Kektet - Art School Journey

Kektet 2020-11-21 18:54:30 UTC #1

Hello everyone,
I've been interested in concept art and illustration for as long as I can recall. I've been spending every spare moment I have lately to try to improve my art. I'll be posting whenever I have a collection of practice for critique. For starters, here are a bunch of value studies and sketches from about the last two weeks of practice. I haven't started any assignments yet (I am also in university right now) but I figured it would be good to share what I have and get some feedback.

Kektet 2020-11-21 19:04:19 UTC #2

A few more bits and bobs of practice:

WeirdOwl 2020-11-22 05:10:34 UTC #3

Those are awesome thumbnails and value studies. You put in a lot of work. I would say your smaller thumbnails have a better variation of values than the more worked on pieces.
Here's a video tutorial I found extremely helpful for approaching environments if you feel like working in this direction more:

Keep up the good work!

Kektet 2020-11-22 05:59:11 UTC #4

Hi WeirdOwl!
Thank you for your kind words and for the link as well, I'll check it out.
The smaller thumbnails have better value reads because I figured out how the value scale shrinks as stuff recedes into the background. I was originally confused about lighter colors in the foreground until I watched one of Marc's videos where he explained that the foreground has the widest value range, and it shrinks from there.

Kektet 2020-11-23 00:38:32 UTC #5

I had a little time today to devote to playing around. I went back into the tree house idea and reworked the values and composition. I feel like its stronger now, but there's still so much room to improve. Had a blast though!

For comparison, the original:

Cheers, lovelies!

Kektet 2020-11-23 17:51:31 UTC #6

Managed to get some head frame practice in. After about 50 heads I'm sort of starting to get the 2/3 ellipse ratio naturally, but it is still difficult. The downward facing 3/4 angle gave me a lot of grief, so I'm going to need to check the vid again and focus on that 'til I get it.

Kektet 2020-11-24 17:34:29 UTC #7

Updated with some silhouettes for fun. They are all kinds of messed up, but I'm trying to balance the rigorous, tedious stuff with some exploratory fun things. I'll be doing more silhouettes as well, because I feel like they can teach a lot about form language and getting a solid read.

Ausirias 2020-11-29 16:09:57 UTC #8

Oh I remember these silhouettes from the Discord these are really cool man I'm looking forward to seeing your progress

WeirdOwl 2020-11-30 02:44:17 UTC #9

These are really cool. Such a great way to approach a character design! What was your inspiration or theme for these?

Kektet 2020-11-30 04:15:58 UTC #10

Thank you! I needed to break up the monotony of drawing heads and torsos, and more heads and torsos... so I wanted to see how many different silhouettes I could bop out from one pose. It was a really fun exploration of breaking out the form and form language. I will likely take one or two of these and turn them into lineart, etc, to slowly evolve a pipeline.

Cheers!

Kektet 2020-11-30 07:37:02 UTC #11

Update on silhouettes: took one and attempted to render it out. Got about a third of the way sorted but I need to get some sleep... class tomorrow.

Cheers, lovelies!

Julia_J 2020-11-30 07:59:01 UTC #12

Looks stunning! Is this supposed to be a black eye?

migmats 2020-11-30 08:41:58 UTC #13

Some awesome concept exploration here, cant wait to see what they turn into! Do you make the sillouhettes using the lasso tool?

Kektet 2020-11-30 16:53:16 UTC #14

Hey, thank you!
Yep, all of the silhouettes were drawn with a brush/lasso tool. Sometimes its easier to visualize volumes when massing in blocks with the lasso, so I use it a lot!

Kektet 2020-11-30 22:14:28 UTC #15

Hehe, no it was meant to be some kinda cyber-eye piece. Ended up taking it out though.

Kektet 2020-12-01 00:55:16 UTC #16

Further attempts at rendering. Good grief the human face is hard. Need to spend way more time with reference. Much work to be done to get this piece somewhere nice.

Julia_J 2020-12-01 08:13:19 UTC #17

Ohh
In the last rendered version you changed the silhouette (around the neck)... I loved the original one, gave it something really special.

Kektet 2020-12-01 16:37:22 UTC #18

Heheh, yeah I did but funny you should mention that cuz I'm changing it back! The neckline in the silhouette is proportional, but when I filled it in to render I messed it up. So ima erase the head section entirely and start over, keeping the original neckline and head proportion

Kektet 2020-12-07 04:56:18 UTC #19

Something I'm working on:

Also did some torso bean practice, and have been doing a page of freehand circles every day as well:

Cheers, lovelies!

Wingz 2020-12-28 13:34:37 UTC #20

😱wow!cant wait to get to this stage. Amazingly done!