Sketchbook Thread of jabuhrer

#1

Hi all! I haven’t been active on cgtalk for a long time, and I’ve never participated in the sketchbook threads, so please kindly let me know if I’m doing anything wrong (I think I’ve read through all of the FAQs and such - whew :surprised )

My background is in 3D modeling and animation. Other than life drawing, I’ve never been much of a 2D artist, but I’m now trying to teach myself to oil paint and also rebuild my atrophied drawing muscles. Over the past few months I’ve been trying to do semi frequent PS sketches during my lunch break and post them on my blog. I’ll probably post new ones here too to get some crits. Anyway, here are a couple of recent attempts at oil painting to start off my thread. These are both from the past month or so:


Oil on linen, 9x11, from life

This was my first attempt at a (more or less) finished oil painting. I did a couple of quick studies before that, but I did a lot of struggling with the new medium here. It’s a still life with a coyote skull that I set up in my kitchen.


Oil on linen, 11 x 14, after von Menzel.

This was attempt #2. It’s a copy of “Friedrich Karl, Prince of Prussia” by Adolf von Menzel. The original was a fairly rough gauche portrait that I thought would make an interesting practice piece. Working with a new medium is definitely a challenge, but I’m finding oil painting to be much more natural for me than PS painting.

As for life drawing stuff, here are a couple of examples that are a little older, but probably the most recent and decent that I have to show :wink:

Critiques are most welcome! I’m off to look at more of your threads now.

#2

You are quite good. Keep them coming. As a small observation I’d say you should try to give to your oils more depth since they are looking kind of flat now. Good work!

#3

AbuAmir thanks so much for the reply. Yes, I think you’re right: the oils are looking flat. I’ll work on that :slight_smile:

In my last post I mentioned that I’ve been trying to do semi frequent (twice a week or so) PS sketches during my lunch break to post to my blog. Welp, may as well post here too:

This one is pretty meh-worthy. I did a quick, <5min doodle of a co-worker during our fabulous Monday morning meeting today, then took a few minutes to tone it up in PS over my lunch break. Probably 10-15 minutes total. Normally I wouldn’t post something this crappy on CGTalk, but hey, this is a sketchbook thread, not a finished piece or even WIP thread…right? :arteest: I’m always happy to work from life when possible, but I’m also realizing that I need to get in the habit of finding reference material for these daily sketches that features better lighting. That’ll be my goal for the next one I guess.

Crits welcome. Thanks :slight_smile:

#4

From a technical point of view it looks like your really doing well for yourself. The tones seem real, the proportions for the most part seem good. And your modelling experience really shows up in the way you form the shadows around your subjects. I shoudl learn a thing or two from you lol

The rest just seems to be compositional, value study, related. I think the lighting could really be pushed harder, to make the darks darker and the lights lighter in most of your studies. Your oil paint looks really nice but the values seem to mesh together into the midtones around the left side of the painting. If it were me, I’d push the cast shadow on the table harder too. But anyways, I’m only speculating as I’ve not seen the reference you used to create your work. I really think you’re on a great path to becomming a great artist!

#5

Hey,

Keep up with the oil paintings, always interested to see those as I don’t find enough time to get the oils out myself. I love the painting style of Frank Frazetta and Shawn Barber, go get some inspiration if you haven’t seen their work already, though you should have.
Well, build up the pages of your sketchbook and good luck on you journey :slight_smile:

#6

redpandafire: Thanks for the kind words. Yes, it seems that I do need to work on value range. I’ll try to work on that :slight_smile:

razz: It’s always great to get out the oils. That’s really what I’d like to do most, once I get my skills up more. It is hard to find time (I work 50+ hours a week, so I hear ya), but once you manage to get everything set up and you get to the painting part, it is worth it. And yeah, Frank Frazetta and Shawn Barber are awesome. It would do me well to take a look at their work again, so thanks for the tip! :slight_smile:

Here’s another sketch:

Colored pencil and a tiny bit of photoshop. Copied from one of Joseph Sheppard’s books. Looking at it now, I can totally see the same problem from redpandafire’s previous critique: most of the image gets lost in the mid tone range. Gotta work on that!

