acadia's doing star wars or dnd rpg illustrations mostly [vaguely nsfw]

acadia

Thanks for the reply Iruka! Well, I've always defaulted to drawing/painting clouds when I have no other ideas bouncing around, so I guess putting them in the context of a landscape feels like a good idea. Outside of what feels like a good idea, I don't really know what work I plan to do, other than 'all of it' eventually. Probably too broad a statement, but that's how I'm tackling it (which I guess is part of the problem -- nothing in particular to target). I keep kicking myself for not going to art school (or taking any art classes beyond the occasional 'Drawing 101' type course in college as an elective). Any particular artists you'd recommend studying for portraiture? I don't have a ton of knowledge there (other than the biggies, like, Van Gogh and stuff).

I'll try using a harder brush for the landscape study tonight! I've tended to stick with one brush at one size for these, and it blends pretty heavily, which is probably contributing to the mushyness.

acadia

Sources are spoilered!

Tried to tighten up some of my brushwork on this one, but it's still pretty mushy -- all that detail in the foreground was driving me nuts. Absolutely nuts. (1.5 hours -- almost all of Mission: Impossible -- and goddamn that movie title really fit with how I felt about this one, gave up on the foreground after a while.)

After that I was pretty well burnt out on the value studies and decided to try color. Was browsing the photo thread and saw an awesome shot by @Prospicience and thought it'd be a good one to get those hard shapes without a ton of tedious detail (plus, cool clouds! I don't usually draw these wispy ones). Really spent a lot of time on this one, but couldn't figure out how to do the grass without it looking like absolute butt, so I kept it soft. (2 hours -- Moving into Harrison Ford movies now, this one was done during Clear and Present Danger -- great flick, I didn't know anything about it going in and expected more ass kicking but it was satisfying nonetheless)

Watched Air Force One tonight (1 hour, tops. The source is from Clear and Present Danger, though). Harrison Ford for President:

I felt a lot more comfortable doing this one than the landscapes, I've never really practiced those outside of this thread. I think I got his likeness okay, but he definitely looks more angry in the source. Not totally sure what I missed.

tapeslinger

Harrison Ford is a really difficult likeness because he's got both an incredibly distinctive face and a range of expression that's different in nearly every character he's played (sometimes even between movies), so it is very difficult to pin down. I think your problem is in the eyes, specifically his left eyebrow and the size of the irises. The sketchiness of the line between the eyes (that curve that goes up around the browline, as well as the actual angling of the browline itself) makes him look confused instead of angry.

acadia

Yeah, he's hard. I see the confusion face. This is supposed to be like 'righteous anger,' cause he's telling the president off in this scene, and he's totally got the high ground. Looking at it today, I should have drawn him looking through his eyebrows a bit more. There's too much space there, and I think that's what's relaxing his expression.

Doodles:

Anatomy studies are kinda fun! You get to draw skeletons and stuff. Figure out how it all fits together.


I'm toying with the idea of doing a little western story. I need to figure out how to draw cowboy hats! And spurs.


I'm ALSO toying with the idea of doing a hitman/secret agent type story.


And my brother's having a baby in a month, and they asked me to draw some safari stuff for the baby's room. Subconsciously inspired by DMACs (much cleaner and more stylistically consistent) stuff that he did for a similar reason.




(and then two days passed, and I did these next ones. They had more direct references, and upon review, they look quite different in style. Which is annoying.)


(secretary bird's like "what. come at me.")

Enc

HELLO LADIES

acadia

Enc

That is my new favorite thing.

acadia

acadia

And I cleaned up the self portrait one a little bit.

Enc

god bless beardmerica

acadia

I pledge allegiance -- to the beard -- and the patchy cheeks of Acadia.

Iruka

The self portrait lacks structure, I think you need a little study of one of these guys:
http://artanecdotally.tumblr.com/post/72495562692/sheds-a-single-tear-by-the-way-this-image-is

acadia

Head study #1


I am seeing a lot of small problems with it, it looks like his left (our right) cheekbone is pushed in? Or his jaw is bigger and pushed forward? Or his whole head is rotated slightly? I'm not entirely sure where I've gone wrong, but things don't quite line up. I realize now that using a black background would have helped to define the edges.

lyrium

It does seem like a lot of the little problems are all tied into the broader issue that the head is tilted a little. In the reference it feels like he is looking down and is head is angled down, whereas in your study he's looking more forward. It's interesting because it looks like you've drawn pretty accurately what it would have looked like to tilt the reference up like that, which wouldn't be a bad exercise to do from a visualization standpoint. But most likely what would help the most is just keeping in mind the gesture, from the very beginning, which is probably the most important thing to get right. Keeping that 'looking down' feeling at the front of your mind as something you want to get across would have helped you observe the angles more accurately. Overall it's a nice study and it's great that you did it

acadia

Head study 2. This one took about the same amount of time as the last one, but I used more than just the pencil tool, so that helped!



Looks like I've scrunched up his face a little bit, and he again looks like he's looking up more than the reference, but I feel like I'm getting closer...

BrushwoodMutt

It looks good, but everything does appear to be a few shades lighter in your image than in the reference.

ChicoBlue

It might be an odd difference in monitor calibrations, but I'd say that a lot of those values are pretty darn close.

