fun, thus also mood-improving.

All this emphasis on not overworking myself is because I already have a day job in which I often do things I don't feel exactly like doing. There's plenty of things on my life to stress about. I don't need to turn my study time into another source of anguish. If anything, it's counterproductive.

---------------------------------------------------------

To compensate for that wall of text here's a small style exploration.

It went surprisingly smoothly, and though at first it didn't felt like "me", throwing it into an abandoned WIP showed it works. The knowledge and confidence gained from all these pencil portraits is starting to bleed into my color work.




Oh, and rocks tests!

Yep, I do struggle with speed and expectations. Was I super obvious lol? Yeah, I do tend to beat myself up and surrounding myself with constantly negativity is just burning me out. If I don't get things down how I want from my head within the first 10 minutes I start thinking I'm a failure and can't do it. Trying not to see how long something is taking me as a 'value judgement' on myself. 

'The cool thing is that chasing this enjoyment counts as practice, whether you meant to practice or not.'
I need to remember this and drill it in my head. I don't just need to bang out 'studies' all day every day. If I'm enjoying it I AM improving. 'Finding happy place',  I need to let myself have a 'comfort zone'. Fanart right now and conceptual illustration is what making me want to draw right now.  I get really bored with rending and when it doesn't go right, like doubt bug starts to creep back in. I would really love to have a rendering style like yours Wes Burt, Miles Johnson or Tran Nguyen. Any tips for how to render pencils like you?
I've been watching videos on starting an illustration career, especially from: The Illustrator's Guide - YouTube and it's actually been helping a lot. I'm been in that negative headspace of always comparing my art to others, especially fantastical realism, super rendered art that thrives on the internet, that zooming out and looking at the sort of illustration that gets hired for example editorial or book design makes me aware there is a market for art that doesn't fit in though genres, like super flat vectors. There are loads of commercial illustrators whose work is off it terms of anatomy, perspective, etc, but it honestly doesn't matter, because the idea is still good and it fits with their style. 
Even though that sort of art doesn't appeal to me, if that art is fine, my current art can still be good enough for commissions/professional work, whilst I work on having a style I really enjoy. I'm actively trying to find illustrators IRL I can vibe with.

I often feel mentally exhausted, and I feel the anxiety comes from the feeling of always feeling like I wasted time, so I don't want to 'waste' any more. I have an idea of something I want to draw, but then I think I need to know anatomy, perceptive, hands, feet, compositions before I even start, so I don't want to. Which is counterintuitive. Like, on here I feel I need to post work in order to comment, even if I haven't or work isn't finished. It's taking me awhile. 

Don't worry about the wall of text, it's welcomed, especially on these topics lol.

Those rock studies are great btw. Did you overlay with photos, or is it just painted?
Great sword designs!

[Leo Ki]

A forest is not a place, it's a dream that overwhelms the senses with details, scents and sounds. No wonder it's difficult to depict, and impossible to describe. When you say you want to make it readable and fast to make, I'm afraid the only way is by drowning the peripheral vision into blobs and streaks of darks and lights, and forcing a focal point. Not that I've ever been successful at doing this...

Regarding the vegetation library, an often overlooked fact is that many species are multi-stem trees, resulting in a different structure and overall shape than single-stem ones. Also as soon as you have a clearing and sunlight, even a tiny one, you will find fast-growing vegetation (bush and birch) that create a parallel universe.

Your foliage technique is intriguing, can you tweak it for more fuzziness and overlap on larger, distant volumes, or would it take a NASA computer to compute?

Now I want to know more about your painted comic project, badly.

I think I understand what you mean by death gripping the pen. At school I used to literally carve the paper with my ballpoint pen, so I switched to a fountain pen, still managed to bend a few tips, even tried a more sturdy calligraphy pen with a slanted tip to force me out of my bear habits.

With the tablet pen I scratch the film and I have the same issues as you getting terrible pressure control when tilting the pen. I never thought of holding it vertical, I will try that but I know I won't like it.

Maybe we are in need of a motion capture system to draw in thin air.

[JosephCow]

The chain mail looks really good actually, especially the one on the left is pretty convincing. I think that stuff is really cool.


What was the process exactly for doing tree leaves? Was it a bunch of leaves in blender to get the shapes? It seems like that could work well.

I agree foliage is a tricky problem for us. Painting every leaf is out of the question, but foliage brushes look kinda cheap. I think it's one of those things where you suggest the mass of color and light and then cut some shapes of leaves into it. On your forest currently you basically have that, and when I kind of look at it unfocused it works, but then of course all the hard edges of each shape draw attention.

[dimensional-knight]

@JosephCow

The chain mail looks really good actually, especially the one on the left is pretty convincing. I think that stuff is really cool.

Thanks! The scale armor absolutely looks best for needing only placement in a X pattern and point more or less down. I've just hooked up the basic rotation back, 1st one looks way better already:



The 2nd in the original lineup is a Shan Wen Kai (Chinese Mountain Armor). The base clothing models I'm using just barely fulfill the requirements for turning them into mails to catch edge cases where it kaputs. They don't have the right spacing for the second, plus the "links" looked cool in a flat plane yet are producing uninspired light/reflections in curved areas. I'll rework them.

