Crimson Daggers — Art forum

I envy your observational skills.

Lumens - thanks!! I fell drawing form life is really helping alot.

more busts
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photo studies
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some CA challenge stuff

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photo studies

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CA & CGHub challenge stuff

The old swamp hermit (CA CHOW)
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The Skyrim Dragonborn (CGHub Drawing Jam)
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Latest piece I did for CharacterForge on CGHub - The Blue Wizards
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Quick studies to prepare
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Nice stuff going on in here :) Especially like the dragonborn piece you did. A nice render to it and a good sense of movement. Have you tried flipping it? Maybe the sense of direction and speed would be greater if the horse travelled from left to right, rather than right to left as it is now. I know that those kinds of "composition rules" are nothing that should be followed like a check list, but it's cool to experiment and then ponder the results!

Recently I've been doing studies, then testing myself from memory to see how much I retained. I just did a study of one of my most favorite portraits on DA by crowgod. You can check it out here. Anyways heres the original.
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And heres the first study. Now looking at it, I see I missed alot of edge work and colors in the face
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And heres the first study form memory. Yeah realized how little I actually retained and paid attention in the study. Very disappointed, I wanted to redo this over and over again until I was satisfied.
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The second from memory
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The third from memory
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The forth from memory. Trying to get that pale skin tone but made it too pink.
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The fifth form memory
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And the sixth from memory
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I don't know whether it is a good idea to do studies from artists currently in the field and in the end I'm not satisfied with the final result, but I feel that I learned alot more doing this than what I usually would with a study.

if you learned something then it was a good idea, but it is usually much better to study things from life, photos or oldmasters instead of contemporary artists. Because you dont want to be another artist's doppelganger right? :)
But still, these last 6 portraits are a really impressive practice, thumbs up!

EduardoGaray - yeah thats what I feared. I really enjoyed learning about edge work and colors, but I can stick more to still lifes and old masters.

I decided to try this again with a photo I found on The Sartorialist.
Here's the original study
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1'st try from memory
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2'nd try I focused on the pose, eyes and skin tones
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3'rd try was about the cool highlights and nose
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4'th try I focused on fixing the nose, but forgot the cool highlights on the skin tones.
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I opened the photo and did corrections to the study above.
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another photo study in grayscale

original study
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First try from memory. eyes too big and too much structure in nose
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Second try from memory. Skin tones too dark and much contrast
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Little corrections after second try. Just lighten skin tones and hair
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My most recent CHoW entry. I ran out of time and rushed this one, so I'm not too proud of it.
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studies I did beforehand
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Heres some quick hand studies. Pics to the right are done from memory afterwards. It looks like I didn't pay enough attention to the form of the knuckles. And on the second hand I painted the highlights too bright.
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Hey Vatteh, your studies are looking really good. Just curious, about how long to you spend on them? the memory ones I think are great exercises. Also, you do a pretty good job of self crit! Nice work, keep grinding!

Cool Sketchbook and kudos to your dedication!

I STRaY I - Thanks man. I tend to spend about 2-3 hours for these memory studies.

Wolkenfels - Thanks!

latest CHOW entry
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Latest CHoW entry. I rushed this one so I'm probably gonna take more time to finish it, if I'm still motivated later.
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Still life of my bust I did the day after
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nice work vatteh! those still lifes are looking great but dont be afraid to paint those eyes in your personal pieces, other than that just keep doing your thing :)

Oh wow, really great studies!