It's the sort of thing you'd probably pick up on when looking at it with fresh eyes, acadia, but there are a few little things to noodle with (chasing value, especially digitally, is something you can do forever and ever).

The darkest dark around the earlobe region could be just a little bit darker. The two largest planes on the side of the head might also be just a little bit darker in some areas. The bottom of largest plane on the side of the neck is just a little too light, especially where that sharp trapezius muscle plane is connecting to it.

Also, if you're going to go back into it, I'd suggest using a hard-edged round brush and trying cleaning up some of the hardest edges you see. That eyeball, for instance, could be very sharp against the shadow of the socket it is sitting in front of.

There's a lot of good progress happening here. Keep at it.

Prospicience

Oh man, just saw you painted mah photo! Awesome job man, really dig it.

acadia

@BrushwoodMutt Yeah, I was afraid of going too dark pretty much the whole time, so some of my shades ended up lighter than the ref.

@ChicoBlue Thanks man! I'll give this another run this evening, looking at it in the light of day has indeed made it a lot easier to see some of the mistakes.

@Prospicience Thanks, glad you like! I loved the colors and simple shapes and thought it'd be a good one to take a shot at.

BrushwoodMutt

What are you doing this in? If it is a digital program because you mention a "pencil tool" then can't you use a separate layer to try and darken it or even to experiment? If you are using a medium like charcoal or pencil you can erase if you feel it is too dark.

acadia

It's all digital and you're right, I could pretty much consequence-free have gone totally black and back again. From what I can tell, the paint brush in this program works by sampling the color on the point of the canvas that you're touching (let's say white), then blends it with the color on the brush (lets say black), and the result is varying shades of grey, depending on how hard I push, how transparent the 'paint' is, and what direction the brush is traveling. If I use another layer (brand new layer right on top of everything else), that 'sampling' doesn't happen, and it just goes with the transparency value of the brush, without any of that nice blending of the 'paint' on the canvas underneath it.

I'm not sure if that makes a ton of sense, but the result was that I felt compelled to paint largely on one layer, as what had down on the canvas would affect what I was doing with the brush more directly. It felt better.

BrushwoodMutt

If I may ask, what program? If it is PS, I would ask what tool you are referring to?

acadia

Lately I've been using Paint Tool SAI. Cheap japanese painting software, but really damn good at looking like real paint. The brush in particular that I'm referring to is the 'flat' brush.

BrushwoodMutt

Okay, unfortunately I'm not familiar with that program. But if you can darken things by mixing them with black, are you unable to say change the brush color to white and lighten things that way?

acadia

Yes, I can do that. And I have! Behold:

Rev 2


The first thing that jumps out at me is the angle of the browline. Spoilered a comparison gif. Fresh eyes, man.:

BrushwoodMutt

The colors are better but still a bit light. And it looks like you lengthened the nose, which shortened the upper lip. Also the angle of the jaw and neck seems a bit off.

Enc

The shading seems pretty accurate to me.

Ollie

I actually agree with BrushwoodMutt. The shading isn't inaccurate and the study is very good overall, but the darks could be pushed a little further. The difference is so subtle, though, that it might not be visible on some monitors.

acadia

I think I'm finished with that last one. The rest of what I'd be doing is noodling with value, and I think there's better ways to spend my time.



WIP! Trying to get the likeness, but he's making a weird face so it's hard.

acadia

Worked on the face a bit more this morning. Weekends are the best.

acadia

A little more (spoilered because it's too tall -- edit: unspoilered because it's my thread so you get to look at my stupid art):


Then I realized I hadn't gotten my Mom a gift, which makes me a bad son, so I quickly painted me, yawning (spoilered because it's my big dumb face -- edit: face is still dumb but unspoilered anyway).

acadia

Iruka

You may want to calibrate your screen a bit. I see splotchy values on the very right that I don't think you are aware of. If you have multiple devices/screens, check your work across them all. I like to try and anticipate both excellent and shitty screens when I'm polishing something off.

Enc

acadia wrote: »

Ahahahahahah +1

acadia

I've mostly been drawing little comics and stuff, so I figured I'd drop a few pages of stream of consciousness western on y'all. Are these comprehensible?

Iruka

I was going to say horses dont lay down unless they are sick, but apparently I know jack shit about horses and they lay down for REM sleep.

Personally, I would reign in on the hatching just a little bit so that even if it stays super sketchy, its slightly easier to read. You may want to play with some solid shapes too.

acadia

WIP late Father's Day gift! My dad used to have a cowboy alter ego, when I was really young, named Black Bart. He'd rob banks dressed as a sheriff, and my brother and I would have to bring him to justice.

acadia

Yet another face. WIP, please point out shit that's wrong! Ref

Enc

I was like "That's Colin Farrell being Einstein, right?" and then I clicked the reference and was quite happy.

Quite well done!

acadia

So I've just drunkenly halved the canvas in size, saved it, then closed it, and now I've lost my high quality version of this file (at this stage in development -- I have the old version still... hooray), so I think I'm going to put this down. Here's where I got it, I learned a bunch about color doing this, so it was not for naught! Next up, I don't know. A study of some dudes that do color well? Leyendecker?