Crackbook

[crackedskull]

Appreciate it MonoOrder.
I think I should take an image and construct the underlying skull, then draw red lines that indicate form. Somwhere in this forum there was something similar.
As for soft edges I went with a hard round brush at 100% flow on my last studies so go figure :)

[crackedskull]

Just a bunch of stuff.

[crackedskull]

...Both artwork and personal life wise. Cant wait to move out and start living on my own.


Started with loomis,







Wasted 3 hrs on this.



And another 2 on this.



Concept: space city.



Edit: forgot this master study. Colorpicked too much! Havent finished it yet though.


We all have bad days once in a while, but still I went through it doing art, even if I failed atleast I did so 9 hours. Frustrating as it may be it will serve as inspiration for the future. Sure you may think: there's no point to doing art when you're too frustrated, but it was more of an exercise of willpower for me.

If I can do this then what excuse do I have to slack off in a normal day?

[devin]

Good job pushing through it, it takes a lot of willpower to do so. I always feel worse when I let a bad mood stop me from being productive.

Keep up the studies dude, that wireframe one looks like a really cool idea. I think that your drawing accuracy could be a good thing to work on, if you want to see where you weren't accurate you could put your painting directly over the ref as a sort of post-game, then go in and fix what's off. If you do this you should be a little bit more accurate each time. What's jumping out to me most is that the cheek is coming out too far and the eye is too big and low. It helps to get a line down that you know is accurate, sometimes by checking it against the edge of the frame (or any imaginary horizontal or vertical line), and then judge all your new lines against what you know is good. With no frame of reference the drawing aspect can be a bit overwhelming.

[crackedskull]

Thank you Devin. I'll try it next time when im in trouble.

Now yesterday I made a promise to myself: do 10hrs of art.
So whats 1 more hour? Nothing.
Picked someting easy, like perspective and spent the hour on my concept.
There were 2 more buildings on the foreground, but they messed with the composition so I got rid of them. Didnt rush anything. Feeling better now that ive fulfilled my goal.





People say goals are kind of easier when you write them down. So here goes. Feel free to join in this schedule :D

1: Do 10 hours of art. Unless something urgent comes, if thats the case then do as much as you can.
2: Do not waste any time and be productive.
3: Starting is the hardest part.
4: If you're feeling lazy, just force yourself into it. Quit procrastinating and just do it.
5: Unless you absolutely need it, remove the modem so you dont go on the internet every 20-30 min.

[crackedskull]

Another day done.

Started with good ol' Loomis





Still life 5



4-5h study, lost track of time.



Upgraded my space city concept further.



Sketches.

[Samszym]

Thanks for the comment! The way you're pushing yourself is really inspiring, with your attitude you'll continue to improve quickly. Awesome to see you're making a lot of pictures and experimenting. Continue on fearlessly! :)
I agree with the common point that you're using too many lines to describe things, you should do some exercises to build up your confidence and accuracy. Drawing freehand boxes in 2 point perspective and forcing yourself not to go over your lines when you draw them wrong is a one exercise I've found helps.
Keep working the perspective and anatomy studies! It might be a good idea to spend a longer period of time, a week or so, just focusing on one body part or muscle formation.

[crackedskull]

Appreciate it Samszym :)
Will try the exercise. And thanks for the tips.

Quick update artwork wise, stay tuned because I have something awesome coming up. I'd reckon it will take 2-3 hrs more to finish.

Loomis 24&25





Various stuff.

[crackedskull]

Allright here it is!
This took me about 8 or 9 hours I think.

First off I felt like I was working way above my skill level at the end. Still cant believe I created this :)



Left hand was difficult because on the ref it was blurred also I changed various details.

[crackedskull]

Cracked like a twig today.

Started the day off confident and decided I can do art a later (BIG MISTAKE).
I figured since I did over 10h yesterday and it was quite fun and interesting that today would be no challenge at all. I was proud of my Bane piece and my brain convinced me of...

Well not gonna tell that here because that might demotivate some of you and that is not my objective. Its quite the opposite.

Other than that I didnt have any focus today, I didnt "get into" any of my pieces. Which resulted in crap.

Started with this, went way off the ref and tried to do some badass character thats fully rendered. Didnt work out.


Loomis faces 1


Hampton


Skull sketch


Concept



Yeah I'm not gonna make any excuses or lies. Procrastination and lazyness got to me and I did'nt force myself to focus, I underestimated the challenge so I failed. Hope tomorrow doesnt turn out like today.

[atrenr]

Sounds like you learned a lot from your mistake, which is great. Keep in mind that failure isn't a bad thing when you learn from it!

[crackedskull]

Thanks Atrenr.

Finished my goal and tried to make up for yesterday. Did a total of 11-12 hrs.

Loomis 26


Thumbnails 1


Thumbnails 2


Crazy hair guy


Nature study


Arnold


Warrior study


Concept


Noir study

[crackedskull]

Updating. Will (hopefully) post more stuff later today. Having a constant battle with myself.
Movie studies




Gestures 8


Got too caught up in symmetry, didnt follow my refs, so came out with this flat bland concept.

[Rognoll]

That's a lot of movie studies! The study on bane is terrific, dude.

