Dabel's Daily Drawing

[Dabel]

Hi guys, my name is Dabelnedy, Dabel for short, Da for shorter.
I've been an indie gamedev since January 2017 doing mostly 2D/3D character/environment/VFX art. I will use this place to be more disciplined with my art journey while keeping it fun no matter what. Yes to eustress no to distress.
Feel free to comment and/or lurk this place welcomes judgments, jabs and jobs!

[Dabel]

20200407: Little egg study from Laurel D. Austin. Great style, I like how she manages to keep a loose painting very clean. Thanks to this study I've remembered:
1. the importance of edge control, defining where needed and using hard to lost edges for composition e.g. the egg yolk.
2. colors and values: Despite having a very limited value range, make it varied to prevent flatness, use the form as guide to reinforce each other. Saturate your hues as the material transitions from light to shadow (i.e. terminator)
3. Don't be lazy with details if you commit on them i.e. pepper sprinkles.

[Dabel]

20200408:
- Anatomy poses from imagination (2.5 hrs). It's so weird to stop a sketch when there's still so many mistakes all over the place. I know time shouldn't be taken into consideration when learning but erh. I'm the type that prefer to separate studies from work though reality isn't as simple. Seeing how much I struggled because of not regularly doing studies was not cool. Hopefully I've learned my lesson.

• Environment study - Nature (1.5 hrs): I thought it was gonna help me relax just wandering all over the canvas without trying to deliberately practice but it was the complete opposite haha. Spent most of my time trying to make something out of this chaos. Maybe next time!

[cedricgo]

I think those anatomy poses are really nice, especially since you did them for imagination. Good job!

[Dabel]

20200409:
- Environment study - Man-made structures (2.5 hrs): As I painted those I asked myself what I was actually learning doing this study. I think it'd help me to read some background information before starting these next time! Maybe it's got to do with the level of details I'm going for. This could be a combination of so many things. Oh well, just gotta keep on going!

• Anatomy study - muscle (1 hr): I originally wanted to draw some more as yesterday's poses from imagination study produced wonky anatomical structures. I didn't expect to produce only 3 of those in an hour. It makes me wonder how much I should clean those up vs basic roughs. The latter being most likely the smartest move.

[Dabel]

20200410:

• Quick gesture drawings from reference (1 hr): Oof. Gesture drawing is hard. I've still yet to figure out how to get proper flow and good looking shapes. I dont even remember the analytical theory. Better grind 'til it's fine!

• Clothes & Folds study from reference (3 hrs): The cloth felt more like value practice than actual cloth study. Maybe it's fine or I should find a better way to practice it next time around. For the shirt it was mostly about having some lasso fun. Though by the end it went a bit out of control and wasn't very efficient. I'll have to look up good practices. Still fun nonetheless!

[Dabel]

20200411:
- Quick perspective drawings from imagination (1 hr): Bad day for perspective but I'll achieve victory. Eventually.

[Dabel]

20200412:

• Quick gesture drawings from reference (1 hr): Tried to focus on motion lines for the 30s ones and think of structure starting with the 2 min ones. Stiffen everything up. Slows down. Gotta grab some more mileage. Cannot wait.

• Anatomy study - Portraits (7 hrs): Should have been a 2 hour practice at most. 1.5 hr in I was still fighting against structure and likeness. Tried to salvage the line drawing with value. End result is good enough though I dont like the smooth digital effect on the skin. The rendering pass was heavy grunt work also, used one charcoal brush. Next time if I still insist on using one brush, better pick the airbrush to save myself some trouble.

[Dabel]

20200413:

• Anatomy sketches from imagination (2 hrs): I tried to better implement my latest study of the knee joint. Mostly remembering the different elements and where they are considering the motion. I also had some fun trying a more bulky body shape. Hard but fun task, failed to see certain parts such as trapezius/neck muscles deformation at that particular angle. How to inflate the pecs in that perspective without them looking all saggy. As well as the lower leg muscles, the anterolateral group and how the intersection points connect. Decent sized toes and feet would have been welcome as well. Still cool!

• Anatomy study - Forearms (1 hr): Aside from keywords like "bullet shape/Y shape tricks and tubes, I have forgotten a lot about that section. One of the many thousands to come.

[Dabel]

20200415:

• Quick environment drawings from imagination (1 hr): Trying to be disciplined while being sick, ugh.

[Dabel]

20200420:

• Painting practice (Couple hours each): The color version is bad freestyle i.e. no thinking. It actually made me want to do it "correctly" and got the value version down. I'll leave it unfinished since I ran out of time and also because of lack of proper understanding and technique. Mileage required.

[Dabel]

20200421:

• Anatomy skulls study (2 hrs): Simple fun.

[vardanian]

u are doing some epic ground work man, u gonna go far if u keep at it!

[Dabel]

Thanks @vardanian! I'll eventually have to do some personal projects to balance it out but it's too comfy doing those when I have some time off.

20200422:

• Anatomy study - Eye socket edge shading practice (3 hrs): Tried to be more conscious about how to produce my edges. Not a lot of variety yet as I try to get one technique down. Though I'm wondering if clamping values has its place or pushing contrast by default should be a no-brainer. We'll see! Grinding the mileage.

[Dabel]

20200423:

• Anatomy poses from imagination (1 hr): Bad day, lazy and tried something too hard i.e. semi-realistic shading on a anime face. Next time!

20200424:
- Volume shading (4 hrs): Most fun part to do was the nose (started with it). Super struggles with eye rendering, likeness, lips. All that time spent on those "higher priorities" actually prevented me practicing fixing details and subtle nuances. Like fighting a boss underleveled. There should be better and more efficient practices but wouldn't be as exciting. Satisfying result at least!

[vardanian]

that volume study is

[Dabel]

20200426:

• Cloudy colors (2 hrs): Started this piece as a warmup following a Youtube tutorial. Autopilot mode made great colors. As the piece progressed I tried to have better volume and overall silhouette as well as good brush strokes but it's still too soon. Interesting note: the piece seemed quite saturated when I was working on it but not so much afterwards. Might be faulty perception or force of habit like using HSB sliders (something I remember Atey Ghailan said about his usage of HSB vs RGB).

[Dabel]

20200427:

• Color study (3.5 hrs): Specifically trying to get accurate saturation. The warm yellow point light doesn't seem to be as pure and bright as it should be, I'll blame the screenshot. For the cloudy scene shot, I didn't work on the skylight much since it looked good early on.

[Dabel]

20200428:

• (Artist) shading study (2 hrs): Hmm.. I [think] learned nothing. These days (more like forever) I'm a bit too self-conscious about my brush strokes and I don't know how to practice them efficiently. Though there's plenty of more important things to improve upon, sometimes it's nice to indulge yourself.

[Dabel]

20200429:

• Skylight study: Got defeated by clouds. Next on the study list.

• Inspiration style sketches: Late night sketches based on Neo Tokyo first segment: Labyrinth Labyrinthos. Pretty curves are tedious.