Finished Black and Whites: third update

Mykonos

Been a while since I started one of these. Figure I'd take some of the recent paintings I'm proud enough to post for some good ol crits. All would be much appreciated.

I'll keep posting wips in the doodle thread to keep me on a right track, and then post the finished ones here.

Just got done with this one. It was inspired by a photo I saw of Michael Phelps.




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I love this one, though it's faults are becoming more apparent to me. Got a feature on Deviantart, though.



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Scosglen

Are you using photo references for these?

I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, but I think you really need to slow down with the ridiculous custom brushes and trying so hard to ape Yoji Shinkawa's extremely distinct and recognizable style.

As far as the paintings themselves, I would say spend a little more time cleaning up your work. It's not hard to tell the difference between strokes that are left raw and impressionistic as a compositional and stylistic choice, and messy haphazard strokes that are left that way because you don't know how to clean up and refine them. The pants of the first one are the best example of this, as they're very hard to read and they look sort of rushed compared to the face, which you obviously paid a lot more care to and looks much better.

The abs on both paintings also are pretty rough and undefined, the first one's being hid too much in the shadows and the latter's looking like they're 'melting' away.

The right arm on the first painting is very conveniently hidden behind his body, but I suspect this was more an excuse to not have to draw the arm and shoulder than anything. The arms on the second melt away in to stumps--These suggest to me that you're readily avoiding having to confront any piece of anatomy you don't know how to handle.

My personal suggestion is to try doing some full body figures. Resort to reference if you have to, paint the whole thing from copy if you want. The sooner you start tackling these weaknesses the quicker you can put them behind you.

trixtah

these guys have huge abdominal muscles...

Mykonos

yeah i used reference photos for both of these, but to say i have trouble with abs is understatement like no other. that's why i've been doing alot of shirtless figures, mainly for practice sake. believe it or not, on the first one there wasn't a left arm, but your right in that I avoided to extend beyond that. I'm currently doing some more dynamic poses taken directly from reference and i'll post those within the next day or so

Mykonos

ok scosglen, I did my best to follow your advice: From reference, full body, did my best to clean the lines, and no texture brushes on bg. Hopefully I'm making a bit of progress

NakedZergling

i do not mean this to sound like an insult. i am just pointing something out that maybe you're intending and maybe you're not. These pics have a very homo erotic undertone. I have many gay friends and they have stuff like this on their myspace. I dunno if thats intentional, but it's feels like a chippendales art calender or something. all the rendering is nice, the top one is especially nice, but i just want to let you know some people might think its almost gay/fantasy type stuff. Maybe others feel i'm wrong, but even my fiance said, "It kinda has a gay vibe."

if that was the intent..bravo, looks good.
and even if it wasn't, they're still solid.

Mykonos

haha i was looking over those and thinking to myself the same thing. I'm still kinda new to using the whole stock photos thing, especially as I'm trying to do some challenging poses and perspectives, but picking reference photos that interest me after googling: nude male stock photos; or other variations; is kinda tough atm. Still I dunno why doing those interest me so much, being that I'm not gay, but they do and my mother and girlfriend are both worried about me. Thanks for compliment though.

Oh and I'm posting some women up shortly so hopefully that will balance things out a bit

DeeLock

That explains why i like them so much :P

NakedZergling

the place i go that has lots of photos of EVERYTHING www.photo.net go to the gallery section, you can select catagory "nudes" and view literally thousands of photos..great site.

maybe you're gay and noone told you...j/k

Mykonos

i guess my lisp and weekly manicures don't help my cause either...jk

thanks for the site, i'm checking it out now and it's looking to have a healthy selection

Mykonos

K, finished my first female painting. Kind of a challenge for me so hoping I got at least a few things right. Tried to keep a minimal bg but very open to advice on how to make a better.

Obilex

i absolutely love the hair. thumbs up

Ravenshadow

not bad.

You should soften up the bridge of the nose though. Its too dark and makes the nose look like a tube stuck to her face.

If nothing else, at least soften up the area where the nose connects to brow.

Mykonos

Thanks for compliments and heads up on the nose. I think I'm gonna rework that and smooth out the arm a bit cuz it's starting to get to me.

Mykonos

On this one I really regret putting in the red blood stains, but damnit I had flattened the image and saved and now its too late to fix it!

flundra

You gotta change your subject man. The whole time I've been here, you've drawn pretty much exclusively fit young men with futuristic weaponry. Draw something else, or if you already have, post them. Move away from the safety zone and so forth. For starters, paint a fat guy. No six-pack.

Also the brushes you use are mostly distracting and unnecessary. You need to rid of the smudgy feel you got going. Try painting the fat guy with a basic round brush, opacity to pen pressure.

And in stead of a random wonky background, do a realistic one. I'm thinking, a room, or something equally sensible.

I realize this is probably old advice for you, but I don't know what else there is to say.

Mykonos

your probably right on everything you said, it's just tough for me to branch out from a subject matter that interests me, but I think I'll start to deviate a bit more. At least if anything start drawing women more.

And yeah I too am getting tired of the custom brushes. I started to shift from them but the second one I posted was an old one I did while I was in that phase.

Also, I'm having a real difficult time working with a standard circle brush. I don't know why its not doing it for me or why I feel more at home using spackle brushes.

Ravenshadow

Working with a standard round brush shouldn't be that hard. Turn the opacity up to 100% and blend with the eyedropper. Don't use low opacity to blend, it makes the image look blurry and undefined (like that first one in your last pic post)

Scosglen

Using round brushes is as simple as it gets. No fancy brush settings or shapes to create texture or other variations for you--you have to learn to make that stuff manually, which is the whole reason why using a simple round brush is best for learning. It strips away all the shit you can hide behind in photoshop and is a raw practice in mark-making. The more complicated painting brushes that give interesting effects are meant as a time-saver, not as a crutch.

srsizzy

Are you using the smudge tool? If not, it looks like you are.

Oh, and you shouldn't.

Mykonos

srsizzy wrote: »

Are you using the smudge tool? If not, it looks like you are.

Oh, and you shouldn't.

no but it could be those brushes that are giving it a very smudgy look. I'm working on this portrait now so I'll do my best giving just the circle brushes a shot.