Practice Sketch

I'm starting up a new freelance job this week to do character design art, so here is a quick practice sketch just to get me in the mood 

Ghost, new personal illustration

This is a personal illustration where I tried to work some on of my recent composition studies. I'm trying to learn to hold back detail in an effective way, and felt that a ghostly figure would be a good practice subject to keep the details very soft and undefined.

Also, for some reason the image keeps posting as a very light version. Please click the image to see it as it should appear (link will open in a new window).

And here is the process video:

Figure Drawing Studies, Level Up!

After a few weeks of doing a little bit of anatomy study each day, I am pleased to announce that I have improved my figure drawing! In all honesty, I had gotten pretty awful with sketching. I had been cheating my way through anatomy by throwing colors and values around on a canvas and just re-working it until it looked right. WRONG. DON'T DO THIS! It ends up taking so long to get something that looks right, nevermind that it probably isn't right. I have wasted so many hours repainting figures because something was off, but I couldn't figure out how to correct it. Instead of using that time guessing, I should have been studying more. I feel like studying is very similar to physical exercise. I have heard so often of people just starting out who exert themselves for maybe 10-15 minutes and they're tired, whiny, and frustrated. If it is done consistently however, the body adapts and allows you to improve a little bit each time. 

Ever since school, I've been so against studying anatomy. I have always found it boring, tedious, and scary. After I received my portfolio review from an artist over at Riot Games (where he said I needed to really study my anatomy), I told myself this was it. There was no way I'd grow my career as a character designer or concept artist if I could not depict the human form correctly. Thus began my rigorous study. I've been doing about 1 hour of gesture drawings every morning before I start work, and then trying to squeeze in a good 3 hours of long studies throughout the week. While I haven't been happy with a lot of what I'm doing, I do see a huge improvement and would like to share that here. 

OLD (a year or so ago)

 

 

 

February 2014:

March 2014:

 April 2, 2014

 April 16, 2014

New, today (April 20, 2014)

(I also did some Game of Thrones screenshot studies, I had to throw them in here!)

A failed painting attempt and some new sketches

I've been working hard on studying some male anatomy, which is my poor excuse as to why I haven't been posting anything on this page in a while! I have a real hard time sharing my study work, but i hope that once I begin applying it to sketches and paintings, it will become evident. 

I started this new painting idea based on some inspiration I had from a song. I wanted something a little creepy, but still very sentimental. The concept behind it is that this man is a necromancer who was blamed for the cause of a plague that swept through a village. He fled while others remained, and lost his daughter in the chaos. A week or so later, he returned and summoned his daughter back from the grave.

 At this point in the process, I really liked how it was looking. I didn't want to fully render it out as a painting, but I did want to try my hand at creating depth using out-of-focus areas with detailed areas, as well was practicing my values. 

 Along the way, I was beginning to get really frustrated. The colors weren't coming out as I wanted them. I was aiming for a foggy, after-the-storm forest look, but I couldn't get away from wanting to do bright greens and warm sunlight. I expressed my unhappiness to my boyfriend, who took a look at it and said that he thought the composition, perspective, and color scheme were all too similar to things I had done in the past. Frustrated by this, I realized that he was right and decided to scrap it. I still love the idea though, and may come back to it at some point and try to make it better. For now, here is a closeup of the characters.

I've also been super busy with work this week, so to unwind a bit I went very loose with some sketches. They weren't planned out and don't make a lot of sense, but it was nice to just doodle without a sense of purpose.