Mes3: We will high five so hard our hands will break and we will no longer be able to art.
Tonkka: Thanks, honeybear.
Mully: You are welcome. Perspective grids are pretty neat things to build and play around with.
This is the final version of the illustration I was working on. I had a pretty tough time trying to figure out how the light would bounce around and fall on the books and the shelf. In the end I decided to flip the illustration because I thought that it read better.
This is a quickie buggie doodle.
A couple of speedpaintings.
This was done for the re-draw thread. I got to look at some photos of anorexic people while I was drawing it. It was interesting.
Pretty lady portrait thingy, because I don't draw enough pretty ladies.
Trying to paint from life a bit more. This is a little silvery cream pourer thingy that has half of a tea ball glued to its top and it is sitting on a crappy mirror.
Same thing in different lighting conditions.
This is a self-portrait that I did while looking at a crappy mirror and in some diffuse lighting. It made everything look really soft and was interesting to work from. I had forgotten how hard self-portraits were.
Perspective for Comic Book Artists by David Chelsea: a little tough to follow sometimes when he gets into the nitty gritty, but he addresses three-point perspective, which is something a lot of books I've seen avoid.
Successful Drawing by Andrew Loomis: shows how to set up perspective for illustrations, but doesn't really explain cones of vision or perspective floorplans or anything like that
Perspective: A Guide for Artists Architects and Designers by Gwen White: I've just started looking through this one. It shows how to project building floor plans into perspective, measure in perspective, and how to cast shadows, which is nice.
Orikae: What Kochikens says is true. My hands are little porcelain doll hands.
Mes3: If we break our masturbating hands, we will masturbate each other. We will lay the groundwork for a Cummunist revolution.
Tonkka: If you say that three times in front of a mirror...
These are some bug studies done from photos.
Quickie bug.
I was pretty sleepy when I drew this. I'd sort of like to draw a children's book someday.
These are some fast little environments. I was trying to focus on creating depth via atmospheric perspective.
Recently, I've taken a step back and started to revisit some fundamentals. I've been rewatching some Scott Robertson's Gnomon Workshop dvds, which deal with constructing and lighting forms in perspective.
Spheres are pretty darn annoying to construct.
A more complex and bendy plane with some top-down lighting.
With the exception of the sphere, the values of all of these things was determined by using a "Halfway to Black" value system.
Halfway to Black basically means that if you have a value scale that ranges from 0 (White) to 10 (Black), and you want to light an object that has a base value of 2, then the value of the side of it that is in shadow will be a 6, because 6 is halfway between 2 and 10. And then you push and pull a bit by accounting for bounce light and whatnot.
It's sort of an interesting way of taking some of the guess work out of lighting objects.
How are you setting up your construction lines? One of my barriers in photoshop is that my computer cant handle super giant canvases, so I'm unsure of how to set up proper vanishing points.
The bugs, the environments, and the simple stuff all looks great.
This is how I was setting up for the simple shapes. It worked well for them, but if you were doing a big environment, you'd probably have to increase the canvas size.
I think a good way to go about it would be to just set up a really tight perspective grid on a smaller canvas, and then crop the area where your image is going to be and then blow it to a higher resolution.
Or if you're really worried about making sure things go to their proper vanishing points
This is another way of going about it. Set up your vanishing points, put guides where they are, and then use the Pen Tool to create lines from them.
The video really helps, thanks. I dont know why it seems like such a tedious hurdle for me to jump, watching other people makes it seem more manageable.
Iruka: Setting up perspective can be pretty weird and dull, but the better you understand it, the easier it is to estimate and you'll be able to produce images faster and more competently. Or, that is what I tell myself.
The strait crown on that dude is making me interpret his face as skewed. Your colors/brushwork continues to be excellent. Hans reminds me of a house centipede, and I find him to be gross.
Iruka: I went in and tilted the crown real quick. Thanks for pointing that out.
Belruel: Thank you. I hope I can continue to blow you (away).
Green: The only magical thing here is the way you look tonight.
