These are some rough sketches from yesterday. They were done pretty quickly, with the longest one (number 3) taking about 30-40 minutes.
My main goal was to keep things simple and try to establish decent shadows and form using a relatively small number of broad and confident brush strokes. Although they turned out pretty messy and i feel like it's pretty clear that i didn't know exactly what to do to set things up.
There's also a couple random poses in there that i did while warming up, but my main focus is on creating better shadows and light on clothing.
Some notes for each sketch below.
Number 1: This one was intentionally done with no color. Usually when coloring a white shirt like this i would start with a very de-saturated yellow or orange, and add some subtle blues in the shadows for ambient light. This one was meant to be an easier warmup sketch so i just focused on values.
I feel like the shadows look a bit unnatural. I'm not sure if softening some of the edges might help here or if that would make the shapes too vague.
Number 2: I was focusing on simplifying the shapes a bit and trying to make the general forms of the jacket clear. Although the shapes are pretty messy (especially on the right sleeve). I tried to do some of the lighter shadows on the right sleeve by starting with a darker shadow and adding ambient light but i don't really think it's working.
Other than trying to have cleaner more accurate shapes, I'm not sure what else i could do to improve this one.
Number 3: This was easily the most difficult one for me. Again i was mainly focusing on trying to use relatively simple shapes to establish the form.
Looking back at it now, i see that I could have put some stronger ambient occlusion under the collar and where the sleeves meet the torso.
But more tips on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
