Tribal girl pg. 4 [NSFW]

Leggraphics

Hey guys.

I just signed up then on recommendation from someone on my website. I look forward to looking through some posts and getting feedback on my work.

I am 22, live in Adelaide Australia and am trying to get into the employment field of Concept Art and Illustration. I have had a few contract jobs in the area and am currently doing some illustrations for a kids book which I will upload some pictures of in the coming days.

I am also a member of Devient art under Leggraphics and have a website at www.freewebs.com/funkart with my work on it.

Unfortunately I do not draw and create full-time however I would really love to in the near future and am trying my hardest to do so:)

Please comment on my work that I post as I am constantly looking for feedback to help me improve my skills.

I will upload some newer works and pictures once I work out how this forum works and such, it looks like everything has to be linked though?

Here are a few of my works in the mean time

Regards
Dom

beavotron

hey there!
i like the one of the cats, it's cute, here are some overall crits though:

all of your paintings are extremely muddy
you need to work on simplifying your brush strokes and making more informed color choices
using fewer, larger more confidently placed strokes in replace of the smaller, more unsure strokes that you use.
particularly if you want to do concept art for the entertainment industry.

check out this tutorial:
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm#flatten_and_simplify

your work is very indicative of the first image of the two
very muddy and hard to read partially due to over-rendering, using really small brushes.

basically read over that entire tutorial, i think it'd do you some good
especially since the guy who wrote it is a professional concept artist, and that's what you're going for.

i also feel that you should be spending more time nailing the actual drawing and line work and less time on rendering
there are many proportion and anatomy flaws in this which make it seem as though you started cutting in details right away without paying enough attention to overall form, and composition.

that's it for now.
welcome to the forums!

Tube

Great stuff, although I agree with beav that it's all a bit blurry.

NakedZergling

The eyes in the first one are way too white. I know it's normal to think "Hey the whites of the eyes are white" but they're really not that white. If you drop em down a bit they won't seem to bug out as much.

Tam

It looks like you have a great capacity for likenesses.

As everyone else said, this stuff is all very blurry. Try painting with a hard brush and using fewer strokes. You have a lot of potential here, Dom, keep working.

Leggraphics

Hey guys,

Thanks for the responses already

I always have drawn my lines with many lines so to speak and i draw with very light opacity with soft brushes which im sure makes it worse. Most of the time I draw that way because I will draw heaps of lines and pick the one i think looks right.

Im going to read that tutorial now and yeah I never have had any life drawing classes or drawing classes for that matter so I'm trying to find a place in Adelaide but am struggling...

Regards
Dom

Mustang

Another from Adelaide, we are multiplying. (Winter Combat Knight is from Adelaide too)

Anyway welcome aboard, I don't have anything else to add to what the others have said. Don't forget to practice your sketching, it'll help with those proportions.

There are a few night classes run out of the Adelaide Arts Centre, I'm thinking of taking one this year myself.

Leggraphics

Hey, did a small test today.

I didn't spend long on it, maybe 20 min drawing the girl..

I did 3 'tests' trying to apply what I learnt in the reading of the tutorial as well as what you guys have said.

I found that the part in the tutorial where the tone should be flat at the top, eg more of the 'real' skin tone should show and shadows and roundness kept to a minimum was very useful.

Anyway.. the 3 tests.... I turned the opacity way up for drawing this as well as used a hard brush - i dont normally


Here is the same picture with 2 minutes of smudging


and here is the same image with the smudging and a bit of soft airbrushing


Please dont judge the drawing as its only like 20 minutes work but im more interested in what people think in terms of the way its painted. Should i go for sharper and just keep using a smaller brush? I 'think the lines are more direct in this drawing mostly because i just used a sharp eraser when i would normally use a soft brush.

