Abyillus - Art School Journey

[jww1994]

Hey all, I recently started to work with the program after noticing some short comings in my own personal art, and feeling a lack of confidence after graduating from a 3 year Video Game Art and Design program where the instructors didn't provide myself or other students with much feedback on what they liked about a student's art, or what they needed to improve on, etc...

So a bit of backstory for myself I suppose, I'm 27 years old and I'm from Newfoundland, Canada. I have been drawing on and off for as long as I can remember. I have no real training as an artist beyond the fundamentals such as perspective, form, colour theory, and most of what I've learned has been through trial and error, reading text books or watching online content creators such as Marc.

This post will more so be a place holder as I await some feedback on my portfolio!

Edit 1:

After replying to Brohawx in my other thread, I felt like I should list this in the main body so it's easier for people to find so they can reference things they might want to know.

What is your favorite text book?: I think this is probably the hardest question for me to answer, but I think the one I like the most would probably be Colour and Light by James Gurney, albeit none of the examples I have posted would demonstrate the things I've learned from that, since I only recently started applying it to miniature painting as I've been trying to come to understand colour and form a little better.

What's your favourite novel/comic/manga: I would have to say I don't really know what my favourite novel would be. Growing up a read a lot of Garth Nix's novels, and while I like the works of Tolkien I actually only read The Hobbit. For comics and manga I would say my favourites are Deadpool, Goblin Slayer, Overlord, Mushoku Tensei, Soul Eater, Full Metal Alchemist, and Chainsaw Man.

What was your favorite master to study: Leonardo Da'Vinci is for sure my favourite classically trained master and he's the reason why I wanted to take up art when I was younger. Outside of Da'Vinci, I think I would say my favourite master is Anders Zorn. I also really admire gothic sculptors, just not one specific sculptor.

Who is your favorite artist: In modern digital artists I would say I do like the works of well, Marc Brunet, Paul Kwon, Adam Duff, Anthony Jones, Masahiro Ito, Akihiko Yoshida and Hideo Minaba to name a few. I can't really pick one of them to say they're my absolute favourite because there's elements that they all do that I love, but if I had to choose from that list I think I would have to pick Adam Duff because his artwork tends to really lean into the gothic horror / Diablo look I personally enjoy.

The fields I'm most interested in are Concept Art, Illustration and 3D modeling/sculpting.

[jww1994]

Here's my work on the volumes homework!

[jww1994]

Here's my post for the Male and Female proportions homework!

I have a bit of trouble getting the right tapering for the legs, but that'll come with more practice .

[jww1994]

Here's my 1 point perspective piece! I think the picture I used was a little tilted so some of the perspective might be messed up. Feel free to ask if you'd like the reference picture I used!

I'll be posting the 2 point perspective drawing as an edit to this post, I just have a particular scene I want to get a picture of for it and the weather here hasn't been great lately .

[jww1994]

Just thought I'd throw in another post just to say why I haven't posted anything in the last little while!

Life's a little hectic right now, but I've taken to doing gesture drawing for 30 minutes to an hour a day (usually an hour a day, but there was one 2 hour session in here and one make up session to make up for a 30 minute day) trying to follow the latest video Marc posted to his youtube channel.

In the video he talked about how it takes 20 hours to reach a good level of understanding on something, so after I hit that point I'll look to see how to set up a gallery of sorts to show the progress that was made!

After this little string of life interruptions I'll be back to working on the rest of the term projects, hoping this weekend to visit a small town that isn't to far away from where I live to gather some pictures for the 2 point perspective project!!

[mau.wamp]

Using the 20 hour rule to practise when you are short on time is a great idea. I've been using it too for the past 3 months and I found myself progress even more because I know that I have to understand and get that skill within a certain time frame. That way there is no messing around.
If you havent already, I'd recommend you get your hands on "the 20 hour rule - how to learn anything FAST" by Josh Kaufman. It's a quick read and he describes the process of deliberate practise very comprehensively.
If you want to, you can also dm me, if you need any help or have questions.
Keep it up!

[jww1994]

Awesome, thanks for the book recommendation I just picked it up on the kindle store and I'll make sure to give it a read!

[jww1994]

Here you can find the link for my 20 hours of Gesture drawing! It's pretty neat to see the improvement as the hours built up. Though the pictures aren't 100% in order (for some unknown reason) they're mostly in order and I think the improvement should be fairly obvious
https://photos.app.goo.gl/hw21XaM4AuFTnTPY8

[mau.wamp]

Wow, you did a whole bunch of work over the 20 hours! I can also see good improvement! good job!

