jack: thanks a bunch man! the beard was epic lol. I took some pictures beforehand, just a standard light, though it was SUPER bright in the picture, I tried to tone it down a little.
deformeds: thanks dude! I appreciate it. I agree, the shadow went missing, not sure what's up with that... the PC monitor had a strong ass light though, so that's my excuse.
Neolight: yeah! he was my lead artist while I was interning at GarageGames back in 2008. Thanks for your support!
did a real quickie tonight, little less than an hour. I actually skipped the drawing stage this time and went straight into painting!
Thanks Spacey! the chunky feel is ideally where I would like to take more of my art, as I feel I 'refine' way too much, and it's a side effect of me using photoshop that I need to get away from. the first two you mentioned were done in ArtRage, which I quite like. gotta find enough courage to not try to make everything overdone going forward, haha. Thanks for the support dude!
just playing around a little tonight. I'll probably take this one a tad further later, but alas it's time for sleep.
I still don't like my workflow.. I'm not sure how to change that. gonna try a couple by jumping straight into painting, then a couple with a lot of line.. I don't know.
and I REALLY don't like the color difference between my monitor and my cintiq. gotta figure out how to calibrate it, eventually.
makkon: thanks dude! what bothered me was that I couldn't get a likeness for shit.. so I set out to change that. if you look at my first couple pages you can see I was struggling. I just kinda kept doing them and paid more attention with each one, you start to notice the defining features a person has much quicker each time. now if I could only handle my line like you!
uly: thanks! you should absolutely do some. anything, actually. you got some killer work in your sb.
here's some small updates to the last one. I didn't do much more but I corrected the things bothering me the most.
Cheers mate, I see that you're comfortzone lies in portrait painting and I see it's really improving : ) But how about you push yourself and make full-figure drawings with focus on hands and feets (barely seen anything of that in your thread), I believe you'll become even better once you can draw the whole human and not only parts of them : )
Keep it up dude!
Whats your workflow at the moment? always similar to the approach you take in your selfportraits?
Try painting with massive chunks of colour/value perhaps? That always makes for a nice change - I've strayed from line for so long as i end up getting bogged down with details and placement from the offset
eoq: yeah man, I completely agree. I definitely plan on getting back into the full anatomy very soon, as well as other things. I mainly do portraits because they are relaxing. when I want to learn I'll usually try something different or push a piece further.
nerf bat ninja: thanks dude! glad you like
jackwhat: hey dude! my workflow varies occasionally, but most often it's still: draw rough outline first, capturing likeness of the person or shape, lay down base colors on a layer underneath, block out 3-4 of the shadow colors, then merge the lineart down at a low opacity (sometimes I colorize the line), and then just paint on that. It's crazy how different stuff can look if you keep or clean up the lineart.
lately, I've been trying more of a 'just paint' approach of laying down the colors without line first. this is a bit too haphazard for me, but it's fun and gives me the more paint-y feeling that I desire.it just makes me struggle with proportions more as I have no 'guide' made beforehand (even if that guide is wrong)
here's one I just did this morning - no lines on this, just started painting. it's also not a face! I thought it'd be fun to try something different. maybe 30-40 minutes total?
one thing I noticed I do, is that since I don't have proper anatomy knowledge (or even attempted to decipher it while painting), I mainly just placed the color notes as I saw them - there's no understanding shown of the underlying figure, even though I'm happy with the result, it's not ideal.
I wish youd push the saturation on the colours just a little bit, for the most part all your colours are on the left hand side heading towards grey, which feels just a tad too washed out.
I guess depending on the reference it does kind of work, but saying that, the colours in that picture are a little bit more saturated than yours overall, then you get shit like;
jack: thanks a bunch dude! I agree, I need to learn to take advantage of a full range more often, I'm getting better on doing that with values so far though.
as you mentioned, I do tend to stick closer to what the reference's colors are. I'd ideally like to break away from this, but I'm such a scared puddy tat.
tried one of the speed sculpt things over at GA.. here's one result.. beh. just about an hour.. fighting with zsphere topo the whole time. gonna give it another go later. hope to do more of these soon.
