Artman's Quest to Become an Art-Master!

[Artman77]

Here is a high-contrast, film noir style piece I was working on last night...

rooftop justice

[Madcrafter]

I'm sure there are easier methods but I wonder if that technique would work digitally as well. It'd be interesting to try at least.

[Deathkeeper]

As someone who's done a Fallout 3 Mysterious Stranger cosplay (yes, I know he's Every Film Noir Stereotype Ever, but when you use the guitar jingle it becomes Fallout), I wholeheartedly approve.

[Artman77]

@Madcrafter; I'm sure you could get the same effect with any program that uses layers. The 'organic' texture that comes from peeling layers of paint off with wrinkled newspaper would be harder to reproduce digitally, but I'm sure it could be done. If you thought the use of layers was akin to cheating you could just use the circle marquee tool to make your mask, replacing the plates, cups and lids...

@LordDeathkeeper; thanks.

On to my recent artscapades:
So in some of these 'spacescape' painting videos, near the end, they'll take a scraper and remove the paint all the way down to the paper, revealing the white underneath. I tried my hand at this technique, but with slightly different subject matter:

skulls
skull

OMG that was hard. Even taking into account that I’m pretty critical of my own work, I’m still not very pleased with how they came out. The first thing that took me by surprise was the finesse required when using a paint knife. Because the spray paint goes on so thin, a really minor adjustment in the angle of my wrist would mean the difference of removing a thin line of white vs two whole bloody inches!

Another thing that took me by surprise was how little time I had to accomplish my task. I’ve used spray paint before, so it wasn't how fast it dried that was surprise, and I had watched the three-minute-videos online too, so I thought I knew what I was getting into. What surprised me was how slow I was! LOL. It was a challenge for me to accomplish anything at all in such a small amount of time. My speed is better suited for oils at the moment. But it was fun, and I do like artistic challenges, so expect to see more of these in the near future...

[Thanqol]

Oh damn. Stuff like that is why I am dying to set up my own physical paints studio. What an interesting challenge.

[Artman77]

Yeah the first skull was pretty smooth, i just messed up my knife control, taking off too much here and there, but I was like "that's cool I'll just do another." So i did, but then the paint started to get sticky. Then dry. Then it was too late. I was like "Alright. let's do another." so I did another. Didn't like it. "Alright. Imma just do one more." And then DANG. It was time to go to work.

[Artman77]

It was a long week. Didn't get the stuff done that I wanted to do, but I humbled myself attempting new techniques...

Week 5
Noir Man
Skulls 1
Skulls 2
Skull
Noir Comic
Logo

[TechnOkami]

Oh S$!&.

I got a shout-out at the beginning of this thread and I only JUST discovered this today??

I really need to make more of a presence for myself on this side of the boards.

Anyways, hi, I'm TechnO, aaaaaaaand you draw skulls really well. Your line detail and skeletal anatomy is pretty good, like, several steps above myself good (not that it means much but whatev').

Actually the only thing I'm finding myself disliking so far is the shading and the colored pencil use. I'm not a huge fan of either (I dislike the gradient shading look you get with pencils. I never enjoyed the way it looked on paper.), and my personal recommendation would be to explore your options as far as that's concerned. Overall though you've got a lot of little things going for you which is cool. Keep drawing.

[Artman77]

Yeah, you noticed that huh? I hate colored pencils for the same reason(s). I haven't been able to get good shading/deep colors with them, but I think it might be because I buy cheap pencils. I haven't really had the desire to use colored pencils that much until recently. I have other things I'm trying to do right now, but I'd like to get the whole colored-pencils-suck thing figured out at some point...

Thanks for stopping by my thread. ARTISTS UNITE!

[Artman77]

more spray paint stuff.
#31skull
#32skull plus paint pen

[Artman77]

Portrait of a friend:
underlying colors
building values
#33added skin tone and details

[Artman77]

So on the plus side, I got my scanner and Wacom tablet back from my brother, but on the flip side my laptop ate a major virus and is down for the count. Posting will have to continue via my tablet until a solution can be found. That laptop was old and clunky anyway, so it's probably time to upgrade. In the meantime, I got some art to show you all.

Practice characters for a FF14 piece commissioned by a friend.
#34final fantasy characters

These were supposed to be panels to a noir chapter of the comic I've been working on, but since my computer took a crap they've been put on hold. I don't want to mess with trying to edit them on my tablet. Forget that.
#35noir 2 - Hercules
#36noir 3

This week's problems aside, the painting I did was really fun; I might try more of that.

This marks the end of Week 6

[Artman77]

#37 40K coat of arms

[TheCountAlucard]

Needs 1000% more skulls.

And unnecessary, unnecessarily-huge pauldrons.

Just kidding of course. Looks great.

[Artman77]

Yeah, I was going to put three skulls looking down under the shield between the lower two blades, and a skull in profile(looking away from center) on each side just above the banner, but it seemed too cluttered to me, so I left them out.

#38:spray paint girls
#39:sketch 1
#40:sketch 2
#41:sketch 3

[Thanqol]

Yeah, I was going to put three skulls looking down under the shield between the lower two blades, and a skull in profile(looking away from center) on each side just above the banner, but it seemed too cluttered to me, so I left them out.

Thank goodness you didn't make any cluttered Warhammer artwork.

#38:spray paint girls
#39:sketch 1
#40:sketch 2
#41:sketch 3

Kind of good on a level beyond my ability to provide useful feedback, you know?

Hey, I forget if I asked this, but what artists are you aiming towards in terms of where you want to be? Do you have any idols or favourites?