DirtyDirtyVagrant: Draw until your fingers fall off and your eyes bleed.
Rank: Thank you very much.
Belgarion: Do not strive to be better than anyone else but yourself. Or something like that.
Goodness, it's been over a month since I last updated. I was slumping for a bit, then picked myself up then slumped a bit more and now I'm back up again. I've been neglecting my perspective practicings recently and I will change that.
Quick little Venice studies.
A fun old man caricature.
I did this one by just colourpicking and messing around with a photo I took of some train graffiti.
These are some doodles I did for the last SE++ doodle thread.
Quick little spot illustrationy doodles.
A study of one of the Lincoln assassination conspirators.
Speedy alien doodles.
This is a bit of character design that I am currently pecking away at. A orc chieftain of some sort. There's not a whole lot of difference between some of these initial little thumbnails, which is not really all that great of a practice. 4 and 5 was really just me allowing 1 to evolve.
I went with number 4, and this is the initial stages of a turn around that I am noodling with.
Your painting is always rock-solid, but I love the way you're approaching the linework in things like your doodly caricatures up there, and the conspirator study. Loose and confident and not overworked.
Hey, remember this thread? It has been 2 1/2 years since I last updated it. How shameful. It's a new year and I figured I might look through this thing, see where I was and how it compares to where I am now.
I'm gonna snag Iruka's resolution questions and put them in here.
1. Reflect on your growth so far
This thread was last updated when I was still sort of thinking about maybe possibly trying to get into concept art. The work I produced back then was more painterly and expressive, but, for the most part, structurally unsound and impatient.
I think I misunderstood and took away some bad lessons from watching speed painters work. A lot of the time I was just throwing down a mess and then trying desperately to pick something out of it, without thinking much about composition, narrative or what makes a cohesive painting or an interesting design.
If I am remembering it correctly, a little after my last post in this thread, I fell into a big ol' slump. Completely unhappy with everything I was producing. It lasted a few weeks, until I finally decided to change up my process and my style completely.
I started to focus more on tight line work, cleaner colours, structure and narrative.
This is the first illustration I made after making that switch.
At the time, the most important thing for me about this illustration is that it actually looked finished. It didn't look great, but it looked complete. Going in and actually having to draw everything made me figure everything out, instead of just throwing down some blotches of colour or value and hoping that would be enough.
I'm not going to go through a whole retrospective of the last two and a half years, because that would be super boring. I figured I might just share that little turning point.
With that said, looking back on last year I see that I've made a few nice pieces, but can't help but feel as though I am stagnating a little. I think the best way to break out of that stagnation is to go back a bit and try to rediscover some of the looseness and expressiveness that I gave up.
2. State some new influences
Dave McKean
(I'm breaking the rules with the first one) He's not really a new influence, but he's always in the back of my mind. I've either lost or never really had the confidence to experiment like he does with his work.
Henry Patrick Raleigh
Expressive as hell, while still maintaining solidity in his figures and his narratives.
Guillaume Singelin
There's just something intensely pleasurable about this work.
Theo Prins
I'm stealing this one from Night Dragon's list.
3. Choose a technical thing to work on
I've already said that I'd like to become more expressive, but I also want to do something that is completely counter to that:
Get better at drawing vehicles. Specifically, building them with the Scott Robertson method. This is something that I've been working at on and off for a while and I am still terrible at it.
5. Make a long term goal
Developing a career in art seems like a good idea. To do this, I suppose I'm going to have to actually track down potential clients and let them know that I exist and that I'm willing to work.
Now, I figure I should actually post some art instead of just wordiness. The most recent big illustration I did was a Christmas present for some purple-headed person I'm sure none of you will recognize.
And since I just rambled on about process and structure and whatnot, I thought it might be nice to post how I go about image-making.
Image idea:
The first and most important step! Here is where you sit, stare at the ceiling and conjure in your mind a beautiful and engaging narrative to depict!
In this case my thought process went: Purple-haired person... Rad arm tattoo... Motorcycle... Tapir? Giant Tapir. Giant Tapir King.
