Errol's sketchbook [images added 5/2/11]

[Errol McGillivray]

That's interesting, but I wouldn't use such simple 3d models for figure study. The textures aren't high enough resolution to really see what's going on and the dark color makes it hard to read what's going on. Besides, you don't see raw meat when you draw people. You see skin. There's no lighting on it. That's good for ideas for poses and seeing proportion maybe, but that wouldn't do much good for the workshop in particular. (Crap, I'm gonna have to get started on it soon.)


Anyway, more figure studies. Perspective drawings will be following soon. Heh.

2.5 hours, pencil, charcoal, layout bond. Warning, female nude  

[Sriae]

I was thinking more along the lines of gesture drawings. Plus the muscles and stuff are really cool, and it helps to know how the inner workings... work. x'D

Also, what type of charcoal for figure drawings? As in, vine or in pencil?  

[Errol McGillivray]

Yeah, I was gonna say the could work for really quick gestures. I like how they're timed.

I use everything! 4H to draw before the charcoal. Then vine to get proportions down. Then I wipe it off and use charcoal pencil and charcoal stick.  

[Errol McGillivray]

Ho ho. It's been a while.

A couple hours in photoshop. Linework for a wedding invitation. I was gonna break out illustrator, but meh. We'll see if she likes it. If she does, then yeah.

Download for full size. Be warned. Looks like s**t in full view. Haha. I like it though.

Sorry for the DA link.

Wedded Bliss  

[Errol McGillivray]

I want to learn to paint. Here is the start of an attempt of mine. Any advice or gestures in the right direction would be massively appreciated.

Warning cartoony nude xd  

[enticing rapture]

First off, I love it. The expression is absolutely amazing! One thing I would suggest is that, yes, you do work a little more on line art. Line art, wile incredibly annoying in my personal opinion, because a major feature in digital art and crappy line art can make or break a picture. One thing I would suggest, though I don’t do it myself, is perhaps making the lines thicker the further away from the light they are and lines closer to the light thinner. This will really give the picture depth and enhance the sense of lighting. Another thing I have seen done often that looks quite amazing is when people use other colors, besides just black. For example, because she’s brown instead of using back, use a dark shade of brown, this makes your lines less prominent though it is more complicated, depending on your light sources. As far as coloring goes… I can’t really help you there, I’m a navies at best when it comes to that. I can however suggest, instead of using different hues of the same color to shade, that you venture out of your comfort zone and use different colors, especial when it comes to your light source. It’s ubber important to remember that the color of your light source will have an impact on the color of things around the room.  

[Errol McGillivray]

Thank you.

Well, I wonder if I should bother including lineart in the end result. Normally, I shade with lines. I'm only recently delving into smooth shading and I find I like one or the other and not a mix of the two in most cases.

The suggestion about using colored lines is a very good one. I will try that. Also, I do know about varying the line weights. (Although I don't do it as often as I should). The sketch for this one I scribbled up in 20-30 minutes. That's why the lines are overly thick and hideous. I was going to cover them. You could say this is me trying to familiarize myself with painting digitally on a whole before I spend a few days on some lineart.

Just to recap-

-Remember to vary line weight to account for atmosphere
-Use colored lines rather than black.

I've seen some people use browns and other muted earthy tones. I normally try to use a grey, like pencil lead. I get that to work in oc, but photoshop I can't seem to get right. I have no idea how to work the brushes and I think that's a large part of the problem.

Any advice about brushes would be great. All I know is to use a low opacity and work with large strokes. Unfortunately, they build on each other when I don't want them to as big ugly flat streaks.  

[enticing rapture]

I had the same problem when I started doing line art. I find it easier to put the opacity on 0, so that my lines are all even, and instead of using long strokes, I use shorted ones, so that I have more control with my tablet. It takes a little longer and there is quite a bit of tidying up to do, but for some reason I just can’t use long strokes, they always come out… well, bad to be frank. Another something I would suggest is, if your looking for that pencil led sort of look, making your brush a soft one. Also, it is always good to use a small brush at first, I normally use a 3 or 5 pixel brush to do mine, depending on my canvas size.  

[Anetra_Pendragon]

Hey! I don't know if this will actually help you, but here's some in-between images of how a very talented friend of mine works in photoshop:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v325/mwahaha/arrt/littl/lilmeh.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v325/mwahaha/arrt/littl/lilmeh2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v325/mwahaha/arrt/littl/lilmeh3.jpg

http://eroding.net/aetherchild/junk/commissions/images/cody_lurormand.jpg

http://eroding.net/rrta/images/c_mm/0/cody_neikos_bs.png


I'm miserable with the whole digital painting thing, probably because I tend to desperately cling to a solid foundation of lines, so I can't actually offer any advise on it other than "Cody is really good and that's what he does." Heh.