This type of armor was said to be worn by high-ranking officers in ancient China. No one knows how to manufacture it anymore nor what it really looked like. It's supposed to be strong and very flexible. All we have now are ancient statues. It's very cool:



I'll also test this generator with some kind of lamellar plating because why not? And it slays when using sequins for links. xD

What was the process exactly for doing tree leaves? Was it a bunch of leaves in blender to get the shapes? It seems like that could work well.

Yes. I created a single leaf and used something called Geometry Nodes to scatter them on the surface of invisible blobs with a few controls. I've included a quick video for Leo Ki below if you're curious. I rendered with a transparent background and used as a mask in a similar way I'd foliage brushes after hammering them into something usable. I'm so happy with the artistic control and efficiency!

I agree foliage is a tricky problem for us. Painting every leaf is out of the question, but foliage brushes look kinda cheap. I think it's one of those things where you suggest the mass of color and light and then cut some shapes of leaves into it. On your forest currently you basically have that, and when I kind of look at it unfocused it works, but then of course all the hard edges of each shape draw attention.

The forest is very messy. Barely any sense of depth because everything is everywhere. That's what I do by instinct -- I do unfocus my eyes haha. I've got to tone down the amount of brushstrokes and drastic value/color transitions, plus work the edges in a cohesive way.

I like to think of the hierarchy of elements of a piece in terms of LOD (games' Level of Details) because I'm a huge nerd, and that's what I'm lacking there. I don't need nor should squeeze visual interest in the form of edges colors light into background elements supposed to be out of focus.


@Leo Ki

A forest is not a place, it's a dream that overwhelms the senses with details, scents and sounds. No wonder it's difficult to depict, and impossible to describe. When you say you want to make it readable and fast to make, I'm afraid the only way is by drowning the peripheral vision into blobs and streaks of darks and lights, and forcing a focal point. Not that I've ever been successful at doing this...

It may not be quick as a spitpaint, but there has to be a way to be better and faster than I currently am, hah.

Regarding the vegetation library, an often overlooked fact is that many species are multi-stem trees, resulting in a different structure and overall shape than single-stem ones. Also as soon as you have a clearing and sunlight, even a tiny one, you will find fast-growing vegetation (bush and birch) that create a parallel universe.

I'm a cheater.

Picked pine-like trees because they're simpler, growing in a sort of ambient that isn't nearly as busy as the wild landscapes of where I live, in a biodiversity spot in the tropics. Here straight-trunk trees like that are a rare sight. 

Your foliage technique is intriguing, can you tweak it for more fuzziness and overlap on larger, distant volumes, or would it take a NASA computer to compute?

Like most computer things the answer is a resounding "yes", it's more a question of should I invest more time on it? I modelled a single lowpoly leaf and used something called Geometry Nodes to scatter copies on the surface of invisible blobs with a few controls. Adding more controls to cover things like other growth directions would be straightforward.



It's GPU inexpensive, and absurdly faster to work with than wrestling foliage brushes. No comparison! I'm leaning towards reverting to actual hand-painted blogs for leaves far in the back, maybe a few leaves on top of it to smooth out the transition between depiction styles. I have some ideas of different approaches to structuring the painting, I'm just lacking the time.

Now I want to know more about your painted comic project, badly.

Hah, it's just an excuse to do a comic in my life. I worked out all major points of the story, but I'm not ready to move from detailed outline to script while I'm not sure it can be done art-wise. I want something pretty and weekly.

The thing with forests and rocks and skies is that the brunt of the story takes place on the road, in rural and wilderness locations, and I'm a big fan of wide shots to communicate emotional states.

It's fantasy and cosmic horror, taking place in a world undergoing industrial revolution but with magic. There, beings from someplace Outside wear the faces of the dead. Guess how the protagonist starts? Dead. Then not dead. :D

I never thought of holding it vertical, I will try that but I know I won't like it.

Noo, don't do that! I couldn't take good photos of my own dominant hand, and I don't hold the pen 100% vertically just close, but in any case, can you spot the issue with my default claw grip? I call it "death" grip not because I apply pressure against the paper. It's on the pen and vs the fingers themselves.



The pen rests against the ring finger nail; When using solid graphite pencils it even gets gray. This claw hand is great for pressure control, but— movements are all finger flections.

That's where the tendon pain comes from. I don't get carpal because the wrist barely moves, I get literal hand and finger pain, heh. And it's exacerbated by the way pinky and ring fingers are stiffly curled underneath the others for stability. Pressure control and stability advantages be dammed, those can be learned with other grips quite easily. I'm glad to leave it behind! This is an evil grip.

I'd be happy enough with slimmer drawing tablet pens with better nib shapes and angled pressure processing.



@Dominicque

Yep, I do struggle with speed and expectations. Was I super obvious lol? Yeah, I do tend to beat myself up and surrounding myself with constantly negativity is just burning me out. If I don't get things down how I want from my head within the first 10 minutes I start thinking I'm a failure and can't do it. Trying not to see how long something is taking me as a 'value judgement' on myself.

It's easy to spot because you're not alone. Some people have a serene approach to work, a certain confidence naturally in them. Us? It's a learned skill.

Just.. Look at these four attempts at the same person. First three took place in the same week, when I first got back into pencils at the beginning of this thread, fourth is from January.




And I'm still inching forward. I hope this drives home the incremental nature of art. Want more, a truly wild ride? Look at Miles Johnson's CA.org sketchbook phase.