A story for the ages!
Thumbnails:
The second and most important step!
Here is where you scribble out compositional ideas, and nail down the key points in your narrative. Do many of these. They don't have to be beautiful. You are just trying things out, seeing what works, and quickly iterating on good ideas. Howard Pyle insisted that at least 50 thumbnails be done before every painting.
When I was in school we had to do 15-20 thumbnails for each project. Even if that project was just to depict "loneliness" or "good grief" with black and white circles.
Rough Refinements:
The third and most important step!
Pick out a handful of your most successful thumbnails and spend some time refining them. Make sure you pick out ideas that have completely different compositions and/or ideas. In this case I got lazy and only explored two of the three I picked out. I picked the vertical composition on the right. If I was doing this project for a client, there would be more than two roughs done, they would more polished and would have some loose colour.
You've got your composition, your figures posed basically how you want them, your lighting mostly figured out. Now you can move on to references. Some people have a great understanding of anatomy, machines, drapery, materials, lighting effects, etc and can build believable images from their noggins. Some people, like me, need a reference for damn near everything.
Some artists can afford models to pose for them. Some artists, like me, cannot.
Here's a quick and shitty render of a scene I slapped together in Blender to help me get the lighting nailed down. I downloaded the motorcycle model from blendswap.com/.
And a Tapir from GIS.
This isn't all I used. There's a big folder full of images of motorcycles, tapirs, leather pants, tattoos, etc.
I decided early on in the process that the palette of this illustration was going to involve a lot of violent violets and reds. With that in mind, I just started throwing down colours and hoping that it would work out. I'm not great with colour. Sometimes things work out, sometimes I have to bang my head against a palette for a good long while. I made the bandana on the tapir a yellow, so that it would clash a little with purple-head's hair and draw more attention to her face.
Painting:
Before I start painting, I usually spend some time making layer masks for the big important elements of the painting, so that I can quickly and cleanly lay down colour. Good masks mean good clean edges.
The first step in the painting is just laying down some flat colours and airbrushing in a little bit of the lighting scheme, like you see with purple-head's face, hair and pants. Some of the elements in this picture are a few steps beyond that.
Everything seems to be coming together alright. Most of the hard work is done. I'm saving the tattoo and the face for last.
Big jump to the final image. Little details are added in, I spent a lot of time just noodling on her face, which ended up changing a bit from the original linework.
This whole thing is already long and pretty self-indulgent, but here's a few little post-mortem things I've noticed with some fresher eyes:
The three main elements, the tapir, the motorcycle and the purple-headed, are all sort of facing the same direction. The composition could've been a bit more interested in one of those elements had been flipped and facing the other side to help create more contrast and interest.
There's an empty space on the left, which while not a big deal, maybe something could've gone there? Maybe flipping one of the elements might've solved this little irky thing?
Her foot is a little off. Facing in an awkward direction.
The tapir's ear and the tip of the sword are butting up against the side of the picture.
The pose of the purple-headed person sort of lost its dynamism from the original refined rough. This usually happens and I'll need to try hard to combat it in the future.
I'm trying to force myself to do quick colour studies more frequently.
While I admire your more careful, 'drawn' approach of late, personally I've always loved your looser work, and that latest painting has some beautiful values and a great suggestion of form. I'm really looking forward to seeing more.
Posts
You are great.
thanks for posting them
Tonkka: Thanks, honeybear.
Mully: You are welcome. Perspective grids are pretty neat things to build and play around with.
This is the final version of the illustration I was working on. I had a pretty tough time trying to figure out how the light would bounce around and fall on the books and the shelf. In the end I decided to flip the illustration because I thought that it read better.
This is a quickie buggie doodle.
A couple of speedpaintings.
This was done for the re-draw thread. I got to look at some photos of anorexic people while I was drawing it. It was interesting.
Pretty lady portrait thingy, because I don't draw enough pretty ladies.
