My Road To Mastery

#301

Damn I should be drawing a lot more objects!
I’m so focussed on humans lately (I don’t even like humans half the time to be honest) I tend to forget there are a lot more interesting things to see in this life…
Thnaks for reminding me :wink:

My teacher at the academy has asked me to select some 30-40 drawings from this school year. Based on these drawings, I will be judged either good enough to pass on to the 4th year next september, or not. The progress over 7 months time is a lot better visible, than over the last couple of weeks…
I guess this proves that becoming skilled at drawing is a matter of years, rather than weeks or months :wink:

I think you are definitely growing stronger.
It is well visible in your work.
Keep rocking! (to quote a fellow fan)

Good luck on the DW! (That old Duke came out beautifully btw)

#302

Woah, the longer poses are so awesome looking. Great job on those. Last quickies are neat also. But it does look like with more time you can do better. And that’s pretty natural, I think. Less lines, they must be precise, still show the subject. It’s as if you were working on a longer piece and making it looks simple, that’s extremely hard, knowing what to keep and what to leave out. Anyway, I think you’re doing amazing. Do keep it up, mate!

#303

Johan - Yeah, objects are really important. People (including me) can get really focused on the figure because it’s so complex and rewarding, but very few jobs are just painting people on a black page. Seems everyone should also be able to paint props and environments and animals and creatures as well if they want to get into concept work.
Thanks for coming by, man. :slight_smile:

Razz - Thanks for stopping by. Yeah, longer poses are a lot easier for me. It’s why I do so many shorter sketches. Really pushing myself to get better at those. Thanks for the encouragement. :slight_smile:

Some life drawing from the bookstore. Kids are impossible! They move constantly.

Also a quick 30 minute sketch in PS from my head. Gonna try to make myself do a little more concept work. I’m getting a pretty decent library of poses from my life drawing, so it’s probably time to start trying to work those figures into enviros.
I started this one in B&W intending to go over it with color, but I tried all of those color/overlay/multiply layers again and couldn’t find a way to make it look right, so I gave up again. I think I’m gonna end up one of those people who paints with color from the get go. Hmm…

#304

Hahahaha. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing in photoshop. Quick sketches are so far out of reach for me, it seems. I can’t say back to the drawing board, cause I’ve never left, hahaha. But here’s a 30 minute thing from the bookstore.

#305

Hey Static, you just have to keep at it. It’s just another medium that requires time and mileage to get good at. Your traditional skills are really spot on and I have witnessed your growth in that area and it’s pretty remarkable. As you start to gain more familiarity and confidence with Photoshop, you’ll encounter periods of rabid growth. Because of what you’ve already accomplished with your traditional studies, you’ll begin to see that experience manifest in your digital work. So, just keep cranking away :thumbsup:

#306

The great thing about the coloring from grayscale method is you learn a lot about hue and saturation. Sometimes, the slightest difference in hue or saturation makes a really big difference in the overall illustration. Don’t give up on it buddy, it’s like Daniël says… you just need some mileage at it. Knowing your adapting capabilities, you’ll start liking it soon!

#307

Daniel - Many thanks for the kind words, man. I really appreciate it.

Johan - Thanks to you, as well. It’s very encouraging of you to come by and drop a line.

So yeah, I took what you guys and a couple friends said over the last day and kind of formulated a plan. Photoshop has always been hit or miss with me, so I decided to try the same approach as I had with charcoal and pencils. Just paint a lot from reference. Life, photos, other artists, what have you. I know I just said I was going to try and do more concept stuff, but I don’t have the skills in PS to pull off what’s in my head yet. I know, because I just tried, haha. I made some shapes in Alchemy and had a really great idea for an enviro, pulled it up in photoshop and absolutely made a mess of things. So I’ll be doing studies to develop a skill set first. Hope you all don’t mind seeing a bunch more studies for a while!

20 minute painting of my brother when we were in Australia.

#308

Studies are cool man… ok? You step away from that ridge now, c’mon
:smiley:

#309

Johan - Ha. Yeah, I only shot the photo to make it look super crazy. What you can’t see is that about 15 feet down there’s a patch of grass on the side of the mountain. It’s not a straight drop off… however, that doesn’t really prove anything, cause he did actually stand on a very small ledge for another photo, with just a few inches of rock between his feet and a 100 drop to the ocean. @__@ Made a good photo, though!

