Adam's Sketchbook

[AdamStolterman]

A birthday present for a friend of mine. Also practice. I'm trying to come closer to realism without going for full realism. Is that wrong? =P

[AdamStolterman]

A drawing. I love to mess around with ink and crayons and water color!

[AdamStolterman]

A couple of light studies! Gotta do more!

[AdamStolterman]

Light study!

[AdamStolterman]

Life value study

[AdamStolterman]

Practicing practicing practicing. I call this one Meeting a God

[AdamStolterman]

A thing i did for a poster for a halloween concert with church organ and flute music.

[AdamStolterman]

I've decided to start introducing all the characters from my graphic novel project Betula. This is Litilda. She's the best friend of Jinni, who is one of the main characters. Litilda is a little odd, and she's a compulsive digger. She digs holes in the ground and hides stuff in them. She claims she has a "system", but no one has ever found out what that system is or how it works. Or what it's for.

[Bjulvar]

Hey Adam!
Your Betula project sounds interesting, atleast from Litilda's description :D Having a compulsive digging disorder can't be easy on life! Looking forward to seeing more of it mate.

By the way, the mixed medium piece from post #22 looks great, reminds me of Tim Sale's style, he rocked Batman with the Long Halloween series!

And a little suggestion would be to study the structures of the face with the skull and all! You could try out Suzanne's portrait class;
http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-2727.html
Haven't done it all myself, but the assignments that I did really helped me out :)

[AdamStolterman]

Hey Bjulvar! And thank you very much for the kind words and the great crit and tip! Thats right: Crit'n Tip. I will definitely take that class it looks great!

A word about Litilda. No having compulsive digging disorder (or CDD) is not easy to live with. Mostly because of the practical problems. Like when you start digging in your friends living room when their in the kitchen. Not good.

Anyway: This is Emanuel. He's one of the main characters in Betula. Growing up in the lower parts of Betula, in the area called the Between Bridges, is not easy. Emanuel and his closest friends spend their time trying to have a normal life while at the same time staying out of the way of both the City Guard, and the gangs that sometimes come across the river from The Fields.

[AdamStolterman]

So thanks to Bjulvar's crit, i have decided to learn more about the structures of the face and head. So i did what he said and started taking Suzanne's portrait class. So here's the first thing i had to do. A realistic rendering of a scull. On to the next thing!

I never used the eyedrop tool here, and so the colour around the photo is me trying out colours to see how close i got. I don't think i'm very good at finding the right colour yet, so i need a lot of practice.

---

I just started on the next one and i already noticed that my process has improved, just by doing this first one! Awesome! In the first one i didn't really have a work flow, i just basically let the brush go by itself and work a little here, and then work a little there. And now when i started this new one i realised that i tried to find the bigger shapes in the beginning and colours to start defining the most basic shapes. And this happened without me even thinking about it. I just realised this! I love progress! And this is just the beginning!

[AdamStolterman]

---

i'm not getting the values right!

[devin]

Maybe try working on a more neutral background, it is very hard to judge value relationships when working against pure white. Try blocking in the background of the apple too so that you aren't working in a vacuum. Judging the the value difference between the background and the edges of the apple will help your ability to percieve all the stuff happening within the shape more accurately, especially if you are working from life. Remember that everything is relative!

[AdamStolterman]

Thank you very much devin for the crit! That was very helpful! I'll definitely do that next time.

[AdamStolterman]

think i am finished with this one. The problem is what to choose is the finished painting. I could (and have) polished this one more, but when i did i lost the feeling i like in it. I rendered out the grass more and the pillars and i did more detail on the wheels and stuff, but it didn't help, so i took it away. I like how it looks. It's hard to know what to do when you are trying to choose between technical level and what's actually good for the painting. What do you think? Do you think i'm giving excuses and this painting should be taken to a much higher level of polish, or do you think that it works as it is, and that the "lack of polish" actually is good for the painting?

[WestZest]

The last piece you did is really interesting I really like what you've done with the colours. The only real crit is nit picking but your rear left wheel on the wagon is wonky. But overall great work!

[AdamStolterman]

Thank you very much West! =)

[meat]

Detail isn't what makes a painting good. It's the story and emotion it conveys and invokes. I think the light keeper girl painting is in a good place. I see some fog on the ground behind the pillar and the cart, maybe you can try adding some fog in the foreground too. But I like the painting as is. Good work here! Anything new on the graphic novel project?

[AdamStolterman]

Pencil drawing.

---

Detail isn't what makes a painting good. It's the story and emotion it conveys and invokes. I think the light keeper girl painting is in a good place. I see some fog on the ground behind the pillar and the cart, maybe you can try adding some fog in the foreground too. But I like the painting as is. Good work here! Anything new on the graphic novel project?

Thank you for the crit! And yes actually i am going to have a meeting about the script for the first part of the book tonight. And i'll hopefully start the finished drawings next week! Thank you for showing interest =D

[AdamStolterman]

I've noticed that when i compare any painting or sketch, where i tried to get close to reality, to the real version of whatever it was that i painted, my biggest miss is most often the chroma. Even though i still think i don't have that much control over values, the chroma is what's most obvious when i compare stuff. So i did this little experiment to see it better.

I was on a train and i did a 1 minute sketch of what i thought the trees would look like when it became dark outside. And then when it was dark i did another sketch. The difference is huge. The values are off of course, but the intensity of the chroma in real life is so much stronger than what i guessed. Also, a thing i've noticed before is that i guess that when a color goes to a darker value, it goes to a becomes more grey. That was wrong. I don't know if that's because of me as a person (maybe i'm scared of going too far so i play it safe and keep the colours grey), or if it's a common thing that most people do.

Anyway, it was a cool exercise and i'll definitely do it again. Now back to work.