• Gave myself 5 days to do something. This is what I managed to do. I'm trying to get better at illustrations, but I have patience to work on something for 3 days maximum :( Splash_Process.jpg5000x3140 2.21 MB Splash_Process-6.jpg3896x2429 2.83 MB concept list char copy.jpg5388x3000 1.7 MB
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  • Did a character concept for a course.https://www.artstation.com/artwork/P6gm3y - more:) list1.jpg3541x1920 2.82 MB
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  • Day 4: Star Wars May The 4th =] Queen Padmé Amidala in my art style! First time drawing her and I really enjoyed making this one! Used watercolours, ink pen, acrylic markers and gold paint for accents on my Canson mix media sketchbook. I hope you like it!
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  • A creature design from a while back
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  • Here is some more recent stuff, I need to make more body studies
  • It's been a while and god, it is so cringe to go through all previous messages xDmy study.
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  • Thank you! I finally cleaned that up. Meanwhile started 3 more ..I have a habit of taking too long to finish a piece, then I lose interest in it and just start something else. I found 8 from recently i started and abandoned, that are decent enough to not delete, but not finished. There’s also been a number of drawings I felt I “outgrew” - became better before I finished them, and it would be easier to start from scratch than fix them. Anyone else thinking that?
  • Lady Death Fanart Collectible: Part 6 Polypaint and base Hi, it’s time to share with you another part of the process to create this fanart piece. Polypaint As this is my first collectible fanart I didn’t have previous experience with polypaint so I tried my best and played a bit with it.I wanted to give a ghostly and eerie look to Lady Death, she is beautiful and deadly, but at the end of the day she is a woman that died and was reborn at hell as an avenging spirit, that’s why I gave her skin tone a bluish very cold tone.As you will see I gave myself some creative freedom to deviate from the traditional color scheme that this characater has in comics and illustrations.To add a bit of sensuality by painting some freckles on the face and the chest. The dark nature of this character was the perfect excuse to gave her a kind of goth make up, very dark shadows around the eyes, blue lips and fingernails. I know that the original character includes sexy red lips but I wanted this girl to have a sexy but at the same time creepy look, that’s why we can see some thin veins emanating from her eyes. The biggest chromatic change I did for this character is at the hair. Lady Death has a characteristic white weavy hair but in my fanart I decided to gave her a very saturated blue color.The reason behind this wasn’t only an aesthetic choice. I want that the face area strongly pulls the attention of the viewer so this area needed a stronger contrast. Another reason is that I want her to have a more modern look, as I mentioned before, I’m strongly attracted to women with goth/punk look. I gave myself half an hour or more to analyse the work of experienced sculptors that create collectibles and I discovered that the use of darker values on the skin is often applied to create a greater sense of volume and three-dimensionality. I found that areas with heavy ambient occlusion are the perfect places to paint with darker colors in order to increase the separation between different forms. Even though she has a bluish skin tone, I used a bit of warmer hues in areas that, in real life, tend to go towards red and pink, this is very obvious in the nose, cheeks, and knuckles. Thinking with a logical mind it’s completely absurd to have warmer tones on the body of a zombie like creature but I didn’t want to limit myself by using only blue tones, it looks boring and artificial. In real life these colors are created by blood vessels in areas where the skin is very thin. ** Scythe **for her weapon I applied a cool gray with some warmer variations, this color scheme is influenced by the work of H.R giger. Base I’d like to talk about the design for the base which, to be honest, I forgot to develop along with the character.My main idea with the base is to show that Lady Death inhabits a very sterile and arid land, at the end of the day she is at hell.You can see a that she walks over dirt and rocks, a sign that she’s surrounded by death and loneliness. As part of the landscape we can see some bones and skulls to reinforce the idea of lack of living creatures, yet we can see three hands that try to reach her legs.This hands represent that all creatures are subordinated to her power and seek an evil blessing with a simple touch of the princess of the damned.1- The hand with skin burns represents the souls of those who are newcomers to hell, tortured souls that suffer for the sins comitted on earth.2- The hand with greenish rotten skin and pustules is the reminder of the decay that has infected the souls of those who have been trapped and have forgotten their humanity3- Last but not least, the hand of a demon shows that even dark creatures and entities bow before her presence. The cherry on the top, at least in my vision, are the simese twins that emerge from the ground, this malevolent creatures remind us that in hell there’s only perversion and any trace of innocence is lost. Thanks for reading till this pointI’m really happy to be very close to finish this creative journey, last but not least it’s mandatory to talk about splitting the sculpture in several pieces to be printed, this will be my last entry before showing the final rendered images. See yaMay Zbrush be with you
