Hi all, decided to finally join Crimson Daggers after Dave Rapoza mentioned it during one of his livestreams.
In terms of long-term goals, I don't have any serious plans on becoming a full-time artist since I'm not the type of person who wants to constantly struggle for financial security, but I do want to try out for a well-paid commission at the least based on my skills.
Here are some stuff I've drawn in the past few days:
I'll add my voice to the feet chorus. These stylized walking feet are wonderful! It's is a body part artists tend to neglect, it's satisfying to see the care you've put into them.
You've also got a good grasp of anime voice. Classic badass pose and composition, good hair treatment, and the style itself is pleasant.
If I may offer a critique, be careful with the perspective. The people on the ground seem off. There's a technique where you use guide lines to scale them, you'd have to use the lying down variation:
(images courtesy of Andrew Loomis)
The character is also a bit off. He seems a bit elongated, which is certainly an artistic choice in anime/manga, but his torso and neck are bulky for this archetype. Take this with a grain of salt because I'm not very good at figure drawing yet, but rotating a bit to remove the tricky camera skew and using his shoulders as the point of reference:
(rotating back...)
Getting the perspective and general shape right can make pushing the pose and adding the style easier. If lost at some point you'll always have a sanity check sketch to return to.
Here are couple of places to grab references when in doubt. They offer paid content, but browsing thumbnails is free ;)
(03-19-2023, 03:35 PM)JosephCow Wrote: Nice feet, dude! Your sketches have a good sense of structure, looks very promising. Welcome to the forum.
Thanks! I try to work on them since I want to continuously improve.
(03-20-2023, 07:48 AM)Dominicque Wrote: Those feet have great form and accurate proportions and those shoes and trouser rendering look divine! Welcome.
I'll add my voice to the feet chorus. These stylized walking feet are wonderful! It's is a body part artists tend to neglect, it's satisfying to see the care you've put into them.
You've also got a good grasp of anime voice. Classic badass pose and composition, good hair treatment, and the style itself is pleasant.
If I may offer a critique, be careful with the perspective. The people on the ground seem off. There's a technique where you use guide lines to scale them, you'd have to use the lying down variation:
(images courtesy of Andrew Loomis)
The character is also a bit off. He seems a bit elongated, which is certainly an artistic choice in anime/manga, but his torso and neck are bulky for this archetype. Take this with a grain of salt because I'm not very good at figure drawing yet, but rotating a bit to remove the tricky camera skew and using his shoulders as the point of reference:
(rotating back...)
Getting the perspective and general shape right can make pushing the pose and adding the style easier. If lost at some point you'll always have a sanity check sketch to return to.
Here are couple of places to grab references when in doubt. They offer paid content, but browsing thumbnails is free ;)
Thank you for the feedback! I had to wait until I got home to leave a message for everyone (and it's been a while since I've signed up for one of the old school forums and recalled how to use it haha ).
Yeah, I definitely need to work more on perspective. I think so far the only exercises I've done is pretty much do urban sketching (like draw buildings, draw environments if given enough time), since I feel like it's the most effective way for me to gain an intuitive sense of understanding perspective.
I did this some time ago (started Mar. 6) as an art request for a tumblr user. While they were happy with what they received, I just couldn't help but get extremely frustrated working over this piece.
I constantly have trouble rendering which part in the dark side I should go whenever I choose rim lighting. I know that I wanted to do exposure for dark, but I just don't know which light source I should head towards when it comes to rendering out the shadow side, or even how much detail to add before I end up overworking this piece.
Also I don't know how to make the background blend in well with the characters. Should I do limited tone studies (in black and white) for backgrounds? Or do limited palette colour studies? Or something else? I'm super lost on this.
Welcome to Crimson! You picked a tough challenge with this backlight. I would like to help but I'm not sure I understand the intention. Is the backlight coming from the chain of blue things? Is it the sky or something else in the far background? What other light sources do you have on this side of the characters?
(03-23-2023, 09:25 AM)Leo Ki Wrote: Welcome to Crimson! You picked a tough challenge with this backlight. I would like to help but I'm not sure I understand the intention. Is the backlight coming from the chain of blue things? Is it the sky or something else in the far background? What other light sources do you have on this side of the characters?
Hi Leo, thanks a lot for offering to help out.
I was thinking of maybe the lights from right behind them, since the reference photo showed that there were a type of snow fountain?
I haven't thought of any other light sources, since I think I was mostly basing off of this picture.
I signed up for Schoolism again and started working on Nathan Fowkes' Digital Landscape Painting Workout series.
In sequence, they are Day 1 to 3.
I rushed a lot on Day 1 and 2 because I'm not very patient, but somehow I managed to take more time on Day 3 (the trees that look kinda blue).
Progress on my drawing. I decided to lengthen his leg and give him more muscle mass.
I'm having perspective issues with the guy laying flat on the ground to Joey's right, so I'm using body-kun as reference. (name is a character from yugioh in a what-if scenario).
I see now. With the main back light right in the center, you cannot use it to give the dark side a sense of volume. The characters will look flat no matter what, but if you make the backlight stronger and the shadow darker you can create a dramatic effect that will make everyone forget the flatness, maybe give it a try? You might have to make the background lighter for readability (I know it's cheating, but eh...)
