Rotohail's "Reclusive" SketchBook

[Rotohail]

What attracted me to those particular pieces were either the pose, the character design, style, the theme, color theme. For the blue haired girl piece it was all of the above and even though it looks like somewhat of a speed piece/character study, it hits all the right aspects for me. A Horned elf girl with a katana going in for the kill, it has an 80's retro anime type feel about it for me personally and that's kinda what drew me in at first glance.

Alright many thanks! Well I like all of the above myself so we will get along then ha. I honestly draw too many girls with swords...

Cool then ^^
OK, first off I like your few scenes of ordinary life, they reveal a good observation of simple - yet not necessarily obvious to render - postures and attitudes.
I also like when you go funny and cartoon, good mastery of elastic physics.
I feel that you could go wilder with magical effects - and in some cases more sober, this can be impactful too.
Your scene with the giant white snake in the trees is intriguing but the high angle weakens it and the guy's hat kind of blocks the view.
More comments to come...

A low angle would do wonders to show the size of the snake, but I was thinking of making it as a establishing shot. The hat was kind of doing a draw the attention with the red but hide the action, scene (that's why is also in shadow that area) so as to leave the viewer curious and engaged. To wonder what is going on! Like in horror movies, hint but don't show, let the viewers fill in the gaps. That was my thinking at the time, but as always too green to pull things off I feel ha. Fun nonetheless!
Well effects, I was reading elemental magic a few months ago and they say, like in animation, overdo it, then take a step back. I feel I need to overdo it much more, because so far I haven't yet had the feeling of needing to push it back. I'm pretty new at especial effects though but has always been one of my top interests.
Thanks about the rest! I hope I can do better on the future, and I should probably study more people and gestures because at times I feel I don't have enough variety.

Im looking at your stuff and i think you have a pretty solid skillset... Your shapes seemed as if youve earned through a lot of blood and sweat and i admire that a lot! 

I think your little painted studies are perhaps done in vain because i dont see how they relate to anything else youre posting. for instance, the french fries you drew, like did you just do that for fun? I cant find any picture where you used that knowledge. same for many of your painted studies, it seems like its just random stuff tbh, a cake, a fish, a flower... whats it all mean?

I personally think youd learn a lot more about painting and maybe the things youre wanting by doing long form master studies of old painters like ludwig deutcsh or sargent or someone. within that youd be taking in a lot of things you can later use like edge control, texture, value arrangement, which are very useful. In your paintings of characters, the drawing is strong, which is priceless, great point, but i see very little use of texture and almost no use of chiaroscuro

I can understand if youre going for a cell shaded look, but i feel like its kinda halfway at this point, which is cool.. for instance the blue guy with the kamehameha or blue beam his drawing/expression are on point. But his clothes are rendered in a way that leaves a lot to be desired. Most your rendering (on your imagination pieces) is a flat color and sometimes theres a dab of shadow or a small dot for a highlight.

I dont feel like youre intelligently planning out your compositions, despite some of them being interesting. Its important to think of value structures and how the rythms are laid out on the canvas. my advice is do a master study of an artist you look up to, doesnt have to be an old master, can be a more comic style artist you like, and try to imitate very meticulously their shapes and rendering . and pick one thats challenging and out of the ol comfort zone. Afterwards, do a piece of your own but inject what you learned directly from the study into the piece ;)

doing that will help you discover what you need to work on so you can do those little bitty studies and they will pay off more, instead of it purely being a rendering exercise, you'll patch up a hole simultaneously. 

I post here very often and theres a guy who posts a lot named Gliger who can offer you some substantial feedback and he has some very interesting (mad scientist) ways of studying which you could find helpful, so definitely check that out and i hope you'll post more because i love you :)

Yeah they are pretty random, I do them as warm up or out of curiosity, before moving onto something else. The fries the one with the pink tray was looking at reference but the other two were from imagination, to try that exactly, but yeah flowers and fish I didn't use the anywhere. The flowers were about me trying to learn color schemes? I thought flowers could be useful to practice that but I could just make color charts for it, so they are just random studies indeed.

Oh yeah, I go with my gut all the time for compositions. Like I most of the time have shots in my head planned and a feeling of what I want but I don't really know sometimes how you have to plan them. I do sometimes do a... post-mortem? ha, after drawing something I look at it and try to reason why it works, sometimes I can make sense of it but most of the time I just think it either feels right or not. Is there any book to learn about composition?

Honestly I just try simple shading because I struggle doing complex lighting, from the top of my head. Even then I just mess things up, overwork or move the brush without thinking. As you said, I've been focusing most of my time with line, and put aside color, form and texture. A few months back I started to try use more color and form on the things I do, so I just need to work more on it. Probably do still-lifes again for a while.

I have never tried master studies, I did at times draw some other artist drawing if I really like it, but is rare, I should do it more though! You are right.

I've seen his SB and took at peak but feels so daunting I haven't got around sending him a message yet.
Many thanks for the feedback!


Leaving a WIP of my current page. I need to change the guy, and correct/improve many tones/shadows. I also first want to focus on the background this time. Make sense of it, because not sure about the setting yet.