What ImSkeptical learnt this week (Sketchbook)

[ImSkeptical]

Jaik - I see what you mean man, concentrating to much on edges and planes and other stuff, art is too hard :(


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Okay so, straight up, not much art done this week. A little bit here and there, but yeah, been finding it tough last few weeks it seems. Feeling a bit of the melancholia. Went out with friends to watch some movies though, saw wolf on wall street and 12 years a slave, was cheap because academy awards season or somthing, great films go see them.

So yeah this weeks art.

studies


study for personal work


the personal work i studied for


And that's it! I was thinking about taking photos of the pen work i did, but looking over its kinda more of the same of what I've already uploaded, which I take as a bad sign. Need to switch things up, do more things like the personal work i did. It only took me like 8 hrs over 2 days, but it was a grand struggle, so much walking around looking for food and playing with the cat, watching random movies, playing a few videogames. I'm planning to take the next 2 weeks to play dark souls, 1 this week (i never got around to playing the dlc) and the sequel when it comes out. I'm hoping this will fight the weird slump I'm in.

Well thanks for stopping by, hope you're all doing better than me. If I do manage to do anything, ill upload, but this sketchbook might go dark (souls) for 2/3 weeks. I'll definitely respond to any questions if you guys have them though. See ya then!

[AngeliquevdMee]

Love your sketchbook! keep up the good work :D

[Liberty]

Awesome last painting, I love how eye is led by sharp focal points.

[pnate]

That is one BIG hammer. Very cool piece. I like that you're trying to do something different with your pieces, and hope to see more like that soon (after dark souls :)). I tried playing it on my pc but found the controls hard to get used to, might try the console version someday. If you liked wolf of wall street, this had me dying laughing (loud headphone warning): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-y1N29vH2Y

[ImSkeptical]

AngeliquevdMee - Thanks! You're doing awesome as always :D

Liberty - Thank you! I've been working hard on those edges recently, still struggling :(

pnate - Looking at your sketchbook has been giving me that motivation, so thanks man. That link is gold too xD, had me cracking up.

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So my Dark Souls holiday is over. 98.5 hours and 775 deaths over a week, and I did about everything you can do outside of covenants. Great game, waited for since before doing art, if you like that old school game design of knowledge and skill development to progress based gameplay, try to put some time aside to play it. Looks absolutely gorgeous too, design in that game is my kind of fantasy.

I also have crazy ideas like it's one of the few games that actually has a cohesive theme running through it by adequately addressing the problem that is challenge and failure states in games and thus is one of the few games that more accurately qualifies as 'art' over most games... but yeah, just dumb semantics arguments that I entertain myself with I'm sure nobody really cares :p

So on to the art practice!

Enviroment studies



Armor studies



Armor sketches



Self-Portrait stuff





ruanjia study




Getting back into this, inspired to try get up at 5am each day after meeting Jaik and Smrr. Meetups are the coolest, defiantly make the effort to set them up and go to them if a 5 hr conversation about art sounds fun to you xD. So yeah, just a bunch of random stuff to start the week. Then started doing a bunch of self portaits, don't really know why, but I hate them. I went crazy because they never really turned out too good, I felt like I didn't know what I was going for, which is always a bad sign. After that first one though, it just seemed like the colors I was seeing were a little to boring, so I tried to emphasize a different color scheme. Probably a bad move, probably just need to change the lighting setup. Also that one with my hand propping my chin, I realized why no one does this. Just imagine yourself doing it for a sec, maybe you can have a guess at my issue... lets just say it should make it obvious why its so sketchy. It was interesting to not be able to use undo as a reflex motion though, should do something like that again; hopefully in a way that doesn't restrict my other shortcut use.

In my frustration I did a study of ruanjia, which was awesome because I think I finally figured out something about how texture works. To make something soft, but something textury and sharp next to it; as always contrast makes everything work! I guess I know how to make my skin really soft now if I want too xD.

So that's it. Back to weekly posting! Thanks for looking and/or/sans reading!

[Rindoukan]

Ruanjia is always fun to study.Self portraits are nice.Like the colors.Just pay a bit more attention to the edges.Keep pushin love the progress !

[JacobJanerka]

Ahhh dude, I know those art frustrations feels, I've just got back into it %100, actually waking up early haha. Good to see you are still alive.

What time is a good time to hit you up on skype mayn?!

talk soon.

