Nadjias Artblog

[nadjia]

Sooo, here is another Artblog that will start today :3 I try to post as often as I can, and hopefully that will be someday a memory of my process when I was starting. Feel free to criticize, I can take everything as long as it is constructive.
the first thing is a little boring, but I really have to work on my noses and the value especially:

[fathomcube]

Great!! better noses than what I can do...speacially the color one

[nadjia]

@fathomcube thank you! but I did that from reference, it is still hard for me to put that out of my memory....

so here I just played around with a brush and I actually liked it so I think I will make a finished painting of it when I have time

[nadjia]

´So after a month with tennis elbow I finally can draw again.

[ragamuffin]

That is looking really cool! So she like, fuses with the rock? That's pretty neato

[nadjia]

yes exactly! Thank you!

[dvlfsh]

Hey, last artwork is really nice, but and really muddy. Try to use more solid brush, even without transparency and focus on solid shapes and just after that add light and shadow. When You add shadows and lights try to keep your tonal scale very simple and limited, because now You're using palette like almost from black to white on same object and it start to look too noisy, fractional and unreadable. If you solve this muddiness - you'll become awesome!

[nadjia]

Thank you, @dvlfsh that was really helpfull, very clear advise!

so today I just did studies from reference to get values better in my memory library

[nadjia]

more value and brush studies:

[nadjia]

It was fun to make the studies by setting a 1 hour timelimit per sketch. The first one is weird because I was not concentrating on the face, so well, no eyes...

and I forgot a hand

[nadjia]

[nadjia]

Some ordinary forms in space I have to work on those:

[dvlfsh]

I think you should use also hard brushes for these studies for more believable results. Also try to copy (or just analyze) photos of real primitives from gypsum. All those soft reflections, subtle smoothness of edges, balance between crisp and soft, etc. Devil in the details!

[nadjia]

Yes, it really looks weird with the softbrush, I still have to figure out when to use which brush...thanks for the link, I was trying from real life but the values on those photos seem more clearer so I will try that. I read your post after I did my stuff today but I take your words for the next studies. I am not proud of those especially for the little amount that I can do in one day because I am really slow, but I told myself that I will post something even when it sucks

[dvlfsh]

Good mindset, keep trying!

[nadjia]

I dont get how to do the core shadow(?) on that reference ... I don´t get the right technique...

[shiv0r]

The Problem is that your terminator ist too sharp for a ball. Also i would recommended to use selections to make the form defined and sharper

[dvlfsh]

I'm, not sure if it helps with your problem, but hope it will.
Blending techniques: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Little bit about theory and terminology: Shading Light and Form
Also you could start with flat shapes of all shading elements from Proko's video and then mix them with techniques from CtrlPaint's tutorials. It's good exercise too.

[stealcase]

Keeping my eye on this blog, studies and exercises are the quickest ways to improve, and you seem to be doing them. =)

[nadjia]

Thank you for the example, @shiv0r. The links are really usefull, @dvlfsh thank you too! That´s really motivating, @stealcase

Ok so I tried out the smudgetool and the mixerbrush. I found a way to get in the direction I wanted. During rendering I already noticed that the shadow is too low but I kept going because the effect was in that moment more important for me. So it probably doesn´t make a lot of sense but I learnt sth, so I will keep the thing I did wrong in mind for next studies. I think there is a lack of valuedifference too what makes the form less readable, well, next time

that was the reference I was working from: