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Another Here is my blog. I also post art and podcasts here. Enjoy. ContactE-mail "brenden" at this domain. Features
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Weekly Drawing: Happy MyrtaSaturday, May 10. 2008
Never again. This is exactly what I don’t want to do when I’m drawing. All told, this took around 10.5 hours, and because I was so pissed off by the end of it, most of it is way below what it should be. This is one of my characters from City of Villains. I did a portrait of her almost two years ago for an ArtRage review I did for the FT podcast, and I felt like going back and doing another one. This thing just got to be more and more of a problem as it went on, and it pretty much consumed every evening from Tuesday through Friday. The initial sketch took slightly longer than it should have, but it was looking promising. Then I got it in to Photoshop and it all went downhill from there. I think I mentioned on last week’s podcast that last week’s drawing was the minimal-shading extreme. Well, this is the maximum-shading extreme – and it’s not even complete – and it’s much, much worse. Not as an image, but as something I’m willing to inflict on myself on a regular basis. I worked at way too high a resolution for this image – the final is 6000×6000, and about 150 MB. The only part with any detail at all is the face, so the rest is just wasted space. It also caused Photoshop to chug more than I’m willing to tolerate. In the future, I’ll probably limit my images to around 3000 pixels on a side, unless I have a good reason to go above that. I think I said that maybe I should embrace the super-tight style, since it’s what I seem to keep doing. No. This is what happens when I do it: it takes forever, makes me really, really mad, and doesn’t give me results I’m satisfied with. In terms of technique, this image is pretty similar to the huntress image I did for the first weekly drawing. There’s just a lot more of this image, so it took a lot longer. Of the past few weeks’ drawings, I think I’m happiest with the “War” image so far. “Faito” was silly, but at least it was fun and not too onerous to do, and could conceivably get much faster. “Huntress” and “Myrta” are OK, but took way too much effort and don’t have any life or energy at all. I liked “Sunset” the least, because even though the sky turned out all right, the rest of it was really lame and reminded me more than anything else of doing FT characters. Starting next week, I’m imposing a four-hour limit on these drawings. If I hit four hours and they aren’t done, I’m just posting what I have. Comments
6000×6000? Wow…my computer was on the verge of commiting suicide when I attempted 3000×3000 once on a whim. Anyways, I’m blown away by the level of detail in this, from the background to the lighting it all looks great! For what it’s worth I think it’s brilliant. I think the time limit is a really good idea though to keep your frustration levels down, maybe also using a smaller canvas, or something like working in monochrome everynow and again so you’re just looking at the lighting and shapes rather than the colour and tone too. I like to mess around in more abstract stuff or caricaturing every now and again too since it can be very relaxing… I really hope next week’s drawing goes better for you. Varda 6000×6000 is definitely overkill. Most of my previous weeks’ drawings were at 3200×2000 though, so I think I could get away with 3000×3000 without much trouble. Switching out to monochrome/grayscale for some of the weekly drawings is a good idea; I think I’ll do that from time to time. I really like the detail. I’m sorry to hear it took so long that it feels like it’s not worth it. Will you link to the full size pic? I really enjoyed the full resolution War pic. In it I noticed stuff I did not see in the small one (like the head which I initially thought was dirt/clay. I like it. Insane happiness combined with violence and/or weapons is always a winner in my book. This is fantastic and was probably well worth the effort… but you have to be the ultimate judge of that. I’m no artist, not at all and never claimed to be but I have one thing that is relevant to some of your recent discussion regarding your art goals and perceived shortcomings. The thing that is slightly awkward and may contribute to your continued comments on the podcast about artwork having a life and vibrance to it… look at Myrta’s joints: elbows and knees particularly. They seem a little stiff somehow and that stiffness contributes to a slight lack of bang pow that the image strives for and needs. The idea behind an image of this sort is to portray action, even though it is a still, and the only thing I can see that works against that aim is the “unflexed” look of her joints. A little more crouch, slight lean into the kick of the gun and a less upright and squared shoulder position (again the gun is blasting) would probably have done the trick. The human body (particularly the female one) is really ‘bendy’. Let it bend. The shading on this looks gorgeous! Especially on her legs. 10.5 hours isn’t so bad for image that looks this polished. I think to get to the stage where you can speed paint you need to start off tight and gradually allow yourself to loosen up. And you need to be happy with leaving it 80% done. A good exercise is to give yourself 40mins to paint a face from reference in photoshop. Then stop. In time you’ll get faster because you only put in the ‘essential strokes’ and learn to leave out the fussy detail. Also I find alt key (eyedropper) really useful when blending. I’ve listened to quite a few of your podcasts but never commented before-they’re a great accompaniment for doing digital artwork! :) |
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