Trying to paint from life a bit more. This is a little silvery cream pourer thingy that has half of a tea ball glued to its top and it is sitting on a crappy mirror.
Same thing in different lighting conditions.
This is a self-portrait that I did while looking at a crappy mirror and in some diffuse lighting. It made everything look really soft and was interesting to work from. I had forgotten how hard self-portraits were.
what books/resources do you use for perspective?
http://store.payloadz.com/details/165635-video-educational-perspective-carl-dobsky-volume-1.html
http://store.payloadz.com/details/196443-video-educational-perspective-carl-dobsky-volume-2.html
As for books, I've been flipping through
Perspective for Comic Book Artists by David Chelsea: a little tough to follow sometimes when he gets into the nitty gritty, but he addresses three-point perspective, which is something a lot of books I've seen avoid.
Successful Drawing by Andrew Loomis: shows how to set up perspective for illustrations, but doesn't really explain cones of vision or perspective floorplans or anything like that
Perspective: A Guide for Artists Architects and Designers by Gwen White: I've just started looking through this one. It shows how to project building floor plans into perspective, measure in perspective, and how to cast shadows, which is nice.
This guy has some videos on perspective that can be pretty useful, if you don't mind the poor production value.
http://www.youtube.com/user/SunnySiuOnline#g/u
blue, as ever, i adore your work and wish i had your hands
We could just give each other very approving nods. Yeeeeah, thats it.
God dammit Chico.
Mes3: If we break our masturbating hands, we will masturbate each other. We will lay the groundwork for a Cummunist revolution.
Tonkka: If you say that three times in front of a mirror...
These are some bug studies done from photos.
Quickie bug.
I was pretty sleepy when I drew this. I'd sort of like to draw a children's book someday.
These are some fast little environments. I was trying to focus on creating depth via atmospheric perspective.
Recently, I've taken a step back and started to revisit some fundamentals. I've been rewatching some Scott Robertson's Gnomon Workshop dvds, which deal with constructing and lighting forms in perspective.
Spheres are pretty darn annoying to construct.
A more complex and bendy plane with some top-down lighting.
With the exception of the sphere, the values of all of these things was determined by using a "Halfway to Black" value system.
Halfway to Black basically means that if you have a value scale that ranges from 0 (White) to 10 (Black), and you want to light an object that has a base value of 2, then the value of the side of it that is in shadow will be a 6, because 6 is halfway between 2 and 10. And then you push and pull a bit by accounting for bounce light and whatnot.
It's sort of an interesting way of taking some of the guess work out of lighting objects.
The bugs, the environments, and the simple stuff all looks great.
I think a good way to go about it would be to just set up a really tight perspective grid on a smaller canvas, and then crop the area where your image is going to be and then blow it to a higher resolution.
Or if you're really worried about making sure things go to their proper vanishing points
This is another way of going about it. Set up your vanishing points, put guides where they are, and then use the Pen Tool to create lines from them.
[vidURL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyS7GcHdozM#t=06m44s"]This guy[/vidURL] has a few neat tips and tricks.
Definitely intrigued by those Dobsky videos too. I suck ass at perspective.
Iruka: Setting up perspective can be pretty weird and dull, but the better you understand it, the easier it is to estimate and you'll be able to produce images faster and more competently. Or, that is what I tell myself.
Rolo: Thank you.
Flay: The Dobsky videos are great, and they will be cheap until August 1st. http://theartdepartment.org/store Also, thanks.
Mes3: Well, you wont be getting that. You'll have to settle for the rough and clumsy caressing of a tiny little boy.
jackisreal: Excellent.
Some odd monster. Someone with purple hair named him Hans.
This is a study/doodle that quickly got out of hand.
These are some quicky doodles. Some of them more quicky than others.
Thanks for the perspective encouragement, too.
leave hans alone
Your paintings are all so interesting to look at. I just wanna keep lookin at em.
you've gotten fucking incredible since last time I looked
god damn son
Belruel: Thank you. I hope I can continue to blow you (away).
Green: The only magical thing here is the way you look tonight.