And here is a drawing i did a few days ago. Looking back on it after reading the tutorial there is way to many colours in the skin tone

beavotron

i definitely already see some improvement
that is a huge tutorial, very hard to digest all at once
so go in parts

also on art school, you don't need formal instruction
until i started taking a formalized figure drawing course this year and a handful of design classes, i was completely self taught
places like this are swarming with professionals who will help you along just as much if not better than many university professors. i've sort of started to consider the ac like a mentorship of sorts.

there are students and working pros alike on here.
people who are in universities, ateliers, self-taught etc.

everyone learns differently
but i strongly believe the one and only sure thing that you need to get good at art is the drive and desire to get better.
this forum will help you a lot with that
it's a strong community, with tons of people to give good input
that being said, i think that schools and ateliers both have great things to offer, as do smaller continuing ed courses at universities, so if you're thinking of doing that, by all means, go for it.

so far you've been excellent at taking the advice, you seem really willing to push yourself, and take crits
i hope you stick around, there's a chat thread where you can kinda get to know some of the other members too, so swing by there.

again welcome to the forums, i think you have a ton of potential

NotASenator

stop hitting on the new people, Beavs

crawdaddio

There are a lot of things I'd like to address, most of which I either can't, or can't express as well as many of the forumers here. The nutshell of it, though: the first test is definitely the best of the three; the smudge tool in photoshop (as well as the airbrush, when used in the wrong way) are not your friends, because the kind of texture they generate is...well, there is no texture, which is the problem. Those things are, I think, the number one reason for people's work looking muddy. The second thing is that, looking at both of the color paintings you have with skin tones, I think your problem isn't that you have too many colors, but rather not enough (at least, not enough hues). The section on skin in the tutorial beavs posted is spot on about the differences in different parts of the skin being paler or redder (or even bluish or greenish, depending), in addition to the variations in color you'd get from the light source, and the various color effects that come with that (warm lights having cool shadows, for instance); it seems like you've kind of got variations on a single hue, which makes the figures look as though they were made of clay instead of flesh. I'd try my hand at a paintover to clarify, but that'd just give me tendonitis with this eraser-head pointer.

Anyway, I'd also like to welcome you to these parts, and I hope you stick around.

Leggraphics

Alien crash - Drew it last night and this morning. haha I'm fair hungover though but its just a test of the harsher brushes. Please comment guys, is it getting less 'muddy'? Im using higher opacity and sharp brushes. Im finding it hard to change technique I think... This is about an hours work.

I think you guys will get the impression from me that I dont do allot of 'finished' pieces because i always reach a point where I feel there isn't much left to be done apart from add more detail and then i kind of give up. Only a few drawings I've done I have spent the time doing like the leopard one. Most drawings I do take less than an hour.

I'm always looking to get better guys so dont feel bad giving criticism because I can take it.

Just don't criticize my spelling and grammar as I'm dyslexic o_O heh

4rch3nemy

I like the "muddiness" in that one.. the windy strokes seem to add to the strong winds in the picture.

crawdaddio

I think it's better, but I think there may be other issues that ought to be addressed before you get into changing your painting technique just yet.

There seems to be something resembling a consensus about a proper order when learning to draw, which might go something like this: first simple shapes, lines, and contours, to learn to draw what you see rather than what you think you see, and to learn the mechanics of shadows; then compound shapes (anatomy, seen as a collection of simpler and compound shapes, especially for the purposes of working out the shadows, or alternatively, as gestural lines, might make its appearance here); then properties of light and shadow (also known as value); texture; and at some point afterwards (skipping some things, surely), color. Not the only way of looking at it, but it's one route. My point, before I get too distracted, is that I think there are more fundamental things you should be working on. Don't get me wrong, you show an understanding of many of these things, but I would venture to say that that understanding isn't as well-founded as it ought to be. It can be seen as a pretty harsh prognosis, considering what I'm basically saying is that you ought to be drawing more, in pencil, from observation, and working more on anatomy, rather than working on color and brush technique in photoshop, but that's where I am, too; trying to draw from observation, working out form and shapes, brushing up on value; hell, in that aforementioned hierarchy, I would put myself below texture, so I've got a ways to go myself. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't do things in color in the meantime, or make an occasional painting like these above--even if I could enforce a thing like that, I wouldn't--I'm just saying that you'd probably see greater improvement in your work overall if you concentrated on drawing from observation and on anatomy before moving on to explore color (and composition and its ilk). And we'll help you where we can, with both.

Mustang

It's very flat, you really need to work on perspective with these landscape images. I honestly can't work out the placement of objects on that one. Also it feels your trying to hard to get things done quickly rather than done right, you might want to consider doing some quick thumbnail sketches before you commit too much to the composition. I think you're more than capable of doing awesome work, you just need to slow down, think and try to be a bit more patient.