Awesome sketchbook dude! Great seeing your progression over the years, the babe studies are really well done.
A quick way for speed sculpting to eliminate that zphere topo trouble is early on hitting the ReMeshAll then ProjectAll in the subtool tab..it'll remake your mesh with evenly distributed polies in a pinch.
ebagg: Thanks man, I appreciate it. I'll give the remeshAll-ing a go next time, it sounds like tat would help. my biggest problem is the fact that there's pole's / 5 sided's, so hopefully that reduces those.
quick color study tonight, been very unproductive compared to how I should be. I'm not very happy with this nor the fact that there's apparently a huge difference in reds/pinks between my monitors. nooo!
any tips are always appreciated. I've been reading a LOT about color lately and it seems none of that has rubbed off. I learned a ton about picking colors and mixing them for TRADITIONAL painting but I don't yet have a method of translating this to my digital stuff considering colors mix differently on a pc
post it bounch, I want to see said art now not soon. Immediate gratification dammit!
Anyway, nice work-- your cousin has a cute girlfriend
the one thing I would say is that (though correct me if i'm wrong this may just be her anatomy) it looks like you've exaggerated the space between the nose and the upper lip.
The art will come after I move. I start my new job (38 Studios, woo!) this Friday, and won't have my own apartment until a month from now, so I'll be quite busy in the meantime. I promise I'll be doing art after work hours though .
Hey wake! I got a job as an Environment Artist at 38 Studios. We're in Providence. It's a bad ass mini-city. I'm loving it so far.
Anyways, finally getting around to doing stuff on the side again, here's a study I guess? just trying to make myself do arts. I'm still going to be tackling scenes soon! but right now I needed something to zone out to.
Wow, so I guess I neglected this for a bit! You can disregard my previous post... since 38 went under I am now a Senior Environment Artist at Trion Worlds in Redwood Shores! Having a lot of fun so far.
I've done some cleaning up of my Dropbox folder so some old images may not be there anymore... but wait! I brought more. Here's just a random sampling of the stuff I've been doing in whatever free time I can scrape together. I've been trying to focus on my color use and whatnot so you'll see some of that and some palette building practice. Also, sketches.
Digging the color palettes overall. Studies are getting better and better so just keep at it. You should do a similar approach to the zbrush stuff, do some generic heads to get some routine in constructing them. I think it's important to get the planes down first rather than making them smooth and realistic directly, like a Loomis head.
Thanks for the feedback and advice AimBiZ! Definitely gonna use that as reference for some people sketching and sculpting, I need to get those forms memorized post haste!
did a little environment sketch tonight based off a picture my mom took in new zealand:
another one tonight. I'm really bad at contrast.. might need to work on that a little. all my images always come out super low contrast, I need to work on my color with a greater range of value.
Oooh, I always like seeing cool and warm on white pulled off well.
Your enviro-studies has greater artistic integrity than your previous made up stuff but obviously you're expanding your visual library so it'll be interesting seeing you create new imaginary pieces in the future.
Only crit on the studies is that I'd like to see them more finished/detailed. Right now you have them sort of in a thumbnail state which doesn't put your ability to define to the test.
@Aimbiz - Good call, my biggest problem with doing art right now is I'm 'afraid' to tackle stuff, and recently I've accepted the fact that I really need to stick with stuff from life (at least mainly) to improve my memory and visual library as you've mentioned. I definitely want to take a few further as right now that's my biggest weakness, especially for environment pieces. I gotta put a plan together for myself to follow and really decide what I want to focus on - I love drawing both people and environments so I want to learn both, but at the same time I feel that I should pick just one focus for a little.
Anyway, finally starting to get some free time again, so here's a study from tonight and one from a month or so ago.