DirtyDirtyVagrant: Draw until your fingers fall off and your eyes bleed.
Rank: Thank you very much.
Belgarion: Do not strive to be better than anyone else but yourself. Or something like that.
Goodness, it's been over a month since I last updated. I was slumping for a bit, then picked myself up then slumped a bit more and now I'm back up again. I've been neglecting my perspective practicings recently and I will change that.
Quick little Venice studies.
A fun old man caricature.
I did this one by just colourpicking and messing around with a photo I took of some train graffiti.
These are some doodles I did for the last SE++ doodle thread.
Quick little spot illustrationy doodles.
A study of one of the Lincoln assassination conspirators.
Speedy alien doodles.
This is a bit of character design that I am currently pecking away at. A orc chieftain of some sort. There's not a whole lot of difference between some of these initial little thumbnails, which is not really all that great of a practice. 4 and 5 was really just me allowing 1 to evolve.
I went with number 4, and this is the initial stages of a turn around that I am noodling with.
Little speed paint.
This is sort of a style trial for the Short Comic Contest.
And now some heads heads heads.
This is a self-portrait caricature that I just finished.
Here's a gif of my process for this caricature.
A few of these are disturbing as usual, but they're all awesome! Everything looks so solid, and I love those heads!
sexy.
Also, hey man, this is pretty amazing stuff. and a really unique visual style. Havn't been on this thread in a while, but really glad I did!
loving this
and your last caricature - looking at the gif of that I would have stopped at step 2 and called it a day
great to see how you kept on refining and polishing those values and skin folds until they were spot on
I'm gonna snag Iruka's resolution questions and put them in here.
1. Reflect on your growth so far
This thread was last updated when I was still sort of thinking about maybe possibly trying to get into concept art. The work I produced back then was more painterly and expressive, but, for the most part, structurally unsound and impatient.
I think I misunderstood and took away some bad lessons from watching speed painters work. A lot of the time I was just throwing down a mess and then trying desperately to pick something out of it, without thinking much about composition, narrative or what makes a cohesive painting or an interesting design.
If I am remembering it correctly, a little after my last post in this thread, I fell into a big ol' slump. Completely unhappy with everything I was producing. It lasted a few weeks, until I finally decided to change up my process and my style completely.
I started to focus more on tight line work, cleaner colours, structure and narrative.
This is the first illustration I made after making that switch.
At the time, the most important thing for me about this illustration is that it actually looked finished. It didn't look great, but it looked complete. Going in and actually having to draw everything made me figure everything out, instead of just throwing down some blotches of colour or value and hoping that would be enough.
I'm not going to go through a whole retrospective of the last two and a half years, because that would be super boring. I figured I might just share that little turning point.
With that said, looking back on last year I see that I've made a few nice pieces, but can't help but feel as though I am stagnating a little. I think the best way to break out of that stagnation is to go back a bit and try to rediscover some of the looseness and expressiveness that I gave up.
2. State some new influences
Dave McKean
(I'm breaking the rules with the first one) He's not really a new influence, but he's always in the back of my mind. I've either lost or never really had the confidence to experiment like he does with his work.
Henry Patrick Raleigh
Expressive as hell, while still maintaining solidity in his figures and his narratives.
Guillaume Singelin
There's just something intensely pleasurable about this work.
Theo Prins
I'm stealing this one from Night Dragon's list.
3. Choose a technical thing to work on
I've already said that I'd like to become more expressive, but I also want to do something that is completely counter to that:
Get better at drawing vehicles. Specifically, building them with the Scott Robertson method. This is something that I've been working at on and off for a while and I am still terrible at it.
5. Make a long term goal
Developing a career in art seems like a good idea. To do this, I suppose I'm going to have to actually track down potential clients and let them know that I exist and that I'm willing to work.
Terrifying.
And since I just rambled on about process and structure and whatnot, I thought it might be nice to post how I go about image-making.
Image idea:
The first and most important step! Here is where you sit, stare at the ceiling and conjure in your mind a beautiful and engaging narrative to depict!
