Chachava's 'Sketchbook'

[Chachava]

Ooops, keep forgetting to upload new work.

Firstly, some logo ideas for 2 fictitious corporations.


And some quick thumbnails of HQ type buildings for one of the 2 corporations, really just looking for interesting silhouettes to work with. I'm definitely starting to see more of a benefit from doing lots of quick little sketches like this to explore ideas.


Practising simple single source lighting on basic head models. This was done without reference, as you can see, I kind of suck at this, especially with lights from below. Either today or tomorrow I'm going to re-do all of these but using reference to see all the glaring mistakes I made.


These next three are from a painting I started for the Virtual Plein Air group on Facebook. I'm starting to get a bit fed up with it now though (although I've only spent about 2 or 3 hours on it over a couple of days). I tend to get very disheartened when I can't do something, in this case painting textures like the stone wall, I ended up throwing a photo texture over the top of it which didn't work too badly, but I'd still like to learn how to paint textures like that and make them read well.




And finally, another thing I've been putting off for a long long time, painting from life. I decided to keep it simple to kind of ease myself into it, so I kept it with a single object with a piece of paper underneath and propped up behind it. I'd just been watching one of the FZD videos on youtube about portfolio prep, and looking at objects as 3D forms and analysing/drawing them that way, rather than just trying to copy what I was looking at. I started off OK, but realised by the end that I'd just fallen back into just copying what I saw. Anyway, I'm fairly happy with the result, still a lot of room for improvement. But then it's pretty much the first time I've painted anything from life, or at least as far as I can remember

[Chachava]

After a few weeks of getting very little done and having to question my approach to things a bit, I'm finally back with a few more things.

I realised I was trying to do things that were way too complex for my current abilities, as far as architecture of any kind goes, so I decided to try something a bit more simple.



Another quick sketch, kind of based on the bandit shacks from Borderlands 2.



Also over the last week or so I've realised a few of the mistakes I was making as far as landscapes were concerned and these are the 2 I've done since, the first was about 1 1/2 hours, the second about 4 or 5 hours.

[Chachava]

A few more bits and pieces to post.

I had another go at drawing/painting a portrait from imagination.


I also went back through a few of my previous attempts for a bit of a comparison.



There's obviously still a whole lot of errors, but I think there's definitely improvement.

And this week I've started looking at prop/weapon designs, something I've never tried before. These are meant to be concepts geared towards games (in this case a slightly futuristic setting). I did a few quick little sketches in a notepad (which I can't scan at the moment but hopefully will later), then a few silhouettes to play around with different shapes. Finally a few slightly more refined design ideas. I'll probably have a look at them again tomorrow and decide which one I like best and then work it up into a more finished piece.





As always, any feedback/crits are more than welcome.

[Chachava]

A few more weapon sketches, this time I wanted to have a go at designing some fairly decorative swords. These are what I came up with, 7 original designs and 1 not so original (but I couldn't resist, lol) These are the initial sketches, cleaned up drawings, and finally 3 of them fully painted up. I wanted to get all of them done but it ended up taking a lot longer than I thought to clean up and detail the sketches, then even longer to paint them up. It's something I really want to get a bit faster at.

Definitely had a lot of fun with these, even if they aren't that great.







As always, comments and crits are more than welcome

[Chachava]

I got round to working up one of the sniper rifle sketches I did earlier in the week, I had meant to do all 3, but as with the swords, this took me a LOT longer than I had anticipated. In the end it took me around about 5 hours to complete (not including the initial sketch), which I have a feeling is a time that I'm going to need to drastically cut down if I want to get anywhere as a concept artist. I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as the swords from yesterday, but a lot of that is down to having a blinding headache at the moment. Anyway, as always, comments and crits are more than welcome.



For the last few weeks I've been spending a week concentrating mostly on one aspect of the things I want to improve on, then working on other things when I have a bit of spare time. This has been working pretty well for me so far so I'm going to continue with that trend. So next week I'm going back to anatomy as there are a few things I really want to work on (like hands for instance), then next time I come round to working on prop/weapon design I'm going to attempt to make a full set of something (like pistol, smg, assault rifle, sniper rifle etc. ), concentrating on the design language and making them actually look like part of a set, it should be an interesting exercise.

[Chachava]

Not a lot to show so far this week, been trying to get to grips with anatomy again so haven't been doing a whole lot of painting. I've spent the whole of today trying to get to get my head round the muscles in the arms, but I seem to be really struggling with it. Most of the day has been spent tracing over photos and trying to rough out the muscle structures, I seem to be okay from certain POV's but others I just can't seem to get, anyway, this is what I managed to get done.



I wanted to colour code everything so it would hopefully help me understand things a little better, and it's definitely helped, but I'm still having a reasonable amount of trouble with it, especially the bottom right one, I even started drawing the outlines of the muscles on my arm with a whiteboard marker to see if that would help.

I did use quite a few resources which were really helpful, and hopefully will be to others as well.

Colour coded arms - This is where I got the colours I used from, I originally found this a few years back on deviantArt, but the user has since left dA and hidden all of his deviations, thankfully I managed to find this blog which also had the images.

BioDigital Human - A free 3D anatomical model which runs in your browser.

