Sketchbook Thread of Maritok

#1

Well, I’m treading entirely new terrain with digital painting. I do have a bit of experience with drawing from way back when – a summer school drawing course at Parsons and figure drawing at SVA, and some pre-arch drawing/design courses. After that though, raising 2 boys and earning a living running my own business have just taken up all of my time. The kids are off to college now and I’m trying to get in some drawing between job deadlines. Although it’s beautiful living in a small town about an hour from Munich, it definitely has some drawbacks: there just aren’t very many opportunities to participate in live figure drawing classes. They are just carried out on two weekends a year, miss one and you’ve missed a whole year! So I am awfully glad to have the opportunity to practice and improve my skills here.

   Although I haven’t done much drawing or painting myself, I have done a whole lot of looking at old masters, which are my favorites. The last trip was to Florence last year, where I discovered the incredible work of Artemisia Gentileschi (she wasn't included in the standard curriculm back when I took art history)  [http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/index.shtml](http://http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/index.shtml%20) 
 
   My goal here in this sketchbook is to improve my understanding of anatomy, for portraits in particular. I also want to be able to capture scenes with figures quickly and accurately. We are planning a long bluewater sailing trip, maybe even around the world, and I want to be able to document that with drawings by then. My inspiration here are the drawings from Irak by Steve Mumford, which I saw at PS1 a few summers ago. [http://modernartobsession.blogs.com/modern_art_obsession/2006/02/baghdad_journal.html](http://modernartobsession.blogs.com/modern_art_obsession/2006/02/baghdad_journal.html)
 
   [http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/mumford/mumford12-13-04.asp](http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/mumford/mumford12-13-04.asp)

C & C are always welcome!
#2

Well, first off, here are the (few) drawings I did for the Torso Workshop:

[img]http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6967/93rafaellokneelingnudewomanuploadfm2.jpg[/img]

And an attempt at digital sketching, which I didn’t finish, the muscles are just blocked in:

#3

These is were for OFDW 20 and 21, which I didn’t finish :sad: . Having no experience with digital drawing, I think I was in over my head. I just had no understanding on how to get the shading smooth. Maybe I’ll still finish them.

#4

So, I thought I’d start with the infamous skull shading tutorial to get some practice. This was extremely difficult for me, but I learned a lot!!! I spent days looking at it and changing bits, I have the feeling I could do that forever and it still wouldn’t be done :smiley: .

And tried colorizing it:

Now I’m experimenting with texturizing it. Will post soon.

#5

Hi there

Really glad you’ve started your own thread!

Great to read about your big plans!

The torso drawings are wonderful and so is that skull study from the shading tutorial!
It looks a bit too clean to me but that’s just nitpicking really.

Well I hope to see more from you soon!

#6

hey maria!

nice sketchbook you’ve got here. i really like your torso and skull studies.

-r

#7

Excellent work! I’m new with digital painting as well so I may have to try this skull tutorial sometime.

#8

Welcome to you Maria!:slight_smile: Lovely sketches you have here! Outstanding work on the skull.

#9

Thank you NR43, abyss 103, Womball and Samanthie for the warm welcome. I am looking forward to participating here on the boards.

@ NR43 - I agree with you, it is too clean. That is exactly what I meant when I said yours is so nice and “skull-ish”. I’m going to put some texture on it. I don’t think I have the patience to paint it all in :D, but I will be trying out the technique in Daniel Helzer’s texturing tutorial
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=2498697#post2498697
I’m curious to see how it turns out.
@Womball - go for it! You’ll learn a lot!

#10

Hi Maria, Really great sketches you have there.:slight_smile: Digital painting is cooool, you’ll like it, if you don’t already. Have you tried playing with the brush settings to change the opacity? that will help your shading. Here’s one for an older version of Photoshop. Maybe it will help.http://www.photoshopbrushes.com/tutorials/using-brushes-basic.htm

#11

Well, I’ve been MIA for a while. Was in the hospital for a minor operation. Now in the recovery phase I have time to play quietly at my computer :slight_smile: .

I’ve tried adding textures to the skull using Daniel Helzer’s method:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthr…697#post2498697

This is a quick result of the filter Bas Relief / Soft Light, first the retouched/semi-erased version and under it the original version. There are so many settings that still can be changed to optimize it, I just did a rough pass over it:

#12

Ink Outlines / Normal

Retouched/semi-erased:

Original filter:

#13

Plastic Wrap / Multiply

Retouched/semi-erased, a quick one:

Original filter:

#14

That was fun, but I think I’ll be using the method sparingly in the future.
Now it’s time to move on to something other than skulls :D.

@ha-dou-ken: thanks for the link, it helps to sort out all of those settings :slight_smile:

#15

it’s good to see this kind of experiments… shows us what the tools can do
looking forward to see more

#16

Yea, these were experiments. They were fun, but truthfully, I’m not really happy about any of them. I can’t get over the feeling that I’m sort of cheating… but I guess it’s just another tool that has to be used properly and in the right places – there’s an “art” to it too.

#17

Hi Maria, I hope you are recovering well.:slight_smile: Thank you for stopping by my thread and for your comments. I’m looking forward to seeing more of your work.

#18

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