Not a sketchbook

[RottenPocket]

You and your family have my sympathies. At the same time dreams are vehicles of some both confounding and profound insight. I admire you for being able to express it.

[Noone]

RottenPocket: Thank you.

Bashed out an oil painting in 4 days and hung it on the wall still a bit wet for a scifi themed show called NonDisclosed Artist.
Did a basic digi prelim sketch but just riffed the details on the board.

[JavierP]

Amit, I am sorry for your loss. I am also very happy to see you doing so much traditional work! Thank you for sharing. Your plein air paintings are wonderful. It is good to know you are still working hard after all these years!

[Noone]

JavierP: Thank you for the kind words. I love seeing the accomplishment in your sketchbook. I mostly only do trad now, occasional digi prelims, though I do want to do some more digi, always interesting to see how my digital process is so changed from what it used to be.

Life drawing session , approx 3hrs, around A2 size

[one_two]

Great stuff, man. Keep it up!

[Jephyr]

That life drawing piece is very good. Love your subtle, tasty shading and the contrast of light and dark values. Very pleasing to the eye. Hope to see more from you

[Noone]

One_two : Thank you!
Zephyr: Thanks a bunch!

Portrait Tuesdays from life at the studio

[Noone]

Mixture of life drawing poses, from life
The multidrawings per page are 2min up to 10 min poses.
Singles usually 10 or 20m

[ruthwood]

luv how dreamy ur stuff feels. The foggy shadows vs. strong contours in ur life drawings is so sweet to look at & very gracefully drawn. neat work!

[cgmythology]

Really enjoy the figure work here, very dynamic lines with great use of values. Keep it up!

[Noone]

Thank you Ruthwood and CgMythology
Had a longish break from art, to reconstitute. Back to some life drawing.

3 hrs into a 6 hr pose. Needs some touchups in the next session, but almost done



Used authentic natural red chalk, sourced from Italy. Not a lot of contrast due to the inability of the chalk to go very dark. Stil a lot of fun to draw with basically a rock dug out of the ground.  2 hr-ish pose from life.

[Noone]

Finished off the last drawing


Back to life drawing again after a few months break. All from life. Veeeery rusty
Charcoal
5min


20min


Digital portrait  3hr


And a terrible oil painted portrait, again after a 3 month break.  3hr

[ThereIsNoJustice]

Really great stuff. You don't seem too rusty to me.

[ballpoint]

In LOVE with your figurative linework. Nice direct establishment of values too. Keep up the life drawing!

[Noone]

Thank you Thereisnojustice and ballpoint!

Another digi portrait from life, about 3hrs. Slowly readjusting back to digital after a long time. Doesn't feel quite as weird and disassociated, after doing mostly trad for quite a few years. Best thing is no cleanup after the session!

[Artloader]

Hey dude, so sorry for your loss, my condolences to you and your family. I admire the way you are able to process your experiences through art and it's great to see you posting on here again. Also I've seen how you transition to traditional media - do you think it has enhanced your digital skills at all?

By the way I particularly love your charcoals - beautiful shadow shapes. Looking forward to more posts from you.

[JosephCow]

This last one looks very oil paintey even besides the texture on the canvas, the brushstrokes look traditional the way they have hard and soft areas, it's really nice. I feel like maybe the shadows on the face could be a bit darker and more unified. It might help the lit part pop out from the canvas more. I really like the subtle cools you intermingle with the pink on the skin though

[Noone]

@ArtLoader : Hey man, thank you and welcome back as well. I hope you are all good!  

I would say, undoubtedly traditional has hugely improved my understanding and intent of what aesthetic choices I want for a digital painting or drawing, as well as just vastly improving my core technical skills and understanding the importance of mark-making. It has also given me workflows to use and adapt that are very useful. It also helped me understand colour theory much better. You can't just wing it with colour mixing in oils for example and expect to achieve specific results easily, whereas in digi you simply pick a colour/value and can infinitely tweak and overlay and creep up until you get things "right".

Trad is also more fun inherently for me due to the visceral nature of it, and the feedback you get back from the canvas or page. I think digital allows a lot of shortcuts and workflows that you could never really emulate in trad, which means you can shortchange yourself a lot in actual hand eye coordination, judging proportions, while still achieving an acceptable "result". That has probably been the main benefit for me in that going trad and especially working from life has really made me focus on my actual drawing and observational skills. There are no infinite undos and warps, no instant colour picking etc. It has made me more deliberate and intentional I guess, when I need to be.

So, yes I am a huge proponent of doing trad, and it definitely has made my digi work better, though I work on very different things now. I have been considering doing some environments like I used to, just to see how differently I might approach it now! I do think I am able to troubleshoot my digi work better now with my trad experience, though I have just done a fair amount of brush mileage in the last few years, so benefits aren't simply related to the medium, but to consistency of practice. Downside is I haven't really enjoyed doing much digi work in the times I picked it up during last few years, it just felt less enjoyable, but I have a nice new tablet and am enjoying the digi more again now!  I just wish I had picked trad up more and done more of it earlier on, but the journey is the journey! I also have moved away from doing concept art gigs and corporate/entertainment related stuff for a while. My last gig was with Weta maybe two or three years ago now, and so I have not felt the need to use digi much, which ofc if you want to work as a corporate artist you would have to maintain that digi upkeep a lot more!
I do think digital allows for results you just can't get in trad without a LOT more effort and if that suits your goals then that's all good.

Also, vine charcoal on paper and a nude figure is one of my main happy places :). Love the expressive way charcoal handles and looks. Very inspired by Henry Yan, learned a lot from slowing down Zimou Tan vids on yt before I even picked up charcoal, and also love Mark Tennant's high contrast figure work.

@Joseph, thanks for the feedback, and yeah I do agree I think I lightened the shadow side a bit more than was the case irl. As a note, the model was very sunburned, which accentuated the pink/green complementary quite a lot!

[cgmythology]

Fantastic updates here, love your paintings especially. Your skin tones in particular are very nicely done, great variation while still looking quite natural, good stuff!