To infinity and beyooond

[Forrestimel]

Hey there Cruptic, awesome work so far. Very happy to see how dedicated you are to improving. Your goal to get work within a year is definitely possible, but getting work and becoming fulltime freelance are two completely different things. I got my first freelance job 2 or 3 years ago but there's no way I could support myself if I lived on my own at the moment.

I'm not saying it's not possible, anything is possible, you just gotta really kick your ass into gear. You're painting and drawing like a maniac right now so don't stop. But if you really want to improve and get work then you might need to consider some things.

1) What do you want to specialize in?

You need to decide now if you want to get work doing character designs, illustrations, environments, pick a specialty and work at it. A lot. Specializing in a specific field means you don't have to mess around doing a ton of studies that don't necessarily pertain to your final goal.

2) Study with purpose

You said you get easily frustrated when you draw from your imagination. Sorry to break it to ya but that's everyone. Don't let it get to you, draw from your imagination every single day and have it be related to what you studied that day. If you studied arm anatomy that day then draw arms from your imagination. And don't just draw from your imagination to apply stuff, you need to keep your mind fresh, keep it loose and fun. Draw not for the sake of trying to make something good but to clear your head, to vent, draw something stupid or funny, it helps relieve the stress of constantly trying to become better.

I'm not sure if someone mentioned this yet and I'm surprised if no one has but you should really stick to just painting in greyscale. Your values are very washed out when you start in color and the only way that that is going to improve is if you work in value and really try to pay attention to how dark and how light certain areas are. Don't be afraid to color pick if you aren't sure but just try your hardest to remember it and then apply it later.

You're starting fresh and you're experimenting which is fantastic, it's great to draw and paint things you normally wouldn't think to do. But try to narrow it down soon if you're serious about getting work quickly. Right now you're studying a lot of perspective and environments and anatomy and it looks like you did an illustration below, you're all over the place. Decide what you like most and (for now) stick with it.

Hope I could help you out, you're dedicated and it shows. Just want to see you reach that goal of yours :)

[Cruptic]

Forrestimel thanks a lot for taking your time and writing this super useful comment for me!
I never really studied with purpose the way you're describing it for so that's going to be a thing that I have to change.
What do I want to specialize in? Not sure, the plan was to do Illustration and Landscapes and I thought I'd need anatomy and a good understanding of perspective for that.. the problem I have is I stopped drawing when I was like 7 years old and just picked it up again half a year ago so I feel like my drawings are basically lacking in everything and I gotta catch up by drawing everything if that makes any sense :D

Anyways, best comment thanks heaps!


I jumped right into drawing from imagination and did some pen sketches because I worked on head construction recently and some rock again cause I studied a rock few days ago.. I'm not happy with them but here they are and I hope by doing more of those I'll get better!

[Cruptic]

Some sketches from this morning.. my ellipse drawing is terrible so I have to practice!
And yesterday while doing this weird stone I posted I got the idea for a landscape so I thought if I want to do landscapes and I have to practice stuff from imagination I'll just spend a lot of time on getting this landscape out of my head and into photoshop.

So that's roughly between 2 and 3 hours in.. I have to bring in some reference next I think and will post some progress tomorrow! :)

[Cruptic]

Some constructed dude and overlay and as I said some more work done on the landscape, about 3 hours again. Most fun part was the village so there is a closeup of that :) Maybe I just trash the landscape and finish the village and valley with color!

[Cruptic]

"Finished" my landscape today, not super happy with the color version of it but it's alright I guess.. I expercienced a lot with it and painted stuff in for hours, it was a good experience I never spent that much time on a piece before and hopefully I make a few less mistakes on the next one.
The village was still my favorite part but the color-layers kind of destroyed the details a little bit, I definitely have a lot to learn about photoshop as well haha.

[Cruptic]

Excited to have a skull now, study from life, 2 hours :)

[Cruptic]

Fun portrait thing, again working on my blending skills and all the facial features.. the expression on her face is kinda funny I couldn't really fix it though I really tried :D
Took about 4 hours of experimenting to get to this stage :o

[Cruptic]

Today I remebered that MEAT posted in my sketchbook here before and told me to check out John Constable who's kinda 'famous' for his cloud studies so I did that today and I did some studies of his work of course. He was amazing in painting skies and for landscapes it's pretty important to be able to draw clouds I guess so I tried to match his colors and clouds the best I could. So my paintings are on top, originals by John Constable bottom!

I also gave me a timeframe of one hour for every study to force myself to work more efficient. So in the end I got a lot done but I'm not really happy with any of them, had hard times to get colors and even contours right and worked only on one layer at all time to not loose time through that and I didn't like that sometimes.. still it's a good thing to set a timeframe here and there although very long studies help me more I think.. but at the end of the day what do I know?! Just trying different things ;)

[ShinOkami]

Hey, tnx for droping by my sketchy stuff, i like how the last landscape turned out but the darker part on the upper-right corner kinda bothers me like it's out of place, don't know what it's suposed to be~

For the portrait, try not to draw the features too soon, the main point of geting the likeness is having the proportions in place, skull structure and the lighting form right then the features come in

Another tip- flip your piece horizontaly now and then, it will show you mistakes you made, in the last portrait, the eyes for example~

Study the skull and values a bit more and keep up the good work ! :)

