MerekatCreations.com :: View topic - Progress, An unnatural resistance to-

Posts: 17 Joined: 20 Oct 2008 Location: Seattle, WA, USA

I've been having a go at art for the past few years, not really seriously, but not flustering in stagnation either. The curve of noticeable progress has been rather logarithmic though, and I do believe the onset of apathy is to blame. I've reached a point where I seem to sketch just for the sake of sketching, without real purpose or drive, and any great ideas I have are beyond my ability to produce. I do want to continue growing as an artist, I do not want to give up the practice, for me, philosophically the creation of something is such a beautiful pure representation of self.

This being said life as a solitary artist is not working out so great (go figure), I am in need of outside support. After lurking in the forums for a while it seemed that this was a good place for a few sharp kicks in the right direction.

(It seems a common thing for the new artists in this forum to be requested to provide a brief background of their artistic forays so as to better assess the direction they should be headed. I hope, in the following, that I do not digress.)

I like many others suffered the tragic beginnings of a tracer focusing on the anime of the time, drawing in the margins of middle school notebooks, not developing any real form or vision for a while. Since high school I've been shifting out of this habit, trying to study the basics and eventually develop a style I can call my own (this resulted in many failed attempts to "forget" the mannerisms learned while in the denial-of-what-art-requires phase). A flaw in the plan: in hopes of developing an unaltered, "pure", art form, I abolished all concept of reference material (sort of a one step forward two steps back situation). I very soon began to see the error in my ways.

In college, where resources abound I've begun focusing on figure study. I'm going back to the basics and slowly becoming comfortable with realism and the idea of sculpting an image onto a page rather than projecting it. I still have difficulty bringing myself to utilize references but that seems to be residual guilt at the failings of the past and the fear of relying too heavily upon a source image. I've been looking into various methods and am currently following with Bridgeman and Hogarth but it seems Ryder is popular here so I should look into that as well. I try not to use other sketches as references because this seems too diluted to be effective, but I try to utilize the instructor's methods on other references. The current method with which I approach method material is derived from something I saw once about treated the human skeleton as a mechanical construct and rather inventing it instead of drawing what is already known. This makes a good deal of sense to me as a problem with artists such as myself that so frequently occurs develops from drawing what one expects as opposed to what one actually sees. Therefore, treating the human as an foreign figure would generate a much more objective representation. I am not currently taking any art classes but that is because my engineering regimen is already quite stressful and I have a long way to go before I can pull together the semblance of a portfolio for applying to the program.

(-end [PROSE] ... hopefully)

(These are arranged roughly from most recent to least recent and cover the span of the last six months. The majority of them are at least partially referenced.)

The following two images were completely referenced (save the figure in the top left of the second image). I pull most of my references off of ShutterStock, FotoSearch, or ModelLaunch, the name of the photographer/model/whoever-owns-the-image is written next to the sketch. I could probably pull together the original reference images if so desired.

For a while I focused on pure anatomy study, without attention to pose, simply the proportionality. The main images here are the major results of this foray, there are thumbnails of intermediate sketches that led to this point.
(EDIT : All made into thumbnails, large versions linked.)

I did a few gestures/skeletons trying to comprehend some more complex poses (in this case a breakdance freeze).

Thrown in, here are a few head shots. The first is pseudo-referenced from life, both faces on the second image were directly referenced.

The last is pseudo-referenced (I believe) from an image but I cannot recall the source.

As far as unreferenced work goes, to provide some slight insight as to how my idea of the figure has been changing, the following is a grouping of character designs that span the same time frame as the above study material. I began writing a text-based game while fighting through an art block, and eventually became quite obsessed with concept art (partly the cause of my discovery of these forums). I decided that a good way to pull myself out of said art block was to force myself to create concept art for the game (despite the fact that there is no GUI). Each of the figures was drawn on a separate sheet, they are supposed to be proportionate relative to each other, but, alas, the first created (the male knight) is rather larger than he should be. In addition to this, the lack of feet makes many of them rather taller than they should be if there is a common ground line. The progression here is least recent to most recent.

I am trying to focus on realism the best that I can, the way I represent faces is still greatly influenced by prior dealings with the anime/manga style of things. I have difficulty with hands and feet, although I am trying to overcome this by treating them as I am learning to treat the figure. I am also having problems with the neck and its connection to the ribcage. I have not been placing as much emphasis on tonality as I should be, which seems to be a grave error as the figure is very dependent on its three dimensional modeling, a feat which is so much better achieved with light and shadow.

I appreciate any and all advice you can offer.

Posts: 359 Joined: 18 Jun 2006

hello ziinyu! welcome to the forums. ;}

wow, that's quite the read. thank you for typing all that, it's all useful information. and because it's so indepth, I'd like to make sure I cover a few points and give you a decent response. however it's now 1am and I have to get up early tomorrow, so if you don't mind, I'll make sure to write up a good response this weekend.

I'm just putting this note here so you didn't see my responding to the other threads but not this one and think it was on purpose. ;}

to give you a heads up, yeah, the ryder book will be mentioned in your case. ;} but I'd like to explain why I think it would be directly beneficial to your work and the habits I'm seeing.

aight, see you soon! and welcome again!

Posts: 17 Joined: 20 Oct 2008 Location: Seattle, WA, USA

(Thanks for the rain-check Merekat, I was ever so close to feeling singled-out.)

So I poked through Ryder a bit in the bookstore, and realized just how ... different his method is (the ellipsis, in this case, implies "radically"). Working from the outside in (EDIT I realize I completely swapped the directions in this statement) makes a lot of sense, as it sort of modifies the gestural stages of the drawing. The figure becomes increasingly more complex, but rather than working outwards from a skeleton, this complexity is discovered by working inwards and continually refining the image. I plan on picking up a copy in the library today.

(The following is some pre-Ryder work from the past week, most recent to least recent.)

A few more-abstract poses, it was harder to pull reference dots for the torso with these.

Various sketches from reference, trying to grab a bit more shading on the main one.

A filled version of the partial page from last post.

... a hex on foreshortening.

Posts: 359 Joined: 18 Jun 2006

hehehe yeah, I can be infrequent with replies, so please don't take it personally. time makes whooshing noises as it passes me by, and I often don't realize a week or two's gone before I know it.

As for your discovery of the Ryder book... yes, it is radically different. ;} That is precisely why I love the perspective of it so very much. The traditional method of skeleton and spheres and cylinders and so forth I consider nonsense when it comes to life drawing. Those methods give no rulers to apply to what you are seeing, they just come up with somewhat idealized symbolic proportions that they expect to be universal. Sure, the body may contain similar structures as another in comparison, but only in theory. In actuality, everyone's body is so different, there is no good way apply those generic shapes and expect to get anything accurate at all.

Ryder's method is so wonderful because it can apply to anything, including animals, props, architecture and environments. It doesn't work from the inside out, it works from the outside in, abstracting the form into measurable shapes that can then be further refined. Absolutely I would suggest you get a copy of it, and if you have any books in your permanent library, I would whole-heartedly recommend that one as a primary staple.