@Aimbiz - Good call, my biggest problem with doing art right now is I'm 'afraid' to tackle stuff, and recently I've accepted the fact that I really need to stick with stuff from life (at least mainly) to improve my memory and visual library as you've mentioned. I definitely want to take a few further as right now that's my biggest weakness, especially for environment pieces. I gotta put a plan together for myself to follow and really decide what I want to focus on - I love drawing both people and environments so I want to learn both, but at the same time I feel that I should pick just one focus for a little.
Anyway, finally starting to get some free time again, so here's a study from tonight and one from a month or so ago.
Thanks guys!
I can identify with that. With so many cool things to learn it's easy to spread oneself a bit thin, although for the same medium I think you should give characters and environments equal attention as one strengthens the other. Personally I'm too focused on characters and tend to forget environments for some reason.
Although it depends on if you want to do this professionally and what kind of work you want to get. For concept work I would assume some specialization would help to quicker build up a portfolio. For illustration, particularly in a story-telling sense you'd probably need to show of full narrative images with characters in environments.
It's a good idea though that you're thinking about a focus, will make it easier for people to give advice.
Pretty good values in the new studies. The knight one might be a bit too much on the brighter side. Looking good non the less.
been a while, and been quite busy with work and Dota 2 item stuff. took a break from that this evening for a little painting, did a short one of the lady:
experimenting a little with colors and brushes, nothing too crazy though
Replies
deformeds: thanks dude! I appreciate it. I agree, the shadow went missing, not sure what's up with that... the PC monitor had a strong ass light though, so that's my excuse.
Neolight: yeah! he was my lead artist while I was interning at GarageGames back in 2008. Thanks for your support!
did a real quickie tonight, little less than an hour. I actually skipped the drawing stage this time and went straight into painting!
thanks again everyone for stopping by.
edit: update
and I'm calling this one finished
Dom War 4 is returning up in here!
concept wip so far. gonna add a good amount to her still but you get the idea:
holy crap does that hand of hers look freaky elongated. I'll get to that, and more!
next time on.. my sketchbook!
thanks for looking!
some color studies, as well as some portraits I started but probably won't take any further:
thanks guys!
I still don't like my workflow.. I'm not sure how to change that. gonna try a couple by jumping straight into painting, then a couple with a lot of line.. I don't know.
and I REALLY don't like the color difference between my monitor and my cintiq. gotta figure out how to calibrate it, eventually.
thanks guys
uly: thanks! you should absolutely do some. anything, actually. you got some killer work in your sb.
here's some small updates to the last one. I didn't do much more but I corrected the things bothering me the most.
Keep it up dude!
Whats your workflow at the moment? always similar to the approach you take in your selfportraits?
Try painting with massive chunks of colour/value perhaps? That always makes for a nice change - I've strayed from line for so long as i end up getting bogged down with details and placement from the offset
nerf bat ninja: thanks dude! glad you like
jackwhat: hey dude! my workflow varies occasionally, but most often it's still: draw rough outline first, capturing likeness of the person or shape, lay down base colors on a layer underneath, block out 3-4 of the shadow colors, then merge the lineart down at a low opacity (sometimes I colorize the line), and then just paint on that. It's crazy how different stuff can look if you keep or clean up the lineart.
lately, I've been trying more of a 'just paint' approach of laying down the colors without line first. this is a bit too haphazard for me, but it's fun and gives me the more paint-y feeling that I desire.it just makes me struggle with proportions more as I have no 'guide' made beforehand (even if that guide is wrong)
here's one I just did this morning - no lines on this, just started painting. it's also not a face! I thought it'd be fun to try something different. maybe 30-40 minutes total?
one thing I noticed I do, is that since I don't have proper anatomy knowledge (or even attempted to decipher it while painting), I mainly just placed the color notes as I saw them - there's no understanding shown of the underlying figure, even though I'm happy with the result, it's not ideal.
Thanks again guys!
did another quick value study of the beautiful milla. I'll be doing different subject matter soon I promise!
