Hey guys. I've been here on the forums for a year now and it's like a year and a half since I started to learn to paint more seriously. So I'll be posting here most of my study stuff which means traditional paintings, anatomy studies, poses, digital paintings, well you know the usual :)
I have some old stuff which is not gathered yet so for now I'll just post some of the charcoal paintings I did at the end of last year and one of the last digital studies I did.
(07-29-2013, 10:39 PM)Wingal Wrote: off to a nice start! Though id rather see more stuff from this year... not old stuff
Keep going!
Hey Wingal. Thanks for the comment :) Well actually half of drawings from previous posts are from this year and some of them are from october and november last year. I don't know about you but my time flies really fast so in a way these feel like I made them last month even though they are a couple of months old ;)
Since this is a sketchbook I want to post basically most of my studies here chronologically and hopefully when I look back and also for anyone that looks at it sees gradual progress.
So in the first few posts I'll show some of my first studies and later on my latest (most of them aren't even put together in a presentable way).
So I started last year with some 60s poses like these.
ok let talk about light and shadow i would recommend you to come back afer 10min after you finish a piece of work. Try to remember that every part is as important as any other part of the body.Basicly the problem here is lack of interest to do light and shadow in some part of the body and some light ans shadow need to be polish you need to add stronger value brighter and darker.
(08-08-2013, 04:19 AM)darktiste Wrote: ok let talk about light and shadow i would recommend you to come back afer 10min after you finish a piece of work. Try to remember that every part is as important as any other part of the body.Basicly the problem here is lack of interest to do light and shadow in some part of the body and some light ans shadow need to be polish you need to add stronger value brighter and darker.
I add this revision of area i am talking about
Hey darktiste. Thanks for the comment and taking time for the quick revision. I think you're absolutely right. Will pay attention more next time. I haven't found myself a solid method for studies yet. The first digital study I ever did was at the beginning of last year. It was only a portrait but it took me 10 hrs to do it. I was still learning how to blend then. Well I still am but now I try to constrain myself with time. So for that particular piece I wanted to see how far can I go in 2 hrs. I don't know if it's a good method or not. Maybe I should still be practicing the old way so I try to be as accurate as possible and to come close to the original in the sense of likeability. But yeah, you're right I did loose my interest after 2 hrs were gone. What kind of methods do you use? Do you do studies as long as it takes until it looks perfect or do you set your goal for each study for itself like today I'll just practice values or today I'll just practice shapes and won't care for values as much. I'd would really appreciate what's your opinion or method on that matter. Like I said I still haven't found myself a good method for me so any advice is most welcome. Thanks again ;)
Hey good start to your sketchbook. Reading your above post ^^ when you do studies don't mindlessly copy the image, unless of course your goal is to just replicate that image exactly (imo not the most useful way of studying) but think about what goal you are trying to achieve and learn with the study and actively seek to analyse while you work how you can achieve that goal and attempt to achieve it with the study.
(08-10-2013, 05:29 AM)JonHop Wrote: Hey good start to your sketchbook. Reading your above post ^^ when you do studies don't mindlessly copy the image, unless of course your goal is to just replicate that image exactly (imo not the most useful way of studying) but think about what goal you are trying to achieve and learn with the study and actively seek to analyse while you work how you can achieve that goal and attempt to achieve it with the study.
Hey JonHop, thanks. Yeah that's what I was thinking. Cuz when I do studies I don't pay attention to everything but only to certain things. Sometimes is really hard to even find a focus much less sticking to one. You know what I mean? Like doing a study a face for example and starting with the idea of making the proportions of the face right but then just focusing on the structure and details on the eyes and spending too much time on that and after a while figuring out that the overall structure of the face is way off and then just leaving it as it is because you feel you wasted too much time on it. I'm kind of thinking making myself a plan like of doing 100 different eyes and then after that doing 100 different noses and lips and after that doing 100 faces. This would be focused and I'm quite sure it would get some good results but I haven't done it yet so there is a chance it might get boring just doing one thing all over again. That's why I'm asking around to see if anyone has a personal method that was proven useful or even if someone has had a teacher that would recommend a good method. I hope we're not all self-taught here ;)
yeah man i know what you mean (esp faces they are my enemy! lol), though one method of study that someone has found effective may not work the same for a different person. I did fine art and completed my 2 year A level course in it and the teachers actually never really taught anything, (not even fundamentals!) it was just the students having to choose a subject matter and going out and drawing it by themselves or copying images. I find that the moment you begin to seek the fundamental knowledge and understanding of why something is the way it is and begin to apply this knowledge and practice it consistently you begin improving. Basically a teacher can only teach you what they know but knowing something without applying it will not help you improve.
There are a lot of resources and videos in the classes section here and videos on youtube (feng zhu's being some of my favourite also ctrlpaint.com is a great resource) where by the artists that frequent this site are helping others with the knowledge and understanding they have, might be worth checking that out and going through some of the assignments. Hope that was in some way helpful to you, and I don't want to spam your sketchbook with this , so I'll come back after you update it with more work and comment on it :). Keep pushing!
Hey JonHop
I agree with you that everyone has to find his/her own method. I still haven't found mine though. Lately I've been reading and listening people like Feng Zhu, Dave Rapoza, Brad Rigney and the red line is that the only proven method is doing lots of work and focusing on a certain aspect and mastering it before going to the next level. Like in the sense you don't need to occupy yourself with color until you master values and stuff like that. But the other thing is how do you know you have mastered something? Well I guess when you do you know :)
Yeah about the teachers I hear you man. Where I live there's only one academy for art the only thing that is something similar to concept art is industrial design. But the problem in our country is that there isn't enough work and therefore not enough competition to make it worth to have a subject of that matter on the academy. If you do industrial design you can make designs for bikes, skis, small household devices, kitchen devices and if you're really good you can go abroad to draw cars and ships. There aren't any games or movie or any of the entertainment design courses anywhere simply because there aren't any jobs for that positions. So yeah I did't go to the Arts Academy. I finished Architecture but this is a totally different thing. Everything else I learned on my own.
I've been searching through the net for years so I have a huge library of links to tutorials and books but only after I got myself a wacom tablet it became clear to me that I could also learn to paint. I think this kind of communities like conceptart daggers and cghub are awesome to find peers to push you when you loose your own will. So thanks for the push man :)
I've been doing some studies in my sketchbook so I guess I'll be posting those when I get the chance to scan or photograph them. Until then ;)
Keep on drawing!
(08-10-2013, 10:43 PM)JonHop Wrote: yeah man i know what you mean (esp faces they are my enemy! lol), though one method of study that someone has found effective may not work the same for a different person. I did fine art and completed my 2 year A level course in it and the teachers actually never really taught anything, (not even fundamentals!) it was just the students having to choose a subject matter and going out and drawing it by themselves or copying images. I find that the moment you begin to seek the fundamental knowledge and understanding of why something is the way it is and begin to apply this knowledge and practice it consistently you begin improving. Basically a teacher can only teach you what they know but knowing something without applying it will not help you improve.
There are a lot of resources and videos in the classes section here and videos on youtube (feng zhu's being some of my favourite also ctrlpaint.com is a great resource) where by the artists that frequent this site are helping others with the knowledge and understanding they have, might be worth checking that out and going through some of the assignments. Hope that was in some way helpful to you, and I don't want to spam your sketchbook with this , so I'll come back after you update it with more work and comment on it :). Keep pushing!