[ImSkeptical]

Rindoukan - Thanks man! Yeah edges always be fucking with me, I can't deal with it! I need to do some exercises to address this shit, maybe some quick still lives or master studies of Sargent or something. Or maybe I just underestimate the time it takes to mess with them. I thought I might have solved it with the Ruanjia study but looking at it after a week, didn't capture that same finesse in the edges still. Maybe i just didn't spend the required time. Gotta deal with this directly, its killing me.

Jacob Janerka - Dude hit me up any time. Then again maybe not the mornings, good to not be distracted then. Lunch or after 6pm. But it doesn't really matter, skype conversations with a day lag are where its at.

Anyone feel free to hit my up on Skype at any time btw, id love to help anyone out if for some reason they feel they can get it from me. I usually write nonsense here because the sketchbook is mostly for me to sort through my ideas weekly; so maybe a interactive conversation would be more informative.

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This week I studied hands and guns. Here they are.


















About half the stuff is referenced, half is imagination/memory work.

This might be the first time I posted almost everything I did. So as a productivity gauge, I don't think I rate alex negrea or dave rapoza or anything... hmm. Yeah I need to work harder, not really satisfied looking at all of it. Timers and schedules need to start being put into place. I'm probably going to re-implement the plan tomorrow each night, plan week each Sunday schedule.

Oh and promising to do the crimson arena, its time for a project to cure this study sickness. You can see I did a little bit of random sketching thinking of ideas, ill do some thumbnails and silhouettes tomorrow.

That is all! Thanks for looking and or reading. Next week, independent powerful lady rebel leaders who can hold their own in a unspecified far off future. It's funny but now I just can't get princess Leia out of my head.

[Jaik]

You crazy mother f---

Looks at those beautiful hands.

Not sure I can really comment on productivity since at the moment I am kind of in the same boat. Day light savings definitely makes it easier to get up in the morning but I am still unable to reach 5am again. Hitting 5 30-6 most mornings now. But I'm not having naps.. I should really play with my schedule and experiment with it.

Struggling to come up with useful shit to say thats useful. I would say do some more actual pieces instead of studies, but this week I think you will have done that. Looking forward to your next update though. Next time you are in my sketchbook, leave a comment with what you feel would help when it comes to feedback so I can sort of try and aim for more helpful crits and feedback :D Help me to help you.. Kind of? I think...

[ImSkeptical]

Jaik - Thanks as always dude. I'm probably always going to need someone to bug me to do not studies xD, so lazy... :(

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K so this week I ended up just watching a bunch of movies, like at the cinema outside! Got to catch up with a bunch of different friends, had good times. First saw Noah, which might seem like an odd choice but the director has done some of my favorite movies (requiem for a dream, black swan, the wrestler, pi, the fountain, i think i just ended up naming all his movies), so even though from trailers it looked like some crazy dumb lord of the rings thing, I gave it a chance at was rewarded with a very decent movie. Next was Lego Movie, which is absolutely pretty much the best. Has all sorts of messages about creativity and the creative processes, even addressing the whole how do we deal with commercial interests and business in art; like the unavoidable fact that taken at surface level the movie is just a big advertisement for Lego. I was also surprised at the humor being of the Community/Rick and Morty/Adventure Time type audience, i.e. me. It made me look up the other movies the directors have done, and although cloudy meatballs was adequate, 21 jump street was damn good. Last thing I saw was Captain America 2 , which was better than I expected. Usually action doesn't really carry a movie for me, but the plot was more than sufficient and the action seemed way better than usual.

So hopefully the movie talk distracted you from the lack of art I have to post. Here it is.

Studies







Actual creative work








Was inspired by Ursula to try do more environment stuff after seeing so much improvement in just a month. Was aiming to do 1 imagined environment a day ended up doing 1 in the whole week :(. I blame going to the movies so much, stupid friends :(

Crimson Arena coming along. Haven't done this whole character design thing in like a year, but defiantly feeling way more confident with my draftsmanship this time around. Hopefully it shows in the final. I probably won't end up rendering or even cleaning up the rear view, but it was good to figure out the design. I found myself sketching on the side for a few things like the pistol, had quite a few variants, maybe I will post them when its done.

K going to wake up at 5am now, thanks for lookin, let's go next week!

[ImSkeptical]

Had a short week, ended up just binging on streetfigher with friends and watching a fighting game tournament over the Easter weekend. So yeah, bit of a late update and short on content, but this week should be a little better.