#7

Ooh nice foot study. I’ve not gotten that far yet in my anatomy studies but I think it looks good. The linework seems a bit harsh, as in some parts could do with a bit of fading into the background but overall its nice. I think the values are pretty good too, maybe the only thing missing is a cast shadow to add dimension hehe.

Good stuff!

#8

Ok, this is just a silly Friday post:


Pen + a couple of minutes of PS doodling

My friend hosts a “sketching night” every Thursday. Nothing serious, usually it consists more of beer drinking and joke telling than sketch sketching :beer: Anyway, looking for inspiration, I grabbed his wife’s forensic pathology textbook (blech!). I decided to combine photo references from two different genetic disorders to create the world’s unluckiest siamese twins. I apologize if it is a little too disgusting, offensive, in bad taste, etc. Eh, it’s Friday :arteest:

#9

Woohoo! Ugly is beautiful! I definately get a feel for the pulling apart at the torso, almost makes them look like they’re trying to get as much distance as possible between themselves. Can’t wait to see more. :smiley:

#10


Colored pencil. After Bridgman.

After doing some drawing from life over the weekend, I realized that I’ve gotten very sloppy with my head construction/proportions. I haven’t really done any study or practice of the head since college, so I figured I should bust out the anatomy books and get to work.

A few days a week, I try to get up early and do an hour (or two or three if I can) of personal art before I commute to work in the morning. It’s tough, and it takes its toll in lack of sleep, but it’s great practice. This morning, I thought to myself “I’ll just quickly sketch 10 or so Bridgman heads as a warm up to the morning’s session.” Heh…I guess I was more out of practice than I thought, cause I spent almost an entire hour on these (5? 4 1/2!) heads. Well, this was the first “sunrise session” since getting back from vacation a couple of weeks ago, so between brushing my teeth and drinking coffee and feeding the cat and yawning myself awake, I suppose it’s better than nothing.

#11

Just a photoshop lunch sketch.

#12

Hey hey, the bridgman heads look fine to me! I’m about to start my study of the head too. Been slowly completing parts of the body on my spare time. Good luck to your studies, cant wait to see more heads in ur next post. :smiley:

#13

great studies here. what’s the hardest part working with oils?

#14

Victor- I’ve only done the couple of oil studies that you see here, so I’m no expert on the subject…but so far I’d say the hardest thing for me is just managing my palette :arteest: It is taking a long time to get used to managing all of my colors on a little board, trying to re-mix colors after my palette has dried up, etc. Haha…the first couple of times I tried it, I pretty quickly ended up filling about 4 pieces of palette paper with color mixtures that were spread all over my work space, like some vaudeville skit or something. It sure isn’t as easy as opening up the color mixer in Photoshop! But like anything, it seems to be getting easier and more intuitive with practice. A lot of people complain about the materials necessary for oil painting: the space it takes up, the time it takes to set up and clean up, etc. All of that is true, but I’ve found it’s not as bad as everyone says. I live in a small apartment (shared with my girlfriend) and I have only a little space in the corner of my kitchen in which I set up, use, and then break down and move out of the way for every session. It works fine for me. The painting itself seems to be a lot more intuitive than digital painting, although I’m not that great at either yet. Probably the biggest disadvantage compared to photoshop is that I can’t bring my painting stuff to work and do sketches and studies during my lunch break like I can with photoshop! :stuck_out_tongue:

By the way, I checked out your thread, and man…you rock! Your progression is inspiring.

#15

Hey Joseph,

Have you thought about those boxed sets? I was looking at this table top easel that folds up and stores your tools inside. I thought about taking something like that with me on a long trip I’m taking overseas pretty soon. Then again, when we have our laptops and tablets it’s easier to deal with that. Thanks for taking a look at my thread. Let us inspire eachother!

