|| Cold Coffe || Getting serious with caffeine in my system

[sgtmikey101]

Just ran through your sketchbook and man you have some inspiring stuff. Keep going with it!

[Suira]

sgtmikey101: Thanks man! I'll keep it up no worries :)

So, yesterday I failed to update, but I had to scan a ton of shit and didn't feel like it.

Well, I have started doing warmups in posemaniacs.com with a 60-90secs time limit, result are lousy, but they help to loosen up and learn about stuff in aquick and effortless way, so it's cool. I have a ton more than what I'm gonna show, but I didn't care to go and crop all of them, compose them, edit them and shit, so here's a sample:





Also, a couple of color/value thumbnails after Fowkes, took about 20 min each (although they're not really rhumbs since they're quite big, but I worked zoomed out:




A couple of annoying face studies, Nicholson took about 1hour and 45 cause it's hard as fuck to nail down likeness, the bum was about 45 mins:



And to finish, a couple of frogs, great to study how value works in high saturation setups, kinda sloppy brush work because I have been working with 750 pixels as image size, so refining wasn't an option or a goal ,getting better at seing color but still got a LOOOOOOOOOONG way to go ( took about 1h each btw):




Overall I'm pretty pissed off, cause I feel I don't study nearly enough and I need to work harder, but real life is a bummer, I gotta start overcoming that bullshit, anyway, hope every one is motivated and happy, and not frying in a pan like I am in this fucking town :(

[rafa zanchetin]

Damn nice man, they aren't lousy at all, I can already see you're making single lines on them and that's hella fast improvement.
Don't be mad, but to me it kinda seem there isn't a lot of value difference between the levels on the thumbs, like this: http://img0.joyreactor.cc/pics/post/full...65128.jpeg check out how much the value drops as it is going back, yer working hard already at it so just keep at it and you'll solve it in no time.

I'm starting to think that these thought it's just on our minds lol, I feel the same way but I dump pretty much every minute I can to it, but it never feels enough, and if I keep on it for too long I start having some arm and wristle pains, so I think I rather take it slowish but make it a long game.

[Suira]

Rafa: Glad you think the gestures are improving! I love yours so I guess mine can't be so bad after all :) Still a lot more to do till they're close to yours hehe. And yeah man, I can't get mad at you for stating the truth :) the values kinda suck on those, I still have a lot of dificulty seeing value in color, unless I take a long time painting something I fail miserably. I guess I'll get used to it with practice, but for now it's quite frustrating :P. By the way, I don't know why but the link doesn't work for me, same happenned for the dragon painting you linked on da ( except that one I looked for the title and found it hehe).

And yeah, you're kinda right, sometimes trying to squeeze more hours to study gets obsesive, but I'm sure you work harder than I do, lately I barely study 8 hours a day, which is...not enough. The best advise I can give is to make a 15 minute break every hour to avoid wrist pain, I smoke a cigarette and have a coffe, and I get ready to go :)


Well, today is failure/ despair / frustration day. I'm assuming it's because I'm close to a new level up, but man it's so fucking annoying. I just hated everything I did this week and I suspect it has to do with my brushwork+ value control + edge control+ not simplifiying+ trying to do too many things at the same time. So yeah, I'll have to think for a while and experiment these next few weeks to see if I can solve it, cause that's a lot to tackle on.

Today I gave up just 4 hours in, I'm tired and frustrated, and I feel that forcing myself is not gonna help today. So here you go , a lazy frog study trying just to understand color a bit more ( it was a luminiscent frog, so value is really off in this one) and a repaint from an old thing I did last year, trying to apply what I learned lately and FAILING MISERABLY. Good night :P

The old one:

The new one: ( took about 1,5 hours)


Frog fail:

[Birchgrove]

Dude, the paintings.... you did lvl up plenty already :D

going to give my 2 cents, just thoughts, don't get offended, I find your work ethic super motivating.

Be careful not to push yourself too hard. Even 4 hours is plenty. I know every pro is telling their story that something just clicked and they started to paint 12 hours a day every day, but you need to keep in mind that everyone is different and in a different situation. be it mental or physical. To avoid burnout I think the focus should be on having fun and learning, trying to figure something new out every day.

