My Sketchbook or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love to Draw

[Markus]

Hi guys!
My name is Markus as you might have already guessed, I'm an aspiring artist from Finland.
Though I'm a student of animation, my interests lie in illustration.
Without further ado, I'll present you with my work. Any crits and tips are more than welcome.
My finished work can be found at http://rotor.cghub.com.

Attached are a work in progress, some doodles and live studies.
Thanks for looking.

[Dimitri]

Welcome !
Your work is pretty good, great potential ! I like the color on your sketchbook et the studies !

[Markus]

Thank you Dimitri!
I've been terribly busy with all kinds of life developments, the latest being moving to the UK to study for five months but I hope to become more active here now that I'm settled.

Here's some stuff, my latest work in progress and a selfportrait.

[Markus]

Update to the Alien piece and an earlier doodle.
Hopefully after I've gotten over school assignment deadlines I'll be able to start proper studies.
Thanks for looking.

[Markus]

This is an animation I did for a course assignment.
All the assets were drawn in Photoshop and I did some Voodoo magicks in After Effects to make them move.








And my Alien piece. I was stuck with it but got some excellent feedback from Mike086. Thanks man!

[Appeb]

The Alien piece is looking great man! You got some nice progress on it :D

Really liked the animation short as well!

[Bjulvar]

Hey man, thanks for dropping lines in my sketchbook!
Your stuff over at CGhub rings a bell within me as well. Strange how that works. Really nice pencil work and I especially like that insectoid creature! You should totally do more Warhammer stuff, you can never do enough of that.

[Markus]

Thanks mates!
Bjulvar, deffinitely gonna do some more Warhams stuff at some stage.
All I have for now is something for a personal project I'm working on with a friend. I'm basically just laying down ideas. It's purely for enjoyment so I'm taking my time with it.
Thanks for looking.

[Virid Rain]

Very nice sketchbook pages !

[Warburton]

Great start to a sketchbook man, i'm looking forward to seeing it grow. You've got some cool designs and illustrations, i want to see more of them ;)

[Markus]

Thanks Virid Rain and Warburton!

Bloodsports 14, man what a ride.
Although I'm happy with how my stuff turned out in the time allowed there are things I need to consider in the future.
Next time I need to focus on the design aspect much more and explore different possibilities before diving into the rendering stage too early. Right now it's just what Dan talked about in one the Bloodsports announcements, my stuff lacks a strong design aspect. It's just a dude wearing this suit of armour and oh look there's a minotaur-creature thingy in there aswell.

But alas, here they are and something from that super secret personal project. I'm bad with faces and hands, so I'll be doing plenty of both.

Oh and look what I found in a book shop.

[Markus]

Here's a new one. 40k (or 31k to be precise) illustration of a Sister of Silence and a Death Guard standing back to back fighting the race of Jorgall.
For this, I will take it an object to study:

texture (metals, fur, ceramic)
how to have a minimal approach to background with atmospheric effect
possibly liquid effects

Composition is not my strong point either, but I like where this is going.
Thanks for looking.

[Elima]

Cool work! I really really like the first creature you posted =) Keep going!

[Otterclou]

Really cool creature designs! I really like the latest one as well!
Maybe try to break the symmetry of the composition a bit more? Or make it even more symmetrical, it´s in a weird in-between atm i feel like.
Feel free to disregard the input. :)
Great stuff going on in here!

[Markus]

Thanks guys!
Otterclou, I'll see what I can do with it. Composition is something I have a constant struggle with. Oh and it's got some perspective issues.

I've been extremely busy with Uni stuff but finally I'm able to work more on my own stuff. I think I'll let the Warhammer piece simmer for a while. And start doing some goddamn studies yeahhh!

Here's some doodles for now. I had a chance to go sketching with the wonderful Nomi Chi.
Thanks for looking.

[CoreyH]

Great stuff, love your moleskine sketches in particular!

[Aragah]

hey man. doing a great job! the bloodsports look sick. and i really love the sp.
my crit is that sometimes you colors "limp" a bit. sometimes missing a bit of values, others missing hue/saturation variation.

that drool on the alien piece looks awesome.

[Mannequin]

I like the traditional sketches. I like the style of lines You have.

[Markus]

Many thanks!
Aragah I completely agree, there is something fundamental I lack when it comes to translating value into colour but it's been hard to put my finger on what exactly. My work tends to turn grayed out and flat or lacks a stronger knowledge of succesful use of colour saturation and vibrance, like you pointed out. I need to do movie screen studies for an oncoming project so I think that's a nice time to get deeper into the issue.

Here's some stuff. I read this article about tonal studies playing a key part in making a good illustration so I made a quick grayscale of the piece I was thinking of working on. I'm not that sure at all anymore. Link.
Then there's some doodles. Really starting to enjoy drawing girls with guns.

[Markus]

I went to visit London during the workshop, though I did not attend. Instead I took in the sights and went to see a bunch of museums. I could spend a lifetime drawing in the Natural History Museum, unfortunately I only had three hours at the time.

Here's a new WIP and some doodles from along the way.