I might ban myself from painting for the rest of the month because of how ashamed i feel at still not being able to draw from imagination good.

Aight thanks for lookin.

[Blewzen]

Cool character for the crimson arena, nice colors and I like the tree magic arm thing, keep it up!

[Cyprinus]

Great updates! I really love the piece with the big hammer! Also, the design of the arena piece is really looking awesome as well.

[JakeB]

Huh, I've been hearing good things about Lego movie, still not got around to seeing it though. Might have to check it out. That tree-arm character came out great btw. Love the design, and the rendering really sells it, especially the extra detail in the face/hand contrasted with the looser feet and stuff. That can be hard to pull off sometimes but you crushed it. Really like that rock face study further up as well. Tasty brushwork man.

Keep it coming :)

[ImSkeptical]

Mariyan-Hristov - Thanks dude!

Blewzen - Thanks man, i feel i broke a little ground on it good to see people liking it.

Cyprinus - Thanks :D! Hope to see you post more

JakeB - Definatly check out lego movie, just saw it 2nd time today actually. Still holds up. And thanks man, means alot coming from you! You've been getting crazy good, very motivating.


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So this week I mostly held up to my no painting ban and just did a bunch of drawing. Some pen some mechanical pencil. Here it all is, not much to comment on. Drawing isn't the most conceptual thing, probably why i will always struggle with it the most :(. I feel like I'm way more comfortable with the pen though. I seem to have trouble dealing with pressure on the pencil, same with my stylus actually when painting sometimes, and my hand starts to ache a bit. I think with pen I'm more comfortable not pressing really hard, and I just need to get used to lines being hard to see with pencil. Also more arm and less wrist. I'm pretty sure its not a hunching up and being tense thing though, I remember becoming conscious and not doing that kind of thing from guitar. Smrrfette getting me worried about ergonomics :P















Oh did a bit of animation too. I always find it surprising how fun it is, defiantly need to do it way more. Started painting one of them a little bit but I think that's a bad idea. Might end up being a waste of time. I guess I should do it once at least to see what I learn.

K that's this week, cya next week.

[ImSkeptical]

K my ban on painting for the month ended. But also my last month of dicking around. I made this month the deadline for when I would dedicate time to looking for work. So I made an assessment, and decided I need to put a strict limit on the amount of study I do. So I've been trying out a 2 hr limit, starting from the new month, and its been pretty good so far. Got a piece out and doing a few more sketches. Still looking to pump out more stuff though, once i get a decent amount of materials and portfolio worthy pieces, gonna post/email that stuff everywhere. Also going to dedicate much more time to that sort of thing, most of my Sunday and maybe an hour a day of community publicity stuff and generally updating everywhere. It's a lot of work, but that's probably how I need to see it, as work :p

So that's the plan, here's this week.













Hokay. Also, I was wondering if anyone would be interested if I did some crimson mentoring jank or any of that. Probably the worst place to gauge interest for this sort of thing, and I feel like there's just so much out there in terms of art resources. But it would be kind of cool to just take a couple people I know I could help and maybe focus more on time management and learning psychology, stuff that isn't too everywhere.

Done, see ya next week :D.

[Cyprinus]

I'm totally totally in love with the colours in the last piece! This kind of minty green and the soft violet! I also like the light/shadow on the hand, it looks so good, to me the colours just seem right. I'm curious to see your portfolio pieces (:

I'd be totally interested in learning more about time management and learning psychology, I guess it's an area that could always be improved. After all I think the right attitude and psychology play a rather big role if you want to put your skills to good use etc etc. I just don't really know how that mentoring would work out here, since I'm not around for too long yet, but I guess it's something I could find out.

Oh and I also hope I post more (XD)

[Wolkenfels]

Very nice update! I agree with Cyprinus on the colors - they give the painting a real push.
And i would be totally interested in that learning stuff! Do it please!

[smrr]

Aw shit yeah, Cam! Awesome work on that personal piece - I have to agree, the colours are gorgeous :)

Also, that's a bloody good idea for a mentoring program!

[goodsir]

I agree with both Cyprinus and Wolkenfels about very pleasant colors of the last painting (clothes design also look pretty cool) and i'm also super interested in learning more about psychology and especially about time management. Very valuable topic for me, since i always feel like i don't have enough time for everything i want to do.