Batman Black & White

"Gooooood for yoooooooooooooou!"

30 minute value sketch from a movie still from The Dark Knight Rises. Christian Bale thinks it's good for you.

Italian Mountain

Arg

Back to brief landscape studies since I have such difficulty with them. This one was pretty quickly thrown together in PS3 with a standard, hard round brush.

Skull Studies

1 Hour Skull Studies

Tuesday Sketches...

All from reference.

60 second poses

Some Cave - 1 hour

Female Knight In Armor - 1 hour

Tuesday Sketch

 Sketch after Serge Birault.

Monday's Gesture Sketches

Creature Concepts #1

I recently discovered the Feng Zhu Design tutorials, and one of them showed his process for creating creature concepts starting with strong silhouettes.

First I start with some abstract silhouettes with a black brush like this:

From there you fill in the details with your imagination and as many tones as you can muster, and you wind up with something like the image at the top. It's kind of a neat way to design, and you utilize your imagination greatly. Since I fill in the details on separate layers, I'm able to do an infinite number of variations for each one without destroying the silhouettes.

The first batch I did wasn't that great, but here it is anyway:

I added a little bit of color to these originally, but I didn't have enough tones in there to pull out the forms.

Fitness Update:

Week 1 - Day 3: Shoulders/Arms (missed abs from lack of energy)

Monday's Landscape Study

I messed with the values and brush strokes on this thing for a long time and I had to call it because I wasn't getting anywhere.

Fitness Update:

Week 1 - Day 2: 30 min. Walk/Run Treadmill Intervals - 2 miles
(Unfortunately, all of the P90X cardio routines hurt my knees immensely, so I have to go to the YMCA for those days.)

Fighting Through The Failure

I had several paragraphs written about this study, but it was accidentally erased and I think I've spent too much time letting the whole process surrounding this thing bother me.

Short version: It's terrible, I hate it, I gave up on it several times after trying several times to get the features right, and eventually just tried to get the colors, tones, and blending technique that Vermeer used in the original. I felt as if I had a moral victory for pushing through and trying to work on it after giving up, and felt obligated to put the horrible thing up here after that pontificating I did in my last post.  The End.

The Dutch girl with a red hat suddenly became
the Asian lady with an underbite and a  red hat.

Girl with a Red Hat
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1665-1666

Feet #1 & Other Thoughts

First of all, a word of explanation.

I've been reading and studying some artists online that have inspired me to work harder at my art. One suggestion they've been throwing out there for people trying to get better is to post your updates and progress no matter how bad they are. For me, it's chronicling my journey so that I can hopefully see marked improvement over time and serve as a good example to others. As embarrassing as a lot of this stuff is, and despite most of it being nothing pretty to look at, I'm throwing it out there for myself as much as for you all.

I just don't get the attraction
Mr. Tarantino...

So here's my start to Sunday's studies. Feet and hands have so many minute curves that the drawing will look completely off if you don't get the essential ones in the right spots...it can be maddening.

Gesture Sketches #3

So....tired.......

"The burly mechanic (from Raiders of the Lost Ark) was played by Pat Roach, a stuntman and professional wrestler who appeared in all three of the original movies." -- Indiana Jones Wiki (Did you know that was a thing? I didn't either!)

Hands #1

Hands.

"Hands."

Hands.

Gesture Sketches #2

I got home a bit late so I wasn't able to do as much studying as I had hoped.  I did get a trio of sketches thrown together though. That one on the left might make a good finished piece someday.

Gesture Sketches #1

Some quick tablet sketches done this morning before work. One of these was done without photo ref, which is pretty obvious. I'm trying to work from life and reference materials more often.

Still Life #1

Two hour light/color still life. I set this jumble of random objects next to my monitor on my tiny counter/desk and put a lone Ikea desk lamp on them.

I'm no artist, but I'm guessing that it's not a good sign if 65% of the objects are unrecognizable. Ah well...

Light & Values Study #1

Whoever this dude is, I apologize for making you look like a serial killer...
and different in every panel.

This is a three-hour study with my new brush. Carry on.