Anatomy and medical knowledge is great and needed, but only applied as a tool for life drawing. But in practice, it's like you said: treat the body as if it were an objective form. So forget what you know and just draw what you see.

So as it applies to your work, I think this is fundamentally what is biting you in the butt right now with proportion and realism. It's really great that you're trying so hard to apply the muscles to the forms you're drawing. I think that is a fine practice, but for now, I think your need to put the forms in is obscuring your seeing what the forms actually are. So I think we should take away a couple of your crutches for now and take off the colored glasses. ;} Part of this is from your anime background (don't worry, we all do it... mine was saturday morning cartoons...), but also from bad books telling you fussing work that creates more bad habits than anything. I'm very unfond of Hogarth books, even though I too studied them as a young artist. I couldn't get past his style to see any of the information he was trying to teach. So everything that I did was pretty sloppy and curvy like he enjoys to draw. Can't stand it now, sold all my books.

For you, I have three resources for you to use in the homework I'm going to give. The primary, of course, is you need to read and study that Ryder book. Read through it a few times and understand the principles he's trying to convey. Personally, I don't like his 'envelope' stage, I prefer the blocking out for measurement, but all in all, his way is far superior to anything else I've managed to find.

Secondly, I'd like you to study Kevin Chen's work. He's a great artist that teaches at the art academy in california... rather well known. But his method for breaking down the body is superior to any Hogarth you'll ever read. ;} He also employ's a lot of great body line work... meaning, flowing relationships of gesture and form that help describe the pose and grace well. Here's his blog that lists his class studies: clicky ... be sure to check out all the weeks, the rest is hiding in the march section.

Thirdly, here's a great site for stock photography that I enjoy: clicky You'll have to get a DA account, of course to see them... they're all nudes. But I would consider them of high quality, very artistic and tasteful.

Now, for the zinger... I'm giving you all these references that have plenty of curves in them, but for your first homework, I don't want you using a single curve. You've got some habits that need breaking, and I don't want them getting in your way for learning some good foundations. ;} So study Chen, study Ryder, use some fun photography but give me nothing but Ryder-method angled lines. How about... 5 drawings, no bigger than 5x7 and no more time for each than 15 minutes. Think simple shapes, focus on proportions and try to see the body forms as silhouettes first. Also, I don't want these drawings very complex, and completely forget about drawing a face just yet. Draw them like you see in cyper's thread in this forum. The shapes are simple, the attention is direct. Once you can get a good outline and silhouette, we'll move onto other things and more interior details.

How's that sound? ;} Remember, NO curves! Absolutely none!

Good luck, and don't hesitate to post if you have any questions. In fact, I'd encourage posting in other folks' threads, too. Feedback is a great thing. ;} heheheh... and it'd be fun if you guys talk to each other now and then. This forum can be more than just waiting for me to respond. I'll try to drop kick the others to do the same (if you guys read this, consider yerselves prodded! hehehe) ;} *wink*

Posts: 17 Joined: 20 Oct 2008 Location: Seattle, WA, USA

I went out for a bit today and picked up a nice paperback edition of Ryder, so I have begun my thorough read (as opposed to a previous casual perusal). I've been testing out the method for the past week or so and ... it's quite amazing. I love being able to indicate posture without having to mess around with someone's spine or ribcage, and, ironically (as at this point it only uses straight lines), everything seems more fluid. That being said, the transition has not been what I'd call a smooth process, and I still have a long way to go before I can consider myself comfortable with the block-in style. The first figure I drew took somewhere on the lines of an hour, mostly of comprised of silent chanting ("it is not a human, it is a shape", "don't lose the abstraction, hold it, hold it" etc.) and erasure of curved or incorrect lines. At many times I felt the silhouette slipping away and grasped desperately for it. Breaking through that wall was the hardest part, it began going better, the next was only half an hour and after that everything was under 20 minutes. The envelope does seem a bit weird to me, it has it's prose and cons. It is very good at establishing an overall balance quickly, but if the distances of the envelope are not correct it provides a false guide for the rest of the proportions. Ryder's slant/angle method is just plain weird, I struggle to understand his compass rose philosophy. The building inward of a figure is very good though, starting with a few approximations and then just building in the details. It is much easier to analyze a straight line between two points than a curved line and this allows one to better keep track of the interrelations of the elements of the image.

The following are the first seven (note that this is an in-progress post, not a homework-complete post, I am still taking too long with each sketch and going into far too much detail).

(references NSFW)
1. (Jogger resting)
2. (Dancer pose)
3. Dark Tree - 1
4. Dark Lady - 1
5. Suspense - 3
6. Suspense - 4

As a side note, thank you for the mjranum-stock resource, the images are so dynamic and playful, a healthy repopulation of the morgue ( ... that was a very strange phrase). I have not yet looked into the Kevin Chen blog, any more so than a cursory glance can offer, but I hope to poke around it this week.

Posts: 359 Joined: 18 Jun 2006

excellent job so far! (as will be probably habit with me, I'm apologize for the delay in writing... actually had a funeral to fly out for, then family visit and now holidays. oy no rest for the weary. ;})

yes, I do believe that some points of ryder's way are a little fuzzy to non-veterans of life drawing. heck, probably even veterans. I am not a big fan of his envelope technique because i think someone who is learning how to draw human anatomy to begin with doesn't have the trained eye for proportions and form that can completely be abstracted to the envelope. the principle is fine, but the practice is a very hard leap for most folk, myself included. in fact, I'd go as far to say I outright don't like it and have opted to skip it, myself. ;} If you'd like to do the same and go straight into the blocking in stage, I'm all for it. Whatever grabs you and helps.

Other than that, I do think his method and eye for approaching it is far superior to just about any other method out there. and it sounds like you've seen it's merits once you've slogged through the initial growing pains. ;}

for your new stuff, I think it's showing a great start. I can see in your later drawings some more ease with the form angles, but you're still struggling a bit with proportions and form. also, for now, I would avoid any reference that has too much little information in the clothing silhouette, such as the one with all the buckles and nuances in the sky captain (great references, though, I like him a lot!).

focus on form or very simple clothing items for now. and for these, don't be afraid to extend any of your form lines into the body... if a little nick of a shape creates the ribcage, I won't begrudge you putting that indicator in. ;} the main point of this method is seeing the anatomy from the outside in, but that doesn't mean you can't put the occasional inside part in there as well... I don't mean details like eyes or mouth or such, but big landmarks like the clavicle or tuck of a deltoid or the ribcage, etc. whatever describes form and helps you pull your silhouette together. again, don't focus on the inside, continue what you're doing. but if the inside slights will help you a bit, let's try it.

the ryder method I like using as a foundational building block. once you become familiar and comfortable with him, we can move into weight shift and gesture and movement. but first, you need to really eye form. ;}

so how about another 5-10 small sketches of form. no bigger than 6" tall, keep it under 15 minutes each and keep focusing on form and proportion. I see you're starting to get it, and it'll need to take some practice to get groovy with it. ;} keep up the great work!

