Alisan's Sketchbook

[AliceChopper]

Hi everyone,

My name is Alisan Kalfa and I try to become an illustrator, I have been lurking around but never had the courage and motivation to join in the conversation. When I decided to create an account and be a part of this lovely community, to my suprise I have been reminded that I had already created an account left it untouched years ago. I saw it says "rusted blade" under my name and at first I was angry - just for a second though , then I realised that is actually what I really am.

And now I am taking the first step to be not rusty anymore and I hope that we all get better together.

[StardustLarva]

Hello there and welcome to Crimson Daggers. I must say that I'm digging that pen illustration involving the floating head and the eye monster. It gives me a very yokaish feeling and reminds me of the work of Tatsuya Morino. One thing that has occurred to me looking at your work is that you need to work on your line weights a bit in those second and third pieces. I think your transitions in weight could use a bit more consistency and smoothness in transition. I can see some breaks and such in the lines. Still, very nice stuff so far, please do post more when you can!

[The Aether Technician]

Nice studies man! Keep 'em coming!
Maybe try to study the proportions of the face a bit more, rather than individual pieces?
so far your traditional is Much stronger than your digital- maybe try scanning in some pen work and working from there?

[AliceChopper]

@StardustLarva : thanx for the welcome and you are absouletly right about the line weights, the funny thing is before starting those I said to myself "Well, just do something easy, some chibi drawings perhaps." :P

@The Aether Technician : Thank you. I just realized I never tried scanning a drawing and working from there, it is suprising how very obvious things can be unnoticed .

I started this thing as testing out a brush set but having so much fun kept on going. Tried to have asymmetry in the face but the right side looks so unnatural an structuraly wrong I will redo that part , and maybe show some love to the background. I always left stuff unfinished so I will try to finish this.

[AliceChopper]

Here's some studies.

[The Aether Technician]

nice rendering on the green creature's face!
It looks like you're struggling a little with perspective on that still life- the brushwork could also be improved, but that's something I have a really hard time with as well.

[AliceChopper]

@ The Aether Technician : Thank you and you are right , I set myself time limit in the still life and felt like a fish fresh out of water, panicked and missed one of the most important steps which is constrution and drawing (not that I am competent on the subject but missing it is still bad though) , and starting copying shapes without a thougt putting in the study. I think I will do a similar study but this time with 2 hours time limit, thank you again.

And some sketches.

[Fedodika]

i like the swooshy nature of some of your lines, just keep drawing and you will improve, though it helps a lot to focus on a particular thing like drawing arms or painting faces to improve faster :). The rust will clean away, just need some fresh blood from your weaknesses!

[StardustLarva]

I'd say you have quite a nice eye for good character design in those sketches. I like the variation in shape you're employing with some of those characters.

[jeremygordon89]

This is a fantastic start! Great to see you're doing Bargue studies as well. Keep it up!
A tip on studying values, by the way, that helped me out a while ago: try doing some studies of images in only three to five values (near black, near white, and a gray). This will force you to push that contrast and see what makes the image really work.

Looking forward to more : D

[crackedskull]

Welcome to daggers, your definately doing the right stuff. Keep honing your skills man.

[BenFlores]

Welcome Alisan! Looking forward to seeing you progress, just keep pushing those fundamentals and updating us.

[AliceChopper]

Thanks everyone,
a value study and two quick color studies.
(I am quite in trouble with colors and appreciate any help)
P.S. sorry Ellie :)

[Adam Lina]

Nice SB so far. On the Pixar studies, your values are the problem not your colors. The values in your version are much lighter and theres no clear separation of the light and shadow side. Keep working on value studies and colors will come easy later. Or so I've heard, havnt quite gotten into color yet myself :)

[Caisne]

Nice studies, and good to see a balance between studies and personal stuff. Keep up the good work.

[Patrick Gaumond]

Yes values need work, but also thinking about the temperature and saturation of the colours you're using. Under most lighting circumstances, colours tend to get more saturated in the shadow side. That's before you take into account any fill lights or ambient lights. That doesn't mean massive jumps in saturation between light and shadow, but small, incremental increases in saturation as you progress from light, midtone, to shadow, as well as the value changes.

Be careful if you decide to study from movies and photographs, especially modern movies. Very, very few movies use colours "as is shot", ie the way they are in real life or the way they appear in the raw footage. There is a process of colourizing that is applied to basically all films that significantly alters the original footage's colours. Animated films tend to stay closer to true colour palettes, since they have full control straight from the beginning, but again, media does not capture the true range of colours and exposure that your eyes can see. Study colour from life if you don't already to get a strong understanding, and complement it with film and photography studies to expand it into new palettes

Also keep in mind that the grayscale on the side of the colour picker in photoshop does not equate 1:1 with the value of the colours beside it. For instance, red at 100% saturation 100% brightness in PS is ~50% gray in value, but it appears in line with white in the picker. Every colour has a different "peak chroma value" (the highest value it can possibly be at a given saturation), so Keep that in mind while working in colour, and if you have to check your values

http://www.artofscholes.com/checkingvalues/