And several books, 'Atlas of Human Anatomy for Artists - Stephen Rogers Peck', 'Anatomy for Artists - Sarah Simblet' and 'Strength Training Anatomy - Frederic Delavier', I'd definitely recommend that last one, it's not an art book, but it is VERY useful.

Anyway, hopefully those links will be useful to some people.

[Chachava]

Back working on environments today, trying to work my way through things I've always wanted to be able to do but was always too scared to try.

Forests are something I've always shied away from, they always seemed way too complicated and difficult. So I started this week with a few sketches of forest scenes. I did get a little bit frustrated with a few of them, I generally knew the kind of feel I wanted with them, but struggled to get a composition that I liked.



They are far from great, but for a first real attempt at painting anything like this they aren't too bad. I'm really enjoying doing these kind of semi quick sketches as it gets me painting from my imagination rather than doing studies, which was pretty much all I used to do. I do need to start doing some more 'finished' paintings soon though.

As always, comments and crits are more than welecome.

[AngeliquevdMee]

Wow the bottom environment looks pretty nice! Also like the first one of the second row. Really well rendered for a thumbnail and good job on the athmospheric perspective. No crits on that so far. The weapons look decent, but they could use some variation in line weight to make it more appealing. Keep studying fundamentals and keep that passion to paint and you will get there :)

[Chachava]

Thank you for the comments :). Definitely agree on the line weights on the weapons. The plan had been to render all of them and get rid of the majority of the line work, but I didn't have time to get it finished. I think getting some line weights down as I'm cleaning up the line work is a good idea to keep things looking presentable for as much of the process as possible.

[Chachava]

I've had a bit of a meltdown since Monday, for some reason something just seemed to kind of give up in my head, everything I tried looked like absolute garbage, even when I tried to do things which had seemed relatively easy a few days before. I couldn't even see where the problems were and I ended up getting really frustrated with things. Eventually I seemed to pull myself back a little bit yesterday and actually managed to get a pretty quick sketch done that wasn't absolutely atrocious.



It was based off a photo ref, but I tried not to directly copy it. It's a bit of a mess, but it's definitely the best of a bad few attempts.

Today however, I rather stupidly decided to try and build my confidence back up a bit more by.......trying to do something I have never been able to do, painting interiors, or more specifically Sci Fi interiors. Unsurprisingly I still couldn't do it, thankfully though it's not really knocked my confidence back at all, which I expected it to do.

I started with a simple google sketchup model, then tried to paint over that. As always though I just couldn't seem to get my head around it. All the flat surfaces kind of throw me a bit, as well as the lighting etc. I have a feeling I'm over thinking it (a problem I regularly have). If anybody has any advice on painting this kind of thing, or links to any videos showing other peoples techniques, they would be very much appreciated (I've had a brief look, but not really found a huge amount).

This is the 3D model I'm trying to work from.

[Chachava]

I've been really lacking confidence the last week or so after having a little melt down, so I decided to stick with something I'm a little more confident with today (That's not to say I'm good at these kind of paintings, just that I feel a little more comfortable with them).

I had originally planned to keep it as just this quick sketch.



but I was fairly happy with it so I decided to take it a little further and maybe turn it into a finished painting. I did want to add some kind of focal point to add a bit more interest to it though. After struggling with a few other ideas I've settled on the one below for now. I want to add some kind of explorer walking up the little ridge on the right so he can get a better view of the surroundings. I'll keep going in that direction tomorrow and see if I still like it, if not I'll scrap that idea and leave the painting a little while till I can think of something better. If anybody else has any suggestions I would be more than happy to hear them.



As always, comments/crits etc. are more than welcome

[Chachava]

Did a little bit more work on the snowy painting today, fixed the perspective on the sled (it actually has some now, lol) and added the guy trekking up the ridge. I still don't really think the sled/dogs/hiker work well and they kind of feel like they've been tacked on at the end. At this point though I think I'm going to do more harm than good to it if I carry on, so I'm going to call it done, at least until I have a little more talent to get it looking right.



Looking at all that snow was making me feel even colder than I already did, so I wanted to try something a little 'warmer'....lava. I went with what was supposed to be a pretty quick colour study, but it ended up taking longer than I had anticipated (about 2 hours or so I think), and I still feel like I failed miserably in getting the lava to look right. It is something I haven't painted before though, so I guess I can't be too hard on myself.



I may have another go at a similar photo/colour study tomorrow and spend more analysing things before I rush in and start painting.

[Chachava]

I'm really struggling with motivation and inspiration at the moment and as a result I've slipped back into my comfort zone (Portraits). To try and change things up a little bit I have tried to go for a slightly more painterly/less photo realistic approach the last few days.

Firstly just a few eye sketches from reference photos



And something a little more substantial, a portrait of the actor Daniel Gillies (Elijah from the originals/Vampire Diaries). I'm quite happy with it as a portrait, although I'm not convinced I really captured the likeness all that well.



Hopefully I'll have a few more original pieces started soon

[Chachava]

Got a bit bored after shutting my computer down, so decided to do a little sketching (with a physical pencil and sketchbook for a change). It was a bit of a nightmare getting a decent photo using a phone camera in artificial light though. I really should get my scanner set up again, but it's just way too much hassle, lol. Also, it didn't help that I was just using a 2H pencil (it's all I had handy), couldn't get a huge range of values from it.

It's nice to know that I can still draw without the use of a computer.