Crimson Daggers — Art forum

Yea I was trying that Im not sure what it was that was screwing me up actually. I think I got over it though.

Heres a wip of my Stephen Gammell rip off attempt.

heres page 8

More gouache stuff. A nekkid lady from life drawing. I kinda screwed up and gave up on it early. But I like how these Stephen Gammell gouache studies came out. I've been just using black gouache and sort of simulating using ink by letting the white of the page show. I think he used charcoal and ink combined in some way. Im not sure if its possible to do a charcoal drawing and use spray fixative to use ink over top of it. If it is just all charcoal he really went out of his way to make it look like some parts were ink. Theres not much information on him online and he doesn't appear to have a website. The only thing I've found pertaining to his technique is a video of him using what I assume is water color. Its kinda similar to his style in Scary Stories...

you can achieve that look if you're very patient and can build up perfect gradations and have a fine toothed paper. It takes a lot of time and practice but its possible, with smudging/layering/smudging/fixing/layering and so on. But like you said, you can just do a charcoal drawing, fix it and then lay ink on top. Ive done it before. It was with sepia so it didn't look so great but it does work.

Also he might not even fix the charcoal beforehand. It might look the way it does because the charcoal sloshes around in the ink. Just make sure its a good quality ink. Or he might start with ink blots and drips and then work around that, and make perfect gradients that work within the limits his ink set. But in any case its totally doable in charcoal

Thanks Patrick! I need to experiment with different papers I think. So far I've tried a few water color papers and bristol but they dont hold up as well to heavy washes the way I'd like. Im still learning about traditional stuff. Maybe I need to use a gesso?

Anyways... NEW PLAN! It changes every week if you notice hehe. This time Im sticking to it though! I want to fill a sketch book a month like Will Terrell advises. Im giving myself till Feb 7th to finish the current one. That means I need to get 2 to 4 pages done a day. Its pretty tough so far. I've barely gotten 2 pages done the last couple days. Hopefully it'll start to get easier after the first week. Im working from imagination mainly to really build my design and form language. Im experimenting with a brush and ink to get better line quality. Excited to get some new brush pens I ordered today. I need to get another faber-castel cold grey 230 since its the only thing I've found that doesnt bleed through the pages and isnt super dark for adding value.

I'm so excited that you're drawing more pages a day! And that you're filling them, too. All these look pretty great. There's improvement in your balance and forms within these pages already. Stoked to see more!

Thanks Stephany! I dont know if I'll be able to meet my goal but the point is that I'll be drawing a lot. Now I dont have to figure out what Im going to do everyday. I wake up and drawwwwww stufffffff...

Great Improvment. Your drawing skills are coming along nicely. I love the variety, you covered everything from animals to industrial design which is great. You will profit a lot in the future.
One question: what`s the difference between guaoche and watercolors?
And one tipp: check vincent locke`s art. I know you will love him.
http://vincelocke.com/
To put it in a nutshell: Great improvement and keep sharing.

Thanks constructicon! Gouache is a lot easier to work with than water colors. With water color theres no white paint. You have to use the white of the page and if you go too dark theres no way to get it lighter again. Gouache can be used like a wash with a watery mix or with very little water its opaque. Plus if you add water to it after it dries the paint becomes wet again and can be moved around. Its extremely forgiving in that way. Kind of like a traditional version of digital painting.

Im still waiting on some white gel pens to arrive in the mail so I can start adding highlights to these again. I've only gotten 1 page a day done the last couple days due to work. My goal isnt looking too good but the point is Im drawing from imagination a lot more.

nice sketchbook - physical sketchbook - full of imaginative designs. Keep it up!

Thanks meat!

imaginative stuff looks great in this latest post! poses look really natural and interesting, great work man : )

That traditional lifedrawing stuff will give lots of help. What are your thoughts about acrylic paints. Ive found my color sense improving vastly due to mixing the right color I see in the still life paintings. Perhaps spend 10-20hours on a still life consisting of a multitude of forms/materials and with good composition and really try to get the colors right, try to notice the subtle changes and the level of saturation the object has. A lot of times the hue might be right, but because the color is too saturated it appears wrong.

Figuredrawing from life is also super good. Do the models only do 20 min poses?
In my croquis class the model does ton of 5 minute poses, some are quite dynamic, others have a lot of overlapping forms, quite a challenge and it feels like sprinting.

Thanks Jynonny!

I've given acrylics a go but I find them a little frustrating due to how fast they dry. Im slow at painting so my palette will keep drying on me. I spent probably over 40 hours on an acrylic self portrait and afterwards I got seriously burnt out from painting. I like gouache better because even though it dries fast I can add water to the dry paint and it becomes usable again. I like doing small quicker paintings for now because I dont have a lot of free time. The life drawing group I go to has a painting night once a month where they do one 2 and a half hour pose so theres that.

Yes, on normal days they have 10 one minute poses and four 5 minute poses before going into two 20 minute and one 40 minute pose. I even like to do the 30 second poses on pixellovely to warm up. It gets my hand moving without over thinking it. I find once I let go of my attachment to the outcome of the gesture they start to flow out more naturally and end up looking much better.

heres more crumby sketches from imagination. Im losing momentum...

various studies and design explorations

There's some nice stuff here. I like the energy in the figures. The Mayan iquanamen are neat. Keep at it!

I really dig the single, soft/hard stroke of shading you're doing on some of your figures. Tasty!

mmmmh, delicious.

Thanks Stephany! I use the Proko/ Jeff Watts technique to get the soft/hard charcoal strokes. Its a lot of fun to show form so quick and easy. These last few updates are using smooth news print, which I highly recommend. It makes the charcoal look so much better than rough news print. I got 500 sheets from Office Dept's site for 30 USD. Thats A LOT cheaper than the news print pads made for artists.

More figures

I did a couple gouache studies. The skull is from life. Some figures and a quick digital design warm up thing.