Bashing yourself for not being able to fill some time quota can turn your focus away from fun and progress, to stress and even less motivation to draw anything, since the last time of bashing left your brain in a negative state about drawing and painting and it does not want to go through it again. Instead of leaving it with a positive note that gets you more amped to do more tomorrow because you and your brain actually want to do it, because it's fun

and once again we are all different, some people actually thrive under stress and want more of it. And somethings you just have to go through and feel, before you can actually understand it. But thats life.

I'm not saying that I know anything, just rambling

relax man, art is something that you are going to do for the rest of your life, you have time ^^

[Suira]

Birchgrove: Haha, glad that you feel I leveld up, at least someone does, even if it's not me xD

No worries, I would never get mad on someone who's trying to help me out :) I see what you mean about the stress thing, and you're right. Except in my case it's a bit more complex. I have been pursuing this career for almost 6 years now, of thowe six years I have only worked hard one, and the rest I just relaxed, because I was a foolish and lazy, weed-smoking teenager. Now things have changed a lot in my life and I am at the point where I'm late to the party, even if I made my choice early ( as a hint Hannes/ Algenpfleger started posting on CA at the same time as I did, the diference in workload and quality speaks for itself) so I want to do my best to keep pushing, no matter my state of mind. In any case, I have taken your advise and decided to relax a bit with the studies and experiment a bit without any expectations, and it has helped me to enjoy a bit and be ready and happy for tomorrow, so thanks mate ;)

CHOW IS HERE!!!!!! Finally an excuse to do some personal work and also design with limitations!
I'm gonna steadily work on this first one assignment to see where I get, granted I will not get near the top tier, but it will be instructive and fun, and that's all I need.

First, today's warmups, I decided to start doing these on tablet instead of pencil, cause I need to start getting some control on my Bamboo, and man , I admire Rafa even more than before, this shit is HARD!



Then, what I think is gonna be the last frog for now, I'll be doing master studies next, and before you ask, the one on the ref wasn't smoking a blunt (ahh reminds me of the good old days xD):


Some experimentation, first what is gonna be a Fallout: New Vegas fanart of my vision of courrier six, first time photobashing, of course it's lame, but it's just a setup so it helped speeding up the process, and there's tons of cool pics of the mohave on google, so that's cool:


And a lame ghoul portrait that I'm gonna either redraw or abandon cause it's the most boring angle/pose ever to be drawn:


And to wrap it up some ideas for the CHOW, I would really appreciate feedback on this, which ones do you like best?




That's about it, see you tomorrow folks!

[Nikt]

Nice! Impressive amount of studies every day, Keep the beat! Also cool that you started chow challenge) It is hard to leave feedback on it, couse it is on really early stage) At first I'm not quite understand how you see your "Crimson dagger", as a badass fantasy- rogue character, or as a post-apocalyptic bandit\ lone wolf, stalker etc :) If I were you, I'd like to decide in which way to move.
Daggers are boring, except №4 and №5 :) I like the idea of trashy- cheap looking material on the handle.
Check this articals if you'll find it interesting.
http://mexart.ru/lectures.html
Especially the "Conceptual Mind" (even if it almost completely in russian)
Hope it helps

[Tristan Berndt]

Looks good, man. I really like those gesture drawings you've done, I'd just try and incorporate it to your characters when doing designs and such. Characters are more than just a costume so make sure you show it when designing ideas for characters.
Apart from that, keep an eye out for muddy colors/values. They sometimes appear and make edges and forms a little messy.

This sketchbook looks promising so keep on working hard!

[rafa zanchetin]

Haha, were you at CA.org too? I made a sketchbook there in '10 I think, but I wasn't very active.
Keep them gestures coming, they're never enough! The zombie looks good conceptually but yea it feels a bit bland as an ilustration. :(

Can't wait to see your CHOW piece.

[ImSkeptical]

Your little figure drawings are really awesome man. Looking over your stuff though I think you could probably get something out of doing graphic breakdowns of things. Especially into light and shadow, make sure to design those shapes out and keep em separate. So do a study but break it down into only 2 or 3 values and still make it look good.

Keep working hard, got some cool designs going for the chow looking forward to seeing what you do with it!

