Masterstudies of Leyendecker

I did a studies of one of the Arrow Collar Man illustrations made by Joseph Christian Leyendecker. 

Not entire illustration 'tho. The full illustration shows 2 man sitting in a room. One of them is holding a golf club and the other one have smoking pipe in his hand - and that's how you'll find it.

I painted just a small piece of that.

I painted this small because I didn't want to focus on details.

All I was using is hard round and soft round brush.

When it comes to colours I have that problem they look fake so the goal was to learn how to make something look alive.

Another things I got hint of was how to outline things, how to do rim-lights, and how to make work with as few strokes as you can.

I mean I still know shit about all of that ^^, but now, at least, I know the direction.

That's it for now,

So long

Herbie, speedpainting | December 2016

Do you know that Herbie from those movies? like with that old Volkswagen Beetle? 

So I went into DrawCrawd and I saw that the challenge of the day is "cars".

My brain instantly popped out that transformer-Herbie kind of stuff... 

Like no thinking at all.

I sat my myself over the tablet and made use out of that.

And here's the process.

If you find yourself looking at a picture and thinking "that doesn't work, but it took me some time and I don't know if I can do that again so I won't scrap it" -

STOP

C'mon! You did that once, you'll be able to pull that out again and this time it'll take you even less time, because you know what mistakes to not make.

It's a speed paint made in one sitting. 

That's it.

So long

Shooting Target Knight

#HeroPetChallenge

Piece made for #HeroPetChallenge

Albert and his penguin Arthur... or something.

Oh boy, that was fun to draw :D

Here's full pic

and...

So yeah... I'm uploading process here now, and I'll update the text as soon as it's possible :D

So long

Self-portrait 2.0

Year ago I did  portrait studies. Everything was off. 

Now it's off, but slightly better.

I started by blocking out basic shapes like beard, eye sockets, beard, hair and beard.

Then on top of that I sketched indication of facial features, and then I looked into the mirror...

When you draw with pencil you don't have that luxury of moving and twisting, erasing and redrawing all these mistakes...

In digital drawing in the other hand it's not a problem, tho you may not have all the control over the line quality and precision that you have got with pencil.

Trade-offs...

Any way I figured out that I've fucked up the placement of facial features, so I just cut them of, moved where I needed them and then I started painting with colours.

The rest of the process is just softening edges that need to be soft, placing hard edges where you need them sharp, and continuous battle with dull, muddy colours.

During that process I was constantly checking my values in B&W mode. I know that at this point my values may be off but I don't want to push myself too hard. 

Just hard enough to progress. 

I don't want to put more effort into that than I've put a year ago either. 

I'm just using that entire self-portrait thing to evaluate my current level of painting skill. 

I'll try to make that an annual thing.

That's self-portrait potato from last year for a comparison

And here you can find entire process... If you want.

So long

Monthly Scraps - November 2016

This fella you know already. I spent too much time painting him and I'm not feeling this at all. 

Must have repainted him like 5-6 times and still It seems he'll be just another forever-on-hold project. 

That's my attempt on painting landscapes. I mean I wasn't really painting. These are just sketches with some colours underneath. Some really poorly chosen colours :D

I'll make that work eventually. Or I won't. Those are scraps so don't expect much.

And some skulls. I sketched them while watching short film made by Platige Image called "Operation Basilisk" so it took less then 17 minutes :D

Stuff is entirely in Polish but there are English subtitles (really well done subtitles). 

For these of you who don't know what the Platige is - where you've been all that time? 

I mean those guys made literally every good cinematic out there. 

Have you seen Ambition - short film with Littlefinger (don't remember his real name) related to Rosetta space mission?

Or maybe any cinematic trailer for Witcher.

Or perhaps Kingsglaive Final Fantasy XV that they made as a result of cooperation with Square Enix?

Or cinematic trailers for For Honor, WatchDogs 2, Total War: Warhammer, Prey, Cyberpunk 2077?

Or those short films that are so aesthetically cool I don't even...