Edit/:
Oh, hah, uh. Okay I'll try to talk more about it I think,
Basically, as Cody describes it, he works mainly in "volumes" rather than "shapes," or something like that. He entirely eschews lines or sketches to work from, and starts with blotting down some base colours. He goes over this with a hard brush (see "cody_neikos_bs.png") to establish the shapes and depths that he wants, then he -- to my understanding -- sets the Opacidy and Flow on "Brush Settings - Other Dynamics" on, and to pen pressure, but -- again, to my speculation -- leaves them at 0%.
Some tutorials I've seen say to turn the hardness of the brush down ("Brush Tip Shape,") but I don't think it's really worth doing.

What you're going to want to do is use that brush to blend all the sort of hodge-podged colours you put down before. You can use the ALT key to use the eye-dropper tool (if you have buttons on your tablet, you'll want to configure one of them to ALT for photoshop. If you have a touch strip, I'd suggest keying it to [ and ] for the top and bottom, so you can use it to make the brush bigger and smaller), and from there you just eye-dropper the colours that result from mixing the different tones, to blend them all together.
 

[blackmoondrops]

One thing I noticed is the way you used such a small bush for light and a bigger brush for the dark. I think the bigger bush that your used on the shadows worked better at creating a more believable light source, and perhaps should have used the same size for the light. Although, I think it looked great in her hair.
The prints on the fabric weren't totally convincing to me, but I don't half blame you because that is a very hard thing to do. I suggest a reference while working with them (because I really don't have any advice other than just looking at reference because that's how I got mine right).
Over all I think this is a very interesting picture with the sort-of mystical background, but I think what would have really brought this to life is more contrast. Which I find is one of the hardest things with work with digitally. Good job, and I hope to see more of your art biggrin  

[Errol McGillivray]

That's a lot to consider. I'll be sure to read through this again before I start painting again. (May be this one. I think I'd rather try doing everything on paper and using ink and watercolor. I'm not sure yet.)

Thank you guys.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Update:

 

[apiyo]

Her breasts are very horizontal and look kind of squished. That's the only thing that stands out to my untrained lil' novice eyes.  

[Errol McGillivray]

apiyo

Her breasts are very horizontal and look kind of squished. That's the only thing that stands out to my untrained lil' novice eyes.

While I'm a fan of perky breasts, after a certain age (and size) a pencil isn't going to just hold under them. You have to lift them to get the pencil under there. Haha. I'm not sure what you mean by horizontal. Can you clarify? Maybe there's something I need to change.  

[Anetra_Pendragon]

While I'm not saying it's an issue, it appears they are being pulled in opposite directions, which is moving them very far away from each-other and .. I suppose giving them the appearance of a sort of "breast-belt?" Wherein you could draw lines over and under them and have them each be parallel and somewhat close together. If I were to change something on this front, it would probably be to have the left breast sag less to the left, as the right one is approximately lined up under her chin.

I also think they are maybe sagging a wee bit much for their indicated size, but this is very much only a "perhaps," and I'd like to stress the "wee" before "bit." I believe I get this impression from the interior line of the right breast, as it curves inward as opposed to outward. This makes it appear as though none of the lower parts of the breast are attached to skin, and the whole affair is drooping down from the singular unlined points. :S


Tangent: Sweet tail placement, hahaha.
 

[Errol McGillivray]

Anetra_Pendragon

While I'm not saying it's an issue, it appears they are being pulled in opposite directions, which is moving them very far away from each-other and .. I suppose giving them the appearance of a sort of "breast-belt?" Wherein you could draw lines over and under them and have them each be parallel and somewhat close together. If I were to change something on this front, it would probably be to have the left breast sag less to the left, as the right one is approximately lined up under her chin.

I also think they are maybe sagging a wee bit much for their indicated size, but this is very much only a "perhaps," and I'd like to stress the "wee" before "bit." I believe I get this impression from the interior line of the right breast, as it curves inward as opposed to outward. This makes it appear as though none of the lower parts of the breast are attached to skin, and the whole affair is drooping down from the singular unlined points. :S


Tangent: Sweet tail placement, hahaha.

Yay for phallic symbols.

Yeah, I'm looking into the breast thing. Unfortunately, I have no scanner, so I either have to redo the line in photoshop (which I want to stay away from for now) or draw and wait until monday to scan.

Thank you for the observations.