Karl's Art Sketchy

[karlansted]

Hello,
My name is Karl.

I have been out of the art scene for many years, though this past few months I feel ready to take a bold step out of my comfort zone on my own and share work again.

I have been using Painting and 3d modelling programs on and off for years, and feel like the 2d skills could use a catch up to complement the 3d. Which would be amazing to level up those skills. I mostly draw and create for myself and very few people have seen my work. Like a small blip on the radar, Though I don't expect this will be too easy to improve.

Portfolio- https://www.artstation.com/wagssie

I Will start off with a Form study of an Excavator. This is assisted with Rhino3d and painted over in photoshop. Thanks For looking

Line render.

masks...

Shadows

forms and colour

[karlansted]

Paintover of Honda monkey Model.
This is kind of messier than I hoped...especially managing layers. Though an experiment. There are somethings that are probably quicker in 3d like reflections and geometry, especially tire treads and the chain. Though I can see It can be a bit over greebled or detailed, and not merge so well with my painted lines.

Geometry for base

Paintover in Sketchbook pro and Photoshop

[karlansted]

An update on this older Metroid Fusion painting.
I was just looking to see if it has made a difference in places studying a little composition and color theory, as well as some form studies and linework. As sometimes I feel my studies are disconnected. -Long story. I think I have a little better idea of where the light will go, as well as the cool warm balance. The values seem a bit clearer. I have tried to give an example of what I was doing, going left to right from older to new.

Assets, and example.

[karlansted]

Just having some fun
The shakers are 3dmodels with keyshot and photoshop.

And the Forest is a colourized sketch.

I have started on what may be the hardest Form study yet due to the nature of intersecting curved surfaces. I may feel confident to try reflections out... But the forms need to be correct. Some quality resources to help the process- Scott Robertson's How to Render book, some of the resources from the Schoolism class, and i can play with the lines in 3d space to try and plot the angles.

I feel this is ambitious and we shall see... The sphere and diamond shape were my last attempts in 2012.

[karlansted]

Playing around with an old concept. This one was made for conceptart.org years ago. Never submitted. I was just experimenting with colorizing again. It was pretty much merged into a couple of layers and greyscale like most things made ten years ago. I feel the value pattern is a little too similar in the foreground to the mid. And there may be some repetition rather than separation. Interestingly if the values are in the midtone, there is options to use a bit of intensity, whereas the background doesn't quite change as dramatically.

There is some progress with the form study. I think this is ideal for the lines. Maybe I will need more drawthrough information as it progresses. Super hard to visualize a 3d curve then to rotate it into perspective. This was pencilled, then inked in sketchbook pro. Ready to start making paths in photoshop.

[karlansted]

Some further Progress.
Lost quite a bit of time when the masks disappeared importing back from sketchbook. Requiring a redo of all the pen masks. Will fix a few lumpiness here and there.
Then, I think this is enough before the reflections. Extra on the accuracy to the reference may lose sight of the learning process on reflections, so there is a reluctance to be too accurate or put too many details. The wheels are just imported from the reference, as suggested in an example from the How to Render book.

The other part of the week has been making a Kraid from Super Metroid, learning some new tools in Zbrush. This is intended to fill some gaps in the Soft Modelling side of things.

[karlansted]

Further progress on the reflection studies, Was using more of Scott's book. These are not easy as they are combining form, perspective and value relationships. Though I think there is something that looks okay. The studies apart from the corvette are using linework from the book. It was interesting to try and plot things in rhino and see the reflections change in keyshot.
I did try a colour sphere though, though it seems a bit off... I think the sphere is meant to have colour change after the terminator. There is a bit to balance.


Black seems to rely more on the environment to explain the shape, and white the form...

I experimented a bit with having shapes inside rhino to try and raytrace where the bounce goes.

[brohmyr]

Good job, especially on the technical pieces. Keep it up!

[karlansted]

@brohmyr Hey thanks Buddy! It does get quite technical at times.

I was on holidays most of last week, and got a little momentum loss, There was some drawings that are a bit out of context for now.

Just having a bit of fun making a package for Kraid!

This is with Rhino3d, Zbrush, Solidworks (fillets and shelling), and Photoshop.

There was also a little time to experiment with reflections and shadow color. Roughly. I was trying to absorb some of Marco Bucci's youtube videos on Ambient Occlusion and shadow colour.

[karlansted]

Had a little time to do a life study. I'm not completely sure how to do brushed metal.