PS. Oh and hey, hehehe could you guys try to post in each other's threads now and then? :} It'd be really cool if we could build up a talking community. I think that might make things a bit more lively whilst I try to get my posting derriere in here for crits. ;} we're all in this together!

Posts: 17 Joined: 20 Oct 2008 Location: Seattle, WA, USA

I'm afraid it has been quite too long since I updated this post, but I have been suffering ... health issues, and I apologize for the delay. I hope to again become active in these forums

I have been continuing in the Ryder line of work but have also become interested in the human-as-creation approach. I have stayed mostly to the outside envelope drawing in approach but have branched out on some parts as I felt like testing and progressing in the method. Some of these figures therefore have some gesture lines drawn upon them, there are some tests of speed and full muscullature as well. I am continue to pursue my FLUX project (a text based game I am writing and for which I am designing concept art). I am also working on a short soundless visual narrative that I wrote but never felt comfortable executing.

I am still having difficulty staying within the time limit, and there are a few sketches where I explore this and try to give a time-lapse view. I want to see what I have completed in 15 minutes and what more I feel I need to do. I suspect I am pulling in details that should be left to the contouring stage.

This was an experiment I did to see if I learned from one fifteen minute session aspects about the figure that I could then use in a second session. Both figures took slightly more than 15 minutes.

For this, there were two images I had to use, from the same photoshoot. Both started with the Ryder method, but on the first I then went back and tried to flesh out the musculature.

I did a short series of breakdance poses that I found while building my morgue (a similar ballet segment follows later).

There were a few images I did from a set of poses from a photoshoot collected in my morgue, on a few I tested with facial expressions and tonality.

For two figures I placed gesture lines over the Ryder outlines.

A few miscellaneous figures.

Lastly the ballet series. I am rather proud of the couple pose. The approach was different than I had imagined it would be, rather than drawing each figure seperately, they were drawn together, and that symbiosis made their emotion much more visible.

That's all I have for now, but I hope to continue these experiments and look forward to further criticism and advice (thank you for all your guideance and support).

Posts: 359 Joined: 18 Jun 2006

Hi there! Welcome back.

In general, the Ryder method is really my preferred system of measurement rather than using cylinders and spheres. However after understanding the measurement part for proportion and anatomy, there's no rule in not including gestures. The method just gives excellent structure and then the art is laid on top of that. ;} The goal beyond the sharp edges is to start realizing where the line grace is vs. structure.

For your drawings, I think some are more successful in the overall proportion than others. And really, I'm looking at the proportions first rather than worrying about the sharp angles because it's easier to loosen up on the lines once you learn exactly where to put them as opposed to trying to tighten and place at the same time. Your last break dancer, for example, feels more proportionate and I can see adding the movement and flow on top of her would be relatively easy. The first one with the leg bending to the head seems very bottom heavy proportionately, even with the parachute pants.

Your sneaking naked man below them I absolutely love. Seeing facets of the values/shadows is exactly why this method really can help nail things down. Seriously, this is one of your best yet.

Crouching man, very solid. Moonwalking man, also good.

For your gesture lines, I agree these are the thrusts, just try to see them more in relationship with the silhouette. I don't draw the movement lines in the middle of my shape because that's not how you read them. I line them up with the forms of the body. So you're technically right but it's not working for you because it doesn't help adding gesture and flare to the silhouette and overall style.

Nice proportions on those, though.

Misc. figures... not bad, but not your strongest.

That ballet first was a very hard pose, but I'm believing you! Well done. Same with the couple pose. I especially love the girl, but I think the male's head and extended arm can use a bit more love... seems out of plane with the body.

Very well done. These are overall heading into the right direction. How do you feel about them?

Posts: 17 Joined: 20 Oct 2008 Location: Seattle, WA, USA

I'm really enjoying the perspective that is developing from these studies. The philosophy behind the style is very innovative and unique, and when one is not overwhelemed by the symbols in a subject there is really quite a lot to see. I have been suggesting this method to a few other artists in various forums and communities and I always describe it as two dimensional sculpting. Taking an abstract shape and removing the negative space piece by piece until what you have constructed is the actual figure. I also give more respect to straight lines, simpy for their use in relating overall proportions.

I don't have anymore artwork in this line of thought just yet, but I do have a new direction that I'm taking and would like to address here.

I have recently decided to apply to art school (specifically Cornish College of the Arts as it is local) and am putting a portfolio together. I am applying to the Visual Communication Design program and maybe Illustration. I'm gathering up all of my significant (and to an extent, insignificant) pieces and trying to take a selection that represents the range of my media interests. I took a portion of the portfolio to an open house there recently and got very positive reviews so I am excited about the actual presentation. I also took my sketchbook with the Ryder studies which recieved a lot of art philosophy questions and praise for the theory behind it as well as the developing technique (for that I truly thank you).

Anyway I would love to present my portfolio works here as I document them and get criticism from this forum so I can really polish it for the review.

For the time being here is a list of the pieces I intend to include:

1. Submission for the 2008 Chinatown Film Festival Logo contest
I created a huge InDesign vector of a phoenix and bridge (it actually turned out to be more of a poster than a logo) a bit of typography.

2. Bed / Desk design
I just moved in to my first apartment and had no furniture so I designed and built a bed and desk (complete with 24" lightbox). I plan on including the blueprints I made for the project.

3. M.e.m.e.n.t.o
Recently I have begun illustrating a silent narrative I wrote a little while ago. The premise is that a portion of the day of five different characters is shown, focusing on their interactions and relationships, the full story is only revealed after the final character. (I would also like to work on this through this forum at some time).

4. Lit-Mag excerpt
I was the Editor in Chief of my high school literary magazine and illustrated most of it.

5. Newspaper cover design
I was the Photo Editor of my high school newspaper and took part in the design of the covers and spreads.

6. Fictional Journal covers
I took an intro design course in college and one of the projects was to design covers for a fictional architectural journal.

7. Pop-up Book
I had an assignment to create an art book in college (beyond that we artistic freedom). I choose to create a pop-up book. The popups were three-dimensional faces. I could find any previous design for faces so I had to create it from scratch. I had a few of my friends give me random word association poems they had written. I then overlayed a typographic representation of their poetry on the paper for their faces. I printed the faces on transparency and used plexiglass for the pages.

That's all I have right now, but I haven't sorted through my traditional media yet. I need to find or create some drawings from life and choose a selection of five of the Ryder sketches. I also might include some photography.

I hope to have more artwork up soon, until then what I am really looking for is general portfolio and presentation advice. Thank you.

Posts: 359 Joined: 18 Jun 2006

Argh... yet again my posting delays... This probably doesn't help you with your portfolio now, but I'll try to give some useful feedback anyway. For the record, I was under a Windersday rock for 6 weeks putting in a buncha work for the game I work on. Check out my forum gallery (when I post it) to see details.

In reading through your list, I'm seeing a LOT of diversity. This can be good and not so good, depending on the results. In general, yes, it's great to have a lot of variety in your portfolio as this shows flexibility and experience in trying a bunch of different things... IF you can pull them off.

