Nicky D's Sketchworld

[DQ_Nick]

Brave

[DQ_Nick]

Getting some practice with edges from a ctrl+paint video

[OtherMuzz]

Solid Studies!

[DQ_Nick]

Solid Studies!

thank you again Muzz.

Another still from Brave, spent WAY too much time on this one. Moving on.

[DQ_Nick]

Pencil sketches from the past week. I'm still trying to improve at head construction, specifically the male face. The first page is a set of studies from Wes Burt and the rest is from imagination.

[DQ_Nick]

A few more pages from the sketchbook. The lighting quality isn't ideal but I have to make do with my camera phone until I can get my scanner up and running again

[DQ_Nick]

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

[DQ_Nick]

Colorful monster nonsense

[DQ_Nick]

This is a study schedule that I came up over the weekend, inspired by a combination of ideas from Wojtek Fus and Anthony Jones
I have this problem where I have constant anxiety every time I sit down to draw because I'm so worried about what I'm NOT doing. Should more of my time go into tight master studies? Loose figure drawings? Character designs with a bunch of cool shapes? Moody illustration pieces? The options are overwhelming.

Therefore, I feel like I need to separate my art journey into two components; one aspect that is grounded in pure academic learning for the purpose of fundamental knowledge, counterbalanced with the aspect of making pieces for creative growth, idea exploration, and also because I have nothing remotely interesting  in my goddamn portfolio.

So basically, I'm going to focus my studies on one fundamental topic per week. This week, for example, it's going to be all about composition. These specific studies will be combined with some figure studies on paper because I feel like figure drawing is a motor skill that needs to be trained daily, especially for a character artist. Everything will be done first thing in the morning so that I can get it out of the way and feel satisfied.

Hopefully, by having a reliable system for consistent daily growth, I'll have the confidence and mental freedom to experiment as I make pieces later in the day. Less frustration and second-guessing myself.

Here goes nothing.

[OtherMuzz]

"Another still from Brave, spent WAY too much time on this one. Moving on."

When doing this stuff speed isn't a virtue dude. You spent the time you needed on it.

Solid studies as well :)!

For faces... i'd really recommend going to go study skulls as a basis for your heads, i'd also recommend loomis's drawing the head and hands, and actually read it. it's actually amazing.

[Triggerpigking]

yep studying skulls is a great way to improve your head drawings, i'd also reccomend learning the basic bone names there as well, usually naming the bones is'nt that needed but i've found for the face it really helps with memorizing the forms since they are such big chunks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9LSobVH0uQ

I also found an amazing skull reference pack ages back, sadly the original link is dead now though but if you want it then i'll try to figure out a way to send it over.

[OtherMuzz]

I have a skull reference sheet that i made here. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-qJDC2...sp=sharing

[DQ_Nick]

"Another still from Brave, spent WAY too much time on this one. Moving on."

When doing this stuff speed isn't a virtue dude. You spent the time you needed on it.

Solid studies as well :)!

For faces... i'd really recommend going to go study skulls as a basis for your heads, i'd also recommend loomis's drawing the head and hands, and actually read it. it's actually amazing.

I'm sure you're probably right Muzz, that's just the fear of falling behind coming to the surface. That's the difficulty of being self-taught in any discipline right? You want to push as hard as you can without letting emotion and impatience consume you. It's tough.

Returning to the structure of the basic skull is a good idea, I think I'm going to do that. 
I've actually spent a ton of time with that book, it's phenomenal. If you look at the first page of this sketchbook I have a bunch of studies from it.

Thanks for the comments as always man

[DQ_Nick]

yep studying skulls is a great way to improve your head drawings, i'd also reccomend learning the basic bone names there as well, usually naming the bones is'nt that needed but i've found for the face it really helps with memorizing the forms since they are such big chunks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9LSobVH0uQ

I also found an amazing skull reference pack ages back, sadly the original link is dead now though but if you want it then i'll try to figure out a way to send it over.

I'm watching the youtube video right now, this guy is pretty in-depth with the latin names. Jeez....
I appreciate the advice man, I'm also considering re-learning Riley's rhythms for the head as well.

[DQ_Nick]

The composition studies I did today, one page of stills from House of Flying Daggers, the other from Zorn paintings

[DQ_Nick]

I got bored to tears with the study schedule. Painting this quick bounty hunter guy was a huge relief!

[Artloader]

Awesome sketchbook DQ_Nick - I love the way you study! I can't get over how many Loomis head studies you did on page 1!

I can relate to feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of things to study - I think your study schedule should help in combatting that. I've found that focussing on fewer things at once means I improve faster and when I feel I've improved, I feel like I haven't wasted my time.

Keep it up dude!

[DQ_Nick]

Awesome sketchbook DQ_Nick - I love the way you study!  I can't get over how many Loomis head studies you did on page 1!

I can relate to feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of things to study - I think your study schedule should help in combatting that.  I've found that focussing on fewer things at once means I improve faster and when I feel I've improved, I feel like I haven't wasted my time.

Keep it up dude!

I appreciate you looking through my sketchbook Artloader! Funny thing about that study schedule...it was and still is a good solution to planning out what to study, the only problem is having the discipline to actually stick to it. I might have to do a study stream or something, because my laziness is killing me. 

Anyway, here is a progress shot of another bounty hunter  I'm working on. Going for a Mass Effect/ Destiny themed-design.

[DQ_Nick]

A few iterations

[DQ_Nick]

Studying the skull, thanks to Muzz's reference pack, along with hands from Loomis.  I'm using the process of short timed copies of my reference, followed by a quick test to see what I remember, followed by some corrections to see what I did right and what needs to be fixed.