Maybe I could make a suggestion about the laying down guy? I see that you are decreasing the width of the body as it goes back in space, which is obviously one component of perspective. It's almost working, but maybe even more important to the illusion of perspective than size, is overlap. Your forms don't quite want to be in front of each other yet.
So like the above is an exaggerated version of what I want to happen. Each major part is in front of the other. Arms in front of ribcage in front of pelvis in front of legs, in front of feet. Emphasizing those lines overlapping makes it feel more convincing probably than even decreasing the size properly.
I don't know if this is exactly what you want for this, like it might not be perfectly in the right perspective, but I think you could use the idea of it. If we saw those overlapping lines going round his body like in the above picture, even if just in the folds of the fabric, it could make it more convincing.
Also I had a glance at a photo as reference, which was helpful since when you're laying in this position, your chest is going to be stretched, and your stomach should sink in. Just something I find mentionable since I didn't really think of that at first.
(03-27-2023, 09:05 AM)Leo Ki Wrote: I see now. With the main back light right in the center, you cannot use it to give the dark side a sense of volume. The characters will look flat no matter what, but if you make the backlight stronger and the shadow darker you can create a dramatic effect that will make everyone forget the flatness, maybe give it a try? You might have to make the background lighter for readability (I know it's cheating, but eh...)
Also, your trees are nice looking!
Hi Leo, yes I will give it a try (haven't forgotten the piece...! Just busy with drawing other things and work).
And thank you! It's mostly just following along with how Nathan Fowkes paints. His stuff is really gorgeous.
(03-27-2023, 12:29 PM)JosephCow Wrote: Maybe I could make a suggestion about the laying down guy? I see that you are decreasing the width of the body as it goes back in space, which is obviously one component of perspective. It's almost working, but maybe even more important to the illusion of perspective than size, is overlap. Your forms don't quite want to be in front of each other yet.
So like the above is an exaggerated version of what I want to happen. Each major part is in front of the other. Arms in front of ribcage in front of pelvis in front of legs, in front of feet. Emphasizing those lines overlapping makes it feel more convincing probably than even decreasing the size properly.
I don't know if this is exactly what you want for this, like it might not be perfectly in the right perspective, but I think you could use the idea of it. If we saw those overlapping lines going round his body like in the above picture, even if just in the folds of the fabric, it could make it more convincing.
Also I had a glance at a photo as reference, which was helpful since when you're laying in this position, your chest is going to be stretched, and your stomach should sink in. Just something I find mentionable since I didn't really think of that at first.
Hi Joseph, yes I'll give this one a try. Still working on it slowly... haha.
I'll give it a try to look at more photo references, though I wish Google would give me search results that are more favourable (constantly showing angles that unfortunately don't help me as much as specific angles that'll help with this piece).
I'm still drawing, some half-way done studies that I will try and finish tomorrow. Trying to integrate what I've picked up from the landscape painting workout series by Nathan Fowkes into the portrait.
I drew more than this, but most of it is nsfw artwork as a form of relaxation. lol
Nice trees, and I really like that color portrait, half-done as it may be. It has a great sense of volume thanks to the way you picked and represented the planes. Good work!
(03-29-2023, 05:49 AM)dimensional-knight Wrote: Nice trees, and I really like that color portrait, half-done as it may be. It has a great sense of volume thanks to the way you picked and represented the planes. Good work!
Thank you! The trees are from following how Nathan Fowkes paints the trees from reference. The way he does it is magical haha.
I guess I will call it done here. Normally I would try and cover all the sketches on top of the paint layers, but I decided to change the sketch colour so that it sort of blends with the bottom layers.
With the arm on the left, I think I found a not-so-good reference (flash photography?) and wasn't feeling that huge urge to go all the way.
(03-29-2023, 12:40 PM)Leo Ki Wrote: Yup, the arm photo is lit from all sides, not great for volume.
Did you intentionally limit the darkness of the shadows on the portrait?
I think it was unintentional, based on the starting local colours I chose. I was mostly focused on making sure there's a direct difference between light and shadow side.
Is there something I could've done to make it better?
Using more dramatic shades is not necessarily "better." But if the purpose of the exercise was to stay true to the model, it would have been a good thing. The way you rendered it is softer (also younger). But doing these changes can also be an exercise :)
(03-29-2023, 01:06 PM)Leo Ki Wrote: Using more dramatic shades is not necessarily "better." But if the purpose of the exercise was to stay true to the model, it would have been a good thing. The way you rendered it is softer (also younger). But doing these changes can also be an exercise :)
Ohh, you are right. I completely forgot about the wrinkles on his forehead. I think I was also too focused on having it more "exposed to shadow".
(03-31-2023, 02:26 PM)mechapark12 Wrote: Have no idea if the viewer thinks his head is tilting down, or looking straight forward.
Assuming the camera is at a flat angle (which is not clear from the shoulder sketch) I read it slightly tilted.
But I get conflicting information: The perspective on the jaw, the low eyebrows and the larger hair mass tell me so. But the neck not being obscured enough by the chin, the ears being a bit low, the nostrils being visible and the tip of the nose not advancing over the philtrum, tell me otherwise.
Now there are stylistic choices that change the expectations. A long neck will remain long even with the chin sinking into it. A big hair mass might change less.
Based on the black sketch on the right, you want it tilted, right?
![[Image: b2039d66b2911f610b37afc44b6f94ed.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b2/03/9d/b2039d66b2911f610b37afc44b6f94ed.jpg)
). 