Learning is a rollercoaster of progress and seemingly nothing at all. The starting point might not be even aligned with what you can do in a different medium! You've got to make room for the tool learning curve. Don't get overwhelmed.

Find the study strategy that works for you. Mine is sneaking one or two subjects into a kind of work I enjoy, like hiding vegetables in yummy food. Plus, whenever I get overwhelmed or stuck in a fail loop I downsize. I try them, but I don't follow the usual study path if it's evident it won't work for me. And you know the mean critic inside your head? Make them earn their keep.

"This looks off, the arm is wrong, (...)" is shit critique. Thanks captain obvious, I have eyes. Don't let the demanding part of your mind get away with such lazy comments, if it wants to complain it better be useful. I've just got into gestures and I think it's a good example of how I deal with it.

I didn't stop at "it's bad", I didn't let "the legs in particular are terrible" slide either. The asshat part of your mind was right there during the creation of every piece, so make them debug what went wrong during it. Did you feel uncomfortable? Why? Is it because you're not confident in the anatomy? Is it the angles? The silhouette? Interrogate the critic until you extract a concrete diagnostic of what's not working right now, what's scaring you or derailing the drawing. That's useful information. You can take action with it, downsize like I did: just legs, legs and more legs, without timing it because fuck it I take two to three times longer than other artists for any gesture and if that's what it takes, that's what I'll do.

I would really love to have a rendering style like yours Wes Burt, Miles Johnson or Tran Nguyen. Any tips for how to render pencils like you?

Oh wow, you're putting me in the same level of amazing artists here. That's a lot of responsibility! xD

I've described my approach a new post below to keep the thread minimally organized.

'Finding happy place',  I need to let myself have a 'comfort zone'.

Yes, absolutely. The point of the comfort zone is to drag things into it and build upon what you know. I dislike the idea of "stepping outside the comfort zone" because it sounds like you got to throw yourself at challenges every time, everywhere, when it's much easier to sneak in and out, bringing some small new thing with you.

Even though that sort of art doesn't appeal to me, if that art is fine, my current art can still be good enough for commissions/professional work, whilst I work on having a style I really enjoy. I'm actively trying to find illustrators IRL I can vibe with.

Another way to look at it is to keep in mind when you're working for a client it's enough to make them happy. That's your target. If it looks awesome to you as well, all the better, but this is not a requirement of the task.

Remember that different styles are answers to different questions. They may look off when judged by specific lens, yet they still fulfil their original purposes. That's worthy and enough.

Those rock studies are great btw. Did you overlay with photos, or is it just painted?

It's been a while since I did these, I think I sculpted a striated pattern for the orange one and deformed, painted over and under it to test the process. Derivated the gray one from it and just painted the rest. It's as much a test of the process as it's to see if the result is too busy or what.

I dug up a timelapse of the mountains!

[dimensional-knight]

Okay, quick explainer on my current approach to pencils. It's built around the things I like and my cans/cant's. It's important you gauge what you like and can do to find yours.


Things I like

- I love the look of pencil on paper. I crave roughness, not pieces that could be done with the PS gradient tool.

Right now I only blend with quick fingertip swipes when I need to lighten something, or when I want to lay a darker base on a large area which will receive dark hatching. I guess we can say I also do rudimentar edge control by smudging, but that's not on purpose, edges get smeared as I draw and in the end I just re-sharpen what I want by redrawing and erasing.

The hatching is supposed to communicate more than values. The direction is all about planes I want to emphasise. Often they follow the longest edge of an area, going counter when I want to flatten it.




To blend in values or create softer areas, I shade in a circular motion.

- It's obvious by now, but I also dig sculptures and geometric plane transitions, so I bring that to my work. I break curves into straight lines, I pretend the face is a lower poly sculpture and represent planes accordingly. I'm omitting, exaggerating and compressing values in name of making it more geometric.


Things I can and can't do

- I can't really do lines as outlines.

The farther they are of my initial anchor point, more off the mark they become. I can't jump large distances in the canvas, I need a firm handhold to move onto whatever next part of a drawing or it'll come apart, quite literally. That's volume to me. So in faces, for example, I do a vague skull for initial placement then go lidar on it, exploring the curvature in veeeery light values, darkening as I progress. For other things I'm also a bit topographical, swooshing volume lines where I can, trying to find the fine balance where they act as guidance but don't get so crowded I can't make sense of what I'm looking at.

- Also can't do that outlining different values then filling in technique due the same issue above.

- I'm not good at gauging values. I place values relatively to workaround it for now, but a more absolute perception of values is something I feel is within my reach (I'm pretty good at breaking colors into more basic hues) and it'd be of great use because having a bad eye for values, I get them very wrong if jumping from lightest to the darker ones. Fudged countless drawings due this!

- I have an okay sense of curvature.

I work these into a drawing as early as possible so I can do the above. There are some gifs in my early posts, one showing a smiling woman's portrait. I still work like that, maybe less reliant on drawing skull landmarks because I'm pretty used to them now, but still light to dark, follow the curves.


Take note of how I didn't mention style. Personal style is something that emerges from chasing the things you like, so it's not so much a matter of emulating someone's work but identifying what you like in their work, why, then freely trying all the things that tickle your fancy. You build skills with the things you want to do in mind, but you don't sweat so much style itself is coming first, except when style is the subject you're studying.

