Rihla's Sketchbook

[Rihla]

Hi everyone, my name is Yaaseen and I am a 22 year old artist, from England.

I have been painting digitally for some 6ish years now, with varying levels of dedication. My goal is to eventually become a concept artist or illustrator, or just be able to contribute to creative projects with my skills. I draw a lot of inspiration from artists like Anthony Jones, and Vlad Gheneli, the latter being the one who inspired me to begin this thread after I found their own sketchbook on here. The complete list of my inspirations would be endless, so I'll cut it there.

I'm starting this sketchbook so that I have a place to post my work for people to see, without having the pressures of only feeling able to post finished or 'good' work. I am lacking direction in my art at the moment, and while my passion is at an all time high, I find it difficult to channel that energy, and often end up 'studying' with no real, solid goals in mind other than to get better and make what I want. That's what I'm hoping to change by organising my thoughts along with my work here in this thread.

I'm not very familiar with online forums, especially posting on them, so please let me know if I commit any faux pas in the process of sharing my work and interacting with everyone! Please do also let me know what you think of my work if you feel like providing critique or feedback.

Here are some examples of my better work, ranging from older to more recent, just to give a feel of the kind of things I like to paint and draw. I'm not sure how to upload more images at once, there seems to be a size limit, even though these are well under 2.1mb haha.










I'm looking forward to posting more and talking with everyone!

[Rihla]

Here is a study from tonight - it's hard to balance work with painting, so I think it's important to have a clear short term and mid term goal to strive for with each painting session to make the best use of my time. I am currently attempting to improve my painting skills - specifically rhythm and flow of shapes, as well as values when painting.




I think I didn't push the values quite enough - this seems to be the case when painting on my display tablet, I'll have to switch photoshop between monitors to gauge the contrast better. More studies it is!

[one_two]

Welcome to Daggers mate! Nice drawing/rendering skills so far! Not having a goal and doing studies is fine. Take your time, there's nowhere to rush, no takeaway at the end. Enjoy the process because that's the most important part I think.

[Rihla]

Welcome to Daggers mate! Nice drawing/rendering skills so far! Not having a goal and doing studies is fine. Take your time, there's nowhere to rush, no takeaway at the end. Enjoy the process because that's the most important part I think.

Cheers for the welcome (: - yeah it's a hard balance to strike between relaxing and enjoying the process and studying with a focus on improvement!

[Rihla]

A couple of studies trying to incorporate flow as best I can - The flow and energy are present in the silhouettes, but the smaller shapes need further simplifying to work with the larger ones. Also trying to improve my ability to confidently move from sketch to painting.







The conception of form is also lacking, especially in the statue. I'll Try and incorporate this into the next studies

[darktiste]

To avoid a flatting effect avoid using a contour line on your object.

As painter say you must loose the line or how i like to translate you need to hide the preparatory lineart.

This is a specially difficult habit to kick off if you have been doing comic.

An other issue that result in flat looking image is when object are presented in a profile manner .Let take a cube as a example let say you place the cube very near the horizon line you end up having mostly only 2 side showing by making small spacial adjustment you can show more dimension of an object by trying to show ''more'' of an object meaning giving a more equal ''read'' to a larger amount of side of your object .To better understand why subject get flat i suggest studying orthographic character sheet or just look for other artist work that have that quality but done deliberately and having a ''analysis'' of what fundamental of art lead to those deliberate choose.

One thing i would say is even if you make 3d shape in the under drawing this won't result in 3d dimensional result because you still loose the underdrawings as as you draw over that layers if you draw digitally so the trick to keep the form is to have the underdrawings actually overlay with some transparency over the ''value'' layers. This way you always can check for the shape without loosing the shape. But you should know that by now unless you pick up the habit of drawing on a single layers.

For thing to read 3d you need to make good visual and inform decision such as understanding how to use light to get more volume or how gradient work around a form to name just those principle.

Here the course i suggest base on your previous message : Building Volume and Form by Anthony Jones

[Rihla]

Getting a little more comfortable with the forms of the face, especially in overcast/ambient lighting.

[Rihla]

Interesting thoughts! Thank you for sharing them :)

I think having some more extreme perspectives would definitely help, I am going to do some more studies, maybe incorporating this idea. It's difficult to find a balance between painting and drawing! I do love a good outline haha, in more complex compositions it may detract from the painting, I suppose it depends on the artist's intention. I need to work on my painting skills, and my shape confidence. I love seeing how different fundamentals interact with each other  - It's almost like chemistry experiments hahaha. Thanks!

[cgmythology]

Very impressive work, you're off to a great start! Your figure work looks very convincing and those values are on point. Keep it up!

[Crowbit]

Bruh, your shapes are so pleasant to look at. absolute wizard

[Rihla]

Very impressive work, you're off to a great start!  Your figure work looks very convincing and those values are on point.  Keep it up!

Thank you! I've started a new, very strenuous job, but I'm still trying to practice when I can!

[Rihla]

Bruh, your shapes are so pleasant to look at. absolute wizard

Always striving for that elusive rhythm - so difficult to find haha. Thank you!

[Rihla]

Difficult to find the time to study at the moment - here is a sketch of an anthro crab guy - pleased with how it went, I'm enjoying dealing with light at the moment, I'd like to do more studies + still lifes.

[JosephCow]

Love this crab man design! Strong shapes, love your quick rendering style as well! I definitely see Vlad in all of your stuff. Idk when the last time he posted here was but he was an inspiration to me as well. There's lots of potential, can't wait to see more

[cgmythology]

Loving your latest! Values and lighting are very dynamic and well done. Great job!

[EGPK]

Nice design and texture on the crab guy

[Rihla]

EGBK - Thank you - texture has been fun to experiment with - it’s nice to have a brush that can do both texture at a large size and detail at a small size!

cgmythology - appreciate it! Great illustrations on your page!

JosephCow - thanks very much man! Yeah I’m very very inspired by his work - I need to find a way to stop relying as heavily on the style of other great artists, and focus up on creating my own based on what is true to me. Appreciate the encouragement :)

[JosephCow]

EGBK - Thank you - texture has been fun to experiment with - it’s nice to have a brush that can do both texture at a large size and detail at a small size!

cgmythology - appreciate it! Great illustrations on your page!

JosephCow - thanks very much man! Yeah I’m very very inspired by his work - I need to find a way to stop relying as heavily on the style of other great artists, and focus up on creating my own based on what is true to me. Appreciate the encouragement :)

You'll find that in your own time for sure. I think being original is really a matter of taking influence from lots of different sources, no one is just themselves. I think it's also okay to kind of 'impersonate' another artist for a time while you try to understand their ideas fully.

[Rihla]

90ish minute portrait practice - i need to work on hair - it's always been a weak spot for me. Ironically this was supposed to be a hair focused practice, but I ended up working on the face for most of it haha - I need to be more focused on the purpose of the practice. This was a lot of fun though!

[Rihla]

You'll find that in your own time for sure. I think being original is really a matter of taking influence from lots of different sources, no one is just themselves. I think it's also okay to kind of 'impersonate' another artist for a time while you try to understand their ideas fully.

Man I hope so! Yeah taking inspiration from multiple sources is best, there's so much amazing work out there that narrowing it down can be a challenge in and of itself! Luckily I have a handful of artists that inspire me the most, so I can focus on drawing from their styles and mixing and matching what suits me