WIP
I wish youd push the saturation on the colours just a little bit, for the most part all your colours are on the left hand side heading towards grey, which feels just a tad too washed out.
http://www.kindgirls.com/photo2/femjoy/hayden_25881/hayden/12/4/0/
I guess depending on the reference it does kind of work, but saying that, the colours in that picture are a little bit more saturated than yours overall, then you get shit like;
http://www.kindgirls.com/photo2/metart/eufrat_56203/eufrat/16/4/01-2011/
Where theyre way more saturated, but then again i've no idea what your reference is and how fitting this is at all...
Eitherway, fucking ace rendering.
as you mentioned, I do tend to stick closer to what the reference's colors are. I'd ideally like to break away from this, but I'm such a scared puddy tat.
Thanks again man, it means alot.
callin it quits on this lady:
Thanks for looking!
A quick way for speed sculpting to eliminate that zphere topo trouble is early on hitting the ReMeshAll then ProjectAll in the subtool tab..it'll remake your mesh with evenly distributed polies in a pinch.
quick color study tonight, been very unproductive compared to how I should be. I'm not very happy with this nor the fact that there's apparently a huge difference in reds/pinks between my monitors. nooo!
any tips are always appreciated. I've been reading a LOT about color lately and it seems none of that has rubbed off. I learned a ton about picking colors and mixing them for TRADITIONAL painting but I don't yet have a method of translating this to my digital stuff considering colors mix differently on a pc
there will be a lot more art soon.
Anyway, nice work-- your cousin has a cute girlfriend
the one thing I would say is that (though correct me if i'm wrong this may just be her anatomy) it looks like you've exaggerated the space between the nose and the upper lip.
The art will come after I move. I start my new job (38 Studios, woo!) this Friday, and won't have my own apartment until a month from now, so I'll be quite busy in the meantime. I promise I'll be doing art after work hours though .
And yeah, it's exaggerated a tad, good eye!
Anyways, finally getting around to doing stuff on the side again, here's a study I guess? just trying to make myself do arts. I'm still going to be tackling scenes soon! but right now I needed something to zone out to.
I've done some cleaning up of my Dropbox folder so some old images may not be there anymore... but wait! I brought more. Here's just a random sampling of the stuff I've been doing in whatever free time I can scrape together. I've been trying to focus on my color use and whatnot so you'll see some of that and some palette building practice. Also, sketches.
continued..
Thanks again everyone for stopping by!
Digging the color palettes overall. Studies are getting better and better so just keep at it. You should do a similar approach to the zbrush stuff, do some generic heads to get some routine in constructing them. I think it's important to get the planes down first rather than making them smooth and realistic directly, like a Loomis head.
did a little environment sketch tonight based off a picture my mom took in new zealand:
Thanks for looking!
gonna try doing some thumbs of different color comps next
thanks for looking!
Your enviro-studies has greater artistic integrity than your previous made up stuff but obviously you're expanding your visual library so it'll be interesting seeing you create new imaginary pieces in the future.
Only crit on the studies is that I'd like to see them more finished/detailed. Right now you have them sort of in a thumbnail state which doesn't put your ability to define to the test.
Anyway, finally starting to get some free time again, so here's a study from tonight and one from a month or so ago.
Thanks guys!
I can identify with that. With so many cool things to learn it's easy to spread oneself a bit thin, although for the same medium I think you should give characters and environments equal attention as one strengthens the other. Personally I'm too focused on characters and tend to forget environments for some reason.
Although it depends on if you want to do this professionally and what kind of work you want to get. For concept work I would assume some specialization would help to quicker build up a portfolio. For illustration, particularly in a story-telling sense you'd probably need to show of full narrative images with characters in environments.
It's a good idea though that you're thinking about a focus, will make it easier for people to give advice.
Pretty good values in the new studies. The knight one might be a bit too much on the brighter side. Looking good non the less.
experimenting a little with colors and brushes, nothing too crazy though
thanks for looking!
thanks for looking!