Sketchbook: Keen

Loren Broach

I need to start drawing more....a lot more. I'm pretty much starting from the beginning and I would love critiques.

I'm going to start out by studying the head. Drawing skulls, drawing from pictures and occasionally doodle to develop my own style.

So to start things off:



Edit: Got rid of crappy doodle.

Mark Dygert

Good stuff, I like the way you block things out

Loren Broach

Thanks Vig

More skull studies, just profile and front till I get comfortable with them, then I'll move onto more complicated views.



And again if anyone sees errors in my work please let me know. Trying to be critical myself but fresh eyes help.

breakneck

[ QUOTE ]
I need to start drawing more....

[/ QUOTE ]
you said that like months ago! j/k, i say the same thing to myself every day. its lookin good though. keep working on those 3d shapes, your doing a pretty good job with em.

Loren Broach

haha, shhh polycount doesn't know I said that. Besides, this time I'm SERIOUS.


More Stuff:


Edit: yeah her right eye freaks me out too....I'll work on that.

pangarang

You have a good sense of proportion and style. My one critique would be your shading - needs abit more midtones. And try not to do contour lines so much. Personally, I find it flattens out pictures, moreso when they're all even in width. But nice stuff you got overall.

Loren Broach

Thanks pangarang. I'll practice a lot more with shading. I did some shading on a few of these sketches but it's hard to see digitally. I'll have to darken in more.

I'll also try to avoid contour lines. It's a bad habit that's hard to break haha.

Loren Broach

Here's some more.

Loren Broach

So I'm going to try and draw darker primarily so you guys can see what I'm doing.

kary

Not sure if you're looking for this kind of input or not, if you'd rather not, just toss me a message and I'll get rid of this:



You're doing a very solid work in capturing character, but it looks like running some plumb lines would really help the final look of things. The other technical thing you might want to look at is breaking things into planes, Loomis and Bridgeman cover that if you have their books. Vilppu has some interesting stuff, and it's summarized in an old series of AWN articles here is one. on seeing anatomical masses. Here are the rest.

Putting the time in would be the key thing, and you're well on the way for the hard part (capturing character). Just checking your work with a few lines, and describing the planes with a bit more vehemence might might help see things quickly.

Loren Broach

Yeah the reason I made this sketchbook is to get help from you guys so thanks kary! I'll definitely spend more time with the construction lines before I start to darken and shade.

Loren Broach

I'm trying to be more careful with my construction. I seem to see a lot of the problems once I put them up on the net. Still would like some critiques! So....have at it.

Loren Broach

A couple more:

Mark Dygert

wow really great stuff, good likeness on the head.jpg.
I'm starting to notice that you kind of exaggerate the eyes a bit?
Also when you rough in hair try to make your strokes match the flow of the hair, and try to make some definition between major and minor strokes.

Looking good keep at it

Loren Broach

Haven't posted in a long time! I'm still drawing I just don't have access to a digital camera very often. So here's some of my new sketches. Still always looking for critiques. Top right page I actually did yesterday, the rest are older.

Vig, thanks for the critiques, though I forgot about them until now, I'll keep them in mind for future sketches. I think I'm getting better proportions on the eyes, but I'll keep working at it.

kiril0t

i realy like that chelo/bass, scraggly dude, reminds me of Frans Hals

Loren Broach

I'm BACK. And I've bought a WACOM so I'm going to try and do some environments now.

Currently going through Fheng Zhu's environment DVD. Anyways, I'm always looking for critiques...........

Shogun3d

Nice work! I love how you're utilizing the perspective brush for the environment concepts

Loren Broach

Thanks kaburan! Yeah I just made a quick perspective brush to save time from drawing all those lines. Plus I can't draw very straight.

Here's todays.

Japhir

Nice! i really liked that feng dvd, but i never was motivated enough to actually do something . how do you get the straight perspective lines that easily?
your head studies are great too. it'd be nice to see one worked out a bit further, so it isn't just line art anymore.

bounchfx

great face studies. making me wanna do some!

Loren Broach

Japhir - Yeah the DVD is great. I find copying his stuff really helps too. For the perspective lines I just made a brush for it. And I do need to shade in more characters I'll start doing that more.

Bounchfx - Thanks dude. You should .

Here's today's work, anyone know any good shading techniques? Or a tutorial I could look at for it. Right now I'm just winging it.


And some older stuff I thought I'd show.

Loren Broach

Some stuff from today:

IronHawk

cool Loren.

Hey man im thinking of getting a sketch group together at the pancake house on Friday mornings you down?

Loren Broach

I would love that! Count me in.

Ah, figured I'd do one more before I call it a night. Going to try and do some more complicated shapes now.

Ged

You asked about shading techniques earlier - although techniques are useful I would say having an understanding about realistic light and rendering of colour would probably be more helpful in the long run. I reckon try some of the excersises here http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76955 and then try apply what you learn to your own piece.

your shading isnt bad as it is, I can see some slightly warped shape to those heads though, might be the error of parallax messing with you, I know I struggle with that sometimes so I have to get myself right over the top of the paper and draw some planning lines before adding detail.