Also, beware of style in studies. It can hide weaknesses and drawing vices. It's best to approach it carefully once you're certain you got a good grasp on the tidbit you're studying.

[dimensional-knight]

To wrap up my posting rage, I picked a sketchbook from 2012-2018 with leftover blank pages to do gestures (biased towards anatomy, not just flow lines) because I'm desperate need of it. Too much of my time currently goes into unfucking full body illustrations.

And let me tell you, I still hate gestures.

The way it's taught, or was in that one semester I took the only serious drawing class in my life, doesn't grok. I don't have the natural sense of balance that's somehow supposed to flourish through repeated speedrun-like practices. I suck at lines and angles, and the only thing bubbling up after 10 x 2 min gestures is anger.

Still, I took that approach to understand where I struggle most. The right page below was the first, the left last in this batch. Anything not a gesture is years old stuff.




1) Curved torsos are the easiest. People put a lot of emphasis on learning to use the spine, but that's not quite my issue.
2) I fuck up legs. They're weird sticks and sometimes I deform everything to attach them. Straight legs, men's legs, they're the worst. Maybe I should give everyone lady legs, lmao.
Bonus) Lizards are fun. I'm sorry, but if I want to loosen up instead of going stiffer I better do animal gestures.

So now I'm focusing on getting used to pogo sticks legs. No rush, just legs. First how better approach them (topologically, it seems), then repletion to drill silhouette and proportion. Arms will come next, and once I'm more comfortable with them, necks.






I've got more pages now, but it's more of the same. I'm taking suggestions of sketchbooks with cool gestures and anatomy studies to lurk in!

Oh, and palate cleanse from sketchbook page I'm currently working on. Accidental smudges can be fun!

[darktiste]

The problem i would argue is your perception of the task and your previous experience of the task.If you don't build small victory and leave with a bad taste in your mouth you simply don't want to come back.Alot of issue we carry is due to mindset not because of leak of talent or muscle memory those can be overcome aswell.

For gesture i would say if you are more comfortable with longer session i would say you could work backward so instead of having 1 to 5 min gesture or even 30 sec one you can try let say do 2x30min 4x15min that would be in the case of if you have let say 2 hour to spare as you see you start from a space of confidence and as you warm up you decrease the amount of time for the subsquent ''study'' of course my example highlight that it probably best not to have such a high degree of difference in the amount of time(30/15) session of longer or short duration like it would probably be good for stress level to have something where there isn't much difference in the level of finish you can achieve.After all
you would feel depress by the level of finish between the longer and shorter session if one is double the time of the other.Also in my time doing similar atelier i remember them putting us into the uncomfortable position first and than as time advance the gesture would turn into longer study this might work for a person who never drew before as they have no expectation... but in your case you do so i propose a inverted approch longer season and than short and shorter one.Of course the idea is that over time you move from needing long introductionary study to just having what gesture is about which is about capturing the essence of the pose.

The point should never be to compare the longer season to the render level of the shorter one.Oh and also the point is that even if the time is up you move on to the next.Bad drawing are a thing we all want to hide because they make us doubt we skill.But they are actually the only way to notice when we make leap in understanding of fundamental principle and rendering capacity.

[Leo Ki]

Thank you for sharing your process, doubts and perceived can/cannot. I'm on the opposite spectrum, have to set up faraway landmarks and refine within or I end up warping.

The stick-like effect of your first leg drawings seems to stem mostly from the region of the knee. Bone-wise the knee is the thickest part, flesh-wise it is the thinnest one; however there is such a variety across people in how the flesh is distributed around the upper and lower leg that it's hard to deem a drawing "correct" without knowing the reference. Some people do have stick-like legs. And those bones underneath are really sticks. Add to that the adaptation to bipedal locomotion and things get really weird.

By the way I like your "very old drawings" on these pages too, at least the ones not hidden by the pots.

For the sake of understanding what you mean, is there a distinction between quick gestures and quick poses? For me the former is lines of action stuff, the latter is more like regular drawing but simplified (what you did).

I see now what you mean by death grip. I had this too when using thinner pens (in addition to carving the paper). Still have calluses on the fingers from this. When switching to thicker pens, my grip improved. The other end of another spectrum, lol.

It's getting late, I'll come back about the comic, leaf engine, forests and other topics.

[JosephCow]

Huh the ancient chinese armour is really cool, I didn't know anything about that. I really want to learn more blender because there's so many cool things you can do. I know there's some software that can help you generate whole trees as well that can be then used in blender. I'm still a big nooby tho so I don't know how to do anything lol. Whenever I think about doing this kind of thing I get overwhelmed and I'm like, oh well I'll just paint everything by hand on one layer.

I really like seeing your work, it looks great. hope you keep posting.

[Dominicque]

@Dominicque

Yep, I do struggle with speed and expectations. Was I super obvious lol? Yeah, I do tend to beat myself up and surrounding myself with constantly negativity is just burning me out. If I don't get things down how I want from my head within the first 10 minutes I start thinking I'm a failure and can't do it. Trying not to see how long something is taking me as a 'value judgement' on myself.

It's easy to spot because you're not alone. Some people have a serene approach to work, a certain confidence naturally in them. Us? It's a learned skill.