In this case my thought process went:
Purple-haired person... Rad arm tattoo... Motorcycle... Tapir? Giant Tapir. Giant Tapir King.
A story for the ages!
Thumbnails:
The second and most important step!
Here is where you scribble out compositional ideas, and nail down the key points in your narrative. Do many of these. They don't have to be beautiful. You are just trying things out, seeing what works, and quickly iterating on good ideas. Howard Pyle insisted that at least 50 thumbnails be done before every painting.
When I was in school we had to do 15-20 thumbnails for each project. Even if that project was just to depict "loneliness" or "good grief" with black and white circles.
Rough Refinements:
The third and most important step!
Pick out a handful of your most successful thumbnails and spend some time refining them. Make sure you pick out ideas that have completely different compositions and/or ideas. In this case I got lazy and only explored two of the three I picked out. I picked the vertical composition on the right. If I was doing this project for a client, there would be more than two roughs done, they would more polished and would have some loose colour.
Greg Manchess has a great little post on Muddy Colors (nsfw) that has some of his compositional studies.
Reference Hunting/Building/Shooting:
You've got your composition, your figures posed basically how you want them, your lighting mostly figured out. Now you can move on to references. Some people have a great understanding of anatomy, machines, drapery, materials, lighting effects, etc and can build believable images from their noggins. Some people, like me, need a reference for damn near everything.
Some artists can afford models to pose for them. Some artists, like me, cannot.
Here's a quick and shitty render of a scene I slapped together in Blender to help me get the lighting nailed down. I downloaded the motorcycle model from blendswap.com/.
And a Tapir from GIS.
This isn't all I used. There's a big folder full of images of motorcycles, tapirs, leather pants, tattoos, etc.
Dan Dos Santos has a series of posts on Muddy Colors about his process, the second and third of which involves how he builds and puts together references.
James Gurney's book Imaginative Realism has great sections on using photographs and building elaborate maquettes to help inform his paintings.
Rough:
Laying in the rough linework.
Finalized Linework:
All tidied up. I usually Frenden brushes to do my linework.
Colour Rough:
I decided early on in the process that the palette of this illustration was going to involve a lot of violent violets and reds. With that in mind, I just started throwing down colours and hoping that it would work out. I'm not great with colour. Sometimes things work out, sometimes I have to bang my head against a palette for a good long while. I made the bandana on the tapir a yellow, so that it would clash a little with purple-head's hair and draw more attention to her face.
Painting:
Before I start painting, I usually spend some time making layer masks for the big important elements of the painting, so that I can quickly and cleanly lay down colour. Good masks mean good clean edges.
The first step in the painting is just laying down some flat colours and airbrushing in a little bit of the lighting scheme, like you see with purple-head's face, hair and pants. Some of the elements in this picture are a few steps beyond that.
Everything seems to be coming together alright. Most of the hard work is done. I'm saving the tattoo and the face for last.
Big jump to the final image. Little details are added in, I spent a lot of time just noodling on her face, which ended up changing a bit from the original linework.
This whole thing is already long and pretty self-indulgent, but here's a few little post-mortem things I've noticed with some fresher eyes:
The three main elements, the tapir, the motorcycle and the purple-headed, are all sort of facing the same direction. The composition could've been a bit more interested in one of those elements had been flipped and facing the other side to help create more contrast and interest.
There's an empty space on the left, which while not a big deal, maybe something could've gone there? Maybe flipping one of the elements might've solved this little irky thing?
Her foot is a little off. Facing in an awkward direction.
The tapir's ear and the tip of the sword are butting up against the side of the picture.
The pose of the purple-headed person sort of lost its dynamism from the original refined rough. This usually happens and I'll need to try hard to combat it in the future.
I'm trying to force myself to do quick colour studies more frequently.
This one is from today:
Done after this Daniel Gerhartz painting.
Hopefully I'll be able to update this thread a little more frequently from now on.
Or maybe it'll be another two and a half years.