Leggraphics

Thanks guys. Sounds like a plan. Ill go back and try some lineart and building from shapes. I honestly did skip that process. I basically went straight into learning to draw by drawing photos which worked well for me but I never learnt the basics of seeing things in shapes not as a whole and I think thats where things like proportion and lighting everything stem from. The reason i like to draw on the computer is I can flip the canvas horizontally to see it from a different angle to check things are ok.

I dont think I understand hue's properly as the term itself is a bit vague to me. But I think as was suggested I might try to work up from shapes.

Dom

crawdaddio

Hue's pretty simple when you boil it down; every color can be defined by three properties: its hue, saturation, and luminance (there are other names for all of them, like purity or brightness for saturation, or lightness or value for luminance). Luminance is pretty easy; it's how light or dark a color is. Saturation is how bright the color is (low saturation = greyer). Hue is what color the thing is itself, i.e., blue, red, mauve, puce, etc. There are different effects relating to all three properties which come into play when you start working on color theory (think color wheels and complementary colors and all that), but in my opinion, the coolest ones have to do with the magic tricks you can do with hue; that's the stuff you see in neo-impressionism (Van Gogh and pointillism and all that jazz).

Scosglen

On the alien crash painting: It's still pretty muddy. I also think you need to save your jpegs as higher quality files because I can see a lot of compression artifacting. The composition doesn't tell a story very well. There are a lot of significant and minor technical problems with the drawing in the painting (anatomy, cloth, the hair, on and on),but there is a bigger problem and it's lack of contrast. Aside from the girl and that bit of wreckage there is really nothing to look at here. If you desaturate the painting in photoshop you'll see the girl's dress and the wreckage stick out (because they are the darkest shapes) while almost the entire rest of the painting is a soupy formless mess of light gray--bad value contrast just makes it boring to look at.

I recommend that you stay away from color and work on your painting in grayscale for a while until you've got a better grasp on value and your rendering technique. Color is a much bigger beast than a lot of beginners might realize, and it doesn't make sense to compound your simultaneous struggles like this in my opinion.

In general: Stop using the smudge tool. Stick to just using plain mostly hard brushes and opacity control. Your 3 step grayscale painting of the woman a few posts back actually got worse the more you fiddled with it. Fuzzy edges from too much smudging and airbrushing is probably the biggest telltale sign of someone who doesn't know what they're doing with a wacom. You want to try as hard as you can to make your work not look anything like that.

Leggraphics

Doing stick figure sort of drawings to work on proportions and shape. Im working out shapes of things and boxing it up. I wont touch colour yet. What I might do is start by drawing a few humanoids in greyscale that way shadings will have sharp edges and be boxy to help me get my head around shapes and then light. As I said I skiped this step back in the day and I have always found it sooooo hard to draw robots and I think that is because of the lack of shapes. Well... hopefully it will fix up

Thanks for your comments. Thats the one thing I dont like about Devient art is that no one leaves constructive feedback.

Leggraphics

Mustang

Hrmm judging from what you've posted I get the feeling you're not all that aware of how to apply foreshortening to an object. In my opinion it's one of the hardest things to learn (there are only a few people here I'd consider to have a grasp on the subject (I'm not one of them)) but it's an absolute must if you want to progress.

You're probably on information overload at the moment, but this is just to make you aware of things that you might want to consider working on.

EDIT: Also I have no idea how good that tutorial is, someone may have a better one to offer you.

Leggraphics

umm well.. Basically to try to help me understand the form I have worked from stick figures to box shapes and now working in some flash, human form into the equation. Its taking a long time but "i" think I see improvement in the muddiness. Its kind of hard to get your head into knowing what is right and isnt right. Hard to explain but I think I need to condition my brain into seeing what other people see and not what I see.

I think thats where tutorials come in that say draw a human not as a human but as a 'thing' and a series of shapes. Thats what I tried to do here. I haven't added detail yet because I want to check with some of you if things are changing or I'm just re-doing same mistakes. mmm as was said there is allot to take in so im working on little bits of everything trying to keep sharp focus in mind as well as proportions and light.