[Suira]

Nikt: Thanks man, gotta keep pushing everyday hehe. Well, maybe I didn't say it quite clearly, but I have a clear idea of the CHOW as an assassin from a secret order, hidden and lethal, which members are all artists to the outside public, and deadly killers at night ( muahaha). THe post-apocalyptic stuff is just Fallout fanart I'm planing to work on. And yeah I agree, the daggers I designed are mostly shit, but , like you, I like the trashy ones, they have something to them. In the end it doesn't really matter cause the pose I'm painting just shows a tiny part of the handle, but it was fun anyway hehe. I tried reading the articles but google translator is basically shit, still, I appreciate it!

Tristan Berndt: Thanks mate :) Well, to be honest I try to just focus on one thing when I'm in the begining stages, otherwise I get lost in the mix and the result is basically shit. Those loose sketches were just the costume rough designs, so I didn't really wanted to waste time on making the dynamic cause the only purpose I have for them is getting and idea on the looks. The final has a more dynamic pose, but still you're right, it's good to always try to make things the better as possible, maybe in the future I'll implement the dynamism even in costume deisgns. And yeah man, my values are basically shit, specially on stuff from imagination, I plan to focus on that a lot for the next few months. Still, I really like muddy colors hehe.

Rafa: Yeah man, I joined in '08 and , like you I wasn't very active, I mostly stalked people and did bi-monthly updates and dumped a ton of shit haha. Back in those days those forums were just too awesome, every guy worth knowing was there, that's what really got me into this career, I got so inspired that I decided to quit my translation studies and just go for it haha. If you want to have fun watching my HUGE FAILURES back from that time here's the link: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthr...gle!/page4 . And yeah man, the CHOW piece is gonna be a pain in the ass, I decided to make it an exercise of patience and process, so I'll dump a ton of hours into it, just to see where it takes me.

ImSkeptical: Hey man! Thanks a lot for the advise, I'll try that tomorrow and see how it goes. I really need to improve on values, and it's been a really long time since I tried one of those studies. If it makes me as good as you with values I'll be happy for sure :)

Well, having some issues these last couple of nights, one of my dogs got operated and I have to take care of her during the night ( she happens to behave like she's on cocaine , even if she just got operated 2 days ago) and basically I don't get to work 10 minutes on a row without having to stop her from chewing on my cables, destroying my studio or getting on my bed to later poop on it ( it has happened twice in 3 days). So here we go:

Did a rough comp for the piece , probably not the best one in the world, but it took quite a lot of experimentation, it's a risky perspective since it requires tons of rendering to make it look interesting, but i didn't wanna complicate my life with super flashy perspectives and shit, so this will have to do:



I started rendering a bit, correcting stuff and shit, I'm gonna change the characters pose on the boring arm to make it more interactive with the viewer, but I'll wait till it's more fleshed out. Anyway, tons of work to do still on this one, just 3 hours in or so ( rendered 3 times the character, and deleted it 2). Did some photobashing to get a feeling for the enviro, but the end result won't include any pics or anything like that, just good ol' painting:



After realising that I see value ok, but I really don't know shit about it, I decided to do master copies, then , I decided I really hate doing that and it bores me to tears, so instead I experimented a bit ( enough patience test with the CHOW piece) and did like 5 of these, all of them turned out lame except this zombie. I never thought that just building on midtones and adding some sparks at the end would work , but it kinda does, still need a lot more mileage to get my values right, but it's a start I guess:


And that's about it folks, no gestures for today cause I basically forgot, sorry ( i'll do double tomorrow). Anyway, Thank you all for your cool feedback, it always makes my day and helps me a lot in this eterna grindfest haha. Take care, and I'm looking forward to see your entries too! :D

[Suira]

Weird times lately. I'm feeling frustrated ( as usual) as fuck, working on the CHOW painting and the latest attempts and studies have really showed me that I have no real approach to work with values, neither a good understanding of correlations, simplification, speed, etc.

So I've been quite stagnate these last couple days, that, plus a ton of stress at home due to diferent shit has really affected my performance. So basically I've decided to stop working on the CHOW painting for a few days and study stuff that will help me get it to a somehow decent finish.

I'm becoming more and more obsessed over my face construction skills ( which are non-existent) and I'll be hardcore focusing on that as long as it takes until I feel I'm fairly comfortable with that. Anyway, tons more of pointless shit in my mind, finding tons of mistakes and really trying to figure this shit out.

