The Girl with the Puppy Backpack

  A quick sketch from my lunch break. Long story short, I'm working on a better "cartoony" style for myself, I don't like how Ive been drawing this kind of content to this date. But I do like how this turned out a lot and I'm going to try to develop the style further from this point!

Painting the Second

Okay, I'm a bit behind pace, this one took me longer then I thought.

This was inspired by a documentary I was watching called "Human Planet". In one episode it showed a group in Mongolia that use golden eagles to hunt their food. The coolest part was an image of the father and son riding their horses across the plain while having the eagles perched on their arms.

In this case I decided to amp up the size of the eagle and change the horse to a Muskox, I wanted some cool horns, what can I say?

Process below!

For the next few paintings I was thinking of trying a close up on the riders face, I've been wanting to try a portrait anyways.

Painting month, 1st post!

So the goal from today (Jan 12th) until the release of Dead Space 3 (Feb 5th), is that I'm going to do a painting a day. The reason for this is that I really want to spend some time playing with different Gamuts, brushes, etc.

In the spirit of the end date, the release of Dead Space 3, my first painting is a giant monster. Rawr.

1.5 hours - alwaaaays in Photoshop.

City Scape

One thing I learned while painting the image for the previous post was that it was just plain boring looking. After some looking around I think it's because there wasn't really a whole lot of dynamic or focus. I tried to get a lot more of that in this painting. It comes from generally the same idea, it's just a different view of that city. So still a lot of inspiration from buildings found in Venice Italy.

My plan is to keep improving on this, I think it's a fight between creativity and the skill of painting in itself. It's hard to do both at the same time, so hopefully my paintings will become more solid and less boring on a nice upward plane as I go.

 Again the goal is the get the nice look scene in concept art from games like Mass Effect, I think I still have a ways to go on the polish, but like I said before, I think I'm on the right path to it.

Factory

So I'm working on the whole painting thing, I'm not 100% happy with this but its another step. I finished this a month or two ago and wasn't going to post it, but ah whatever, may as well!

till next time.

Application time - soldiers

I decided to apply some of that gesture practice to a drawing finally. I think it worked out pretty well, although I'm sure I still have a ways to go.

I decided to drawing some soldiers clowning around, so first the design:

Admittedly I did the poses first not thinking I was going to take it further, so the design came second. I then applied to the poses as you can see below. I was considering painting it, but I think the shade worked out pretty nice so, maybe I'll leave it at that.

I also had a lot of fun drawing the rifle, first time I really tried to make a gun design, it was a blast I have to say... no pun intended. I really wanted to stay on the sci fi theme for the time being, so more to come in the future.

An important lesson i'll never forget

So This Blog is basically to document my progress in getting better at art, and just as importantly, re-discovering what I like about it. The first part of that has been coming along well, but to my surprise, the second part, is just booming!

I honestly viewed this blog as a way to force myself to do the chore of getting to a point in art where I could draw my armored unicorns fighting spaceships and move on. However, It's becoming so much more than that. I've learned a very important lesson, and although I wished I learned it earlier, I'm really excited to be moving through it now. That lesson is firstly, basics are king, and you're never too good for them. The second part of this lesson I'd really like to stress, viewing it as a chore was a horrifying way of thinking, and doubly so, I 'm happy to move past that self defeating state of mind.

When I did the painting for my last post, it was to take a break from a bigger painting I'd been teasing for a bit. But as the lesson I've been learning goes(and sadly had learned in college but ignored), was that detailed crap is still crap, and 20 hours later, I abandoned it. That's when I decided to gear this learning process in one fundamental direction, basics first.

Gestures are definitely a defining point because if the gesture is bad, the structure following it will not make the drawing any better, nor will the anatomy layered on top of that and nor will the clothing, laser guns and helmets on that. Taking it a step further, neither will its paint job. So simply ignoring the first step, which takes all of 20 seconds, you can spend 20 hours to finally realize you made a fundamental error, and it was all pointless.

A lot of old advice has been flooding into my cranium lately, mostly from my friend over at Chroma Sketch. The biggest of which was to read Walt Stanchfield's notes. I'm happy to say I picked up a copy of "Drawn to Life" last week. It's beyond awesome and very inspiring.

I'm really starting to understand that this is a lifestyle, and to be great at art you really have to live it. Between gestures, anatomy studies, and just observing more, I can really see the huge benefits that will come from this. I understand now that although my goal has always been to create cool sci fi and fantasy characters/environments, that in between, I must, and will enjoy a regiment of practice to keep my skills sharp, and my visual library primed and ready to go!

So ending this long winded thought, drawings! The are all from coffee shops minus the nudes, which came from stock I found on characterdesigns.com (I can only afford so many drinks haha).

 The last one here is the one I think I got the closest to the goal, note the girl sitting on the right side of the page, very few lines, shows the pose, not to caught up in anatomy.

I admit as a whole these are a bit touch and go, but I'm having a lot of fun trying to drop my bad habits and work towards the ideal point of the exercise.

Lastly there are a few I did that aren't gestures but I'm putting up anyways. Obviously gestures are a means to an end, and another part of that is anatomy, structure, aesthetic etc. So when I was trying to wrap my head around a collar, I ended up drawing this. I only bring it up because I think the relaxed demeanor of the pose is a bi-product of the gestures, since I usually end up with something stiff and lifeless. But I like it stylistically, and I'd like to play more with drawing like this in the future.

 

This second one here is a quick study I did of lips since I've been having a bit of an issue with them, especially in 3/4. This is part of a larger effort to do more anatomy studies, primarily focused on facial expressions. I've started doing a lot more, but here's the start.

Although the number of drawings here are pretty limited, since two weeks ago, ive filled over half of my new sketch book. I hope with much more study and practice, I'll be able to post more and more of them. I know not every attempt will yield a great gesture, but I'm only now finally getting some consistency in my artwork through these exercises. Despite having a long way to go, I'm finally excited about art again, and that's more then I could have ever hoped for.