[Artman77]

Rembrandt for his speed, Caravaggio for his drama, and Monet for his color. There are too many modern artists to get into right now, but Louis Royo (spelling?) comes to mind. These are just for a solid baseline. I'll migrate towards concept art and promo art after that...

[Artman77]

Nope. It was Boris Vallejo I was thinking of.

[Artman77]

Been doing a lot of stuff offline for awhile now, and am fearing the massive art-dump that's building up. Here's some of it, in no particular order:
42, 43:girls
44, 45:dogs
46, 47:greyhound one and two
48:insignia

[Thanqol]

THERE IS ONLY ROOM FOR ONE DRAWTHREAD IN THIS SUBFORUM

Really, hoping you've been keeping up offline. It really sucks seeing people flame out after a couple of weeks

[Artman77]

Yeah, I've got a mountain of paper in my art room waiting for upload: I'm just really not that much of an internet type of guy...

[Thanqol]

Yeah, I've got a mountain of paper in my art room waiting for upload: I'm just really not that much of an internet type of guy...

I know I personally have stopped uploading my P&P sketches to the computer - I don't have a scanner so I have to photograph, crop and resize them and they're still blurry and crap.

Still I think that it's important to talk a bit about your art when you can, putting experiences into text can break them out of an emotional tactile zone and let one approach things more critically.

[Artman77]

Okay. So. I've been spending mega amounts of time either, A. Playing with colors values in photoshop trying to get the lighting right, or B. Doing figure sketches trying to get my anatomy down. Neither of these practices, while important, haven't produced anything upload-worthy, in my opinion. That being said,

ART DUMP!!

49:succubus
50:
51:sketch
52:goat
53:zombie
54:hip/thigh study
55:2 light sources
56:batman(color/brushes)
57:dog
58:starwars
59:orc
60:tree
61:man
62:woman
63:rage
64:FF14 photoshop
65:mother teresa

@Thanqol; talk more smack please. It is very motivating.

[Artman77]

Week 14 under my belt! Got burned out on the uploading/posting there for a bit, but I'm back at it.
66: Calvin and Hobbes
67: Elephant
68: Dumbledore
and
69-71: orc study

The last one was the most fun for me to do, and I'll probably be doing more of these over the next few days.

[FinnLassie]

I really like your spray stuff - what do you use for it?

[Artman77]

Spray paint. Rustoleum 2x coverage mostly, but some cheap store brands too. The textured effect was achieved by spraying multiple layers of color, then lightly placing newspaper on top and peeling it back.

(Note: It has to be done on cardboard, posterboard or some other smooth surface to work well. I've seen people try to use that technique on canvas and it fails because the tooth of the canvas doesn't allow for a large surface area contact with the newspaper to pull off sections of the top layer of paint.)

Some of the white linework you see was created by scraping the paint off with a palette knife while it was still wet. Other lines were done with paint pens after it was dry.

[TechnOkami]

THERE IS ONLY ROOM FOR ONE DRAWTHREAD IN THIS SUBFORUM

Fite me IRL I swear on me mum.

On your "art threads burning out" comment, I've actually got basically a sketch dump in the works, it's just a lot of scanning I really don't want to do.

So I'm still active as far as art is concerned, I just haven't done anything digital as of late and have been working almost solely in traditional mediums. I actually just bought a few things I needed to give watercolors a try, so we'll see how that goes!

[Artman77]

Ditto on the watercolor stuff--I've been wanting to give that a try for awhile now.

[Cuthalion]

THERE IS ONLY ROOM FOR ONE DRAWTHREAD IN THIS SUBFORUM

Really, hoping you've been keeping up offline. It really sucks seeing people flame out after a couple of weeks

I was gone, and it's going to take a while to imgur up everything onto the thread here. It's on tumblr, though.

[Thanqol]

@Thanqol; talk more smack please. It is very motivating.

Sorry I'm late in replying to this but I just couldn't find the motivation to wade through all this crap.

SMACK TALK GO

Okay. So. I've been spending mega amounts of time either, A. Playing with colors values in photoshop trying to get the lighting right, or B. Doing figure sketches trying to get my anatomy down. Neither of these practices, while important, haven't produced anything upload-worthy, in my opinion. That being said,

ART DUMP!!

49:succubus

Ear looks too small, the skin and wing tones are too similar. The texture on the wings looks really flat, I find that this is a persistent problem with texture effects.

50:I FORGOT TO WRITE SOMETHING HERE

Look at me with my fancy-pants leaf brush and brilliant compositions, la-de-da

51:sketch

Your skill is clearly deteriorating here.

52:goat

You have drawn this goat as some sort of terrifying demon entity trampling trees underhoof. Completely inaccurate and possibly goat-racist.

53:zombie

Picture is excessively creepy.

54:hip/thigh study

Butt is insufficiently sexy.

55:2 light sources

Too political

56:batman(color/brushes)

Batman's new costume includes half a dozen scarves in place of a cape.

57:dog

Dog is not cat.

58:starwars

Obi-Wan's lightsaber is blue. So is Anakin's, actually. Poorly researched.

59:orc

The snout seems to be facing directly towards the camera despite the 3/4 view.

60:tree

Sky is not actually pink

61:man

Face accidentally cropped from picture

62:woman

Too talented

63:rage

Bicep has transformed into basketball.

64:FF14 photoshop

Weapons are clearly impractical. Any given woman is showing more skin than every male combined.

65:mother teresa

BABIES ARE RUINING ALL MY TABLETOPS

Fite me IRL I swear on me mum.

Fight me in the park at lunch time tomorrow. Sincerely, your nemesis, Johnny Snow.