Just.. Look at these four attempts at the same person. First three took place in the same week, when I first got back into pencils at the beginning of this thread, fourth is from January.



And I'm still inching forward. I hope this drives home the incremental nature of art. Want more, a truly wild ride? Look at Miles Johnson's CA.org sketchbook phase.

Learning is a rollercoaster of progress and seemingly nothing at all. The starting point might not be even aligned with what you can do in a different medium! You've got to make room for the tool learning curve. Don't get overwhelmed.

Find the study strategy that works for you. Mine is sneaking one or two subjects into a kind of work I enjoy, like hiding vegetables in yummy food. Plus, whenever I get overwhelmed or stuck in a fail loop I downsize. I try them, but I don't follow the usual study path if it's evident it won't work for me. And you know the mean critic inside your head? Make them earn their keep.

"This looks off, the arm is wrong, (...)" is shit critique. Thanks captain obvious, I have eyes. Don't let the demanding part of your mind get away with such lazy comments, if it wants to complain it better be useful. I've just got into gestures and I think it's a good example of how I deal with it.

I didn't stop at "it's bad", I didn't let "the legs in particular are terrible" slide either. The asshat part of your mind was right there during the creation of every piece, so make them debug what went wrong during it. Did you feel uncomfortable? Why? Is it because you're not confident in the anatomy? Is it the angles? The silhouette? Interrogate the critic until you extract a concrete diagnostic of what's not working right now, what's scaring you or derailing the drawing. That's useful information. You can take action with it, downsize like I did: just legs, legs and more legs, without timing it because fuck it I take two to three times longer than other artists for any gesture and if that's what it takes, that's what I'll do.

I would really love to have a rendering style like yours Wes Burt, Miles Johnson or Tran Nguyen. Any tips for how to render pencils like you?

Oh wow, you're putting me in the same level of amazing artists here. That's a lot of responsibility! xD

I've described my approach a new post below to keep the thread minimally organized.

'Finding happy place',  I need to let myself have a 'comfort zone'.

Yes, absolutely. The point of the comfort zone is to drag things into it and build upon what you know. I dislike the idea of "stepping outside the comfort zone" because it sounds like you got to throw yourself at challenges every time, everywhere, when it's much easier to sneak in and out, bringing some small new thing with you.

Even though that sort of art doesn't appeal to me, if that art is fine, my current art can still be good enough for commissions/professional work, whilst I work on having a style I really enjoy. I'm actively trying to find illustrators IRL I can vibe with.

Another way to look at it is to keep in mind when you're working for a client it's enough to make them happy. That's your target. If it looks awesome to you as well, all the better, but this is not a requirement of the task.

Remember that different styles are answers to different questions. They may look off when judged by specific lens, yet they still fulfil their original purposes. That's worthy and enough.

Those rock studies are great btw. Did you overlay with photos, or is it just painted?

It's been a while since I did these, I think I sculpted a striated pattern for the orange one and deformed, painted over and under it to test the process. Derivated the gray one from it and just painted the rest. It's as much a test of the process as it's to see if the result is too busy or what.

I dug up a timelapse of the mountains!

That's the different between an 'intuitive' artist and an 'analytical' one. I do feel I missed the boat being the first, because I was a teenager too obsessed with 'copyright', internet dogpiles and getting good enough to draw what I want and hopefully financially support my family. Fun fact, I discovered CA when Miles was on it, but unlike him I was afraid to post my art on a sketchbook thread, because a couple of years earlier I put young writing online, where it didn't get a good reception, and came across LiveJournal communities that used to make fun of artists, especially beginners. (I feel it's worst with mega websites these days that everybody and their mother is on. Look up the Croaket situation on Tiktok) As someone that was bullied IRL, it made me paranoid to say the least. I think that why I feel I have to have everything good and set before I even start. It's my form of 'safeguarding' I guess. I already think I suck, if someone points out something wrong, it just confirms what I already believe about myself. I look at Miles now and I feel sad and even more behind, because if I just had more confidence I could have been where he is. (Making myself vulnerable here.)

That is a very noticeable improvement. The last looks effortless. I assume it wasn't just getting used to the medium again, but also how long you allowed yourself to spend on each drawing. I always thought to myself, 'Why spend hours rendering out a piece if my end goal is not to be a realist artist?'. I felt should be spending that time grinding anatomy instead. I think that's why when it comes to laying out the initial shapes I'm fine, but when it gets into the rendering stage I get bored, frustrated, or anxiety kicks in because I think I should be doing something else. Colouring and rendering detail is not a strong suit of mine, because I have very low mileage in that arena. There is something to learn from realist artists, though, because even though they may lack construction and technical knowledge, they do know how to render and post importantly they are patience. I approach things like that as 'studies' that I need to get through as soon as possible, without spending time on them the way you should a finished piece. I'm going to try and follow you and try and just render out an image and take my time.

'That's useful information. You can take action with it, downsize like I did: just legs, legs and more legs, without timing it because fuck it I take two to three times longer than other artists for any gesture and if that's what it takes, that's what I'll do.'

Love this.


I just have to remember my 'Why?' Why do I want to draw? To create stories/aid in story making. Thank you for your advice. I'm trying to ignore the head mice and just be mindful and repeat to myself I can get there if I just take my time. If I want to draw something, instead of mindless grinding, actually think of what I want to draw and look up refs that align with that. Just need to work on believing the work is all still mine, even if I consulted references or other artists work to get it to a more finished stage. 

