Crackbook

[crackedskull]

Didnt have much time today, but what I did have I used well.

[crackedskull]

Full master study of Rembrandt's piece- Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts
Took a good 6hrs, never done anything so rendered so I was surprised at the end result.



Concept derived from a bison, study coming soon.

[crackedskull]

Now off to sleep.

[Rognoll]

Cool stuff! Why do you sketch poses with two colors?

[crackedskull]

Thanks.
Well, I sketch the gesture first then go in with blue or cyan for basic bonestructure and then the same with red and muscles. Also I use this method to check over, often enough I find mistakes that I can go over and fix that way. Sometimes I go further and start doing other details with the colors. Then I go back to black and reduce opacity of the first gesture sketch to 25%-50%. And so on.

[crackedskull]

Got burnt out today, so I decided to cool down and watch some FZDschool and Dave's livestreams.

Didnt do any studies (attempted, but it lead to frustration) so just made some random doodles/concepts. Perhaps my standards have raised way above my skill level or something like that.

[Ignatz]

Having standards above your skill level is a good thing. It means your eye is getting better at seeing things. Your eye always has to be better than your skill level in order to improve, otherwise you just become comfortable with your current ability and stagnate. The trick is not to get frustrated by constantly feeling that your technical ability is lacking. I know it's a cliche but just think of every bad drawing as getting you one step closer to that really awesome image. You have to do them to get them out of the way. Keep at it.

[crackedskull]

Thanks Ignatz. When I watched Dave Rapoza's livestreams yesterday, he mentioned something similar.
Quick update on paintings. I tried to study light mostly and how it behaves.
3hr study


Alien disguised as a human concept. I used some noir movie shot as a ref. It should have this 60s early mysterious vibe. Kinda like in The Twilight Zone.
Again I focused on the lighting and the mood, rather than proportions and anatomy. Now off to to some loomis and gestures.

[JakeB]

Nice work dude, just keep an eye on your proportions with the faces. Loomis has a thing in one of his books that shows the layout of all the features, and their size relative to one another. Pretty useful, might be worth checking that out.

Keep pushing man :)

[crackedskull]

Thanks JakeB, I have read that book some time ago(did half or so exercises aswell), will go over it again.. Will go over it once ive finished with some other stuff. Face proportions are my achilles heel, especially at angles.

Aced it today (workflow wise) so feeling pretty good. Hope I have the same drive (or better) tomorrow and that nothing comes up.

One problem I have is that external things(school, helping out at home with something big, going out to a city, pretty much anything) mess with my drive to do art. Anyone else have anything similar?

Here's the rest of today's work:
Loomis' studies. Went quite loose and messy with them. Focused on specific things.




1h gesture challenge.


Still life on table.

[crackedskull]

Today was certainly different. I had all these ideas and they were quite fun to execute on thy canvas.

Started with a quick study as a warm up.



Had this idea of an aftermath of a giant battle with mountains of corpses! Main hero is standing in the middle watching towards the horizon.



More quicksketches, was trying out new brushes on them, not much else.





This one started out as a concept for a final boss, but the more it went on I was reminded of some kind of cartoon villain, so I said "fuck it" and went with it. Even added a mustache because fuck logic :)



Finished with the idea "Price of immortality".

[crackedskull]

So this morning I recieved a call. It was my Focus...
He said "Fuck you Crackedskull, you've been treatin' me like shit, goodbye"
I was utterly shocked. How was I going to to art without my focus.
And thus the day began.

Started with Loomis.




Then I thought about making an awesome lineart. Problem was, I had never made lineart before. Didnt even get to detailing.


Concepts




Shenanigans 2


Gestures through light. Was fun and intresting.


Linepractice


Self portrait




All in all i'd rather do 1 good, refined and finished fantasy illustration than 20 scribbles like the one's above. But that damn focus...

[crackedskull]

Not doing so well today, workflow wise.

[Markus]

Hey man!
Looking really good here.
All I can think of tips-wise is to take specific care with structure and form. Oh and keep drawing, especially with pencil on paper. It will help with the confidence of your linework as well being a general foundation to build on. Getting straight into digital can be a bit overwhelming, and the principles still lie in basic draftsmanship. You're doing a ton of studies already and that's awesome, keep that stuff up!

[crackedskull]

Thanks for the tips and motivation Markus.

Quick update drawing wise. Gonna post more later today.

Gestures 7



Landscape derived from my city concept. No idea where to go with it so I threw some random stuff together



Skeleton from imagination



Sunset study. The color saturations were much higher than I thought.



Loomis 12

[crackedskull]

Shapes on a plane!



Finished the day with character concept and thumbnails.

[crackedskull]

Quick update.

3h grape study. Tried hard to make it look right, but ended up with this. For this piece I didnt colorpick ( usually I do 5-10 times per ref, its a bad habit) or even place the ref image on top see where I was off. Tried to go the hardest way possible just like when doing still lives.



Loomis 13

[crackedskull]

Armor study wip.



Rustled.



Concept.

[crackedskull]

Did not start until the late afternoon this time. First half of the day I had that lazyness I get. Felt bad. Then I got it together and went straight for 8h(with short breaks every hour to rest eyes). Unplugged the internet so no distractions. Went just fine.
Loomis 14 and 15




studies




still life. That rock took so long :)


And then some abstract stuff and doodles.

[MonoOrder]

Nice job cracked skull! You're putting in a lot of work with your studies! For now focus more on construction and getting the basic shapes/forms accurate over rendering details such as strands of hair. Also more soft edges and blending of colors/values into your studies!