Hi Tonix…!!
Nice to see you here… great start! I like the pic of the girl… nice expression and very good lighting… the ear could do with some more work, though… maybe you should re-draw the ear from a good reference. Are you going to add more detail to the eyeball? a bit of specular, maybe?
cheers!
Hi Tom,
It’s nice to hear about your background and I’m glad you’ve started your thread here. I look forward to seeing what develops - that sculpture looks really cool, almost like an ancient sculpture that has been dug up - I like the stylization and exaggeration of the features. It would be cool to see you do more work like this. 
Cheers,
-Rebeccak
Thanks for the kind comments guys.
This isn’t quite working out how I planned but maybe I ought to choose a better reference for my next piece- the base for this was a tiny picture in the paper. It might look better with texture(stubble wrinkles etc) and a bit of colour but I’d like to get the form fairly accurate before then.
Oh, and don’t mention ears. I hate them. My 3d ears always look a bit dodgy. Maybe that’s why I ought to work on them a bit more.
Here’s a quick sketch I did from a piece by Thomas Gainsborugh. When I was at Art school I used to arrogantly look down on his stiff style of painting but recently I’ve developed a huge admiration for him as well as a lot of other figurative artists. There’s not much tonal value here but I’m fairly happy with the proportions.
Another quick one from my sketch book. It’s from an Old Master (can’t remember which) and I thought this guy had an interesting profile.
Tonik,
Nice to see more of your sketches up. The main thing I would recommend is focusing more on the planes of the face - really analyzing the form vs. trying to ‘copy’ it. This is a subtle but key difference which can really advance your understanding of drawing.
I recommend checking out the Paintovers and Demos thread on foundationalarts:
http://www.foundationalarts.com/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=9;t=30
As well, check out this thread for a step by step of a planar breakdown of a head:
TUTORIAL - General Principles of Anatomical and Figurative Art / Cross Hatching
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
-Rebeccak
Thanks Rebecca - any advice is always welcome and I think you’re spot on !!
When sculpting I used to try to breakdown everything into geometric forms but as I’ve been trying to develop my painting maybe I should get into the habit of using planes more.
This is another sculpture I made a long time ago. The horse is limited a bit by the material. I couldn’t make the legs any longer or thinner without adding any supports. Looking back I can see a lot of it’s weaknesses but I learnt a bit making it.
I think a lot of it’s down to practice and I’m going to try to get a lot more done over the next few weeks.
Hey Tom!
I think the work you’ve posted so far looks great. Specifically the two digital and sculpture pieces. Your proportions are strong but I agree with what Rebecca stated. BTW, thanks again for taking the time to post in my thread and I hope to see more of your work posted in portfolio. I sent you a network request so shoot me a heads up when you post your feature studies. Talk later! - Joel
Cheers, Joel. I understand what you mean by Network request now - I checked my spam and it looks like my CGTalk emails have been ending up there. You’re the first in my network !
I’ve been setting up a IK rig based on the cow sculpture’s proportions to try and use the quadruped knowledge I’ve picked up. The modelling’s very basic and it’s at an early stage but I’m learning a lot doing it. What’s really interesting me is the rolling hips and shoulders.
This is a real cheat with a simple photo projection. I thought it was pretty good at the time but can see that it could really be a lot better - I painted some textures but it looked pretty terrible so here’s the cheat. The more I learn the more I realise I have so much more to learn.
Here’s a quick colour sketch in Painter. Painting digitally I sometimes have trouble getting the balance right. I’m wondering how Carlos Huante renders his pictures as I love the look of his digital paintings. I think he paints in grayscale and colours his pictures later. Having had a quick look at his video tutorials I think Bobby Chiu paints this way too.
The further this thread goes the less structure it seems to have. Ah well, I’ll try to get some feature studies done and to concentrate on Planes.
Hi Tonik. Thanks for stopping by my sketchbook. Nice thread you started here. I’ld like to see some more of your 3D work. The ceramic sculpture of the cow looks good as well. Keep on posting.
Thanks for the comments and for checking out my stuff Bartovan !! I’m not sure where most of my work is but I’ll post stuff as I do it and will scan my old life drawings if they turn up.