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  • memory 2min gartic phone, used ref 2m gartic, used ref for pose 2min gartic 2min gartic 2min gartic 2min gartic memory memory memory memory study memory memory memorymemory memory memory memory memory memory study memorystudy study stylized left memory, right study study memory memorymemory memory memory memorymemory memory, porportions r offmemory memorystudystudy memorymemorymemory memory memory memory memory memory memory memory, right leg is a bit broken The feeling of only getting 1 - 3 likes on a social media post will never not be discouraging. But nothing is discouraging enough to make me quit drawing. I think the strategy of drawing a lot of stuff and waiting a while to post is good though rather than posting it immediately and then feeling that sadness on the next set of drawing
  • Urban Dragon Girl Wip Urban Dragon Girl_wip1.jpg5000x5000 1.11 MB
  • Long time no see! New artworks produced lately
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  • studies studies juri study imagination, how I feel before a speech imagination imagination study something I drew for my presentation also drew this for my presentation, didn't fix the one hand being bigger than the other imagination + study study studies study study, I need to fix the face a bit based on screenshot from anime but in my style study. except for the eye study studies studies study. changed some things tho imagination imagination imagination study studies, except top right samurai based on anime screenshot wolverine studies, changed some of the poses a lil, not very good at all, but first time i drew the character ever. semi study studies study imagination imagination imagination , for first time ever i tried to draw over 3d model for middle pose, I dont like the result tbh, but it makes it much easier than coming up with it from memory.imagination, except right figurestudies imagination + studies, coming up with action poses r hard, these are not dynamic enough, I will redraw better ones in future. imagination , imagination imagination study, except for eye imagination imagination imagination doodles except for the two chrollos imagination storyboard thumbnail, idk if i ever shared this. my storyboards end up being a little detailed since i usually just draw in one layer.
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  • Quick fun sketch. CyberFish.jpg2394x3857 674 KB
  • Neon Gambit This is a fan art of my all time favorite character Gambit from the X-Men.I made this a birthday gift (26.04.2024) to myself and honestly I really do like how it turned out in the end =] I hope you like it as well =]
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  • Art Blog - April to September 2023 Suffer a little burn out. Look at some memes. Here's some art from in between. critique.jpg1333x5736 1.77 MB
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  • And some more! Been painting over them a bit more this time. Some variants I tried for the old guy using mainly the liquify tool. Someohow looking a bit like Owen Wilson (not intended :D)
  • Cafe sketch/color study
  • Hello! My name is Vithor, I am from Brazil, studied Design at a local college worked as an illustrator for more than 10 years. I took a time off around 3 years ago and am trying to get back in my art shape and maybe become professional again. Here are some recent pictures: You can find timelapses for most of them on my instagram: www.instagram.com Vithor Albertim (@vithor_albertim) • Instagram photos and videos 123 Followers, 638 Following, 19 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Vithor Albertim (@vithor_albertim) Comments and critiques are always welcome.Cheers!
  • @patrycja.lerch Thank you I created another variant, which might capture the witch look I was going for better
  • Thank you @daceronine! If I remember I save in google cloud, I will have to stick a note to do it more often. Lamp is from life. Poses are from refs but I look at refs for a while and then try to do it myself and look it up if needed. Outfits and rest is from imagination Something went wrong while installing system so we will have to wipe everything again... pc works but something is wrong. We will wait till internet is done and I will save everything on cloud this time Threads came out in eu. It's been 3 days and I had more engagement than after half a year on instagram. It feels really nice I hope it stays this way A portrait of old dude. It's the same character I posted a while ago. Inspired by Bayard Wu work. At first I thought of him as a bear but I named him Fenrir and I think wolf suits him better. Eye gave me a bit of hard time but I think it is fine now. I focused on face and forgot about area below. The way I draw hair clashes with greying hair. I had the same problem while doing Lohse's white hair. Does it looks like it is greying here? I love how desaturated red looks blue there. I keep lying to myself that I will use different color scheme but It all comes down to this blue and yellowish one it is just flipped this time Have a great day!
  • Been bad about posting updates on the forum. I figure I should just throw down stuff. instead of waiting until I finish something.
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  • Havent done much this year since I am focusing on learning programming and deving my own Indie Game . But here 's a New Year Piece 2024 , she 's the mascot for my Game Studio - Lucid Realm : Lucid Chan ! LucidChan_v001_sketches.jpg3072x4352 973 KB
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  • Long Crested Eagle studyI had so much fun making this one and honestly I love that Eagle! It looks so cool! Used for this one high quality watercolours, high quality watercolour sketchbook/ cold press and it was 300 grams paper.I hope you like it!
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This is a WIP study of an older portait by Marc. I was having a hard time with how to get faces in the right "position" or pose so I decided to copy his "Daydream" portrait off his art station. I chose that one to copy since the piece really focused in on the facial features with little to no background content to distract from the figure itself. I also tried to rely less on line art and use large brush size to block out shapes. I did take liberties with the hair since I wanted to stay engaged.