I didnt do this drawing with references and maybe I should but I feel it would of made the process of making form from a series of shapes usless. I find it hard to put solid brush strokes in that I like, I guess I like the blury look because it hides mistakes and tonal problems but I have been trying to use long flowing strokes that run with the body to try to make it 'flow' like the human body naturally does.

anyway.. here it is... Comments please

Tube

I think it's important to point out that you're still doing really well. People forget to point that out sometimes.

beavotron

Cardboard Tube wrote: »

I think it's important to point out that you're still doing really well. People forget to point that out sometimes.

yeah this is true
you are doing awesome
and your attitude is perfect
you've not given any resistance to critique, which is really rare, usually people kick up a stink and go "it's my style" and blah blah, but you have this awesome willingness to improve which means you'll really get far.

people around here (myself included) tend to skip over saying the stuff that we see which is good and go right for the parts we think need work
which isn't really the best way to keep people around, but is the best way to cut right to the chase and tell you what needs improvement.
so yeah, i think you're doing really well, and i can see improvement already in your forms and stuff.
other people have given you crits already so i'm not going to.

Sublimus

For the figure studies, I highly recommend using reference. You will learn so much more that way.

Leggraphics

Here are these ones with a little more work and the center one done in a rough big brush. To be honest I really like the look of the middle one. How harsh it is yet simple and it still provides enough detail to actually know what it is.

mmm maybe thats just me lol.... anyway ill do a few from reference photo's now. Ill try to avoid photos that use a flash because they really mess up lighting because its from two lighting sources then. Ill find a nice simple one light source and work on shapes from there.

surrealitycheck

That middle one is great - her right arm especially, the thick black line on the side facing her body seems the perfect width, with the notch for her elbow.

Leggraphics

With reference, took about an hour. I change the face from the photo and I think you can tell because of the slight lighting difference mmm...


You guys seeing an improvement from being 'muddy' ? I have noticed that when I export to jpeg it does take away some of the 'lines' in the drawing mmm i can see in some areas like the top side of the legs it isnt a clear line, same with the top shoulder... mmmm I think I will work on this a bit longer with higher alpha.

Thanks for your kind comments to guys. I understand people can get carried away with criticism but its ok. I really want to push myself because I really want to get a career drawing and since I only started drawing late last year when I gave up my music career I have allot of catching up to do. With the few contract jobs I have had the biggest compliments I get is that apparently most graphic designer and drawers 'go off' or get angry when to much criticism is given and it is sent back to many times. I really love it as I want to draw and create for other people, not just me.

Sure you cant please everybody but we create for an audience and them liking it and maybe taking something form it is what gives me the kicks. Its why i want to create for games or movies because both have such a huge impact on todays society

Im disappointed that I haven't got a job yet apart from a few contract illustration jobs so I really need a push. I've been looking through the forum at some of you guys work to and there is some really really good stuff so I know I am getting good advice

*EDIT*
Ok looking again at what I did I spent another 10 minutes on it and made it allot sharper I think and I think you guys will like it more. The lines are more clearly defined.

Leggraphics

I'm going draw crazy but yeah I did a drawing of a dragon a few months ago and since finding out I need to sharpen my images up I re did it and went over it and made it less muddy and more crisp. Tried to fix the lighting in it as well. Still having difficult with the extra lighting source the flame but I definitely see an improvement since the old version
Old version

New version

Tube

That's a big improvement in the second picture. The picture of the girl is good too, although the light source seems inconsistent.

NotASenator

it really is a huge improvement.

You are getting better by leaps and bounds.

To extend what tube blathered out of his stupid head, shouldn't all that fire be casting a lot of light on the dragon?

Leggraphics

haha yeah I know.. fire makes light sure but I had no idea how to draw that in. Ill give it a go maybe tonight after the movie. Going to see my bloody valentine in 3D lol...

Here is another drawing I did just then. About 30 minutes. I always love to draw dragons and they come so easy to me. I have over exaggerated the light source and tried to keep the angle of it simple. Still not adding any colour just because as was said earlier probably best to leave it out at this stage and fogcus on the shapes and light.

Here is two versions of it. one with texture and one without

Scosglen

I think a lot of people here shy away from too much praise to make it clear this is not DeviantArt and nobody gets asspats without earning them. That said, you're definitely among the better end of the spectrum in terms of having the right attitude and taking advice to heart, and you're putting your money where your mouth is and putting up lot of updates.

