Hey man, I can understand that feeling from time to time. College of course gets to be the same way at points with projects consuming time you'd rather be spending on more personal things. Don't let yourself get too down, what is important is that you're working towards your goal. Keep that eye on the prize! :D
These aren't so bad. Personally I can't work with straight cylinders and truly simplified shapes, I find it helps to complicate the forms slightly beyond their fundamental shapes. It seems easier to read the overlapping parts better that way, especially when it comes to perspective.
Hey man I love your work, and it's very inspirational ^^ when I was done with looking at your sketchbook I directly felt motivated to do something difficult haha.
Archreux - Yeah, for sure. Definitely always reaching for the goal, and hey procrastinating personal work with studies is better than video games or something. I think I'll get back in to personal work pretty soon, just need a moment of clarity before diving it. xD
And thanks! I agree it can be helpful to add a little of complexity to help find the overlaps, though on the other hand doing straight cylinders forces you to be really deliberate, so it's a tradeoff I s'pose.
Yarrnick - Thanks, I appreciate it! Being motivated is good, go make some arts with it! :D
Moar studies for today, Lots of comp and color studies from "Can't Hold Us" which has crazygood cinematography. This took like 2.5 hours longer than I planned, but oh well, had fun, learnt stuff, on to the next thing. Each one was about 30 mins each, cause I render too much. :D
Here's some figure drawings from today's livestream. Trying to get better at dynamic posing, think I learned a lot! Was trying to channel some Glenn Keane mojo.
Oh, hey! I'm watching you on DA, and I didn't even notice you had a sketchbook here :D
Anyways, just stopping by to say hi, I'm sometimes lurking on your livestream, but I never actually write anything.
This last portrait is amazing. Do you mind telling me which brushes you used? I'm asking because it looks like you used only the basic, round brush, and it looks perfect (and also, I'm looking for an excuse to avoid textured brushes ;) ).
Thanks a ton for the comment Jon!
Awesome work in these last posts, all the studies seem totally successful for the things you're trying to learn. I gotta try that turning the figure in the mind exercise you did sometime.
When I saw the dynamic pose studies, I wondered if you'd ever tried animating. There's no better way to learn how to make poses with a good sense of motion than actually putting them in motion!
Inspirational/awesome stuff, I'll be looking forward to future posts!
MajaD - Thanks muchly! And yeah, that portrait was done all with the round brush. Pretty much everything in this thread is done with the round brush; I think there are advantages to custom brushes, but you have to have a lot of control and I think working with just the hard-round forces you to really figure things out for yourself, so I prefer to use it especially for studies and often for finished work as well. Join the hard-round nation, we're taking over! :P
Samszym - Thanks very much, glad you're digging them! And yeah, figure turnarounds are great practice (they'll melt your brain though). And I haven't tried animating much no, I've gone over the basics of it and I have Richard Williams' book sitting on my shelf waiting to be perused, but I haven't actually tried animating figures. That's probably going to be something I start getting in to very soon, cause I think it's gonna be a necessity for being able to pose from imagination. So we'll seeeee!
SpectreX - Thanks! And yeah, that's a great library of reference, good practice to get out of boring model poses. xD
Here's another study for today, practicing figures both drawn and painted! It was actually kinda funny, I decided on a whim to paint these higher-key than the reference and see what happened, and limiting the value range actually forced me to think a lot more about which property of light I was painting at all times, and I think I actually learned more and got better results from it. Gonna have to do this more often!
Also playing with lost edges, cause I suck at them. Droar!
HiddenMyst - Thanks! Glad you're liking them. And yeah, I do figures from life fairly regularly. It's been a little while since I've done it due to vacations and work and craziness, but the studio I work at has life drawing every week and I'll be getting back in to it as soon as it starts back up again. :)
BUT, until that day, here's some more studies from photos! Doing more high-key lost-edge studies, having lots of fun with them and learning a lot! Some of them got too render-y, but overall I'm pretty happy with them. I need to get back to turnarounds and stuff though, but this is so much more fun. :S
All the beautiful life drawings! I am impressed, I love your value studies and your dynamic pose studies. Could you recommend any online sources that have a good collection of poses?
Xylithric - Thanks, much appreciated! For pose reference, I'd recommend pixelovely, figuresfordrawing tumblr, and dynamic poses on pinterest. Collectively they've got a ton of good reference material! Also characterdesigns.com has a bunch of free photo sets you can download.
Archreux - Thanks! Figure studies are a buncha fun. :)
And speaking of figure studies, here's another! Taking the high-key/lost edge concepts I've been playing around with the past few days and applying them to a more refined work. This one's about 4 hours, from reference.
Thumbnail studies from today, lookin' at some killer concept art and trying to reverse-engineer the process to absorb some of their design sensibilities.
Lots of fun, super tiring, I kinda pooped out on the last row. xD
Original artist credits, in order of appearance:
Wei Wang, Wes Burt, Jason Chan, Dean Holdeen, Glenn Rane, Trent Kaniuga, Victor Lee, Josh Tallman, ArenaNet artists, Brom, Dominic Qwek
Here's a couple new things, had a pretty meh day in terms of art. Started working on some characters / fashion design but they didn't really turn out so I didn't flesh them out very far. Need to figure out how to get past this well when designing stuff. :P
Then after that is a figure study from life, been a while since I've been to a live session, looking forward to getting back in the groove. This one's like 1.5 hours, turned out a'ight.