Anything that could help me get some new insight on making this portrait more like his original "flavor" would be appreciated. I did not spend too long on it but I decided to stop and ask for guidance because I started down the bottomless rabbit hole of rending skin and I find myself wasting a lot of time for sub-par results. I've been sticking with a soft round so there's quite a bit of this plastic feel which maybe someone can comment on techniques or solutions.

I always get stuck at this post-base color phase and want to make sure I'm not missing the whole point of the portrait. I feel like the portraits never really get past this stage and into the "polish" or "final touch" because there is a strong weakness (or multiple) or lack of something (if its fundamental anatomy, etc, please point out the shortcomings specifically, I can notice a few but please let me know). Any advice/pointers appreciated.

I also linked his original: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/4yGE4

The plastic feel comes from your colors. Marc did an awesome video discussing this on his yt channel.

besides that, when wanting an non blurry look for edges, you can still use a soft brush, but, you have to make it smaller.

off to watch the video. Finding the balance of soft and hard edges still eludes me. i guess that is where the smaller brush comes from. Thank you for pointing me in that direction.

any other areas that you have input, please let me know. I'm aiming for replication more than 100% realism, if that makes sense. Its a study of sorts i guess. Thanks.

Personnally I feel like using a hard brush works much better than a soft one when blocking in the big shapes and colors. I actually do most of my work with a square or triangle brush and I rarely use a soft one. I just feel like it's easier to soften hard edges than it is to harden soft edges.

Maybe it's something that could be worth trying, at least for the initail block in stage.

So i used a hard square brush for blocking in original shapes but i think i lost a lot of the hard edges and shapes when I added color for skin with soft round. It started to get muddled together with the soft brush, probably because I am not using it right I am guessing? I dont use mixer brush, I just alt-click the graduating colors when I add. I like the effect of mixer brush but i have yet to find a decent mixer brush brush. Is eyedropper/ alt-click a legitimate way to color? I found myself with a lot of grays so to problem solve I found myself thinking similar to what Marc said in the tutorial "going down in value but going up in warmth" or something similar. I'll try to practice what he's saying in the tutorial about plastic vs skin.

I think in all of that, I lost a lot of the nice shapes I tried to copy from his original.

I am tempted to do grayscale only study but I also hear starting with color is "better". Since i'm insure I might just do a grayscale study next to find out myself.

Hello, @jonsu72! :smile:
I try to keep it as clear as i can to help you out.

People that say painting from colour is better mean it only because it is hard to convert grayscale into colour. I personally find it very distracting and overwhelming trying to tackle ALL the things like light and shadow, anatomy and perspective, composition AND COLOUR at once.
So for training your eye and learning fundamental principals of painting I'd recommend you to do more greyscales until you will get a good grasp of it.
(of course you can combine greyscale practice and then do the same piece in colour and compare it, or you can keep doing colour.. there are tons of options and you are in your own hands the question will be more about how efficient it is for you :wink: )

Anyway. going back to your drawing here.
I haven't pushed this paint-over as dark as Marc's version is but hopefully I've captured the idea of how to make it looks better.
Main key is Your light source. Always consider it and always think of what will face the light and what not. By doing this you will achieve more 3d look in your paintings.