One of the biggest complaints I have of student portfolios is they're often trying to push diversity at the expense of quality. Sometimes this is the fault of the school, as the courses (especially if you're in a gaming school) stress the entire process. So a student could have modeling, texture work, animation, concept work... all in the same book. However usually someone isn't excellent in ALL of those subjects. Yet, they feel compelled to include them.

So though by your descriptions, the projects sound great, I'm not seeing too much of an underlying thread tying them together. I would suggest you take a critical and editing eye to your book and do not include anything for which you would have to apologize or make excuses.

I think your design layouts and covers have relation. I think the pop up book could be refreshing, depending on how it turned out. The logos are nice, but if you were to include the illustration narrative, I would do so only if you had other illustrations you'd like to bring along OR the narrative were done in more of a storyboarding fashion, which would make it more graphic design and thusly related to the design spreads. Else, I think it kinda seems oddly out of place, along with the desk design (if there aren't other construction designs to go with it).

But then again, if they all were excellent, sure, throw them in. It's just that usually, if you include one of a new category, it's good to have others of similar vein to support it.

My two cents.

So how did the interviews go? When was it? What have you been up to? :}

Posts: 17 Joined: 20 Oct 2008 Location: Seattle, WA, USA

My life has taken a new turn (for the better) as I will be attending Cornish in a few weeks and persuing a career in Visual Communication Design.

I had the review about a month ago, and it went very well. I had not yet perfected the portfolio, but if I rescheduled the review I would no longer have been applicable to start this Semester. I went ahead with the unfinished piece (pretty much what was listed in my last post) and presented that as it was. They really enjoyed any pieces for which I could give detailed process and concept development information, and particularly were interested in my philosophy about art. You were correct about which pieces would be weak or strong, based simply on how well they related to design or other pieces in the portfolio. I think they were looking for strength in design as well as one or two secondary interests. For me, they picked up on my photography, as well as some illustration (although this was not as strong). Below is a link to the portfolio (.pdf) and an analysis of how they viewed the pieces (using the same numbering as the previous post, not the order in the portfolio itself).

Portfolio (Broken) (Best viewed in 2-Up Continuous showing cover page.)

EDIT: I apologize, I did not investigate the upload site I was using very thoroughly. Upon closer inspection it is full of ads, pop-ups and other undesirable properties. I will try to find a better one and re-upload the portfolio.

1. Submission for the 2008 Chinatown Film Festival Logo contest
They really liked the experimentation prevelant in this, particularly with opacity and reuse of shapes. There was not much comment on the typography, though I feel it is the weakest part of the piece. Due to this piece I was informed that I would likely be able to test out of the Adobe Illustrator course.

2. Bed / Desk design
I was most worried, when entering the interview, about explaining how and why I was going from an Engineering study to an Art study, this was meant to be a piece illustrating that transition. They liked it, but commented on the awkward perspective (orthographic). It is put together entirely in Adobe InDesign, and each piece is a set of black outline objects and 30% opacity white objects. This was to make edges that could not actually be seen lighter, further lighter as they went deeper and deeper. The effect is ruined in some places due to the necessary stacking in InDesign, a piece could not be simultaneously above and below another piece. I would like to redo it in a 3D modeling program at some point, to show experience in that field (once I take some courses in modeling).

3. Memento
This was definitely a weak piece of the portfolio, but I was lucky enough to include a few storyboards for one of the pages. That was far more interesting to them than the illustrations themselves. This is an ongoing narrative that I complete in my spare time, the plot has been entirely written, and some page layouts have been completed, but right now I am struggling with figure and perspective so as to complete the book.

4. Lit-Mag excerpt
They liked the initiative this piece showed, and enjoyed the multimedia approach to the cover. I am quite interested in the use of multimedia artwork in design, so I was able to use this piece as an introduction to my passion in the field. The page excerpts were regrettably low-scale images, so a lot of the page layout elements could not be appreciated, I believe that eventually I will change it to include only one page instead of a page and a spread.

5. Newspaper cover design
These were also well recieved and gave an indication to my background in photography. They are somewhat typical of cover designs, but they had some unique twists from what is normally seen. Due to this piece, the journal covers, and the lit-mag I was told I would be able to test out of the Adobe InDesign course.

6. Fictional Journal covers
These were included so as to show previous classwork in the design field that had been completed. These were rejected for the class they were originally intended (due to distortion of the typeface) and are not individually strong. However, they enjoyed seeing the development process and the various experimentations before the final product.

7. Pop-up Book
This was probably the favorite piece of theirs (as well as mine) in the portfolio. It is interactive media and I was able to give a lot of background on the concept of the piece. (I regret that I do not have a page for the book yet, perhaps this will be finished at some point.)

I am still working on building and completing the portfolio, so advice and criticism are well appreciated. The format they requested was everything in 8.5 by 11 which at first was very restrective, but ended up giving me ideas about how I could tie everything together with an overarching design. At the bottom of each page is the name of the piece, the date created, the materials used, and a collection of symbols indicating other attributes of the piece. The pages were printed back to back on cardstock. As I keep my sketchbooks organized and compartmentalized there wasn't any one that served the purpose of a journal (though I did show my Ryder sketchbook) so on the back of each page are process, alternate, or detailed images relating to the main piece. When it is finished, the pages will be held in a paper box, the front and sides will be cardstock, while the back will be transparency (showing one of the pieces immediately). The front will show a logo I am creating as the prospective identity for a design firm I someday hope to start. Inside the folding portion of the top will be the meanings of the symbols used. The idea is to be able to print many copies of the portfolio, and interchange the pieces in each box. In this way a customized portfolio could actually be given at each interview. I was forced for this design to resize everything, meaning no originals were included. As most pieces were digital, this did not significantly effect the presentation, though I know that original works are preferred.

I recently purchased a tablet (a Wacom Bamboo 4 by 6) just to get a feel for the interface. I did not expect that it would come easily or naturally, but it seems I overestimated the difficulty of the device. I love the smooth nature of the lines and pressure variation, and though the screen mapping was at first awkward, it now no longer requires any thought. The support for it is also excellent, so many things may be controlled by the pressure and tilt of the pen.

I created a portrait (from reference) to try my hand at digital painting. I have never tried this before, so I do not know any of the correct methods or tools, but I enjoyed the result and am eager to learn more.

(Included are thumbnails of in-progress images.)

My goal was to complete the painting using only brush and eraser tools, no smudge, blur, or burn / dodge. I am working with Adobe Photoshop CS4 on Windows Vista. The brush I used was 50% softness, pressure controlling size (to a minimum of 50%) and opacity, sizes ranging from 25 px to 500 px. I created a starting pallette but ended up mainly using the eyedropper to select intermediate colors. At first I was concerned that my shading was too harsh, but now realize that it was in fact too soft.