Your rendering technique could still use a good deal of refinement. I think the best thing for really getting a strong grasp on photoshop brushes is to try doing a study from a photograph and do the best job you can replicating the forms and paying attention to how the edges terminate. Right now too many of your edges are still fuzzy and careless, like in the dragon picture it almost looks like it was drawn with crayon.

Post up the reference you used on the painting study of the leggy woman and we'll be able to give you more specific advice and on how you can improve it.

Leggraphics

mmm I think i need to find some lighting tutorials. I'll try your suggestion scosgien. Ill try to find a high res photo to work off so I have the detail to copy.. Im using a funny looking standard brush in photoshop. Maybe I'll give the circle one a go but I really dont like the look of it on the canvas.

more light and smoke

surrealitycheck

I saw this on youtube and thought this might help you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzoHhgrHrEg

It's a guy speedpainting a dragon with very basic colour usage, but remarkable effect!

Leggraphics

That video is cool. The dragons are veryy cool:)

Been doing as sugested and working on a reference photo. I probably should of picked a reference with a better quality but I like pulp fiction and I dont think its coming up to badly so far
Original

My drawing

Mustang

You're having us on aren't you?
You're an awesome artist whose pretending to be a novice aren't you?

Leggraphics

Mustang wrote: »

You're having us on aren't you?
You're an awesome artist whose pretending to be a novice aren't you?

haha godd I wish I even have a dodgey website and am struggling to get any work in drawing or even graphic design. I have such a broad multimedia degree which I finished last year and I'm really struggling. I have started illustrating a poem my sister wrote to get it published and hopefully start to make a name for myself.

After I improve a bit more I will re-send my resume off to a bunch of places and hopefully this time at least receive one positive response I came across this forum because someone I think I applied a job through said I should join it and has been right so if that person is here 'Isaac' I would like to thank you

I work hard at the things I want and I struggle in some areas of learning and life but music and hopefully art comes a little easier and I love doing it. It is my dream to work for Pixar or something like a games company.. I think its many years off but I have to keep trying

A main issue I have apart from what has already been said being lighting and well drawing technical knowledge which I am working on is I work very quickly and kind of rush through something and then its over. I need to learn to slow my thoughts down and add more detail. As shown in that pulp fiction thing that is only about 45min to an hour work. mmm I draw in shadows and light and then fill in the details which makes it all work quickly but I still dont see things in shapes. Only in light and dark. Anyway off to work and have fun this weekend and I'll be back on the ball monday

Id like to thank you all again for the progress you have help me made so far I'm stoked and looking through this forum you all seem so talented and I'm honored to be getting criticism and advice from you.

Regards
Dom

Scosglen

The pulp fiction drawing is exactly the kind of thing I like to see. You're making mistakes and that's a GOOD thing. If you don't stumble a bit then it's not a study worth doing.

It looks like you're jumping a little too soon into the latter steps of the study and not spending enough time observing and setting up your drawing to ensure accuracy. I did a little paintover that will reiterate this, but two things to always keep in the forefront of your thoughts when drawing from observation are: Is the angle of the contour or edge accurate, and does this shape line up where it should relative to others on the same axis in the canvas/page (plumb lines).

So here is a section your reference side by side with your painting and some notations that I have made in red, corresponding to explanations below. Almost everything noted here is spotted using some simple tricks for analyzing shapes.



A. The window frame in the background isn't just window dressing, it's part of the scene and is actually a very helpful tool to ensure accuracy of your foreground figures if you know what to look for. Notice the strong, sharp edge that the light from the window creates against the suit (You may recall the term "negative shapes". Sometimes it's easier to draw the background against an object than the object itself). Notice in your painting how this edge is wobbly, and the shape is a bit off.

B. I've drawn here a horizontal "plumb line", which is simply a vertical or horizontal straight edge that you can use to compare how various features should line up on your drawing. In real life you can hold your arm out and use a ruler, pencil, string, or any other straight edge to do the same thing. Notice in the reference how the top of the gun lines up neatly with John Travolta's chin. In your painting the gun has fallen too low and it throws the gesture of the whole figure off. John's pose doesn't have the same intensity from just this little mistake.