I really like how your pencil comes out! It's very 'calm' if that makes sense. Looking at Johnson's and Nguyen's pencil works, the faint graininess of the pencil texture on paper adds to it's oneiric, dream-like quality. Deffo something I'd love to emulate. I'll peep your approach in the next post. 

I very much favour your approach to the 'Comfort zone' and think it's a lot more conductive to producing work. In the 'Comfort zone' is the foundation of joy and relaxation, not just 'safety', hence 'comfort'. People shouldn't shame the thing that makes them want to draw. It helps when you want to progress from doing the same thing, but constantly pulling the rug out from your self, is like always fighting your creativity. I'm working on creating and maintaining that foundation. 

I guess I shouldn't shame people that like my work and give me compliments, then lol. If someone asks me for a commission and think I'm not really yet. Clearly they must see something they like. They're always room for growth and development. Editorial and picture book illustrations seem to be the most relaxed in that regard. 

I think I'm too much of a digital painting novice to completely understand what you did, but it was interesting to read nevertheless! Thanks for the timelapse. I notice a jump from when you added details.

[Dominicque]

'Shade in circles blend values'. Noted, I assume with light pressure, at first. I'm doing a pencil drawing right now and the lines come through the most. I'll try to glean the rest of what you have to say.
I still don't get gesture, either. They are used to capture a gesture, right, but if I do it too fast it's not recognisable at all. Like you I find capturing the torso first the easiest, but after studying from Hampton, still find placing the spine difficult.
If I see some cool sketchbook that fit your recommendations, I'll give you a shout!

For the sake of understanding what you mean, is there a distinction between quick gestures and quick poses? For me the former is lines of action stuff, the latter is more like regular drawing but simplified (what you did).

I try and do the former, get frustrated with what looks like scribbles and try and 'fix' it by turning it into the latter.

[Leo Ki]

Picking up where I left yesterday.

So you say you want a pretty and weekly comic. How many pages (or panels) per week is that? I'm asking because some platforms kind of demand half a hundred panels a week, which is bestial unless you have a studio crew with you.

Industrialization period with magic, sounds exciting! Do the two oppose, or is magic part of the growing industry? I lean for the former because you mentioned countryside and wide landscapes. Landscapes lend themselves well to speed painting, but the forests... I was thinking about generating the trees like you do the leaves, and Joseph suggested it. I know some software for landscape designers or nature scientists does it. However, how much control would you have on the process, how much of your spirit would seep in?

You're lucky to be next to a tropical forest, they are the best! But your for-simplification pine forest is nice looking :)

[dimensional-knight]

Before anything, just to make sure we're all on the same page: My goal is to bring the entire human body into my comfort zone, for creative drawing. If it's believable and dynamic, it's enough. Not that I'll stop studying, but my skills are unbalanced. I need to level out the field.


@darktiste

The point should never be to compare the longer season to the render level of the shorter one. (snip)

Thanks for the detailed response!

I get annoyed at many things, but thankfully this is not one of them! I'm fine with letting things sit unrendered or halfway done, and I'm inured to the natural variation in quality of drawings when studying. It might be a bad day, or it has some aspect of it I find tricky, it happens.

My annoyance comes from creating something completely unusable. I can't build anything from those initial figures, no artwork without redrawing from scratch and stiffening them in the process. They don't work as warm ups nor loosen up my lines. They don't have the saving grace of being aesthetically pleasant at least. A 100% failure rate, with the added stress of timekeeping, that's frustrating.

for gesture i would say if you are more comfortable with longer session i would say you could work backward so instead of having 1 to 5 min gesture or even 30 sec one you can try let say do 2x30min 4x15min that would be in the case of if you have let say 2 hour to spare as you see you start from a space of confidence and as you warm up you decrease the amount of time for the subsquent ''study'' of course my example highlight that it probably best not to have such a high degree of difference in the amount of time(30/15)

Though I love shading I don't feel compelled to shade them to just so I get satisfaction from the process. I'm already getting shading practice from the morning portraits, at this point I wouldn't benefit much from shading figures, which I'm studying late at night.

In any case, I've slowed down. The best approach to build confidence seems to be vulturing: I take my time to tackle the worst and often easier issue first. I keep circling the subject, working on one point a time, getting used to it, from easier to harder, until it consistently meets some criteria.

This causes the spent time to fluctuate. It's always higher at first, decreasing with the practice, increasing again on the next step when I swoop in from a different angle. In the end the overall time to draw _subject_ decreases while quality goes up.

Of course the idea is that over time you move from needing long introductionary study to just having what gesture is about which is about capturing the essence of the pose.

I agree. I'm not ready for gestures. I'm not sure if I'll ever benefit from them, without volume they almost look like abstract lines to me, but I'm sure that my weak foundation certainly makes me not ready for them.


@JosephCow

I really want to learn more blender because there's so many cool things you can do. I know there's some software that can help you generate whole trees as well that can be then used in blender. I'm still a big nooby tho so I don't know how to do anything lol. Whenever I think about doing this kind of thing I get overwhelmed and I'm like, oh well I'll just paint everything by hand on one layer.