EDIT: The more I view this incomplete piece, the more I realize the differences from the reference. In my first trial of the tablet I neglected the relative proportion training of the Ryder method, and drew separate, disconnected elements. The profile line (particularly the lips and bridge of the nose) does not match the original and the eye is incorrectly placed. The shading on the back of the head is rough, but a better approximation of the tonality than that of the front of the face, which is too light. The head is incorrectly shaped, but I expect to remove that portion as it is not included in the reference.

Any advice on the technique of digital painting would be greatly appreciated.

I hope to be taking a class in figure drawing and one in color theory, but my schedule is, as of yet, unknown.

(Cross-commenting in this forum you say? It seems like such a strange concept, but I may give it a try ...)

EDIT: I have recieved my schedule and begin classes today. I am quite excited about my courseload, it is a good balance between traditional and digital media, many of which are applicable to this forum.

I am taking the following:

1. Figure Drawing I
2. Color Theory
3. Digital 3D Visualization
4. Book Design I
5. Multidisciplinary Improvisation
6. Art History II (Post-Roman to Renaissance)

I hope to post work from these soon, particularly from the Figure Drawing I, Color Theory, and Digital 3D Visualization.

Posts: 359 Joined: 18 Jun 2006

Heylo!

Excellent! I'm so glad you got into the school, congratulations! It sounds like it went very well. How are things going? You're probably getting close to a midterm by now, no?

It's okay that you don't have a link for the portfolio, I'm just glad you noticed the undesirables of that site before I got to it. ;} Thank you for your diligence. Heh... my taking forever to critique has some benefits I guess. But I do apologize for the delay. *sigh* I'm just going to have to put some disclaimer on my forums at some point.

Though I can't see the pictures, your descriptions seem pretty thoughtful. I'm very curious to put the images with the text, as a lot of your observations are interesting and I see some nice attention to process. I also really like your customized portfolio idea. That's something not a lot of students —or interviewees, for that matter— think about. They usually assume one portfolio fits all. Well, that's only the case if you've done it all. :} Not many people fit that bill. So optimizing is best.

Tablets are bizarre animals, they take time to tame. Or rather, they take time to train you properly in the ways they want. Try to maintain your hand skills, the wacom is nice, but it can teach a lot of bad habits. The disconnect from eye to hand is one, the muscle memory from short, truncated strokes from the scaling is another. If you find you like the tablet and use it very frequently, I would recommend getting a 9x12 at some point as that forces you to move at the elbow and keeps more normal strokes.

As I wrote on Christian's post ( in the tea time forum), my secret to my painterly style is I didn't know any better. I forced photoshop to somewhat paint like acrylics. I'm not saying I'm completely convincing at that, but it's why my work isn't always recognizable as digital. The fact I'm trained as an illustrator and not a fine artist is probably why it's noticeable at all. I'm working on loosening up and looking more like my peers. :} At least, for the practice of it.

You're right to use only brush and eraser. Only trained professionals should use the other blend modes. ;} *wink*

Personally, I make do with mostly a hard round and barely any soft round use at all. If you raise the firmness on your pressure in the wacom tablet interface, maybe to enh... one or two blips short of full, then you can use less opacity and rely more on the stroke for your transparency. It won't solve all of it, I still plunk down the opacity to the occasional 30 or 40 for a nice blend, but most of the time I work at closer to full.

Big important rule: no eyedroppers. Try to avoid it. Try picking your own colors. It trains your eye and also gives more reliable tone as photos have many dots of color in a pinprick that what you select isn't necessarily viable.

Sounds like you have a full load of great classes. Learn a lot from those history courses! Those are gems! Tell me how things are going by now, it looks like an excellent schedule. :}

Posts: 17 Joined: 20 Oct 2008 Location: Seattle, WA, USA

Work for school has been (over)whelming ... not ... because it has to be ... but because I’ve decided it’s good policy to double the instructor’s expectations for a piece (it’s all right though, my colleagues follow the same principle). On the sunny side of the world, however, I have been getting an awful lot of very diverse work done and even have developed a few new portfolio pieces. I feel like I am doing rather well, creating some good connections with the faculty, and learning a whole variety of new techniques. That being said, I’ll gladly incorporate criticism and direction from the home front of the Mere Forum (every time I read the URL of this place I just chuckle a little bit to myself, such a modest title).

I have yet to find a trustworthy upload source, so for the time-being I have exported the portfolio pdf into a series of jpg files. I include them here along with the title of each piece (I apologized that the descriptions are split across the two prior posts). (They are only linked as some of them represent work from much earlier than the first post and disrupt the continuity of the thread.)

1. Submission for the 2008 Chinatown Film Festival Logo contest
2. Bed / Desk design
3. Memento (Process)
4. Lit-Mag excerpt (Process)
5. Newspaper cover design (Process)
6. Fictional Journal covers (Process)

Onwards to the school work.

Firstly, I want to talk a little bit about the Figure Drawing class and show some pieces from that. The direction we are taking is a bit of a jarring break from the Ryder regimen, it focuses on gesture and weight of form. There isn’t a lot of mention of abstraction, though we do implement it, just in no named form. I didn’t realize, until switching out of the Ryder technique, what an impact those studies had on the way I perceive spatial relationships. I am almost subconsciously comparing angles, drawing verticals, and creating abstract shapes from the figure every time I sketch. The medium is, for the most part, large format charcoal works (2’ by 3’ news), but there is no one technique that we use. We started with simple three line gestures (focusing on the spine, hips, and shoulders), moving on towards studies in tonality, modeling, and individual features. The format of the class is to sketch do three hours of figure drawing, followed by one of portraiture each week, with outside homework focusing on a different facial feature every week. We are working from models and have also been provided with a great resource of the open studios in the area. I have a rather concise list, but I manage to make it to 10 - 15 hours of figure sessions a week.

I have discovered a great fascination with the different techniques and exercises used in figure drawing, and I am compiling an archive of as many as possible. Each teaches a new form of perception, and the combination of all of those forms an individual, abstract sight is.

1. Three Line : Identifying the Spine, Shoulder, and Hips.
2. Gesture (used in Ryder) : Capturing overall motion of the figure and visual elements.
3. Landmarking : Positioning elements by geometric and spatial relations.
. Internal Anatomy : Building the figure from the inside out, skeletal structure, musculature, and then skin.
5. Blind Contour : The pencil never leaves the paper and the eyes never leave the model. Teaches the artist to see contour in everything.
6. Surface Contour : Drawing only on the surface of the figure. Sometimes this means only using parallel lines (cross-sections) similar to “Rind”.
7. Pure Contour : No tonality, only variations in line weight.
8. Pure Tonality : No contour, only blocks of tone.
9. Geometric Simplification : Reducing the figure to spheres and prisms.
10. Ryder Block-In : Abstraction of form from the outside in.
11. Modeling : Ignoring strong lighting, the figure as if it were marble.
12. Distance Shading : Shading the elements which are farther away from the artist.
13. Stress Shading : Shading the elements which are under physical stress.
14. Negative : Working lighter from a medium tone.

(I’m sorry for using this space to list these, but this thread has become somewhat of a process book for me.)
(These are all life drawing techniques, so things like standard spacing and proportions are not included.)
(If you have more standards I’d be really interested in adding them to the repository.)