[jww1994]

Hey all, back again after a bit of a hiatus. Life kinda hit me rough between working 60 hours a week 6 days a week, being to tired to draw after work and just not being able to come up with an idea for the perspective assignments.

Well, that's a bit of a change now as you can see above. This is still obviously not fully fleshed out, just showing my use of 2 point perspective in this piece that I'll be coming back to for parts of assignments to try and finish it up!

The idea behind his piece is this is going to be a picture I'm going to use for a dnd like campaign that I'm writing and this is overlooking the player's starting town from the outskirts!

After doing a bit of reading from James Gurney's Imaginative Realism book, I learned that traditional painters would sometimes use Maquettes to help with their understanding of the form that they're painting to learn how light will interact with it. Rather than physically sculpting out a maquette I'm planning on using my training in 3D modeling to make 3D scenes in Blender to do the same and integrate it into my workflow (as Marc later demonstrates doing in chapters/units as part of Art School) and using this version of the piece as more of a guideline to model from before I polish it further.

I'm going to start working on the 3 point perspective drawing as part of this campaign setting as well, so I hope to have that posted in the next while!

Any feedback would be appreciated as always!

[Lockenheim]

DnD Players unite! Lets go!! Welcome back and keep it up!

[jww1994]

And here we have the makings of my 3 point perspective drawing! Much like how I mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to use this as more of a guideline to make a 3D scene out of, and return to this piece to further the quality and overall take.

To put together the scene;

The adventuring party will eventually make their way underground to discover an ancient, giant doorway with iconography and runes scattered about that they've never seen before. They're here searching for the researchers that had been stationed here for some time, only to find their base camp and none of them around, almost like they had vanished.

As always, any comments about what you like and any feedback on what you would change would be much appreciated .

[Lockenheim]

Nice work! This adventure sounds fun!

[jww1994]

Back again and here's my current progress with 4 point perspective. Not the greatest drawing, but I felt more like just trying to make sure I got the perspective right rather than getting the perspective right and rendering it to a higher standard.

Edit: Just realized I never attached my head drawings!

On to term 3!

[kairechtern]

Hey nice work here!

The two things that draws my attention here are the head with added features. For me it seems the drawn ellipses are a bit too wide on the front facing head and should have been more narrow. The head looks a little bit compressed.

On the other head looking to the side the space between eyebrows and chin is too small. The chin should be a bit more down.

But overall good progress! The face features also looking pretty nice already

[jww1994]

Yeah, I felt like the forward facing head was a bit to compressed too but wasn't sure if that was just my eye or not.

For the side facing head I don't know if the chin is to low or if I have the lips drawn to big, but it also wouldn't surprise me if I trimmed it back to much.

All just things to work out as I keep practicing either way .

[jww1994]

Hey all, here with an update for Term 3!

Works been pretty busy so I couldn't find much time to draw due to just being fully burnt out and to tired to draw, so here we are with the first post for term 3!

I still need some practice with folds on a nude model, which I know I've struggled with in the past so I'll have to continue with more practice sessions on getting better at that aspect, rewatching Marc's instructions and looking for some references.

As for copying the reference picture and translating it, I feel pretty confident about being able to draw this way, however I'm obviously no pro yet.

With these pieces I tried shape panting more so than line drawing, so I feel like practicing this method might be more up my alley than standard line drawing but you guys will have to let me know!

[Lockenheim]

I have had a difficult time working with clothing and folds, the regular critique that comes back from Marc to me and others is to really darken the deep folds to show volume. He has some good feedback on those on the most recent videos on facebook if you are looking for more detail. 3 weeks ago I submitted clothing only, you might find his feedback on that up your alley.

[jww1994]

Hey, thanks for letting me know about that, it's greatly appreciated!

I think that could be half of my problem. At one point I had a problem with pushing to far into vakyes so I've been trying not to paint with super dark greys/blacks or pure whites, but I think it's also just a lack of visual library build up with clothes that could be doing me in haha.

[jww1994]

Well, here's 4 different models for the first part of the Anatomy 2 assignment!

I think there's some areas where I need to rewatch the video demo to learn more about the muscles and draw them along with Marc, but for the most part I think I did a fairly decent job on these models. Feel free to do as Marc mentions in the assignment details and help me correct my mistakes!