LesleyCarol - Art School Journey

[LesleyCarol]

I really excited to share this! I don't have that much time in the morning on some days so I decided to chip away at a study with the time I do have. I got the idea to get a bunch of my photos and manipulate them from a Stephen Wootha video on Artstation. Then I picked colors and changed values to paint. My main goal was to use painterly brush strokes and study how colors change with darker and lighter values.
If you feel like you're in a rut or stressed I really recommend trying this, it was a lot of fun.
Here's the ref:

[Lockenheim]

Checking out Stephen now! Thanks for the tip. This is gorgeous. My favorite piece I have seen of yours yet! Keep it up!

[LesleyCarol]

Thanks so much! Hopefully I can apply this to my illustrations somehow.

[LesleyCarol]

This is a sketch dump for illustrations I want to finish this month.

I've gotten a lot of feedback about not establishing what objects/figures are behind or in front one another, so I did sketches to understand this a little more.

I decided on the final costume for the diety so I did some color thumbs. I think I'm going to go with the one on the right.

And here's a thumb for my Mary Blair inspired piece.

Can't wait to see how these progress

[LesleyCarol]

I finally got the full sketch down for my mountain diety piece! I think I'll go over it onw more time to refine it but I really can't wait to start painting. Let me know if I should fix something!

[Xybb]

I really love the design, though there's two things that feel odd to me:

The crown doesn't sit properly in perspective. I've tried to construct it, but it's still a bit off because I eyeballed the VP and the dimensions of the square.

The other thing I noticed was the belly. To me, she looks like she's in early pregnancy. I think this may have to do with the symbols on her stomach which are slightly shifted to the left. I don't think there's something actually wrong with the proportions.

Edit: Something else that jumped into mind. Have you tried putting the staff in her right hand instead? That way it wouldn't block the body as much and you could position the highly detailed ornaments closer to her face, guiding the viewers eyes to where they belong.

I can't wait to see the finished piece.

[LesleyCarol]

Thanks for the input! Also, that's a great idea with the staff! I can't believe I didn't think about that.

[Lockenheim]

I cant wait to see this! It looks so great already!

[LesleyCarol]

@Lockenheim Thanks!!

Here are some of the studies I've been doing!
I did perspective for six days so far (scattered in the past couple of weeks) and I stuck with basic boxes and and two points on the side. I moved onto cutting parts off, and for the last one I tried rotation and using a different vanishing point for one. My goal is to get more and more complex while reaching for good quality.

And I did some color/portrait studies for my deity piece. I watched a couple of videos by Sinix and Ross Draws that emphasized shapes and grouping them by value/color, so that was something I wanted to practice.

[LesleyCarol]

This one feels like a growing pain. I like the way the composition, lighting and colors came out, but I need to sit down somewhere and do more painting and material studies
Don't think I can call it finished but I'm going to leave it here for now.

[Lockenheim]

Dang! Very nice! Those do look like some tough materials. I think the head dress came out exceptionally well!

[LesleyCarol]

Thank you! I really appreciate the positivity

[Lockenheim]

No problem! I don't always have much to add as I am so new but I can always bring the good vibes! I know sometimes that is just as helpful.

[gregorya]

You're doing very well with colors. I didn't know you can study colors like that. It's pretty good. Do you do line art with the color studies, or just the color? I also like the rendering of the hair and face.

[LesleyCarol]

Thanks!
If my goal is to just do a 10 min. - 1hr color study then I'll skip the lineart, but anything longer I'll draw it out first.

[LesleyCarol]

Small update! Not much but I've been doing a lot more studies and exercises along with bigger illustrations/projects.
Full figure study WIP. There's lineart for this one but I forgot to turn the layer on lol.

~15 min. value studies. Extra points if you know the artist or movie!

2 min. gesture warm up

Illustration WIP. I'm a little iffy on the pose for the figure on the right.

[Lockenheim]

Nice work! I think the top left is Normal Rockwell? But I am not confident.

[LesleyCarol]

Yep!

[LesleyCarol]

More studies and progress pics!
I've been splitting my days up with studies in the morning and illustrations in the afternoon/evening. I think it's been really helpful and keeps things organized. I was bouncing between two or three full drawings/projects everyday and it was getting to be too much. No I just dedicate the whole day to studies and one major project.

Here's a 10 min figure warm up. I want to work on using less lines and get better at capturing the form of what I'm drawing.

With this I'm trying to practice water texture and fully rendering. I forgot how much work went into finishing something. Recently I've been getting a lot of feedback that my work looks unfinished despite how much time I spent on it. However I realized I wasn't being patient, zooming in and really cleaning up the shapes and edges. I used to, but for some reason I became afraid of my work looking to polished and plastic so I thought putting less effort was the solution. With this I'm going to try and get a high level of detail while still keeping it natural.

And finally I cleaned up my drawing for my latest illustration. I still need to find references for the hands and faces, but I like how it's going. From now on I'm going to try and consistently do clean lineart before painting.

[Lockenheim]

Nice progress! Loving to see the updates!