#16

Hi Joseph.:slight_smile: http://beinart.org////It’s GREAT,…much more to my liking and taste than what I was seeing over at ZBRUSH Central…I can’t handle all of that mindless violent computer game crap that seems to be all that they are interested in over there, with the rare exception of a few artist.
Just dropping by to say thanks for that link that you posted in my thread…very inspiring and thought provoking works in there…Ive been having fun checking it out every morning while I have my cup of coffe and wake up before I start working on my own pieces.
Anyway, like I said, just wanted to say THANKS.:slight_smile:

I like the direction your sketchbook is taking and headed in by the way.
The only suggestion I can give, is maybe concentrate on the value range more in your paintings…Start out with the darkest dark, and work your way into the lightest areas last kind of thing…Get those darks and value variations going on in your backgrouds also…surrounding the subject with air/atmosphere…don’t be afraid to lose some of those edges…will really make the main subject stand out and not compete with the background color.
Anyway…looking forward to seeing where the journy leads you to…:thumbsup: :slight_smile:
TAKE CARE
Glenn

#17

Glenn - I’m glad that you’re liking the beinArt group! Those folks are great. The instant I saw your work, I thought “wow, this would fit in perfectly on beinArt.org!” I’ve been meaning to respond to your post here, as well as your recent post on your own thread, but I’ve been quite busy at work and haven’t had the energy. Perhaps when I get a moment I will send you a more detailed message. Anyway, the gist of it is, I can totally relate. It’s a bummer that the zbrush site isn’t working out. I understand- I actually stopped coming to cgtalk for many years because I felt that it was simply too commercial-art oriented and my work did not fit in. I really got sick of the attitude that art is a competition and that the most important thing is outdoing the other guy and getting a job (in an animation sweatshop). The place just had such a negative tone - it was all “you better suck it up and step up to the plate, cause here’s what your competition looks like!” - which really turns me off. I’m sure the majority of the site is still like that, but being able to post on the sketchbook thread here seems to be working well for me. But anyway, perhaps when I get a moment I’ll send you a message with more thoughts. It seems like it’s sorta rare to find someone around here that is actually interested in art outside of the commercial entertainment industry. Oh, and thanks for the thoughtful critique as well. You’re totally right, I’ve really been struggling with the value ranges, I need to work on that.

Anyway, on to the long delayed sketchbook update. This was just a quick little doodle. I thought I should do some drawing, as I’ve spent the last few days doing scripting for a new 3D project at work :frowning: I didn’t really pay too much attention to detail, I was just sort of trying to go with the flow and let my imagination take over. So, er, it’s not exactly anatomically accurate. From Bridgman + my head:


Pencil and photoshop

#18

Some anatomical notes on this latest piece:

For a male pelvis in this position, the anterior superior illiac spine should be more or less vertically aligned with the public symphysis.

Remember that the sacrum is quite separate from the pelvis and even has some mobility with it.

The illiac crest along with the public symphysis are probably the most important parts of the pelvis to remember. Try to memorize the crest in terms of the AS illiac spine to the wide point to the high point (which is often directly above the lowest part of the ischium), to the re-entering angle of the posterior superior illiac spine.

When thinking of the scapulae, remember be sure to represent the rectangular acromion process no matter what the angle. From there you can spiral down to the bent triangular shape of the body of the scapula and add in the glenoid (shallow) cavity and the corocoid process (think of it as a bent finger). One thing I did recently was buy a disarticulated skeleton and I kept two scapula on my desk for weeks. Every time I had a spare moment I would touch and observe the scapulae from different angles. There are pretty damn complex but I really think as artists we have to memorize them to “unlock” the back region properly.

You represented where the costal cartilage receives the ribs but I would recommend that you also represent where the costal cartilage joins with the sternum.

Remember the three parts of the sternum because they affect no only the angle but also the muscular attachments. The manubrium, the gladiolus, and the xyphoid process.

I really like seeing this type of work. I am happy to critique and encourage whenever and wherever I have time. Keep it up!

#19

Thanks jjacobo. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge! I’ll try to soak it in and apply it to the next torso study :slight_smile:

Here’s a quick oil sketch that I got started on tonight, complete with the obligatory sloppy digital camera oil glare and perspective skew :wink:


Oil on canvas board, 9x11

Trying to loosen up, I blasted this one in with a single, medium sized short bristle brush. I’ll go back in another setting and clean up the details with smaller brushes.

Oh, and Victor I forgot to reply to you last question: no I have not tried one of the paint box easel setups. I’ve seen a few different types, from the typical French easel to some handy looking home made ones, like Leighton Hickman’s. I’d like to try it though. Let me know if you give it whirl!

#20

Proportions and construction look great. Whats the dark grey patch at the base of his skull? It looks like you were starting on the hair and stopped to take a picture. :smiley: