StardustLarva & Jaik, thanks guys!
Samszym, thats my plan to start trying to make my own ideas once I've got more time and energy. Im just doing these charcoal studies of armor to try to get better at rendering. I've always had a slight dislike for rendering but now its starting to become fun. Thanks for commenting!
Heres more charcoal armor studies and some gestures. Im trying to reverse engineer Jeff Watts Reilly abstraction after watching a stream of him doing quick gestures.
Lovely charcoal man! what do you use for the highlights? chalk? Figures are looking really dynamic too!
Man those traditional armor studies look good! Liked the Jorah Mormont study on the page before too, but it's nice to see that you get more contrast in the armors now. Makes them look more metal and you know...armory. Impressed by your knack of blending the shading in such a smooth way without it getting all blurred up!
For the gestures, have you tried doing them with only one line? I found that helped me a lot, especially when I did quick ones. It's easy to get caught up in anatomy and forget that you're actually doing gesture. You want the balance and flow of the pose, not so much the detail. And I found doing those gestures without letting go of the pen helped my line quality too.
Everyone's got a different approach but it's nice to switch it up once in a while also :)
JyonnyNovice: Thanks! I use white charcoal pencil for the highlights and a tortillion to blend.
Adzerak: Thanks! I've been trying to get more gestural and use long continuous flowy lines. I'll try that out with the one continuous line for the whole gesture.
I want to start updating more regularly. It makes me realize how much Im not doing per day when I dont upload 3 weeks worth of stuff at once. So in 4 days I did 3 sketchbook pages (and a few gesture pages that Im not uploading because its pretty much the same as the last dozen gestures) of anatomy sketches from Sarah Siblets book. Also tonight I'll be going to a life drawing group. I havnt done life drawing in like 10 years so Im excited for that. Hopefully I can meet some cool artists people as well.
Oh man, great anatomy studies and also love the way you rendered that armor in your sketchbook. Hope to see more personal stuff soon!
Thanks, Nate! One of these days I'll get to doing personal stuff XD. Theres just so much general knowledge to learn that I can apply to almost anything. I have ideas for personal pieces but I need to study a ton more stuff like drapery and clothing design. Im starting to feel more confident with my nekkid people drawing but theres always more to learn.
Heres what I did in life drawing yesterday.
More anatomy and gestures. I've got the next 2 days off work so going to be hopefully getting a lot more done.
Some mechanical design studying with memory sketches and Chow WIP. Sorry if you cant see a lot of my light lines. I messed with it in PS to try to make them more visible.
Damn them armor studies are fantastic man :), also nice work on the memory sketches of the robots, alot of them are'nt that visible but the ones that are seem pretty close to the originals.
Your gestures/anatomy/figure stuff are looking good :)
Nice work with the mecha stuff. I think it could be a good idea to go over these with single straight lines on all the hard edges, and to get out your 4B and put the dark darks where they need to go. No reason to wait, jump into values!
Thanks guys!
I signed up for the Watts Atelier online school. I plowed through figure phase. It was mostly reviewing stuff I already know. Starting on figure phase II tonight. Still going to life drawing too.
A lot of hard work and study going on in this sketchbook. This will pay off without end. Look forward to seeing where you go with your work.
Wow that guy with a beard is awesome man! great job!
Thanks Jyonny!
More Watts studies and some star wars figures.
little update. I got some Wolff Carbon charcoal pencils which I really like. They're more expensive than the Generals but they dont break when you try to sharpen them down to a long taper like they do at Watts.
You're flying dude! That last one looks like something straight outta a Loomis book!
Has the Watts course benefited you a lot or is this more the result of all your recent studying?
I think Watts is helping a lot so far. His videos are pretty inspiring and the pdfs are very informative. Although I wouldnt have been able to use his methods as effectively without studying anatomy as thoroughly as I have recently. Being familiar with muscles and bones are instead of just drawing bumps without knowing what they are is a huge difference. Supposedly hes adding an anatomy course soon which is a pretty big piece to the puzzle of learning his more advanced abstractions. I might of been able to do all this on my own but it would have taken much longer.
this is great sketchbook! It's really refreshing to see someone stick to pencils and paper these days. What anatomy book are you looking at for the skeletal structure? Keep at it. Sean.