To do the blocking out part few moment that you need to consider are anatomy and your light source. How each plane of the face will reflect the light.

And the last main thing is that Your value range never will be as white as the light source unless it has a 100% reflect-ability, even eyeballs will be darker.
Preserve all the light reflexes for last and go darker gradually as you work. Don't go 100% black in the beginning of your work.


The face i did doens't look 100% as Marc's piece but again. I hope i captured the main idea.

And I gonna link you few videos in case you will find it helpful.
How to block in
More on blocking in and edge-work
She has even more videos on her channel explaining all the nuances as she critiques other ppls work.

How to colour skin - starts at 5:47
Marci Bucci also has a video on Light and Shadow from his series of 10 minutes to better painting.

Happy painting and I hope that it was helpful:sweat_smile:

Wow, thanks so much for the detailed break down. I've never watched Istebrak but after checking out her blocking-in/edge work video, I really like her personality and the way she explains stuff.

It looks like the forms and the block-in is really what is setting my portraits up for disaster. Lack of lighting makes it even worse in terms of looking flat.

I'll try to post my progress of going through the steps similar to how you isolated areas independently. Thank you again for the time you put into this.

you are welcome :smile:
glad it wa helpful and im looking forward to see your progress
dont give up :muscle:

So i took some time to try to differentiate between line art and blocking-in. So far what i've made sense of is that we block in shapes because we are painting form. Line art, at least to my understanding, is more graphical like comics/anime? I used polygonal lasso tool and smudge to try to work on finding the "shapes" or form. This is the first time i've tried to do something like this and i'm heavily relying on the geometric anatomy (planes) of the face that I find from low-poly 3d. and superimposing on some reference. I look at areas where the light hits similarly and lasso that area while trying to check on the face planes. If I am using reference and trying to replicate a photo, do I really need to do all these planes or should I only be doing the simplified major planes and smudging...This time I literally make a polygonal lasso selection every time I thought there was a dip or indentation. Mostly trying to copy where the light was hitting.

This is super rough but I wanted to check in and see if this is sort of what some were eluding to when mentioning blocking in and form. This seems really different than drawing a circle or drawing outlines and then coloring inside the lines. But if this is a more ideal way to train, I guess i'll commit to this way for the time being. I just wanted to know if this is even the right direction to go in...

You can use line art to get you started for sure. I think it might actually help in the beginning. I think you have the right idea, but as you mentionned, for the blocking in you should really focus on the major planes of the face and ignore all the little details. Here's an example of how I would approach it.

As for what I wrote about control your blending in the last step, you can look at the part under the eyes as an example. The shape starts off with a more defined edge and it fades out more towards the cheek.

As for how you do it, wether it's line or value painting, the important thing is getting to understand what you draw as a 3D object. So go with what you feel works best for you.

I hope this helps :smile:

thank you for explaining the idea more succinctly. Since the last post i've tried to memorize the major planes of the face (which in turn help me place the areas of bone and fatty masses more ideally). I also tried to transition away from lines being the things that create the shape, to lines serving as "edges" where the value changes. So i'm shifting my training more to planes and less of "outlines" i guess? i'll try to post more progress when I feel like I hit a wall, but i need a lot more mileage to get something even close to realistic form. My understanding is that instead of depending on lines to form a shape, it is more about using it as an edge and less as a "paint by number" mentality.

here is some of the eye's I have been trying to study. I can still see often times i revert to the symbolic eyes and the blobs of lashes. In some of the exercises I omitted the lashes to focus on the form. I also found some of my early tests had a very small eye form which was because I wasn't considering the eye sitting in the socket.

The top right example shows my lack of anatomy which I attempted to address in later examples...The eyeball is floating and is not proportionally sitting in socket. In many of them I also notice the top lid not being folded very accurately into the corners of the eye (lacrymal duct area). Including the water line at the bottom lid is also difficult with my line dependency since it is not generally in shadow when I look at my reference.

I have many more studies to do on the eye but I just wanted to keep myself accountable by posting some work here and seeing if I am heading in the right direction...