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Art by Lamp [nsfw]

2456

Posts

  • tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    that's still a fabulous sketch, though! Lots of good work there considering the time frame. captured a lot of good visual information that'll help you with the next one, and so on. Nice work!

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Thanks Tapeslinger! I'll have more life drawing later this week...

    In the meantime, here's a big update for this image that I've been working on in my free time. I've pretty much completely repainted the entire thing, including the giant's face and hands, and the girl's pose -- although some folks over at the Concept Art forums are telling me that her bow and arrow pose still looks totally wrong and goofy. I don't know if I have it in me to repaint it though! Maybe after another break...

    2F8iyiL.jpg





    Lamp on
  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    Are you doing all your painting on your surface? What program are you using for touchscreen buttons, radial menu?


    How were your crits over on CA? I'd be interested in what was said.

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Hey Iruka! I'm doing about half of my painting on my SP3 these days. I go back and forth -- sometimes I love the directness of painting right on the screen, but other times I feel like I have more control when painting on my big monitor using my Intuos, with all my keyboard shortcuts right at hand. Managing layers, for example, is a real pain in the ass with the tiny interface on the Surface. So are a lot of other common Photoshop actions. I really can't wait until there's a decent, affordable third-party Cintiq alternative. If I had a 24 inch display, I would LOVE to do all my painting directly on the screen.

    On the other hand, DRAWING on the Surface is a thousand times better than drawing on an Intuos (or any other traditional drawing tablet). Now that I'm freehanding all my drawings everything directly on the screen, I can't believe I wasted so much time trying to draw on an Intuos. So typically what I do, is do all my line art on the Surface, and I usually block in basic colors and that sort of thing with the Surface. But when I really want to dig into a painting, I usually revert to the Intuos and my big monitor. I guess the difference is that I have a hell of a hard time making confident lines and shapes when drawing on the Intuos. I think a big part of it has to do with the angle that you have to hold the pen. However, I find that painting is a much less physical act for me than drawing, so the hand/eye disconnect isn't so bad for painting.

    I am really excited about figure drawing on the Surface though. As someone who knows zilch about handling actual physical paint, I am LOVING the chance to actually paint from life in full color. I'm excited to try getting out and doing some landscapes and stuff, very soon.

    And yes, I do use Radial Menu. I have it rigged so that I've got a touch button for pretty much every single action I use in Photoshop, so it works fairly well.

    As for the critiques for that giant painting over on CA, here's a link if you want to check it out!

    http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/316597-Giant-attack

    The new draft was posted on the second page, you can still how people are (probably rightly?) picking apart the pose of the girl. I am not totally convinced that it looks so bad, though...

    Lamp on
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited June 2015
    Frankly the lighting bothers me a lot more than anything about the pose. What are you envisioning as the light source(s) here?

    tynic on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Eh, yeah Tynic, that's really fair. I had a lot of trouble trying to conceptualize how to light the scene I wanted (fire burning outside in the darkness, with the monster poking his head in). I eventually settled on the idea that the interior area is has a skylight and the characters are lit by moonlight that's pouring in, but I exaggerated the effect until it really just looks like there's a big spotlight being pointed at them. Ah, well! Better planning is needed next time. I wonder if there's a way to salvage it, though... Maybe it would look more natural if the light had a cooler cast to it? Or maybe this lighting setup just conceptually makes no sense.

    Thanks for the feedback :)

    Lamp on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    I could probably sit and tweak this forever, but I got kind of bored trying to match all those little tiny details on the clothes, so I think I'm calling it done.

    wxpdd17ewkg5.jpg



    Lamp on
  • tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    If you squint, it's pretty spot on!

    The one tiny quibble I have is I'd go for just the slightest bit harder edge on her jawline against that burgundy/brown backdrop; since it's a soft edge, it fuzzes out with the background on her left/our right and makes her jaw look broader than the base photo. Other than that, in general, this is a really good likeness! The features are really well-crafted.

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    Thanks for the crit, TS! You were right. Instead of reposting the image with a tiny edit, I went ahead and tweaked the jaw and just edited the image in my post up there, hopefully it looks better now ^^^

  • tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    Nailed it! Such a small thing but does a lot for the shape of the face. Nice work!

  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    You've talked a little about your influences, but out of curiosity do you have long term goals for your work? Like a project, or job or anything?

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    So, I definitely am studying with the objective of painting pictures for living some day. I have all kinds of vague notions of what that could be. I guess my ideal dream scenario involves creating art for games, whether that's some kind of production art or finished artwork or gosh, I'm not totally sure. I think that goal is pretty typical for people who spend their free time drawing fantasy monsters, right? I guess being able to work on art for books or tv or movies or some other segment of the entertainment industry would be great too. I've done a little bit of paid editorial illustration (my day job is in journalism) and I like that kind of stuff okay too, though my interests are leaning more towards learning to paint realism these days.