Loren Broach

Thanks Ged! I'll start doing those exercises. I'm also going through another Gnomon DVD called "practical light and color" which is very informative as well.

And I'll do the other things you suggested as well.
Here's todays:

Ged

nice, keep at it

Loren Broach

More exercises. These are helping a lot. Decided not to use Gaussian blur and trims on these, I'd rather rely mostly on my hand rather than on filter and marquee.

Loren Broach

So I got a new DVD showing how to make concept art using 3D/photoshop. So I'm starting with 4 thumbnails with a pier/dock theme. I like the top left one so I'm going to make a nicer concept of that.



and a couple more perspective studies:

Loren Broach

meh, having a hard time with painting and colors. If anyone has any advice or feedback it would be appreciated.

I think I'm going to try a slightly different approach of this tomorrow.

Loren Broach

Alright, so I ditched the 3D concepting and went straight 2D on this one. I based my colors off a photo I found.

I'm glad I finished a fully colored concept for once! Would love to get feedback.

bounchfx

I like it a lot keen, but you're missing one of your dimensions on the second wood pillar from the left!! OH NO!

colors are nice, good idea to use another image as reference. did you color pick or eye it? also, do you plan on going more detail into some areas later on? (like the roof of the hut, maybe that's hay or something? could look cool and be good practice.

but yeah I dig it, do more!

Loren Broach

Thanks man! I'm pretty sure that second wood pillar is correct, the vanishing point is directly above it. Actually it's the first pillar that's off, whoops!

Yeah I color picked it, which is probably not a good thing, I'll start eyeing it.

I'm not going to detail this out more, I want to create a bunch of these until I feel comfortable, then I'll start getting more detailed concepts. Thanks for the feedback!

Ged

nice progress, I havent delved into landscape/environment concepting much myself but I could imagine its quite a challenge

Loren Broach

Thanks Ged, yeah I'm still trying to get the hang of it myself. It's fun though

Gonna go for a treehouse theme this time. I think I'm going to go with the top right thumbnail, except with more layers of houses.

bounchfx

top right eh?

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9fZj53lhGg[/ame]



looks good

Loren Broach

Ha, sayy that's good reference! Gave up on the treehouse though. Just wasn't feeling it.

Got another DVD from Massive black. This is me copying Whit Brachna's work. So far it seems to be helping.



And I'm going to go ahead and archive my Mini Dom War portrait here just for kicks.

bounchfx

I saw that DVD, you did a pretty good job re creating the feeling, nice work.

love the generals name. keep it up man there is definitely improvement.

Loren Broach

Yeah, I'd recommend the DVD, here's another one based off of a photo.

Ged

nice studies. If I could try and crit then I would say the foreground is lacking in contrast, only the truck has dark shadows which is a little odd and the background mountains seem quite close in tone and value to the midground too so its all getting a bit flattened, maybe some more depth haze so that the mid distance is obvious.

Loren Broach

Thanks Ged. The back mountain needs more haze and lighter blues. And the foreground needs a lot more contrast, I'll keep these in mind for future projects.


Another study:


And a potential scene I'd like to create. The medieval crapper.


Gonna really have to study up on lighting to pull this one off though. We'll see how it goes.

Ferg

dude that southwest enviro study is the shiznitobamsally!

Mark Dygert

These are looking great! It's great to see the progress. I agree that AZ one is really really good.

The only thing that bugs me, is the cracks at the base of the center rock mass. Look kind of tacked on like a not so fleshed out idea,not really ground in the painting?

Loren Broach

Thanks guys! Appreciate the comments.

Vig - yeah the cracks were pretty rushed, I think I need to work with harder brushes and spend a little more time getting these to a "finished" state.

Trying to get an idea of how to draw trees. So here's a study from one of Whit Brachna's DVD's:

bounchfx

wow that looks great keen! which DVD was this?

only thing that doesn't match the overall style is the clouds, not to say they look bad, but just looking at the textured state of the rest. it does offer a contrast being that way though, the bottom half being painted one way, top half another.

good job man

Loren Broach

Thanks Bounch!

Yeah it was a really cheap DVD that shows you neat masking tricks, but it also taught you how to draw a tree. It's only $5 to download so I thought it was worth it, you can find it here: http://dvd.massiveblack.com/

I agree with you on the clouds, I honestly didn't spend much time on anything in the scene except for the tree, much like this one!

Rens

Nice studies

Loren Broach

Thanks Rens!

MOAR TREES:

breakneck

your getting way better bro. its all about mastering the tools you use to let that creativity out!

DeusExMatteo

kaburan wrote: »

Nice work! I love how you're utilizing the perspective brush for the environment concepts

Nice perspectives, but what is the perspective brush?