Wood, Wood and More Wood

CourtT

This thread is to document my progress in learning hand painted wood and to get some badly needed feedback. I've been posting this in the WAYWO thread, but thought I'd compile it here for easy viewing. I started out by painting this:


Tried to achieve something not flat and more stylized and ended up with this:


I was encouraged to add more color, so I ended up with this:


I wanted to try to create a hybrid between a stylized and realistic wood, so I came up with this:


Then I wanted to try something almost photo realistic so I created this:


Then I wanted to push the stylized wood further and I ended up with a rough almost bark like texture:


All in all, I hope I don't totally suck and this and with your feedback I can continue to learn and improve.

Steve Schulze

I think you need to grab yourself some nice wood references. Even if you're working on something that's quite stylised, it'll be helpful to be able to see the structures of how woodgrain, knots and the like form. Generally, your grains look very broad and deeply indented and tend not to flow all that naturally.

CourtT

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I have actually looked at many reference images and tutorials. I'll post some of those later. Sounds like I need to go back to basics.

skodone

i recently found this you may wanna have a look at it

http://gimaldinov.deviantart.com/art/How-to-draw-wooden-plank-267517599

Coppero

quite a few of your wood textures have just sinuous lines, real wood has straighter lines with variations of sinuous lines, maybe take more time to block out the direction of the grain before you start painting. I really love the direction you are taking with the last texture.

CourtT

Thanks skodone. This is a great reference. I'll be studying this closely.

Thanks Coppero. I see what you mean. Wood should have a more balanced proportion of straight-ish grain lines interspersed with the more curvy grain lines. I will try to push this further in the future. Any comments on how I can push my last texture further?

HighSchoolHero

That's really nice! However, some of the textures look a bit animated. Are they meant for realism, or a bit cartoony?

CourtT

The first one was a poor attempt to create a realistic wood using hand painting techniques but it ended up looking cartoony. The second to last one was my next attempt at realism though it too still needs a few tweeks. All the other ones were meant to be cartoony or stylized.