Matt's Art Blog

[MattD]

New to the Cubebrush forums so I thought this would be a good place to start. Been drawing for a while but never posted on forums.

Gonna start off with some life drawing I've done over the last couple of weeks done with a brush pen.

And some bus sketches

Finally something from a project I'm working on

[MattD]

Image from a comic that I'm working on, going for an Indiana Jones vibe.

[cedricgo]

I love your ink sketches and the way you used the same approach for your comic. The bold flat black shadows look really good!

Great work and keep it up!

[MattD]

Had to skip life drawing last week due to snow so I felt a little rusty going into the session yesterday but I was able to shake that feeling pretty quickly.

Watched Sergio Suarez's quick start to environment painting part 1. Composition and environments have been a struggle for me so I decided to put some serious effort into improving that. Here are the first ten studies I've done, these are a mix of classic paintings, movie stills and, modern illustration. I plan to do 100 of these before moving on to the next part of the tutorial

Finally here is page two of my comic book project. I was going for something dramatic and foreboding. I think I did an okay job but after staring at it for hours it can be a little hard to tell.

[MattD]

More life drawing, I've started useing a fine point pen to add some more detail and soften some shadows. It takes a bit more time but so far I like the result and with some more practice I'll get faster so I won't be rushing when the two minute warning sounds.

Still doing some composition studies

Finally a page from the comic I've been working on. Trying to incorporate the hatching I've been doing in my life drawing sessions

[MattD]

More composition studies. Trying to be looser wih these ones and focus on shape and less on detail. Still kind of mixed success at this point.
Another page of the comic I'm working on. Trying some diffent panel layouts seeing how much I can mess with it before it starts to effect readability.

No life drawing this week due to work being really busy but there are some quick character sketches for my coworkers D&D group.

[cedricgo]

I really like that comic page layout! And the panel art is also really nice. I love the way you ink with bold black shapes. That's a style I'd like to get into eventually.

[MattD]

@cedricgo Thank you so much! Bold black shapes are something I've really struggled with in the past so for this comic I decided to really put the focus on that.

Life drawing. We had a trans woman as the model which was really interesting for me. There are some cough obvious differences between her and a cis woman but also some more subtle one that were fascinating to study

Next page of my comic. I'm not much of a writer (yet) but I think I can make the dialogue make sense even if it isn't the most clever or witty. Toying around with the idea of giving the cultist guy some sort of wavey or just weird speech bubbles but left it normal for now. I think I could have improved that first panel by lowering the horizon line, made it more dramatic. That's something I'll keep in mind as I move on to the next page.

And some composition studies to finish off my post for the week.

[castonia]

Damn you're figure drawings are insane !

[MattD]

@castonia Thank you! I've been trying something new so that's great to hear

A co-worker asked me to draw the D&D group he runs. This is the last sketch before moving onto the final line work.

More composition studies

[MattD]

Finished the illustration for my coworkers D&D group

Experamenting with drawing on my tablet and sketchable. This is my first full color drawing using those tools. It has a lot of limitations compared to Photoshop but being able to draw while I'm on my couch is really nice.

Composition studys

[echoriel]

Hi! @MattD! this is very inspiring art blog!
absolutely love composition studies and that enviromental piece in the first post!

[MattD]

@echo_jk Thank you so much that's great to hear!

Some life drawing done last Sunday

After doing that large D&D piece I kinda got the itch to do more D&D characters so here is an elf bard

[jc.aedo.o]

Super nice shape languaje with the inking brush man! I wonder if you have consider to use that aproach in your comics, like Frank Miller´s sin city.

[cedricgo]

I just love your figure drawings! The ink and brush gives them so much character. I also agree that a comic in that style would be really cool

Oh, and nice work so far on that elf bard

[MattD]

@jc.aedo.o @cedricgo Getting some more of that inking brush/large shadow style into this comic is one of my goals. I think that my latest page is going in the right direction but I'm still going to push it further

Some roughs for the next four pages, trying to get feedback before I finish pages. Feel free to ignore my scribbled dialogue. Writing dialogue after the pictures are done is easier for me for some reason

[jc.aedo.o]

I really think you have good figure construction here, particulary I find very good your heads construction depicting the most important planes of the head, however I cant really follow the story , I completely understand that being this rough layouts of the pages the only person that needs to understand what is happening is you, but I cant tell much more friend, I would suggest that you do some preliminary pencils on top of the roughs just to find the things that could be more difficult to draw before moving to inks, cause one thing I can tell is that iit seems like there is some heavy action going there. Keep it up man!

[little_jerboa]

I really love the way you work with values. Your figure drawings and composition studies are really good!

[MattD]

@jc.aedo.o Thanks for the feedback. I can see how the story would be unclear with this very early draft. Sometimes I forget that it's clear to me because I'm the one writing it

@little_jerboa Thanks that's always great to hear

Page 7 of this comic. Originally the last couple of panels where extremely foreshortened. I changed because I wanted the throw to feel softer. I think is a better solution but I fear I may have overcorrected.

I like how this came out for the most part but it did make me realize that my fabric and folds could use some work

Mushroom studies

[MattD]

Page 8 of my comic. The exploding brain was fun to draw even if it did take a while

It's been a while since I did some painting so I decided to paint a couple of my mushroom studies