This is an unfinished model of Benicio Del Toro. I was going to do some work on him in Zbrush but I messed up the topology somewhere along the line and no matter how much tidying I did I couldn’t get it right. Some of the features are abit off anyway - looking at Dave Black’s mouth modelling video showed me a better way to model mouths. Textures are handpainted in Photoshop.
Maybe I’ll try to finish him sometime. Oh and ears again. What a curse.
First off, congratulations - there’s some nice work here already!
I quite like that head model of yours - it may not be perfect, but i’m struggling through my first attempt at one, and if it comes out anything like that i’ll be pretty chuffed.
Looking forward to seeing what else you come up with.
Andy
Hey Tonik,
You’ve got some nice 3D work going on here. So much to learn. I love my 2D studies (I’ll never give them up), but I am slowly being sucked into the vortex of 3D. I will be dabbling in ZBrush when I can get my hands on it, and assoon as I free up some mind space. Have BodyPaint but can’t get it to work on my Mac.
Your color painting has some nice tonality to it. The color is nice and harmonious. One thing, IMO, that would enhance this piece, would be to vary the size of your brushes, and particulary in the hair, where there is alot of opportunity to ler loose. There is alot of life in your brush strokes which I really like. It’s also good to think of large masses and shapes as well, now and then.
Keep up the nice work.
Thanks guys.
Aztec, I see what you mean about brush size. I was trying to go for something quick and spontaneous. I hadn’t really considered it’s impact on that small colour piece but I think you’re right - a little variety could really give it a bit more life.
Andy, am working on some more 3d stuff. It’s amazing how each time it just gets quicker and easier. Getting back into drawing is really helping me improve my 3D.
Here are a couple of rough hand studies. Maybe I could have taken more care with the shading but they were preparation for a clay sculpture so I didn’t really bother to render them. They’re my left hand drawn in mirror.
This is another head, this time taken from Leonardo’s Study of Madonna with Yarnwinder.
It was quite quick and again done in Photoshop.
I’ve been trying to follow Rebeccas advice of drawing face with planes but they all end up looking like Kryten out of Red Dwarf.
http://images.google.co.uk/images?num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&sa=N&resnum=0&q=kryten&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&tab=wi
I had real problems with the lighting in this one. It’s from Michelagelo’s study for Adam. It’s obviously a bit weaker than the other digital tonal studies I did but at least I learnt quite a bit from doing it.
Looking at the torso I think there’s one light coming from directly above with the area under his arm in shadow but it’s really hard to distinguish. When I’m happy with how the tonal stuff’s going I’m going to concentrate on come colour pieces.
Woohoo, I bought a Graphire 4 yesterday and have to say the difference is incredible. My old tablet was plugged into the serial port and so I think it was making the whole thing stutter a bit.
I’ve been playing around with it- here’s a WIP from today. It’s nearly there even if the eyes are a bit wonky and the mouth’s a bit shapeless. I might try colouring it and adding some texture - work on the hair and sort out her freckles.
I’ve been playing around with skin tones for this pic but am having problems with layer types and general colouring. I’m avoiding blues as they make her look as though she has stubble so have stuck with a yellow-peach-red-pink type palette.
When colouring a piece done in Grayscale I can never get as much vibrancy as when I paint in colour to start with. I always get that slightly static look that old B&W photos have when they’re colourised. Anyone have any advice ?
This is Photoshop and I’ve been using the “Color” layer type. Perhaps I’d be better off with multiple layers with Overlay and Multiply settings.
Hi…Tom…
Just popping in to say that I REALLY ENJOYED what I have seen in your thread so far…
GREAT WORK…
REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING MORE…
TAKE CARE
Glenn
Thanks for the comments SpiritDreamer !! I was looking at your work the other day and really like the hybrid 2d/3d and other stuff. I can’t remember if I left a comment though.
I’ve been getting some ideas together for this headhunter project. I might be a little bit late but I’ll give it a go. Here are some of the pictures I’ve been looking at for research. I’m going for the horror angle and as you can see with this one it’s all in the Teeth.
I’ll try and get some new stuff posted pretty soon !!!