    I guess I've never spent that much time trying to figure out what kind of job I could get, what's realistic, etc. -- because I'm just trying to focus right now on learning the craft. I figure that if I keep at it long enough, EVENTUALLY I'll be good enough to kick off an art career?
    I've listened to a lot of podcasts over the years from all kinds of pros who work in different parts of the gaming and entertainment industries, and a lot of things have sounded interesting to me. I just love drawing and painting, so if I can find a way to make some money doing that, I think I could be reasonably happy?

    Right now I have a good, stable career that doesn't pay the best, but it also doesn't stress me out too much and gives me time enough to study in the evenings. I've been trying to press my nose to the grindstone really hard for the last couple of years or so, though I have no delusions about how far I have to go. I'm currently 28 years old, maybe in five years I'll be ready to give it a go? I guess we'll see!

    Lamp on
  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    One of the reasons I ask is I think considering your career path is a really good way to point your studies in a particular direction. Like your whole thread is paintings of elaborate scenes, but when you study its pretty much just portraits, with the exception of that one from Up. But why? Studying these portraits is going to be great for your facial structure, but I would say that you really need to be working on the full body, as your gestures seem to be whats weakening on you. You should also consider master and composition studies, as you seem to want to make narrative scenes.

    There isn't going to be some point where suddenly you are technically proficient enough to be making a totally different kind of art. The trick is really to study the kind of work you want to make while working on your fundamental technical skills. Sort of like how if you wanted to be an Olympic runner you wouldn't necessarily do a shit ton of weight lifting. You would work out everything because you want to be healthy and its part of your training, but in the end you need to run on the track.

    I would consider your goals. This doesn't have to be job oriented really, but ask yourself "What am I trying to accomplish with my work". Choose a few different things, and then break down the parts of it that you want to work on the least but are probably hurting your work the most. You seem to enjoy working on faces, as they are consistently the strongest elements of your illustrations, but environment, material differentiation, and general anatomy are being a bit overlooked. Cater your studying to the weakest possible points in your skill set that still serve the larger purpose of what you want to do (so, you don't really need to study spaceships if you never plan to draw them, for instance)

    Basically, you want a well rounded work out, and it seems like you are skipping leg day.

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Thanks for the real talk, Iruka. You're spot on. Portraits are my comfort zone. I have much more to work on.

    No excuses, but I was actually working as a newspaper reporter until recently, which was an incredibly stressful and time-consuming job. But I quit that and now I have a low-stress job as a tech writer (basically I reviews computers and smartphones). I have so much more time and energy now, so there's no excuse to fall back into my comfort zone all the time.

    I have been trying to focus really hard on actually completing "finished" illustrations for the past year and a half or so, because honestly I went years before that "studying" without ever putting that knowledge to work. I think this was useful on the whole for helping me understand more about what I need to focus on. Recently, I think (hope) that I have particularly learned the limitations of my knowledge by trying to incorporate photo reference into my work, with varying levels of success. I am going to take a step back for most of the rest of this year and just work mostly on studies, and more importantly drawing from life a lot more -- human figure, still life and hopefully do some outdoor environment work too!

    Lamp on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    More life drawing on the Surface Pro 3 tonight, about 2 hours. Got more done than last time and I think it's an improvement overall. Really getting the hang of painting on the tablet I think! Struggled with the model's back though, need to grind some back anatomy now... Also I just wanna say that I am so excited to be back into life drawing again, I really encourage everyone to attend a session if you have one in your town, it's just so much fun! (and SO refreshing after doing so many slavish photo copies lately)

    q3l7k9br5him.jpg


    Lamp on
  • F87F87 So Say We All Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Lamp I feel like the proportions are kind of off. The torso is too long and maybe the lower leg is a bit small? Hard to tell but I feel you could focus a little more on that for the next one. Really love the forms and brushwork, I need to do some figure drawing classes one day!

    F87 on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    Right on both counts, I think. That's what I get for rushing the drawing so that I have more time for painting! Hopefully with practice I'll just get better accuracy in a shorter period of time. Thanks for the feedback!