Figures form mind ( about 2 minutes) to warm up:


Gestures: ( 60 sec limit this time, super lame cause I stressed and failed)




Followed ImSkeptical's advise and tried some value studies trying to simplify and working with 3-4 values, the problem is that I use pressure sensitivity and thus in the end there's a fuckton more of them, next time I'm gonna avoid using that:


An experiment trying to work on low contrast and no oclussion, turned out shit, but learned a few things:


Edit: Forgot to post the "sitting on the shitter" sketches:


And to finish today something more loose I did , took about 20 mins. basically another experiment, gonna do tons of these to see if I figure out wtf I'm doing wrong:


Anyway, a shit update, but sometimes you need to fail hard for a good while till you understand what to fix and how to do it. Take care folks!

[Suira]

Just a joke I made for warmup today on how my physical condition is....ehem...changing in my art struggle. I didn't make it to pro, but I fear that's the future xD

[rafa zanchetin]

LOL, but hey, who has the cintiq??? Tots worth it.
The only crit would be that the pro we'd like to be is too tanned, he should be whiter than 255 255 255.

[Suira]

Rafa: Hahahaha so true for both! But see, this pro is REAL PRO, meaning he's working at the studio, shirtless ( because he's that good xD) and borrowing the art director's cintiq to draw penises and salty balls in the lunch break ( again, he's THAT good) and he's tan because he's so fast and good that he goes to work twice a week and gets an entire project done in a month, so the rest of the time he spends smoking weed on his private beach with two hot women taking care for his every need. No wonder he's a fat fuck Hahaha. Nah, I just went lazy on it , still I'm glad it made you laugh :D

-Another quick and lazy update cause my laptop is reaching it's limit after so many days of photoshop / youtube, so I have worked for like 2-3 hours on the CHOW painting, and another hour on a personal thing I kinda wanted to play with. No gestures, no studies, no nothing. This is a bad week for me, and I said wtf, as long as I've spent a few hours trying to learn I can give myself some room.

The source of my despair is bacisally that I discovered that I have NO METHOD at all to paint , I start diferently every time, and I start to get scared to delve deeper into values or whatever and the shit doesn't improve cause I don't have the balls to repaint, when I do have the balls I fuck it up even worse. Any advice for this? Any ideas? Anything? I'd appreciate it cause I'm going kinda crazy with that shit.

Well, there ya go:

[Bjulvar]

Hey man!
Thanks for trading laughs with me, because I found that art progress sketch hilarious. I've never painted in my underwear! So according to this scientifical diagram I'm still a newbie :D

Sorry this became pretty long. I recognize a lot of what you're writing here :p

You said that you weren't very good at facial construction and I don't really agree. You've certainly progress over these sketchbook pages you have here! That latest tribal dude has a pretty solid foundation. I'd check out Hampton for some nice exercises and guidelines when it comes to portraits, and anatomy overall for that matter. It helped me out a ton!

Really dig the work you're putting in for the ChoW! You picked the coolest design in my opinion. Great to see that you think about all the different parts of the design!
When it comes to the pieces itself I think maybe you should bring more attention to the character? Feels like he is taking up a small area of the canvas while the window looks huge and has the highest values.
Hope it's okay that I scaled the character up a bit to fit the rule of thirds to show some sort of solution! (you can disregard this if you don't like it :P)


The story looks interesting, feels like some sort of oriental monk just got capped and the assassins is walking calmly away to claim his bounty.


Recognize that despair too. But I think that it can be a plus to not really have a method. You'll have to play around to find something that works for you. You're not a slave to any technique now! Like slap a new layer over and go crazy if you don't feel like you have the guts to repaint something.
You can do a bunch of silhouettes with good values and color balance them later or scribble a bunch and paint under/over it. You could do some really solid lineart and have simple hues beneath.
Look at it as a challenge from the art gods!

You're doing great work man, just keep the flame burning.

[Suira]

Man!!! I always wait till I have something to post to reply, but you just made my day for real!! :)

Those adjustments you did totally improve the painting! I knew there was something wrong about the size of the assassin, but I couldn't put my finger on it, thanks so much man, you nailed it. I'll be rearranging the comp,thanks a lot really.

And also thank you for your words about experimenting and just take it lightly, it really helps, lately I've been in "that time of the month" artistically speaking xD. I'll follow your advise and see where it leads me :)

I'm glad you laughed with the art progress thingie, now we're even, the coffe one was awesome. Well, I'll have to make an extended one, with diferent clothing and stuff haha. I personally draw like this because I live in the caribbean, and it's fucking hot day and night. :P

And thanks for the kind words about the design, I'm dying to start fleshing out the details, but I needed to be certain about the foundation of the painting, with your help I'll fix it in no time!