Yeah, there are addons for everything. And because it's open source the amount of information, guides and everything is amazing. It might feel overwhelming at first, but the interface is pretty intuitive.

You could try simple things, like a blockout of a scene from mind for perspective reference, maybe a simple sphere of a material for studies, so you get used to the interface.

When I first started I was very curious about the physical simulations so I created a fabulous ball of hair, hah.

I really like seeing your work, it looks great. hope you keep posting.

I badly missed this art forum atmosphere. Have no intention of going anywhere, even tweaked the css on my end to make reading more comfortable (nerd!).



@Dominicque

That's the different between an 'intuitive' artist and an 'analytical' one. I do feel I missed the boat being the first, because I was a teenager too obsessed with 'copyright', internet dogpiles and getting good enough to draw what I want and hopefully financially support my family. (snip) I already think I suck, if someone points out something wrong, it just confirms what I already believe about myself.

We've threaded similar paths, I think I've just ran out of fucks to give. I don't look at circlejerks, and with all I've been through in the last years, am more than ready to yeet mean assholes directly into the Sun. People in my life need me, I don't have time to give to walking emotional blackholes.

That doesn't mean I'm not a brutal critic of myself, but understanding where the upset and the challenges come from has been helping a lot. I'm still self-conscious and skittish about things I'm "supposed" to master, like figure, since I've been doing pro character work for quite a while.

if I just had more confidence I could have been where he is.

It wasn't the right time for you then. People have different personalities and are raised in settings that cultivate different traits. Someone like Milles seems to have had some inherent confidence + access to resources and plenty support from a young age. Yes, he's impressive, but he also had opportunities we hadn't, or weren't prepared to take advantage of at the time.

I'm not the same person I was few years ago. I wasn't ready then. I might be now, and getting to this point isn't a waste of time because this was the time it took for me to experience what made me myself today. I'm not a timelord, and I suspect you're not one either, so don't blame yourself for having no control over the order and speed of events that led you to today.

I assume it wasn't just getting used to the medium again, but also how long you allowed yourself to spend on each drawing. I always thought to myself, 'Why spend hours rendering out a piece if my end goal is not to be a realist artist?'.

Yep. Time fixes it all. I often fumble in the middle of a drawing, then recover. It's so common I've learned to trust the process.

I always thought to myself, 'Why spend hours rendering out a piece if my end goal is not to be a realist artist?'.

If it's of any help, knowing why things look like they look will let you deliberately tamper with them, aka stylize. You don't need to master realistic painting, just get a grasp on it to twist it your way. And you don't need to lvl it all way up, you can always pick it up later again for further study if needed.

I think that's why when it comes to laying out the initial shapes I'm fine, but when it gets into the rendering stage I get bored, frustrated, or anxiety kicks in because I think I should be doing something else. Colouring and rendering detail is not a strong suit of mine, because I have very low mileage in that arena.

It sounds as if you've developed some aversion to it. Have you tried going small? Painting something that will make you happy but is self-contained, which won't take as much time and planning as full illustrations, so you get used to the act of painting?

look up refs that align with that. Just need to work on believing the work is all still mine, even if I consulted references or other artists work to get it to a more finished stage.

Hold on a moment! Never let someone, even you yourself, tell you references are cheating, that they make the work any less yours.

You've probably have seen Ophelia by John Everett Millais before. Have you ever head about its creation?



He did it in two stages, first landscape then Ophelia. For the landscape he travelled to the banks of the Hogsmill River and painted 11 hours a day, six days a week, over a five-month period.

Ophelia was modelled by Elizabeth Siddal, an artist in her own right. She was nineteen at the time. She spent five months in a bathtub. Once, the oil lamps he set up to warm the water went out and she came down with pneumonia.

The great artists of ye olden times used reference, and a lot. I bet they'd be happy to avoid being stuck in a riverbank being devoured alive by insects or catching near fatal illnesses. Fine, contemporary artists work differently, like Norman Rockwell, you know, the illustrator, he didn't—




Nevermind. ;D

If their work isn't any less theirs when they had people modelling specifically for them down to the fold of the fabric of their outfits, why would yours be not yours just due references? Shush this bugbear, it doesn't know what it's talking about.

I guess I shouldn't shame people that like my work and give me compliments, then lol.

I'm grateful most of my work interactions are online. I have no idea how to react to compliments. Then there's the believing them. I accept they mean it, but it can be hard to sink in. I'm always with that impostor syndrome sensation like I just fooled them with the pretty colors so they don't see the weaknesses.

'Shade in circles blend values'. Noted, I assume with light pressure, at first.

Yes, very light. The lightest values were the first thing I've learned, before that I was struggling because I only had two settings: dark lines and blank paper.

About the motion, it's circular but adapted to the area I'm rendering. Eg if it's a narrow area I'll do something oval.


@Leo Ki

I'm on the opposite spectrum, have to set up faraway landmarks and refine within or I end up warping.

Witchcraft!

The stick-like effect of your first leg drawings seems to stem mostly from the region of the knee. (snip)

I'm proud to announce my pogo sticks now have some flesh to them. I'm figuring new ways to structure them around my volume bias.

For the sake of understanding what you mean, is there a distinction between quick gestures and quick poses? For me the former is lines of action stuff, the latter is more like regular drawing but simplified (what you did).