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    I went ahead and made some quick drag-n-drop edits just for kicks, does this look better?

    tzkx6ro23c7s.jpg


    Anyway, moving on! :D

    Lamp on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Intentionally painted this at a different scale from the reference so I'd be force to observe and not be temtped to draw horizontal plumb lines to check proportions. Anyway, it's time to take a break from figures (outside of weekly life drawing) and work on some different sorts of studies!

    quoovfqlzrgk.jpg

    Lamp on
  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    That sword lady is great! Very glad to hear that you found a life-drawing group to attend. W/r/t the sitting guy, what stuck out to me is you saying you were rushing the drawing to have more time for painting. A mindset that I found to be very helpful is to not really separate out the ideas of 'drawing' and 'painting' as you work on a piece. We always just used 'drawing' to refer to the placement of the marks, whether it's in paint or dry media, so in each stage of a painting you should be improving your 'drawing' as you refine your marks. I'm sure you know that it's best to start general and get more specific, and proportions are a really big deal. At any point if you notice that's off, you fix it, whether you're already 'painting' or not, because it only gets more painful to fix something when you've already wasted a lot of time painting it wrong :P (Take it from someone who has repainted entire heads on long term studies multiple times. The earlier you nail it, the better). Clearly, from your photo studies, you have really good observation skills, so try not to let those slide while you get excited about painting. Working digitally seems particularly conducive to cultivating this mindset, because the physical medium does not change whether you are 'drawing' or 'painting'.
    Great work so far, keep at it!

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    Well said and excellent advice I think. Thanks for the feedback and encouragement, Lyrium!

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    So I was trying to doodle a dragon but I was like, lol what are animals. So here's a first step in trying to understand how non-human creatures are actually put together.

    65lbixsotqyf.jpg

    deer.jpg 185.5K
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Nother Wednesday, nother figure drawing session. Again, about 2 hours.

    blpdwc1um72h.jpg

    Lamp on
  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Nice! Couple of thoughts:
    A big thing that jumped out was the very straight visual line from the top of her shoulder down to her seat. It is a good example of where you can make decisions at different stages to help it read better. That straight line is perfect at the beginning, because it lays down the angle from the top of her shoulder to her seat, which is really important. But given the development of the rest of the figure, it now seems over simplified. Sure, it is possible that from your angle it happened to be almost a straight visual line all the way down. However, there are some important overlapping forms here that would have benefited from some emphasis, and given more character to that side. For example, the impression of her arm draped across her torso feels very flat, not like a form that is resting in front of the torso, but more like a seat belt. Where it passes the breast is nice, but a little more care with the musculature up at the shoulder and the edges where it passes behind the thigh would go a very long way. The model may have very small deltoids: but searching for even a subtle limp roundness where it visually overlaps the back would have accomplished several things: bringing more character to that very straight line, offering some sense of the form of the arm, and giving more of an impression that the arm is in front of the rib cage. Please excuse the really shaky mouse drawing where I've highlighted the area. I also circled a vague area on the deltoid above the armpit, where it is very unclear what is going on.

    lamp.jpg

    Paying attention to the overlapping areas will offer you great returns for your observations, and are good places to make the choice to emphasize things and design how they look to help your drawing, even if they are a bit more subtle in nature. Another example is the musculature at the hip further down that same line. Based on your brush strokes I can tell you observed and understood the area, so giving it a little more attention will (once again) give character to that visual line, offer a sense of the anatomy in her hip, and give more of an impression of the gesture of her hip being pushed out more while her torso leads away. And the nice thing is that these suggestions aren't intended to have you spend a significant amount of time on these areas, but rather recognize them as areas where a little intentional emphasis will do a lot. Where the weight of her thigh rests against the seat is another important area. Whether you are able to see where her thigh meets the seat or whether there is fabric that obstructs this view (hard to tell exactly), taking care with that bottom edge will improve the sense of her 'sitting' on that structure.
    Also, big props on the strength of your faces <3 Having the face be more developed and refined than the rest of the figure is the opposite of what you see in a lot of short studies, haha.

    lyrium on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    Such good advice, thank you Lyrium! That's all stuff that could be addressed to some extent with a handful of brush strokes, so the limited time frame for life drawing is no excuse. I'll keep all that in mind :D

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Ooook I think that's about enough fur scribbling for one day. Started off kind of tentative with that, but sort of started to figure out a strategy for dealing with the fur, I think? Gonna do one more animal study like this, then try to do a fantasy animal illustration of some sort.

    j5oaxmn1y915.jpg

    Lamp on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Ah screw it, I needed a break from studying so I let myself just have some fun today for the first time in a while.

    dgjlr223qsy8.jpg

    Lamp on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Oof, struggled trying to keep my colors from being muddy here and there but I don't think this turned out too bad? 2 hours from a model.

    Probably some anatomy issues, I think the forearm is short? I dunno the model kept moving and couldn't resume the pose at all, grrrr. Also I should spend some actual time on the feet sometime LOL

    4hj37924exei.jpg


    Lamp on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    So I had to have retinal surgery on one of my eyes this week and that wasn't much fun. Thankfully the surgery was a big success and my vision in that eye should be back to normal within a couple of weeks (it's pretty blurry at the moment as a side effect of surgery). Scary stuff! What would we all do without our eyes, huh?