And again, thanks a lot for the post, it really helped me to get off my ass and keep struggling! :D

[Lyraina]

Damn boy you're productive!! Depending on what kind of stress you're having outside of art, I found that at times it can be better to work a bit less, focus on getting the stress sorted out and then continuing full steam with studies. If that is a possibilty at all. Better than being distracted at drawing, then grumpy the rest of the time etc... nothing good can come from that.
LOL, that art progress sheet! I'm cutting back on snacks and stuff at the moment for exactly that reason :PI like the beard progression though. Beards are awesome.
As for not having a set workflow, I agree with Bjulvar, that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Just try out every tool and way of working that seems good to you, drop what you don't like and keep doing what works for you. Like that, you'll not only develop your very own way of doing things, but you will also have a broad range of tools available for any kind of work you might want to tackel in the future. Just match the right technique with the right challenge and you're good to go!

ChoW is coming along nicely, love the bent over/caught in motion pose!

[Suira]

Lyraina : Hey! Glad to see you drop by! well, the stress I'm having is the kind of thing you really can't do anything about. Part of is is that my dogs are sick, specially the little one, and she's trying to basically open a huge wound on her stomach by going nuts day and night, meaning I have to keep an eye on her every night, and cut my workflow to take care of her, which really fucks up my focus ( this happens every 20 mins or so, all night long). the other is that I'm living in the worst fucking place in the world, aside from war zones, to study art. There's literally nothing here, nothing at all, it's like 40ºC all day long, on the cool days. And lately I had important stuff, like my main computer, getting broken, meaning I will have to undertake a 7 hour trip to the capital to get a new one, and tons more of this kinds of issues for the tiniest, most common thing in the rest of the world. So yeah, my only choice is to keep going and trying to do my best to not go nuts.

I'm glad the art progress thingie made you laugh hehe, I'm planing on doing one of the art jokes every week, to do something diferent so keep an eye out for them!

And yeah, you guys are right, part of my problem has been this tunnel vision type of mentality where I obsess over stuff that will get solved on its own over time, so I'll be taking it easy in the meanwhile :)

Well, thanks to the cool feedback I got I got pumped and motivated again, and got back to studying and shit, here we go:

Warmups:



Then some face/value studies, accuracy still sucks but I'm starting to understand how much a limited value range can improve workflow and form readability:


I listened to Alex Negrea level up session and decided to start doing design studies every day, cause my understanding of clothing, armor, complements and all that shit is quite limited, so for today, bandoliers, just focusing on understanding, no fancy drawings or shit:


And finally, application of all of the above ( kinda diggin' this one, even if it sucks :P), some dude in Syberia, in the 1930's or something:



I also started reworking the CHOW piece following Bjulvar's advise, but it needs more work to be shown, so maybe tomorrow I'll have a significant update.

Anyway, thanks guys for the feedback, it always helps me keep my head where it's ought to be, keep on pumping them awesome drawings and paintings folks, see you tomorrow!

[Suira]

Hey fellas. Failed to pull off more than 7hours....again. Meh. Well, there we go:

60 sec gestures, I keep forcing mself to use the tablet cause I have to learn how to use it ( eventually xD), so here's this shit, more quantity than quality I guess:



After that I tried a memory study, at which I failed big time. basically just open a pic on the browser, check it out , and try to reproduce it with as few lines as possible without looking at the ref. I think I'm gonna do more of these , cause they help to remember angles and shit, but the results are a disaster:



The obligatory ( sitting on the shitter because I drink too much coffe) sketch:


And a couple 45 min face/value studies, failed too, although it's kinda my fault, I have a tendency to try and study "shity light" scenarios, in which the light sources are all over the place, or the pic is really small, or shit like that, I keep telling myself that if the ref is bad, maybe I will learn more, but looking at the previous sets of studies, in which I used well defined ilumination setups.....I don't think I'll do this again:



Also spent a bunch of time watching art with attention and thinking on approaches and shit. Was gonna do some application of the studies when my pressure sensitivity on my super pro BAMBOO PIECE OF SHIT decided to go on vacation, so, nothing more for today, I guess that not everyday is gonna yield good results, at least I learned something.....I guess.