[Cruptic]

Hey ShinOkami and thanks for your comment they're always helpful for me! :)
Your right I really focused almost only on the features again and not really on structure and construction.. I tend to do that when painting digitally and now I know why nothing worked out on the portrait thanks!
For the landscape, glad you liked it despite all the problems that it has, the grey stuff on the side was supposed to be heavy rain comming in as a contrast to the light that's coming from the left but yeah it's just badly painted I promise improvement on the next one! :D

Today I focused on the head again, I always have to think about Forrestimels post and that I have to focus on something I want to be working on later but drawing heads and anatomy in general is just so interesting and satisfying.. so after studying construction again I did some feature scribbles to improve these as well and I will do another portrait the next days to use the studies there

[Cruptic]

2 hour landscape color study, now time to watch some soccer :)

[Cruptic]

Some 10-15 min face scribbles from random photos

[Cruptic]

Another day another post, I want to make my posts a little bit bigger in the future to force myself to not be lazy and really do stuff and get more done.. often I just hang out and waste time on the internet :/ I hope the quality of the work doesn't go down and I hope you guys don't mind.
So here's the first big post with some anatomy from Hampton, some experiments with cylinders and figures and some quick cloud studies!

[Cruptic]

Alright next sb-update! I have a little schedule now for every day so I do a little bit of anatomy everyday as well as color theory and after that I can do everything else. Tomorrow is going to be only anatomy full day and friday only landscape stuff so I'm motivated and excited how that's going to be! :)

First some anatomy stuff, I did the gesture lines first and a rough skeleton sketch in this weird pink and over that I tried to figure out how the flesh falls and overlaps itself






Some landscape stuff that started off with a photo ref but I ended up putting that down and just finishing the piece without it. the first one was an hour and the second around 1,5 hours





colored that last one




I felt like I wasn't really understanding rocks while painting them in that last one so I tried to figure them out with some scribbles




and I did this doodle just from imagination nothing crazy just trying out different things, around 1,5 hours.. that one actually started as just a rock scribble :D

[PacaTatuCotiaNao]

Cool stuff, man! Keep it up!

[Doolio]

Oh hai, I see you're going through Hampton too, ogogogo:D

[JyonnyNovice]

Doing great! Love the one with the huts out on the water, really captured the feeling of the photo!

[Cruptic]

Hi there, next post! first of all thanks to all of you (JyonnyNovice, PacaTatuCotiaNao, Doolio) for the comments always happy when I get some feedback of any kind! :)
And yess Doolio going through Hampton right now but I looked up your sketchbook and wow not so into these studies like you were you're crazy! Oo

So more Hampton stuff again, today was my anatomy day so this update is gonna be more boring to look at I guess ;D





My first attmept on really studying some hands, I always see brigdemans hands everywhere so I grabbed his book and began with hands.. and I was loving it. will do it more often from now on






Some gesture drawings, never feel good about doing those it always seems stupid to set those 60 seconds and then rush through the whole figure although I could take my time with it and make it much better (accuracy and overall look) .. just don't get the point of gesture drawing so if someone has an own opinion on that I'd love to hear it! :)




Tomorrow is environment/landscape day so I hope that's gonna be more interesting!

[Doolio]

And yess Doolio going through Hampton right now but I looked up your sketchbook and wow not so into these studies like you were you're crazy! Oo

ahah, well, as far as I see it, you're doing the same thing (going through pages):)

Now, the best thing I can say is, try to apply hampton as much and as often as you can. I think it's a great book overall, but it lacks some substance when it comes to anatomy (which is, well, normal, as it's a figure drawing book and not the anatomy book) and it MIGHT have some quirky proportions or landmarks. But generally, I personally think it's the best book to go through and get acquainted with human form, before going nitty gritty:)

[JyonnyNovice]

Hey Cruptic, gesture drawings is all about training your mind to see past the form of the model and capture the natural, organic energy of the pose.

Everything in nature has gesture in it, trees - the flow from the trunk up through the branches into the leaves; forest landscapes - how the canopy moves and swirls along the vista. A leopard as it readies to pounce - the jagged tension running through its bunched up muscles.

The time limit is there to try and force you to ignore the details and just see the natural rhythm in the body - is there a line that sweeps along the edge of the head and continues down the thigh towards the foot? Any other relationships throughout the body that create nice sweeping curves?

Where is the tension in the body? Which muscles are engaged?

Is the ribcage pushing out on one side? Is the weight on the pelvis on the other side of the body? Sweep a line through the bottom of the ribcage and curve it down the pelvis on the opposite side, flow it down through the thigh and bring it back over the knee if its bent because there's tension there.

It's also about creating movement though your drawing. Glenn Vilppu uses short c and s curves that curl over each other to lead the eye through the drawing - not following the contours, just the energy and rhythm of the body. The 'waves' at the top of the picture below are examples of movement in drawing, then he's applying it to a gesture drawing.



You can watch his demo's on youtube.


Proko says that all figure drawing starts with gesture - get a solid gesture down and when the figure is laid down on top you will find it much more dynamic and vibrant than carefully copying and measuring every detail.


Also check out Ryan Woodward to see some really great illustrative design with gesture.




Hope that helps you! I'm really passionate about gesture drawing if you can't tell ^^