LowPolyLama Skethbook

[LowPolyLama]

Hey guys, first time posting here, 


Here is a short info about me, im 28 years old guy who last year decided to pursue art as hes career. After like 279 days of drawing everyday on paper and once in a while in digital i decided to make online sketchbook so its like more official and someone can kick my ass for not posting daily work. 

So here is my todays work. 

Thumbnails were my like one hour warmup (Mostly inspired by Armit Dutta YT video)
Second piece is roughly 3 hours master study. My approach was to do a simple gesture then proceed to skeletal landmarks and then put all the othere fetures like anatomy, then i painted in like i would with oils. Started on mid-value background and painted light and shadows. After i had basic block in i blended some edges with mixer brush. 

Any crits are always more than welcome :)

[Artloader]

Hi there LowPolyLama :).  Welcome to Crimson Daggers!

Nice start here.

Just a few thoughts for you here:

1. For a study like this I don't tend to start with gesture and go through constructing anatomy.  If it was me I would use this as a study for accuracy and controlling my values.  Check out this guide from Dorian Iten:  http://www.dorian-iten.com/howtodraw/.  By the way his Accuracy Guide is awesome - I highly recommend it.

2. If you are practicing gestures, I would say you are better off studying off some full body references where you can see more of the anatomy.  Maybe use somewhere like:  http://www.quickposes.com/.

Hope that helps at least just a little.

Keep up the good work :)

[NoodleInBox]

Welcome to CD love those little thumbnails :D cant really say much more since artloader already summed everything up pretty well. Just keep rocking! I wanna see moreee

[Hozure]

Already getting a sci-fi vibe from those thumbnails. Fan of it at all? Care for the shadow underneath her elbow-- it's sharper than the ref which makes it seem as if she's being lit by a stronger light.

You got 21 hours to post another study or I'm gonna kick your ass.

[LowPolyLama]

SO yeah day2.

Thank you a lot for your input. I do have quite big photo libary from proko and im using gesture drawing app for my gestures.

Thing is im really focusing on invention so im trying to digest everything i see. Second thing is that im SO incredibly afreid of going into copy mode when i measure and look at staff as simple 2d geoforms. Last time when i drew it was like 5 years ago, and i could literally copy photos 1:1 but couldnt draw single thing form my imagination - so i quit. 

Maybe now where i do have bigger grasp on fundamentals i can try to actually focus on accuracy and understanding values more - but still im afraid that i will do what i did last time.

And if it comes to SCI-FI yes i do love that kind of scenarios, too bad that to create them you need such a incredible craft and perspective knowledge that it might take me a while untill i can attact this task in method other than thumbnails :)

So if it comes to today studies, arms are done from reference, workflow -> Gesture, 3d primitives, muscle forms, and shading.

Portrait is done from my imagination, so here i kinda feel like i still dont know what im doing, i constructed face and then shaded it with soft airbrush. But then yesterday i did really rough value approach and then tried to kinda render it with hard brush. Kinda feeling lost about how should i approach painting when i want to have this nice traditional not so blurred feeling to it.



Thank you a lot for your comments and advices, im incredibly greatefull for your input and help :)

As always i welcome your critique :)

[LowPolyLama]

Todays, update, damn i so struggle with finding interesting silhouettes for my characters, any tips on that? 

Other thing, giving my tries at shading full figure - still a lot of headaches. 

[LowPolyLama]

Hello there, so todays warmups were like lots of eyes, then proceeded to get rid of my biggest weakness right now which are foots, and then a little fanart of Goal from Deponia just to have fun and see if i learned anything in last few days.

Anyway kinda need to learn how to paint hair.

[NoodleInBox]

Cant really help you with the silluettes since i suck really bad at drawing them but maybe try do draw some quickposes casue your figures look a bit wonky at times. For example the shoulders of that girl you drew are wrong in proportion and perspective. You drew the one that is the furthest away bigger than the closer one while it should be the other way around. Oh and her boobies are a bit too firm ;) I like the studies you are doing asepecially the feet. They turned out great. And drawing the full figure is a great idea even if its hard. Just push through it and keep up the good work!

[LowPolyLama]

Hey Noodle ;)

Yeah, i think ill focus more on gestures in incoming days :) Thanks for advice!

So today i did like 5 pages of feet in my sketchbook, but guess i wont be showing them cause my skethbook is my privacy :P

Anyway here are my heads from imagination, as i struggle with faces im trying to draw more of them.

[LowPolyLama]

Todays update, fighting with foots an hands as i still feel like they're my biggest weakness. But from tommorow, more full figures - cause im so incredibly afraid of them.

Feets are all from my imagination, and hands are of course my left hand - kinda hard to draw in photoshop and hold hand position :>

[LowPolyLama]

It went kida weird, dont like it... onto another.

[The Aether Technician]

Here's a quick paintover of that last one! Just some quick ideas about it.

[LowPolyLama]

Thanks! It reads so much better now :) but as i though, i kinda went weird way with shape of eyes. That claryfies a lot, thank you for your effort :)

[alexdanila]

Really nice studies, keep going!

[LowPolyLama]

So im probably gonna hide in my sketchbook cave and draw hands for next like 5 days. cause i dont know how to get them right. 

So todays few silhouettes and a full body from imagination doodle.

[LowPolyLama]

Quick update on whats going on. So im actually working on that orc face, probably going to put values on him tommorow.

And did this quick speedpaint to test out if i can think with light and volume (insipred by Anthony Jones) 

Of course coments and crits always welcome :)

Besides drawing hands suck...

[LowPolyLama]

Todays drawings, quick portrait inspired by Anthony Jones and some hand studies. - Im SO FRUSTRATED WITH HANDS, god dammit.

[LowPolyLama]

Update. Value and anatomy struggle is real. 


And selfie from mirror, kinda failed

[LowPolyLama]

Some more han
d studies this time used leyendecker as reference.

[ThereIsNoJustice]

Hello, LowPolyLama. You seem to be on the right track pushing forward into the stuff you find difficult.

I want to leave a crit which I hope can save you some time and frustration. With your values/paintings I think you're using too much opacity, and thinking on the canvas. (I did this for the longest time as well). What you can do to fix this is think before you put anything on the page. Something like, "How many values are in this area? How will I simplify those values? Where will be soft edges? Where will be hard edges? Which value should I paint first, which middle, which last? What should be on its own layer?" etc. Opacity can be used to make smooth transitions, or finding a value between, of course, but it has to be used w/ a purpose in mind.

This is basically the same thing with layer modes or any other digital trickery. When I was first starting out I thought there was some trick to multiply/screen/color dodge, that people were basically using these tools to get the program to do the hard work for them, but really, the trick is that the artist doing the tutorial I was watching knew what the image needed to look like, and whatever method they used was a convenient way to get there, and definitely not the only way. When you know what the image needs to look like, and you know how to make it look that way, there's nothing else to it but get it done.