A couple more from life.

This one is with a hard brush at like 80% opacity. I was also trying to see everything in black and white, which proved pretty difficult.

This one I started in color and tried some different brushes. Also used the hard round a lot, but this time with pressure sensitivity.

Those are both somewhere between 10-20 minutes. So what I think I’ve learned here is that I’d probably be better off learning how to paint well before worrying about painting quickly.

Long road ahead, but I have PF Flyers, so I’m good to take it on!

Huzzah!

#310

Feeling a little better with this one! It’s of a pretty sweet Chinese garden in Australia.

#311

I entered DWAR III but never actually made the final image. Not gonna happen this year!

I’m going for a (what I hope to be) unique idea here… and I’m making a machine cyborg… with the living parts coming from a captured demon! I’m thinking the machines ambushed and captured one of the demon princes and applied their technology to harvest certain parts of the demon. It’s against the rules to let him use magic, so I won’t have this guy utilizing demonic powers. However, I figure the demonic flesh empowers this dude to move faster and gain slight resistances to flame, or maybe they attached organic wings for more agile flight, who knows. Something like that.

Anyway, I did these first concept silhouettes a while back in photoshop. My first time trying silhouettes, so I’ve yet to get an idea how to do those effectively in that software.

Then I went into Alchemy, which is amazing (and free!) software for sparking creativity. It also happens to be an amazing silhouette tool. So here are 6 more concept ideas. I’ve uploaded a large file because some of them have intricate patterns.
I’m liking (left to right and down) 1, 2, and 4 right now. We’ll see what happens when I try to flesh them out.

#312

That’s a pretty neat program. Just tried it. Reminds me of the silouhettes of the recent Transformers robots.

#313

velenosangue - yeah, I totally know what you mean. Good stuff.

I spotted this idea after posting the last page. Not looking at #6 as a flying blob, but as a torso/shoulder area. So I made some legs and arms and attached them in PS for this idea.

#314

Nice job on the reflections in the water on that garden sketch.

Alchemy… can’t wait to try it now grmbl

#315

The program can be found here – http://al.chemy.org/

Also, Staticpen:
I really admire your work, especially in traditional media, and it definately helps motivate me to keep practicing. I have no doubt that you’ll master digital painting if you keep at it.

With silhouettes in Photoshop, I usually set up something like a 2000x4000 canvas with a white background layer, a clear layer above that for storing finished silhouettes (sized down after i’m done), and another one above that for actually making them. I also tend to draw a line in the middle to designate the left as the “storage” area and the right as the working area. I usually turn on an onscreen countdown timer (i use xnote stopwatch). I spend the first several seconds with my eyes closed visualizing a character, which makes the actual drawing part a lot easier and straightforward. Then when the timer is getting close to zero, I resize the silouhette, scale it down and place in the storage section, and create a new layer for the next silouhette. I do a new layer so I dont’ have to select the silouhette before resizing.

I thought it was pretty cool thought that alchemy has an option that does the timer part for you ( autorecord/auto clear canvas).

Also, have you tried corel painter at all? Though I usually practice with basic round brushes, it’s a lot better at emulating traditional media than photoshop

#316

Static, awesome job on the Chinese Garden :thumbsup: You have a dominate color choice in the greens and the orange umbrellas are a perfect accent.

You’re Alchemy work is kick a$$! After seeing your stuff, I won’t to go back and create some more creatures. In any case, have fun developing them.

#317

Johan - Thanks man! Yeah… love to see what you come up with out of Alchemy. :slight_smile:

velenosangue - Thanks for the advice man. I saw your silhouettes in your sketchbook. Nice stuff! I’ll give it whirl sometime. Also, I’ve never been able to use Painter. I’ve wanted to for ages, but have yet to get my hands on it. One of these days!

Daniel - Yeah, the color worked out pretty nicely in that garden. Credit goes to the architects, though! I just painted what I saw! ;D But yeah, Alchemy is super hip right now. haha. I’m loving it. Thanks very much. Cheers.

A little fleshing out of idea 1, and a sketchbook page. I’m at the library, so no access to image uploading websites. Thus, the attachments:

#318

Working up another concept from a different silhouette.

#319

Still working on that accuracy.

#320

More enviro work. Bumskee’s recent enviro thumbs are just blowing my mind…