Time to start doing some more original work again to make some use of the studies. Looking at doing another bike based on similarities to this older concept.

The biggest difference may be that it will start with drawings rather than a model which gets built and modified. Which can be a bit driven by the program.

[karlansted]

Some work continuing on the bike. I think this might challenge the use of reference a fair bit, as the previous one had no direct references. I prefer the direction of the one second from the top.

There was some time to do some Master studies as well. After some practice with colour, and refreshing observation skills. And a look at how things can be handled.
The first one after John Singer sergeant was pretty tough, and I feel originally was warmer and more greyer than Perceived.

This next one was an experiment with shapes, and doing everything with hard edges (polygon selection tool). With a final diffuse and lighting effect.

I was keen to do a cezanne copy, I think maybe too quick in early stages.

And finally A JMW Turner Study. Something is working about using opaque colour for this.

[karlansted]

A side project, This model is roughly 15 years old now, and i was thinking originally the paintover might be a bit quicker to go to base matte and build things up... 5 hours of path masks later with no end nearby it was getting super complicated keeping track. So decided to keep the red paint and add now more informed reflections and fresnel.

Rhino

The original had issues with clean marks, the wheels are not really worth the time painting. and was a bit flat in places.

Things got stuck here, or at least pretty slow before scrapping.

[karlansted]

Been a bit of a weird couple of weeks. I am studying Horticulture at the same time as drawing this year, and the two seem to clash with each other. Time wise. And one being on the mind while doing the other. There is only a couple of months or so left for Hort though.

Working more on Colour, Materials and Lighting. There is what feels like a useful course for this point on Domestika by Sam Smith. Which does explain some of the colour shifts in the master studies. I was feeling a bit like the Scott Robertson resources are strongest for either Reflective or Matte and describing form and it would be worth exploring a few other resources.
I was up early following along the Lightbox Expo demos, by Sam Neilson, and Nathan Fowkes. I might come back to the Sam Neilson demo after the Sam Smith course, mostly due to the pace.

[karlansted]

I've been gone for a little while. It was a bit bananas with work stretching sometimes to nearly 11-12 hour days later last year. And I had to prioritize finishing the Horticulture course, which has been pretty useful. All better now, So I am hoping to continue where things left off.

I continued with Sam Smiths Assignments. And am putting together some things with Rhino and Zbrush.
I think Form does help with the Lighting course but they complement each other.

Sam Smith Sunny Day Lighting Part 1 and 2

I have started importing rhino models into Zbrush, rather than the other way. Seems okay with high poly counts. When i started with Rhino 3 long ago the computer would often crash with high polys. Rhino 7 is a bit friendlier. I think the Zbrush model may be much quicker and neater to build with primitives especially spheres, though have committed to a rough base long ago with the experience I had then.

[karlansted]

Continued exercises. Starry night, Cloudy day, coloured lighting in a room and sunny room lit from outside.
The sunny room seems to be the hardest. Dealing with bounce light and defining the volumes. And being subtle!

[cedricgo]

Nice! They all look pretty solid. I think you succeded with all the lighting scheme.

[karlansted]

Thanks cedricgo! There is a few more assignments to go.

This snowy one I painted in some white snow on the local color layer. It was a self chosen scenario. it is harder to know if it works with these, without instruction to follow. Snow does have properties that are not quite matte, that may be answered in the translucency exercise.

I played with reflections a bit more with the excavator. I was thinking of lighting studies with this, though it may be better to get smaller scenarios/models right before bigger ones like this.

[karlansted]

Some translucency and reflections were added to the Sunny scene, and the Room under coloured light assignment.
Not sure if these are completely right, as the tutorial explains how the local colour changes to the light, though not necessarily the reflections. I guess the strategies with the cars may work... though a simpler object/s may be a better choice.

Other than these excercises, I'm getting a Model towards rendering and painting stage. There has been some success sharing a .Obj file with zbrush using high polygon (with quad remesh) exports from Rhino.
Getting the programs to help each other.
I have found a way to fix wonky but more geometric bits with the Zbrush Ridley model by experimenting on a hatchling, at a later date.
Zbrush seems to be great at adding missing texture and bumps and smoothing, with less rigidity than Rhino3d so far.

[karlansted]

The year has gotten away quite quickly, Merry Christmas everyone.

Created a scene using zbrush for a cavern, and a few overlays to use or discard lighting and reflections in photoshop.

[karlansted]

Some more paintovers from older models in Rhino and Zbrush.