Sketchbook: achillesian - Help me improve!!!
I'm switching majors, and trying to enter the game industry in the only thing I have a smidgen of talent in; art. Help me improve!
I'm going to post everyday.:shifty:
I'm going to post everyday.:shifty:
Replies
crappy pirate guy
and finally something from reference
All done in painter 9 btw, cs5 isnt saving my brush presets, so, back to the old apps
Mate you shouldn't be so hard on yourself when your going off calling everything you do "shit" It's a downfall many artists have as we are our worst critics. If you find yourself heading down that path where your work isn't just cutting it you can either step back and figure out why, or step away, start a new one and then come back to the older piece.
Spending too long on a piece isn't really a bad thing at times, but you need to step away from it once in a while as you it is inevitable that you get too caught up with a certain problem and neglect the rest of the piece.
With reference work you need to know why you are using it as a reference, what are you going to take from it? Is it the lighting, the colour, the shape perhaps a certain texture interests you from it.
One of my teachers told me "When are you going to let go" at first I had no idea, but thinking about it I finally understand what he meant. That I had to let go of everything I loved drawing since I've started following a set routine and or technique, that the room for growth had ceased. So I abandoned everything I love (mainly the figure) and headed for a more abstract route, only recently I came back to figure and I have improved tenfold as I wasn't too precious or caught up with perfection, confident strokes came in and I was pleased.
So the basic question is, what are you interested in and why? Don't do something just for the sake of it as it will show. Find something that absolutely fascinates you and go with it, find some sort of joy to keep fueling that passion (even though at times we have to go out of our way to keep fueling it)
Hope everything works out well mate, you've started working on a great path, but you'll come along many forks that only you can decide which direction to take.
Cheers!
One thing I can say though with the current pieces is to push your contrast a bit more, if you greyscaled the orange picture and compare it to your orange you drew you can definitely see it has more contrast around the centre.
doodle w/o reference:
silly one
If you're not doing line-work then you need to crank that brush size and zoom waay the f* out. If you've taken an oil painting class (highly recommended) the teacher probably told you to periodically step back from the canvas and view it from a distance. They'd probably have you paint from back there as well if there weren't the issue of arms not being 10 feet long. However, this is not a problem if you're working with a tablet! In the beginning stages you need to have the canvas zoomed out to about 25% when you work, regardless of whether it's from reference. This helps you to see the overall forms and colors without getting bogged down in details (that you'll paint over anyway). The other point is that while you're doing this your brush size shouldn't be smaller than the size of a dime against your screen. Working with small brushes early is slower and doesn't look as good-- you end up with that scratchy look as opposed to nice smooth tones.
Keep working from reference-- anatomy, fruit, mechanical shapes... that nose you did is a good step forward, as are the elf chick and the orange haired girl-- 3/4s profiles are a great way to get more comfortable with how dynamic the human face is.
And remember, BIG BRUSHES.
Keep on painting/drawing, you can only get better !
bigger brushes
some hand painted style practice
Finally have an art class under my belt now, and I've really fell in love with the gesture like, sketchy art from alot of masters, I love the style and minimalism, I'd like to see it in a game.
You've got some cool style going on. My suggestion is to concentrate on one aspect of art at a time, it can get quite confusing when trying to do it all at once. (silouette,values, color, posing etc..)
Start with making silouette studies, here is a good place to learn about it : http://tedwoodsart.blogspot.com/2011/04/silhouettes-part-1-for-every-action.html
it is really the most important aspect of character which you seem to focus on.
Then you can study values, with b/w pics of your favorite movies which will lead on to colors & the rest..
Good luck!
@wizo
I have started quite a few of my sketches and characters with sillohouttes, it does tend to help me, and I think its very good for establishing proportion when working from reference. And I think that is the key, I really just need to work from reference more. I work from alot of reference when I'm using traditional medium, but don't have a comfortable way of doing so on the computer (no room for drawing + reference on screen).
I may just end up being one of those people who do the majority of their work traditional and scan stuff for touch up, because frankly, right now my traditional is 10 times better than my digital.
You know, the first thing my teacher has every noewcommer draw is a chair... It seems stupid, but try it... In perspective, by an actual chair and you'll see.
Other than that, definetly getting better... Thumbs up for the progress.
But with the digital medium, you can also simply copy the reference image and paste it into your working image. By keeping it on a separate layer you can move it, scale it, and hide it without affecting your painting.
and if you are better with traditional media, you can always scan pencil drawings and paint on them digitally.
http://i1135.photobucket.com/albums/m633/PixelKD/eyestuff.jpg?t=1307450413
Hope that helps.
Keep up the good work.
that is probably the next step, I'm really trying to get the gesture/sketch stage down though, especially on the compy, my gestures tend to be my strength with traditional, so I'm trying to transpose that to photoshop.
My ultimate goal is environmental art, but i've been practicing alot of figures because alot of people say if you can draw figures you can draw anything.
Are you suggesting slowing down and choosing strokes more carefully from the beginning of the piece? Or transitioning into a slower tighter control (which I've been wanting to try).
There are a couple of things working like that accomplishes. For one, the piece looks much cleaner and less amateurish. It also helps maintain a hierarchy of shape. You don't want the entire image covered with thin strokes. Use those small shapes to describe details around the focal point (using the example again, the girl's face) while the big blocks give the eye a place to rest, in a compositional sense (the dress, the background).
Quick sketches and fast drawing has their place, most notably when trying to "feel" a gesture, get things on the canvas, or throw an idea down quickly. But when it comes to rendering I highly advise against that. If you look at the work of, let's say, a Jamie Jones, sometimes it can look like he's thrown down quick strokes, but I'm willing to bet each one of those strokes is carefully placed to give the right effect. Look past all the texture he uses and you'll see those blocks of color.
And from personal experience, I've trained my eye much faster by doing some long, slow drawings (blind contour drawing is great for teaching patience). I'd rather try and get everything drawn properly instead of it becoming a sketchy mess. I've picked up bad habits that still linger from years and years of "Gesture gesture gesture! Gotta get this down quick!" Speed will follow accuracy.
from ref:
from mind:
fast, done for concept arts daily sketch group, gonna start trying to do those everyday