C. One of the most appealing parts of this photo is the cool graphic effect the strong rim lighting makes when it plays with the suits and arms. In the photo the folds of the jacket fabric create strong, graphic shapes, but you've muddled around with little brushes and grays. You're too concerned with getting every little crease and furrow in there and not enough with the big picture. These edges should be high contrast and sharp.

D. Faces are always tricky, especially celebrities when you have to be foremost concerned with likeness. I could write a whole post about getting John's face right, but I'll just boil it down to a few things to watch out for. His head just a little bit too big in general. John has a big forehead but it's not quite as big as you've drawn it. His face meeting his hair creates a very high contrast edge, it's almost white up against black. That means you have to be extremely delicate and careful with getting the contour right. The features are also handled a little too heavily to match the slightly overexposed look in the photo, and the handling of his mandible is also not quite subtle enough. John has a very slight scowl that is mostly lost in your drawing of the mouth, and again goes to show how just a little mistake can take away greatly from the character of a figure.

E. Once again, negative shapes are our friend here. In this case, the negative shape of the back wall against Mr. Jackson's shoulder reveals a big error-- Mr. Jackson has slid far too much over to the left in the framing. We can also see a sliver of light from the window behind detailing John's other arm that has been almost totally lost in your painting.

F. Angles are important to pay attention to! For every shape, that goes for the background too. If you look closely you can see that the frame leans to the left in the photo reference but in your painting it's gone the other way. A little mistake like this can throw the construction of the scene off and make things look lopsided and skewed out of perspective. It can also make it hard to use things like negative shapes to help you (like in E.) when you have inconsistencies between big forms like this.

G. This shape has gotten a little too thin in your painting, which can again throw off your negative shapes, plumb lines, and all sorts of other details. It's an important bit of his jacket so it's important to make sure it's properly proportioned. If we look a little to the right we can also see John's undershirt-- notice how it's just a bit darker than the bright white we see up near his collar.

H. John's shoulder is raised up almost like a little hill here. It's subtle but it's important to getting the gesture correct. We can see in your painting that the angle isn't quite high enough and the shoulder just kind of wobbles down.

Whew! Anyway, here is a QUICK little summary paintover taking most of these changes into affect and showing what a few little fixes can do for you. I'm sure mine is a bit off in some places and the likeness isn't perfect but hopefully it gets the point across for you.

One final bit of advice is to USE BIGGER BRUSHES! Use the biggest brush you can get away with when painting something. Be foremost concerned with the whole image, then the major shapes before the details.

Urantia

I see major improvement from first post here.

This will soon lead to rock hard abs.

Leggraphics

Hey guys.

Scosgien:

Thanks for the very detailed reply and hints. I feel stupid that I never thought about using lines and grids to check placement on things. I have used the grid technique before but I guess when I work from photos I don't try to make it look perfect because then its not mine. I will try again using the tips you have left me tomorrow. Unfortunately I am going to be a little slower because I got 2 fingers broken friday night at the party I went to. ahaha mmm. some girl slammed the door against my finger tips right on the end on the nails. My nails are black and really hurts lol... I didn't even realise my hand was in the door for a few seconds and then WOAH!

Drawing those outlines over the characters 'lines' felt like a click for me to. I am discovering I am just working in to bigger space at a time and not spotting these lines. I am looking for shades and blocks rather than lines and I think you made me realise that is most definitely wrong as well as inaccurate.

I appreciate the time you spent on writing it up for me and I know I haven't got you gave me in one go but I will re-read this post a few times and work it out I think I definetly rush through these paintings to much to. I gave the time frame on-top of each of these drawings and I think I need to spend more time working placement out before adding anything else which I think is the main thing you were getting at.

I also read on another post for giving another new person feedback that starting off with the solid round brushes might be a good thing instead of using the more shapely complicated brushes. So I will give all of this ago tomorrow. I wish I could try today but I have work in an hour *sigh*

Also, great paintup you did

Urantia- Thanks for your kind words

On another note this is a pencil self portrait I did of myself about two months ago. Id like to give some more pencil drawings a shot soon. Its really weird but when I do pencil portraits people always end up looking heaps younger than they are

and good ol walter M

I did this in pencil and Pen - I really like this one