Anyway, now for the art.

These are all pieces done in ink or pencil, as I was able to scan them and have yet to photograph the charcoal works.

My line quality seems to have degraded pretty terribly over the past few months, but I am trying to bring that back together and be more concise with my lines. These are all from one three hour session, they start off with thirty second gestures, then one minute, 5 minutes, and eventually 22.5 minute poses. Regrettably these are from about a month and a half ago, I hope to have newer material documented sometime this week. A form of stylization that I favor is shown in some of these. I tend to use a very small medium, an 005 Sakura (which, I have learned, is not for gestures) or a .03 mech pencil. For this reason, I like to use lots of contours and abstract swatches of tonality in the subject, hatching them to achieve a grayscale. I have started leaning on this, and my works become more and more metallic and reflective, and less fleshy, so I am trying to escape from it. The last piece is a technique I was trying to develop with a description on the side.

I have a few more digital paintings to present, this time just silhouettes. The first is a poster draft (sans detail) for an event my uncle (a former curator) is hosting at Maple Grove Cemetary in NYC. Mother’s day is the most popular at cemeteries, so they are holding a remembrance event. Christian customs follow the leaving of flowers at grave-sites, but in the jewish culture stones are left instead. For the event, participants will be writing messages and painting flowers in white on black stones. I created a concept based on the old 1800’s style profile portrait being composed of stones. The reference for this painting is the same as that for the painting in my previous post. (Also, in regards to the prior painting, I was using eyedropping to refer to the collection of colors within the painting, not the photograph. As I was using only partially opaque brushes, there were many tones that existed in the painted face that were outside my limited initial palette. I have done my fair share of photographic whitebalancing and share your woes of pixel selection.)

I wanted to try a bit more costume design, so I have also included some silhouettes I did as a part of a modified Character 101 schedule. I eventually want to model these figures, so I included an additional side view. The character is that of an angel for the game I am creating.

The religion in game is sort of a western structure meets eastern philosophy.

(... and now, an interlude.)

The angels are a group of once humans that have ascended to heavenly status. A human becomes an angel, when at a moment of their death or the death of another at their hands, they become aware of both the full spectrum of good and full spectrum of evil (a little Genesis here). They are not good, nor are they evil, they are keepers of the balance. They fulfill the traditional role of protectors, as well as that of hooded death. The people begin to fear them as they are the bringers of mortality, and lash out against the angels. There are two gods, one of white and one of black, embodying the elements of life and death. Humanity does not understand the balance of the dark and light (as they contain the divine mistake of free will) and they deny the black god. This leads to chaos, and the warring people begin to tear their world apart in search of immortality. At the final instant, when the earth is shattered the gods sacrifice themselves to create a network holding the remnants together. And thus the age of god has ended. The remains of the gods embed themselves in all living creatures leading to a power shift towards the magical and natural. For a time there is peace as the people weep for the sacrifice of the gods, but soon they forget their past. With the death of the two gods the race of angels have become insane, and begin to destroy themselves. They have not been seen since the sacrifice, but they still exist in the most holy and unholy of secluded locations.

The main image that I wanted to get across in their design was : HUMAN (rather than angelic).

These are the first two designs (male and female), the rest are yet to come.

And lastly, for something completely different. This is a rendering from a project in the 3D class I am taking. We are using Cinema 4D, which is , while not industry standard still a very powerful program with a beautiful interface. The assignment was to create a table setting (with the double assignment being to create a complete interior). The focus was on various simple NURBs manipulations (such as the Lathe used in the wine glasses). My concept was for a juice bar called Fr:uce (with an umlaut on the “u”) that specialized in pure fresh juices and fruits of exotic varieties. Customized blends could be designed by the customers and mixed on-site. It would also serve fresh fruits, liqueurs, and sorbets. I became a bit too involved with reflection and transparency in this project, making everything out of a semi-glass material. The structural theme is that of the number five, if you look for it, you can see it represented in most elements. I spent the most time detailing the napkins. They are folded into apple shapes, with the napkin ring sitting over the stem (the corners) and containing a silver leaf.

(I wish I had a better render for this, as it is I had to turn it sideways to fit my forum sizing scheme.)
(Why do I have a sizing scheme ? ...)

I am working on an animation of a time lapse iris opening, but it’s just the model, I want to polish the lighting a bit before putting it up on vimeo and showing it here. The class is very focused on modeling, I don’t think we will get into texture mapping or rigging though. There is a companion class on character animation, so it is probably covered there. Be that as it may, I would like to get involved with it before taking that class. I have yet to use any form of texture in my projects, because most of the stock textures are very unnatural in their perfect state, and I don’t know how to grunge them up. It is a very interesting field in which you work, a nice balance of dimensionality. Final project in this class is an animation to music. I am using “La Corde” by Yann Tiersen from Tabarly (he also did the music for Amelie), and am working on a concept involving alpha mapped animations to simulate the effect of ink diffusing through water.

The ECCC sounds like it was really successful, I regret not having attended, but I was finishing up a project for class (actually it was the Iris design), perhaps next year. It’s nice that the forums are seeing a boost of energy recently. I intended on commenting around the other active posts here, but instead ended up being a regular critic over at megatokyo instead. This is the way of things I guess.

In other news I am putting together a website in the meantime (and teaching myself actionscript along the way) to showcase my work. I’m working on acquiring iris-design.org as this is the name that I desire for my distant-future company (dreams a’plenty). I know I should use my own name (been reading Freelance Design in Practice), but it is rather bland and horribly common so I wanted something to set me apart. I need to become more active in the art community and develop an identity for myself so portfolio and website branding has begun.

I was thinking though that maybe we should have some form of group thread here, a party thread scenario or a teaching one. I was reading back through the old Character 101 threads (original and rogue) the fight threads, the parties and contests, and even the Masterwork debate threads, on megatokyo and was remiss for the presence of such a place here. I don’t really know the logistics of upkeep, as I have never participated in one before, but it seems like an interesting idea. I don’t know if it’s a structure that requires mod support or is a product of user initiative. I think there are 5 - 10 active (for whatever meaning that description holds here) artists here, so perhaps we could drum up support. As megatokyo Art is so fond of crossing over with Creative Writing I though maybe we could cross over with megatokyo (a lot of us came from there anyway), do a little collaboration both ways.

Just thought I’d put in the request.

EDIT : So the Semester has ended and I am enrolled for next year.

I’ve become really interested in indie gaming and started developing an RTS game (mostly along the lines of tower defense). The art style is minimalist, two dimensional, with all layers set to multiply and a user defined color scheme. I plan on getting some mock-gameplay images developed and posted here. Inspiration for the game comes from a collection of games that have both excellent gameplay and a beautiful interface [flow] [auditorium] [fractal] [eufloria] as well as two whose overall feel, artistic and structural, was perfectly unified [World of Goo] [Plants vs. Zombies]. If anyone has insight on flash development, I’d be very appreciative of advice for the field.