You should watch out for the facial features. I'm having a similar problem right now

[crackedskull]

Thanks Rognoll :)
Facial features are quite hard indeed, escpecially at angles.

On another note, had kind of an off day. Im like a lightswitch, on and off, on and off etc.
Did not meet the goal, so I figure I got to make some changes to further help myself.

Quess its time for a little story.

I'm getting mentally tired, I think, almost every day I just lie down in my bed and listen to music or just daydream for 1 or sometimes 2 hours. Its related to working on art, I dont wanna waste time on playing games, so I fill in the gaps of lazyness with "rest". Also I keep getting these thoughts "But I have 3-4 years, thats plenty of time, why be so harsh on yourself, lay off".
Thats the lazyness talking.

I'm quessing knowledge about my mistakes and such isnt enough, I have to keep fighting until im hardened and disciplined.

Why am I this way?

I'm not a down to earth guy, I'm a dreamer of a sorts. Even as a kid I tried to avoid working.
But what really increased my lazyness was school. I used to go every day. Then at 5th or 6th grade I got bullied and started to hate school even more. Thus I started finding ways to skip school, parents were angry, so I had to constantly improve my techniques.

Some years forward and the habit of skipping school(even if the bad shit stopped), or avoiding stuff is still with me. In the mornings I always analyse what I have to do in school and stay home if I can.(well I used to anyway) Same goes for homework.

The environment is the same, my friends are lazy and they somewhat praise how less homework they do (dumbest thing ever). They say with pride "oh that thing, didnt do it". That also leaves some kind of an effect.

This year I didnt skip school that much, maybe once in 2 weeks average, because of the new policy the school instituted. But homework, I skipped that every time I could.

So thats where my lazyness and procastination evolved.
Even today I'm counting the hours, always thinking what will the clock be when im done with my 10 hours. Partly im doing it so that I do 10 hours instead of mistakingly doing less, partly because of something else.

I should break my workload to smaller bits, I still go by "do art 10h, you can do whatever you want, but spend a total of 10h doing it".
That approach may seem like it has a lot of flexibility and freedom, but its actually quite hard.

New schedule:
1. Do 2 hours of studies from artbooks.
2. Do 4 hours of studies from various refs.
3. Do a still life for 1-2 hours.
7-8 hours is mandatory. If counting hours, do so according to this.
Optional: once done with 8 hours.
1. Concepts based on studies.
OR
2. Do more studies.

Quess its still kind of "too general", but beats the previous schedule.



Movie study 2



Shenanigans 4



PS- Got too carried away writing, I do that at times, sorry for the Long ass text.

[crackedskull]

Going to keep trying and making new schedules with 8-10h in lenght. Will post one if I find it works for me.

Loomis 27 and 28





Studies.











At this point Ps got choppy/laggy so it hampered my lines even further.
Still life 6



An example of it can be seen below, notice that when I tried to do a ring it lagged and produced a straight line at the start of the ring.



Still got 5-6 hours today before I get tired, Ill take a break and perhaps post something more later.
Got the bare minimum done atleast :)
Limited time of daydreaming to 20 min, because it seems to make me more lazy, kinda worked.

[Samszym]

Dang man, thanks for spilling your guts like that. I've said it before, but seeing how hard you're pushing yourself and working towards your goals is really inspiring. All day I'm gonna be thinking "crackedskull isn't being lazy right now, what excuse do I have to be?"

Couple things I thought of, first I think you should try drawing figures made up entirely of big boxes. A box for the torso, a box for the head, a box for the pelvis, and a couple boxes for each limb plus some hands. Doing this and drawing all he boxes in proper perspective really taught me to consider how every part of the body was moving towards or away from me and really helped my sense of form. (hope you don't mind me posting a few here as examples)



(hah, looking at these old ones makes me think I should be doing this exercise again myself)
Those cross contour lines you're doing are a good exercise for learning form as well, but it doesn't look like you're putting enough thought into the contour lines for them to help so I'd suggest doing this even simpler exercise until you get the hang of it.

Another thing that came to my mind is how many soft edges and complex textures there are int these studies. I think it might be a smart to begin these studies with the lasso tool, blocking out all the biggest shapes first then when everything you need is established going in with the brush and rendering/softening up edges where it's necessary.

Best of luck man, I really hope you find a schedule that works out :D

[YOLOLEX]

great studies :). these will really pay off just internalize them

[crackedskull]

Wow, I really appreciate that level of feedback and help Samszym. Also thanks for the examples, I'll recreate atleast 1 figure made out of boxes in perspective.
As for the cross contours, I kinda rushed them so I got them wrong at parts.
Lasso tool eh? Will give it a shot, I do appreciate a good blocked in artwork, much easier to blend and reduce unwanted muddyness.
Thanks again buddy.

Another movie study, spent about hour and a half. I feel like im getting faster at this thing. Which is kind of good, but I also need to cramp out some 8h superstudies or even studies altered so far they become concepts (kind of). From this one I learned how form, light and color are connected. With wrong form the lips came out weird, like he was suffocating, but after applying the correct form to the lips everything started fitting in.

[crackedskull]

Thanks Yololex.

Had only a handful of time today for myself, but I made what I could with it. Also tomorrow im going out for the day and will get back pretty late. When I get back I'll try to get something done.

Loomis 29&30