Because my default mode is "stiff" I started with (detailed) gestures, but all gesture drawing in the world can't help you if you're getting shape and length consistently wrong. Simple figure drawings have enough info I can target issues and push poses whenever I want without being onerous to produce.

It's getting late, I'll come back about the comic, leaf engine, forests and other topics.

Please, don't feel compelled to address every point if you're running out of energy!

I was thinking about generating the trees like you do the leaves, and Joseph suggested it. I know some software for landscape designers or nature scientists does it. However, how much control would you have on the process, how much of your spirit would seep in?)

One of the leading software for generating trees for games and movies, SpeedTree, gives you artistic control down to patches of bark. However, exerting control to this degree is time consuming. You either reuse trees or don't do it for every single one.

I've not tried to create entire trees in Blender for paintings yet (which should be faster). Maybe special trees, but for the ones in the background I'm afraid it'd start looking like matte painting: Rigid and ill-fitting if used without care.

Last time I checked tree addons weren't very advanced, but that was three years ago. A lot has changed. So many ideas for approaches yet no time to put them in practice, hah.

You're lucky to be next to a tropical forest, they are the best! But your for-simplification pine forest is nice looking :)

I also live in one of the largest metropolis in the world. Getting to true wilderness takes some travelling. And oh boy, tropical forests are like walls. Extreme undergrowth! I kinda envy those temperate forests in which you can walk.

So you say you want a pretty and weekly comic. How many pages (or panels) per week is that?

One page per week. Two would be ideal, but doubt it'll be possible. I'm aiming for something like Hiveworks, where you keep your own site and complete control over the work.

Industrialization period with magic, sounds exciting! Do the two oppose, or is magic part of the growing industry?

Hey, don't tempt me into infodumping, haha! It's both. The way magic works enabled technological advances in areas such metallurgy beyond what should be possible at the time, while curbing others like arms industry because both mages and Shades (the undead) can tamper with temperatures and ignite substances at a distance. Your guns will go boom, so will your fuels. If it weren't for the Shades, society probably would try to do away with mages now they're being outpaced by industry.

[dimensional-knight]

And here are the updates. Check the post above for replies!

A bunch of recent figures for accountability. I realize the overlaps make them hard to understand after the fact. Trying to make the most from the dead trees, and I don't want to run out of pages before a new sketchbook for studies arrives.





I need to review anatomy to think up ways better to deal with the lower legs and feet.

Plus complete portrait/shading practice output from last week photographed with a potato.



And an unexpected WIP. I think I've never posted something in progress before? I'm not sure I'll finish it, I just got possessed by an idea and had to get it out of my system.

I happened upon a classic tail of 90s style Stardust cover by Charles Vess the other day and couldn't resist giving it my own spin.






The partial timelapse. This is still an exploration sketch, I need basic color and light to know where I'm going so I treat these as lazy color thumbnails, painting zoomed out. Once happy with the direction (not there yet, lots to solve) I flatten them, repurposing as a color base for the artwork.

I took a practice sculpt as loose ref to try to give her rounder and gentler features but movie Yvaine is leaking into the piece, and yes, the canvas was resized once already.



(and this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you end up so bad at legs)

[darktiste]

Being ok with drawing that do not evolve beyond the initial intent is fine this is what exploration is for.The problem is often that we can get so over saturated by other people work that we feel as if we are exploring to much or to little.I think that might be a problem of process for example some people might get stuck in over rendering piece or some might do to much preparatory drawing or construction.The problem is that in general no artist ever really think of rewinding there thought process until they arrive in a space where there other artist who force them to interact with there older piece and ask them about the process and why they might have choose this or that. Justifying those decision can become overwelming at time because you start to realize how much decision you make will drawing but it not so stressing because most of the decision are almost intuitive to a degree so you don't feel as if you really have to justify them will more complexe problem require a good justification as to if the process will lead to the intended goal.I think trusting the process is what make thing intuitive if you explore something new it less intuitive that natural.

Having a space to get feedback is really critical to have a honest perspective the key is to ask people you can trust not to sugar coat what is wrong.But it come at a cost which mean less time drawing and more time spent in retrospective but overall this can lead to better yield.It can be hard to let go of being intuitive to a certain degree.

[dimensional-knight]

Explaining the process is my favourite methods of reevaluation. I use it to refine and think of new approaches, and also debug issues. It produces better results than relying on critiques alone because sometimes people point the obvious — what looks wrong — but they don't know how it went wrong. They'll give well-intentioned suggestions (eg gestures) almost as if reading from a syllabus, exercises that won't help you as much as expected because sometimes the root of your deficiencies lie elsewhere.

So I feel it's important to reevaluate your approach to mix what you know about yourself — fears, technique snags, etc — into practice. Speaking of approaches, I posted late last night and forgot to ask you something about timing drawings! Do you know why it's done?

Timing studies is a source of stress to me. I'm avoiding it by doing the "no hard individual piece timing, assign a time slot and set minor goals instead", but I'd hate to miss some unknown benefit because I misunderstood the point. I feel it's to keep people moving on, without losing themselves into details nor fleeing into the next drawing to avoid something they dislike. Is that correct?

---

Oh, and here's another sketch done to exorcise ideas. Doubles as a quick body of water rendering practice. This is close to the look I'm aiming for that graphic novel project.