From the old computer files - my first animated cartoon

Looking through the old hardrive and I re-discovered another project I did a while back. An animated cartoon. This was probably one of the hardest projects I've ever done since I had no idea how animation worked only gif animation on Photoshop and I didn't own a light box so I had to rely on the Sun and English weather to allow me to trace over frames which caused a whole lot of problems.

Anyway thought I'd share this thing out.

Yeah if you want to watch this your probably going have to zoom in my line work here is pretty light.

Self Portrait -from photo ref

Another self portrait (this time from photo ref). So far looking through my blog its a bit too samey not enough experiments with paints and other styles. However I will upload some different stuff in the future, maybe even scan in some paintings I've done for art.

Aside from this I'm currently working on building a mini art community for people around my age who want to build up there portfolio for uni's as well as there skills. I've manly posted this up on concept art.org so if you interested I've embedded the link in this post and I hope to hear from you all.

It should be exciting talking to other art student can't wait to see all the different styles and backgrounds.

Some critque I got from CA I thought I should remind myself of.

"All those books are well and good but if you aren't figure drawing from life on a consistent basis, you won't be able to find an approach that works for YOU. Sure on paper Bridgeman's approach looks great but I don't draw that way and neither do most artists and it doesn't work for me. Take what you can from the books and try to apply what you've learned while drawing. You'll find things that work and things that don't. The worst thing you can do is give up, because the more you draw the better you'll get. As for painting, its extremely important to design with a drawing (traditional works best for me) then move to digital or another color medium. Don't forget to take the time and effort to explore with studies and thumbnails before jumping in, it will save you time and headache in the future and result in a better painting. Thats probably not what you want to hear but all the pros do it so don't skip it. Developing good habits and fundamentals early will streamline your way to strong pieces in the future." - Dan Sprogis

Sorry for the long quote this ones a bit personal its just something to remind me where im going on my journey.

Anyway here's a link to a really great art blog I found recently whilst on Sprogis's blog. Its stuff like this which get me to pick a pencil again after tearing up a bunch of bad drawings.

 

Still life study and some other art stuff

Nothing really exciting really just a still life. I've started to go back to these things because while I was on concept art.org I was wondering whats a good exercise in proportion in the human figure and I was recommended still life as a way to really push how you see things in relation to each other. And whoever it was who told me this, they are not lying these things really give you a ton of problems to solve especially milk cartons they are perspective nightmare but I'll recommend this to any art student out there try drawing one. Its a great challenge for perspective studies.

Next time when drawing these things I should really invest in like a table top lamp to get a better range of values in my reference but I can't really complain can I its not like the tones in the drawing itself are that great haha.

Anyway recently I joined the Micheal Hampton figure drawing course at CGMA and its a great resource for any studying artist struggling with figure drawing so far its really given me this clear path or method with to how to approach the body plus the teacher has made anatomy really simple, there's still some things I'll need to read over but all in all now anatomy books don't look so scary anymore.

Happy self portrait day

My first self portrait for self portrait day. Quite happy with the results but I think that's bad normally I get really annoyed with my work but this one turned out alright well I think. Wait till a couple of days later and my attachment to this thing wears off and I notice how ugly it is. Second thought I already can see some dead eye plus I think the eye on the left is a bit wonky and long and I might of overdid the facial hair. Note to self learn how to draw facial hair and also Afro hair.

Here it is I found it

I found the paint over of the value study I posted a while a go

Heres the critique I got
"It's all about contrasts: light against dark, soft against hard, blurry against sharp, low detail against high detail. You need to make sure the whole thing reads as a big, soft, potato-shaped blob before you get into teeth and incised lines and other details. Big shapes first, then smaller shapes."

Credit :Stoat

Another tip I got on this painting
"Paint big shapes with a big brush and small details with smaller brush. Start with big one and add smaller parts afterwards. Also think about edges, make them sharp, don't smudge them."

Another Value study

Here's another Value study on Photoshop. I did this while in a Google hangouts call with a bunch of other art students from around the world. It was quite fun actually and weird at the same time like we all come from different countries but we were brought together by just drawing and also game of thrones and the internet but still pretty cool definitely recommend it.

Also I got some critque recently on concept art.org about this thing which was cool; the best piece of advice I got was to balance my edges in this  painting more to make it interesting, like have some hard edges and contrast it with some soft and lost ones and also have the object interact with the environment its painted in.

I think the person who critiqued this also did a paint over of my work to show what he meant if I can find it I'll post it up one day both for me and anyone who wants to use this tip I got.