    Here's a little sketch I today while I'm sitting here healing up. I might go back and try to reference some of the anatomy sometime because I think there's some pretty wonky stuff going on (especially with that arm.) Actually I'm feeling eager to get back to studying after spending some time off in the past two weeks to paint from imagination.

    kt5fvrb2u799.jpg


    Lamp on
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited July 2015
    I'd really like to see you use a light source for these that wasn't an intense, highly directional, blinding white. I think it would help you experiment with both colours and value ranges. Your figure drawings are much more interesting and varied, light-wise.

    tynic on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    Sometimes I'm amazed how blind I am to my own habits. Thanks for the feedback Tynic :)

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    So I got a long ways to go with this one, the egg shaped building in the distance is gonna be replaced by something cool like a castle tower or something like that, right now it's just a stand-in, and there's gonna be some mist or something the mid-ground. But I figured I'd share this WIP now, since I haven't posted in a while and I'm about to spend the next few days moving from NYC to Seattle, so I won't have much art time!

    8h6qljavtjm8.jpg

    I also figured I'd share this one little tidbit cuz why not. I was struggling to paint the monster's green skin under the yellow-orange light source. Things kept getting muddy and confused, so out of frustration I painted some little balls and lit them based on the light source. Took me five minutes, and that helped out so much as a color reference when painting the character! I don't know if the result was actually successful, but doing that tiny simple "light/color study", even just from imagination, at least really helped!

    q9hbzi5pjmg1.jpg

    Lamp on
  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    I still find the lighting to be a bit messy and harsh. You seem reluctant to let a light play out over a surface rather than go for a harsh rim light. You are also a little overly reserved in your tones. You can add a little of the surrounding colors, in the bounce light, and in general you can play with color to get more vibrant results. AOB made a tutorial here that's a good reference: http://artofkevinoneill.tumblr.com/post/92952050239/feedback-to-a-painting-in-an-art-forum-original

    I would also suggest just trying to think more critically of what you are trying to achieve. In your up study, you smoothed out your strokes a little more and you picked up on some of the more interesting color shifts, but in a lot of your work its a simple chalky gradient. You also lean towards photos with white as hell light that is strong. Your dude here is holding a paper lantern with what I assume is fire in it, so why is it hitting the ground with such a white tone?
    uw022hm2haqs.jpg
    In these examples:
    Where the light is hitting the subject it takes on a warm tone, and where it falls off alot of blues are introduced. even in the chunkier stroke style of the Morgan Weistling painting, he controls his strokes around the face so he can smooth out the fall off of the light.

    If you want to be able to differentiate materials, you are going to occasionally have to switch from your chunky stroke style and try something else. You don't have to aim for hyper realism and never have a painting that has a more unified stroke overall, but it seems like for studies you are leaving it at a stage that doesn't allow for any subtlety, which maybe part of the issue.

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Thank you so much for taking the time to give feedback, Iruka. I REALLY appreciate it. You comments about the colors helped push me in the right direction, I hope. And material differentiation is definitely one of my most glaring weak points, I'm gonna step back from creative work for a while and focus on studies, including some observational material studies.

    This is definitely not finished, but I need to take a break from it for a bit. The castle/city in particular is really just roughed in. Haven't had a lot of time to really focus on art for the past week since I've been moving, but I managed to squeeze in a few hours here and there. Here's where I'm at right now.

    MGD6QMv.jpg

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  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    So I have been working on some studies, I'm gonna round them up and post them all together soon, but I figured I'd post an update for this because I feel like it's close to being finished. I repainted those monster pants quite a few times, hopefully they a little more like pants now.

    ad85blkik3wt.jpg


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  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Found a decent figure drawing group in Seattle, so I'm back in the saddle. Here's a 2-hour figure.

    m72gcnl9488c.jpg



    Lamp on
  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    Nice improvements on the illustration! I dont have much in terms of critique for now, but I'm glad you found some figure drawing to do.

    Uh, out of curiosity, does the image uploader give you problems?

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited August 2015
    Hey thanks! And no, no problems with the image uploader -- sometimes I just do a crazy thing where I upload something and keep working on it or notice little things I want to fix, then I edit my post -- sometimes I repeat that about a dozen times haha. I also often end up re-uploading edits once or twice to resize them and make them more easily viewable, which happened with this very post in fact!

    Anyway, after painting that last illustration with the orange light on the monster, and thinking about all the blown-out white lighting I've been guilty of abusing lately, I went back and revisited this character painting to try to do something similar with it.

    llh7qnzcw7u0.jpg

    And this is the SUPER dark, blown-out original.

    4r9rqvv45v9s.jpg




    Lamp on
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    The lighting and colours are a massive improvement.

    His arm is bothering me - in fact I guess it's that all his body parts seem to be made up of cylinders. It would be good to see more form and musculature in play.

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited September 2015
    Thanks for the feedback, Tynic! I made some edits to the anatomy on that piece.

    Here's something new I've been picking away at for the last two weeks...

    echrggeiwt5h.jpg



    Lamp on
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