Thomas' Sketchbook

[Thomas Mahon]

hello daggers! i'll start with some recent stuff
studies:




(abandoned)

imagination and other stuff:





I'll write a small introduction. My name is Thomas, and I'm nearly 18, I've only been interested properly in art as a career in the last couple of years, only recently have conceptart.org and very recently, the crimson daggers. I'm an aspiring artist who is still in 'highschool', although not for much longer (I call it Sixth Form, i'm a brit, britcrits). I want to become a concept artist and illustrator like everyone else here. I have a somewhat general outline of what I want to do when I leave school, attend an atelier, but I'm planning on taking a year off to save up and teach myself. (Talk is cheap, I know.) Constructive feedback is extremely welcome.

I'll enjoy studying with you all. I wish you much success on your journeys!

[JonathanMacgregor]

Hey, I've seen you around on CA, I remember seeing the samurai guy before and thinking it was cool, I like the studies too, especially the helmet ones. :)

[FlyByKnight]

Really liking your studies and concept ideas, loving the Samurai and the Mech images the most though.

[Sprayah]

Skulls unlimited, that's the Preaditors day job when he is not out preaditoring :-) if you are this good at 17 you have a bright future ahead...

[ramalooke]

Nice stuff mate. Try to spend more time on your study once a while and push it as far as you can. good luck!

[Thomas Mahon]

[Thomas Mahon]

[Tooth]

Hey Thomas, hope you're well bud.

Nice studies man, keep 'em up. Apply 'em n stuff :)

Firstly you're doing AWESOME so don't take anything I say as a dig at you or as patronising you cos I'm not trying to, and I don't know what you do or don't know. And im nowhere near a Pro either^^

Paint-over as promised, and some thoughts.

Thought no1 :)

Ok, so we all have our heroes, that's awesome and they inspire us. But remember there's only ever going to be ONE Dave Rapoza, and I'm seeing hundreds of mini Rapozites popping up left right and centre at the moment.

I thought rather than say, study Dave, lets go to the source, those old guys, the dark/light masters.

Here's a set of Carravaggio, Valasquez and Rembrandt. There's a Rapoza on there too for good measure. Spot the odd one out? Yep that would be yours :)



So you want to get into this kind of portrait art, STUDY those guys... and bring it in to 2012, like Dave is. But please, try to make your stamp on it. Cliche time, think outside the box, what really can you do to set yours aside from Daves? Spend some time on that.

K onto the paint-over.

Well it's values and mood at the moment, hopefully we can bring yours into the sphere of the people above more.

I did this quickly, mainly using a big soft brush for the lighting, Dave (and those masters use a much more sophisticated layering technique for their light, built up slowly) So get into that, spend time and don't rush the lighting.

Here's what I did



Think in terms of Light and No-Light (shadow)

So basically for the paintover, I just added a flat layer of colour set to multiply.

This "turns out the lights" so your figure is sitting in the dark.

I mask this layer and erase away the shadow with a big round airbrush, medium opacity (painting on the light) Alternately you can work by painting in the shadow, or alternate between the two. For speed I chose to erase away shadow.

Take your time here anyway.

For more speed I added further lighting with levels adjustment layers, don't use this shortcut though unless for minor adjustments as it's unnatural.

Add texture, give us some interest.

I used some skin and splatter type brushes. With an FX layer added. This is set to Bevel/Emboss, did and outer bevel, adjusted the light direction. Gives a quick easy bump mapping effect, again do this properly, this is a shortcut.

Whacked on a photo texture, erase part away - don't make the whole thing textured, it looks flat and unnatural, vary your texture. texture the light OR the shadows, don't have it all over, or texture areas of interest.

Colour is up to you, vary your rim light for more impact, compliment your skin tones.

Vary up your skin tones.

I did it with some colour layers, colour pick the base skin tone, then shift the RGB sliders ever so slightly and paint in different hues. Be careful with saturation here.

Contrast, Contrast, Conrast.

Cool/Warm your light and shadows.

contrast in saturation - think about your areas of focus, dont put some uber saturation in somewhere where we're not meant to look, save it for the areas of interest.

Vary everything up, large/small brush strokes, dark/lights, texture/flat, hard/soft.

Keep it interesting, do as much as you can.

PSD attached, think it's earlier than where I got to in the end.

Sharpen areas of interest, filter. Blur out other places. Add some fx in the atmosphere if you like.

experiment with everything photoshop has to offer you.

Happy painting matey!! Looking forward to your updates.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8009186/mewtwo_b...0d1sPO.psd

[Thomas Mahon]

Thank you very much for your crit Tooth. I appreciate the crit and paint over so much. Although the part about 'Rapozites', I'm aware of, and I don't intend to rip off Daves style in the future, I was concious of that when painting the mewtwo. It was very much a one off painting that I started in a spur of the moment type situation. It was more of an homage than anything, but I digress, I was more concerned with my technical failings rather than the style of my art, because I don't *really* have one yet.

Thank you again for the critique :D

[Thomas Mahon]

For the Royal Fellas challenge

[brenthollowell]

that last dude is great man

[Thomas Mahon]

[Tooth]

Love the little devil in armour that's awesome man, and a great improvement! Post moar :)

[Thomas Mahon]

[Thomas Mahon]

some stuff from loomis & some is applied imagination

[Thomas Mahon]

[img][/img]
quick frans hals study

[Thomas Mahon]

some quick anatomy stuff

[Thomas Mahon]

study for a character

[Thomas Mahon]

character im working on, trying to apply stuff im learning. inspired by Sam Carr's stuff

crits very much welcome

[Thomas Mahon]

these are the first loomis studies i did. horrible






I'm having trouble with confident lines I think