Wolf's Sketches

[Wolkenfels]

And another trophy skull.
reference http://www.tribalartasia.com//TRIBAL_ART...UGAO5.html

[Wolkenfels]

Anna Steinbauer dared me to paint skulls from memory.
Soooo hard when you are used to paint from reference.

[Wolkenfels]

Skulltime again - from left to right:
Cool reference from Christof Grobelski (check out his blog http://www.cgbrush.org/ for a super collection of skull shots), my study and on the right the same from memory right after the study. Seems to be a good training - due to the missing comparison it is harder to get the proportions right, but you also learn all the stuff you are not sure about.

[Ursula Dorada]

Oh nice idea!
It's very cool to compare both results afterwards :)

And yeah, those shots are the best. It's amazing how much lens distortion we find in most skull shots o.O

[Tygerson]

Wow, the skulls from memory look great. Now do it in your sleep!

Really like the pastel colors in the snowy lion pic. Gives a nice twist to the king of the beasts.

[Wolkenfels]

@Sula It is a cool method to learn what knowledge you still miss.
@Tygerson thanks Tygerson - i dont know if my wife is okay with me taking the wacom into bed - but i will try :D

Needed some distraction from skulls. so here is a portrait photo study.
Study - you can find the nice original here http://fav.me/d9broc

[ShinOkami]

Hey, nice stuff happenibg over here as well ! :)
Those skull studies look cool, i need to do more as well.. >.<

Keep it up !

[Wolkenfels]

@ShinOkami - thanks man - and skulls are fun. :)

Anna Steinbauer dared me to paint a lady with a trophy skull from imagination.
I cheated wiht the hand because i needed a ref for that. :)

2 variants - second because i was told the first one is too flat. Hope the second is better in that.

[Wolkenfels]

My CD Arena Final and 3 "virtual plein air" studies.
They are done in a FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/290155717818479 that makes landscape-studies from Google Streetview pictures.



Alicante Spain
https://www.google.de/maps/place/Calle+A...15ddeec7c8


Thailand
https://www.google.de/maps/@12.491452,10...Ka-Yiw!2e0


Morocco
http://www.mapcrunch.com/s/263000_9bf2f0de

[Ursula Dorada]

Oooh nice idea! I should try some of that!

[Lyraina]

I love how your CD arena piece came out! The graphic/hard edges stly looks really interesting. I can't really decide if I miss the eyes or not, though - I think adding at least a hint of them in the face would draw the attention more towards the girls than now, where I'm kind of torn between different focal areas.

The digital plain airs are nice, doing those is really addicting right? :D I think you could be a bit more free with using the photos as reference though, and add a bit more depth than your reference offers - adding more atmosphere, lowering contrast in distant areas, adding mist or whatever ... something photos tend to ignore, resulting in pretty flat images.

[Wolkenfels]

After the critique session for CD Arena is over i felt the need to explain some stuff.
I am thankful for the critique and i know a picture has to speak for itself but... I feel like I need to get some thoughts of my mind - even if it sounds like some whinerly defense.

1) yes it is an S in the RedRose - that typefont is called Fraktur and if you bought any german book 70 years ago it would have an S like that. I have chosen the font because the fairy tale books of my grandma looked like that. And i assumed the typefont is common knowledge.

2) yes - time ran out - my tablet was not working and i had to communicate with the wacom service for 5 days till it worked again. But I really put hours into this and is not some 2 hour thing. even if it may look that way. If you think i make pictures like this in one or two hours you seriously overestimate my abilities. i can do copy studies in short time but not work from imagination. But time challenge was one of the reasons for the style. but i did not simply used every photoshop filter i found.

3) the other reason for the style was that the challenge was "poster". i first went for a more illustration like version - and then someone pointed out that "poster" is defined as bold and simple work - so rendering like in an illustration was out of scope - that is why i went to that form. i should have put faces on the girls though.

the following wip-shot was the last save i made before i went into the cutout style. till then the fur studies made sense. after it of course not.

[Lyraina]

Wouldn't have thought that the font is so unknown - while I have some trouble reading larger text blocks written in it because I'm not used to it, I still do have several old books sitting on the shelves here written in it. (Then again, I'm German as well, so ... no idea about international context. Maybe a poster like this would be fine in Germany/Europe, but would need another font for international audiences). I do think that it is very fitting for a German fairy tale though.

With your tablet breaking etc, it seems you got your fair share of bad luck this time :/ Don't let the critique get you down! *hug*

[Wolkenfels]

@Lyraina Thank you - hope it goes upward from here. :)

finished something i had started 3 weeks ago.
A scene screencap from the BBC musketeer series with the addition of a friend in his LARP captains clothes. Loved the muted colors. And btw Ships have way tooooo many ropes.

[Nowio]

Gree on the ropes, there are sooo many... Build a model with my father some time ago and... yeah x.x

Great study btw it looks really good! Maybe a couple things here and there, like the barrel is a bit out of perspective and the man/captain is a bit overrendered compared to things around him. Also there is a tangent with the west of the woman and the edge of the dock. The ship looks awesome!

[Wolkenfels]

@Nowio thanks -and you are right with the tangent. low hanging fruits to fix that.

okay - after a month where i have painted nearly nothing and was more contemplating if painting was really the thing for me or if i should find something else i finally decided to give it a go again.

2 hour study no tracing, no color picking great reference fav.me/d497u59


Fort Amber in Jaipur https://ssl.panoramio.com/photo/50791524
picked the colors

[Ursula Dorada]

Wolken, something silly that occurred to me this last few days.
I always had trouble applying photo/patterns to my paintings because they seem off - a bit too stiff for my liking... so I tried this: I painted a small part of the pattern. Handmade, with all the wobbly lines that make my heart content. Made a pattern from that - and then applied that to my painting as it it was a photo.

It worked better overall. You may want to try that too, I think the bricks would have looked a bit more natural :)

Great job on those studies :)

[Wolkenfels]

Hey Sula, thanks for the tipps. I am not sure if i understand it correctly - you mean patterns like photoshop patterns or just "as a pattern" through copy and paste over the whole image?
And for sure the bricks could get some love. The problem was to try this picture in 2 hours for my deviantart speedpaintingstudies-group where i am not allowed to add more time. I am also unhappy with the roughness of the sleeve on the left side. Not the best choice for a study with alll that details. :)

[Ursula Dorada]

Just as a pattern. The same way you used the brick pattern on the study of the girl on the doorway :)

The idea of using a pattern is to save time, it does not have to be a photoshop pattern. Like, draw 3 bricks, duplicate accordingly, cover enough area and apply that on the study. It wouldn't take much more time than using a pre-existing one, just a couple minutes more :)

[Lyraina]

The luminous and vibrant atmosphere of your 2 hour study above is really nice! If you're pressed for time, I think it can be a good thing to really concentrate on one (or two) areas where you want the viewer to look at, and let the rest stay really loose and painterly. If you pull the viewer's attention with value and contrast to the right spots, it might appear as if there's a higher level of finish than you really painted.

For some reason I'm quite fond of the way you did the plants in the foreground of the environment, with those little spots! Looking cute.

Glad you returned to painting. Even though it is not an easy path to take for sure.