I’m putting my RPG on hold for a bit. The goal for that was to create a sandbox style emergent gameplay interface, but it seems like Fable (and now GW2 with your dynamic event system) have already crossed that bridge.

Another digital sketch recently, part of a series for the MTA&D:SCT.

Posts: 17 Joined: 20 Oct 2008 Location: Seattle, WA, USA

(There's a bit of new work going into this one, so I decided the double post was acceptable ... perhaps though ... I am wrong.)

I recently visited New York for a week with my uncle (he's a local of Queens) and picked up some commissions (well, really donation requests as they are all for not-for-profits) for some web design. I'm doing the site for a community organization centered around a cemetery in Kew Gardens (this might lead to doing the site for the cemetery itself, which would be a legitimate business venture) and for a growing organization whose goal is to get the highschool generation interested in performing arts. They're actually pretty wonderful, they get donated time from the Broadway types and then use the proceeds of the shows they put on (featuring students) to run the program overseas. I also managed a visit to the Met, they had a feature exhibit on drawings (mostly pre-lim work for the paintings) of the great masters. They had an awful lot of Tiepolo (which were beautiful, especially the ink wash ones) and a series of exquisite figure studies from other Italian artists. They also had a pretty expansive Picasso exhibit, which was nice to see the development of his style, very confirming of the fact that for stylization to work, one first has to have a really good understanding of the realism underneath.

I expect to have some mock-ups going for the websites by the end of the month (perhaps some functional layouts), but right now I'm working on scripting an interactive calendar that can be used in both.

Anyway, on to the art.

As I was out for a bit, I missed a lot of the MTA&D:SCT deadlines, so I have some pieces for that that never managed to get submitted.

I found a great photoshoot of couples stock, so trying to get the relative proportions balanced has been a challenge for me. With this one I tried to focus on negative space.

These two were studies of working with a toned background instead of a white background.

This is a piece for a story I am developing, single panel (per page), without an ending yet in sight (although in all likelyhood it will be suicide) about a little girl who is actively distanced from reality. She lives a horrible life in the slums of some 19th century European city (going to have to do some research) and has invented the world around her so as to protect her from the horrors of her actual life. The real world will be portrayed only in black and white (well, grayscale) while everything that she creates will be in vibrant color. All reflections will show the real world, and she will see reality whenever in physical contact with someone (as well as in situations of extreme trauma). The goal of the project is to create standalone images filled with symbolism, exploring different media and comic development techniques (I have another narrative which I am not yet comfortable executing due to lack of technical expertise). I would hope to update it weekly, though I would have to get a few pages going before I would be confident in that.

Anyway, this is part of the first storyline, the woman is a prostitute named Rose. In this frame she is standing with three other prostitutes (each with a head of different flowers) one of whom is being led away by a client who is taking one of the flowers from her head. Hiding behind Rose is her daughter, Lilly, who has a single flower in her hair. Throughout the first 50 pages or so, Rose develops a relationship with Lilly and then witnesses the murder of both her and Rose.

The inspiration for this piece is Dali's "Woman with a Head of Roses". The pose is referenced (I will have to do some studies of high-heeled shoes though, they completely distort my understanding of balance).

These last two were studies for speed painting. I haven't really done any, and haven't worked with my tablet for long, so I am quite slow, and don't have a very good sense of developing a gesture digitally. The first took 39:30, the second took 45:00. With the first I was also studying the use of pure black and pure white on a toned surface.

This was one I just started recently, I have probably already worked 15 minutes on it, any thoughts for improving my efficiency?

The last one is a page from the design document draft I am developing for LIGN, the game mentioned in the previous post. This is a concept for the logo and its interactive use in the main menu of the game.

EDIT: Here's a bit more, these were for the MTA&D:SCT final week (full figure), but I didn't get a chance to scan them in time. I managed to scan them completely out of order, but they are numbered. Each is fully referenced, a few use the RYDER technique, some are more gestural, and the occasional one will have tonality applied. I also managed to find Lois Greenfield's website. The images there are all downloadable (not in a flash based layout, though admittedly low resolution) and there are quite a lot.

So I was in the midst of all these figure studies, when I decided I wanted to try my hand at something different. I have been reading through all of the old threads on here and picking up some tips, pointers, direction, and general art philosophy. One of the realizations I came to (or at least admitted to myself) was that to grow as an artist you really have to push yourself to do things that are just beyond your capability. I have been trying to do this, but only really superficially. I have been trying different poses, experimenting with portraits, changing media (did my first oil painting last night, quite an experience), but always saying within the same general subject material, that is, the figure from reference. In part, that's because it's the right way to do things, in the humble opinions of most around, and I agree, but to some extent I find myself becoming too involved in the reference and losing some of the individual creativity. So I set out to do something different, that is, to create a character without reference (at least for the pose).

First I tried to create a figure with pose reference, but it just wasn't really what I was going for, and I felt my focus slipping again.

Then I decided to remove reference completely and just go with a neutral pose. The conceptual side of things I kept along the lines of what I have been reading in Rad Sechrist's How-To Blog. I tried to incorporate design attributes, balanced but asymmetric shapes. Everything was curves with very few straight lines, and everything could be simplified to simple forms. I wanted a stylized figure as ... well ... this was going to be a PIRATE.

Okay, so, I know that pirates are not quite standard subject matter (it's not the usual attire in clothed figure sessions), and when they are, they are stereotypical to the extreme. So I had to justify to myself the creation of said pirate. As such I created another game concept. Now this game won't ever be realized, but I got to conceptualize an entire art form and aesthetic for it. Figure proportions will be very stylized, but more importantly it will be 2 dimensional ... with some depth. The idea is sort of that for every location there will be three levels of depth, the center level being default, the next closest being transparent, and the next furthest being low contrast (atmospheric perspective). The characters will be animated as if they are two dimensional, but everything else will be very flat. There will be pirates though, so really, all is well.

The resultant (non referenced) figure design.

From this I learned that I should use reference. Okay, so it's not terrible, it it was actually really interesting to see where I really was in want of a reference and where I was more comfortable constructing, nevertheless, reference, even multiple reference, even non-exact reference is always useful. That being said, I really like this guy and plan to do more with him (next post).

EDIT: So I went in and updated the Community Mule, he was in need of some love. There's more still to put up (haven't put my links up yet, just the ones that have been tossed around here), and I need to get links to sites for all of the books. -_-

We (meaning the entire forum) should really edit him more often, keep him up to date (I haven't even checked for broken links yet). I split the artists up based on that for which they are most often referenced, and I added a LINE & TONE, STYLE, and MODELING post, as those were the most frequent categories for those things that didn't really fit anywhere else. I'm thinking maybe we should put up a Miscellaneous post as well, for everything that didn't make the cut (maybe a Visual Narrative post, as there are many of that persuasion here). Anyway, those of you that are frequent modelers, I don't have too many links for that, so if you could fill it out that would be great.

EDIT: A bit more work to put up.

I recently started taking an oil class at the local art academy. It's a really great class, but oils are a crazy medium. Everyone talks about how forgiving it is as it never really dries, but they lie. Each brush stroke is crucial, and color mixing is strenuous, if you don't have a good palette you don't have a good image.