Those are guys who are making Witcher related film that is supposed to come out in 2017. Not a shitty one like that pile of bullcrapp from early 2000... (<< that I linked for you to know what to not watch)

You want to know more - I linked everything. You're welcome. No need to thank me :D

Enough of fan-boying,

So long

5th Age Nocturne :D

Like, come on - that had to happen.

I was thinking about giving him a shoulder pads with long cloth hanging out of them, but it ended up like that.

I think I like it more that way, but I'm not sure about that golden coin-like things floating over his shoulders 'tho.

I wanted him to look powerful and fabulous at the same time, so I gave him low angle camera shot, super power-welding pose and pink crystals, because what's more fabulous than pink crystals?

I didn't know how to draw him from that angle so I quickly sketched him from the front view to have something to look at, and then I redrew him. 

Also made some notes about things to keep in mind that are crucial for his design like bigass shoulderpads, bigass blade, and having 5 fingers...

Then I started the refining. Slowly. Very slowly.

At the beginning I wanted to give him golden scrap-like blades because I was afraid of drawing crystals, but here's where I faced the choice: refine hands and shot myself or procrastinate.

So I choose procrastinating and drew those crystals. 

Further refining... I mean I don't know if there is anything to say.

Beside the fact I know shit about drawing forearms and hands... I'll have too practice them more.

It's too vibrant, but the colour saturation is not the thing I want to focus on right now. 

One problem at once.

That month is dry, but It's about my art progress, not spewing bullshit every 2 days, right?

So long

Monthly scraps - October 2016

This month I focused on creating as finished illustrations as I can.

That doesn't mean that they look good. They are just finished :D

And here are scraps from this month:

^^ I'll have to go back to the older, black and white version -
maybe even create sketch out of that, and than put colours on.

^^meh...

^^ Those I didn't want to upload, but I'm trying to make a point about bad days and sort of progress journal

^^That fella you'll see in the future. I'm recording the "process of creation" so you can expect YT video this month. 

^^ and that one I've done as an entry for one of daily challenge on DrawCrowd. Kind of speedpainting. 

The key word of challenge was "Moon", and the only thing I had in mind was Bloodborne. 

I have never played it. I don't even like it design-wise. It just came out like that.

That's all

So long

Anime_something_something

^^ I named original file like that and well...

When I'm exporting step-by-step pics I have that tendency of calling them with the first letters of whatever words I've used in the original name.

For example exports for Cell_shaded_01 would sound something like "CS_export_01.png", "CS_export_02.png" and so on and on... 

That name may cause some confusion...

Any ways - I kind of pushed myself once again a bit further than I was...

I've never rendered clothes (wasn't event drawing them that much - really :D), wet surfaces.

Never made full illustration. Never drawn properly looking hands... 

Basically 70% of what you see here I did for the first time and I failed. 

I mean not tremendously, but failed. 

Every time my friend was pointing out a defect in my piece, I was like "eh... artistic liberties", "too hard" or "I'll fix it later" but I didn't.

It's not that I don't want to fix these mistakes. I rather draw something from scratch than fix something that I was working on for last 6 hours...

I can scrap things I know I can redraw in no time but stuff I don't know how to draw... that's another story.

Now I at least know on what I should focus more.

But let's talk about something that happened rather than something that didn't - shall we?

I knew I wanted to do something that resembles images of people like Marc Brunet, WLOP, Evan Lee or Saejin Oh.

Especially Saejin Oh. 

^^made her butt a bit too big (I mean that's what my friend said :D) so I toned it down.

I know that I know nothing about drawing torso(all these diagonal torso muscles), so even if I knew that none of these muscles will be visible later on, I decided to sketch them just for the sake of practice. 

I do that from time to time.

^^That's the typical for me manifestation of frustration

I started with B&W values and blocked out composition.

Then I started the refinement process and of course forgot about making all that step by step mambo-jambo.

^^If you're not sure what to do try making some notes about what you want to achieve or at least what you don't want.

You can always change your mind half way through as I did.

And yup - my writing is that terrible.

So long.