Anyway, so the professor is great, but I have to give a lot of credit to the things I learned on this board. She introduced the figure via Ryder (go figure) she was talking about envelopes and I was trying not to smile. It was nice though, I got to get the proportions down within about 10 minutes and spend the rest of the three hours working on values. We only went between Burnt Sienna and Titanium White, temperature comes next week. The method that is taught here favors black and white value development before going into color, we talked about this in class as indirect painting, where the value underpainting shows through to the end. We are going for a more direct painting style, that use laying down pure opaques. After getting the silhouette and some of the blocking done we go right into large abstract swatches of a limited palette and then mix those for intermediate values. It actually turned out really well, especially after I started using (as she calls it) "Dissolution of Form", that is, the blending of background and subject tones for more dramatic lighting. I hope to get that painting up here before too long, but alas, I fear we may continue working on them, so I will wait (all that buildup for nothing, right?).

The moral of this story is that I have been trying to replicate oils in photoshop. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. ... Ha. It's impossible! I have tried varying everything, but I can't get the brush to act the way I want it to behave. I've tried opacity, blend mode, gradients, blurs, smudges, variance, wet edges (any idea what that is used for?), pressure settings and the like. I can't even develop a finely toned palette which I would like to, as such I can't get any of the values I need. The rules for oil include a single layer and no erasing (though if breaking out of these rules wouldn't be so bad). Anyway, first attempt.

Reference : 06_2009_004

Parts of it are okay, most of it is terrible, this is where I was trying everything. Before I get smited for using burn/dodge, know that I didn't, that's actually low opacity on multiply with the same color (which is most likely the burn algorithm, but I didn't know that at the time). Actually, what I noticed is that the best parts are those where I remained high opacity solid swatches, where it gets fuzzy is where it loses all form.

Second attempt.

Reference : u12594869

He's still in his initial stages, but is coming along way better than the other girl. I developed the palette using something that you (Moogle) said in Son8's thread about determining temperature using a really low opacity layer with a strong hue and then painting with that hue (after color shifting it so that it matched) on a slightly higher opacity. I also used this method on the background and I have to say it worked really well (thanks Moogle).

On both of those I include progress frames and references (I really need to go back and find references for the rest as well).

So here it is direct question time: How do I get photoshop to behave like oils?

Ideally I want a brush that combines a solid edge with 90% opacity, slight variance in size, 50% average blur, and 35% strength smudge. Is creating a composite brush like this possible in any way?
How about a brush that behaves like an empty brush only containing the medium (like linseed oil)? It would have to do a little bit of smudging, but what was smudged would sort of overlay the replaced pigment in less opacity.
Any thoughts for digital painting in the direct method, or does everyone support black and white values first?

Comments and critiques are ever so greatly appreciated. (You guys don't have to critique everything since the past critique either, that would be crazy. Just pick something representative of an area in which I could improve ... of which there are no shortage -_- ... and give me some direction ... school's out and I need a good direction. If you feel like giving me homework, all the better. I really value the opinions of the people on this forum, you are all wonderful artists, but we really need to start being more active).

Oh, ACTIVE, on that note, you guys should go check out the Tea Shop Discussion, I'm trying to get a group thread going on these forums, but I was stupid enough to put it in Tea Time where it doesn't get any hits (I also managed to cover it up with what is likely the worst timed post in the history of poorly timed posts). Anyway, show some support for the Tea Shop and lets get this thing going.

EDIT : A few more things. I just recently picked up a little scanner and started scanning some of my paintings. The first is my final project in my life drawing class (a one hour in class painting), the second is a portrait I did in preparation for the class in oil painting I am taking.

EDIT : And yet, there's more.

These are the first two paintings for the oil class I am taking. Each was 3 hours on the same pose, the third being after the first two digital painting studies I did and both being after the portrait.

Progress?

I have a tendency to compartmentalize value, I take each part of the figure and just increase the contrast, which makes each section look great but the figure as a whole look flat. The second one turned out much better than the first as my instructor was constantly having me evaluate values which I thought to be unrelated to help integrate each swatch relative to the whole.

EDIT : Well why stop now, right ? ...

These are the reason I haven't made the deadline for the pirate, just wanted to let you know I haven't been a'wasting away.

These were all from a two day (7 hours a day) intensive on "The Figure in Ink Wash". There were two main paintings from each day, plus a few studies (are those Hogarth's thrusts? - say it isn't so) while waiting for a layer to dry. It was really interesting, though I have to train myself to have the patience to lay on 50 odd layers before I get to pure black.

The other big thing that's taking up my time is something I've started up on deviantART (quick, let's all pretend not to have one, ready .... GO - I blame you not, the site has fallen into a miasma of degradation). As you've probably guessed from my crazy verbose posts, I have a rather strong urge to contribute to the art community at large. I was getting a little irritated at writing really intensive critiques and instructional material on artwork at random, in hopes of getting a little more dialogue going than the typical "thnx ... i guess, but it's part of my style". So I started up a thread offering legitimate critique, and surprisingly it's been going rather well. In this first week we've had almost 100 critiques go out, with 90% being well received and a few of those going into full discussions and instruction (I'm about halfway through writing a tutorial for a kid, and I have some paint-overs scheduled for another. while about 10 are getting back to me with studies I suggested).

Anyway, as a result of this, I started up a group called #contribution-box, to provide a sort of online school through deviantART, We are based around group critique, a resource index (currently derived from the one I've been helping put together here), and some course work. The idea is that the critics will run classes in the same format seen on conceptart, cgsociety, and as Mere ran at megatokyo. Until we get some of the pros involved, it'll just be groups of us working on the same things at the same time with weekly submission deadlines and group discussion. Once the bigshots join up, we'll start running things with specifically designed homework and more directed guidance.

Anyway, here's the introductory logo for the group :

- and this is the tutorial I've been developing (the text can be found at COLOR Primer - :Color + Value:) :

In other news, I went and purchased "Anatomy for the Artist" (the newer one, with vellum pages, photography by John Davis) and Nicolaides' "The Natural Way to Draw", both of which I love.

A speed sketch that will likely become something more :

Critique on anything and everything would be ever so much appreciated.

Posts: 17 Joined: 20 Oct 2008 Location: Seattle, WA, USA

(Okay, triple post, this is pretty much original sin ... but there's a good reason, really there is.)

I've decided to go through the Character Design 101 class as a rogue. It's pretty behind the game, but I'm sure it's still a relevant process. I'm going to keep all my progress for this in this post, and just edit it every week and add a timestap (it will be on the honor process, but I'm rather motivated about it). The bittersweet part is that I already know the final project guidelines. I had never read through all the way to the end of the class before (I usually dropped off around the material reference week). This is not such a bad thing though, as it was the perfect and well timed turnaround from pin-up to - well, I won't spoil it - that inspired me to try this in the first place. I always meant to, but got sidetracked in the process of figure study and could never find a character for whom I didn't already have preconceptions.