Well, I decided to brush up on my painting skills a little.. since they were non-existant. Been looking at a lot of tutorials and well... these are my first paintings ever.

First one I did without much thinking and no reference



Second one I got inspired by some guy's painting.. I forgot who though. Used it as reference for color scheme.. or well. I wouldn't call it a reference since I didn't actually look at it when I started painting.



Here's something I threw together just now. I used an image I found on google as reference. You can find it if you google aztec pillar or something. Everything was done with painting.. using various brushes I found on the Internet.



Both latest ones I did by painting a value painting. I only have the value painting for the one above though.



Critique and comments are welcome The images are kind of empty cause well.. my imagination apparently doesn't extend past well.. cubes. haha.

Could I be the first to lend some critique here?

The main thing is that everything is central (besides the sun in the first...) and my eye does not really want to move across the painting as there is nothing that attracts it. That makes them feel static, almost non-believable. The grass on the last painting for example - it is just grass. Uniform, blurred over the stone and quite boring. The same with the sky.

Take a look at some other artworks that inspire you and take note of the different strokes they use, the way they blend their colour and what really excites you about it

But keep going! Practice makes perfect

Thanks for the critique and you are completely right. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it in mind for my next piece

God, so today I tried to learn some Mudbox. The results was so horrible so I'm not going to post it here. Instead here's some subpar scifi doors. Sadly I have big problems with detailing them out. Not really sure what to put on a door really.. a door is a door..

Not bad, agree with the centralness, but that's not the main issue imo.

Tone down that saturation man! It's all over the place, use it subtly. Your toning is pretty inconsistent too. Think these are your main areas you need to work on. I know gnomon has some awesome lessons on that, but they are pretty expensive (well worth imo). There was also this online tutorial on values and colour. Bet with some searchin you can find it here on the boards, or someone can post if he knows.

Keep pluggin away and look back critically you'll improve in no time ;)

Took an hour to try to fight the color thing but it didn't really work out well. Everything looks like it is the same color. erh.. actually it was more like an hour trying to set up the scene (god, perspective must be most annoying thing ever) and coloring it for 10min and then getting tired of it cause I couldn't get it working. heh. it is way too warm to be sitting at the computer working. arrggh.

EDIT: Well, I think I need to start drawing from reference instead of trying to make things up.
EDIT#2: Imagine someone blowing up a nuclear bomb outside the window. lol.

So I guess I got bored of painting and started up a scifish corridor. but I quickly got tired of that too. not a good sign.

The tutorial Stjoris mentioned is probably this one: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
It's a very good tutorial to start with, I suggest reading through it, and practicing it all.
I notice it's been updated with some new pictures, too.

Thanks. I had that in my bookmarks but I couldn't find it. Heh, been looking for it. Read that way long ago. I guess it is time to read it again.

Until I finish it.. here's another image I took a little more time to make.

I think in your latest one, the eggs...or plants...things look pretty good. I really think you need to paint from reference though. It's hard enough trying to learn how to paint and get the correct values but to have to MAKE IT UP on top of that makes it way more difficult. If you still wanted to do some 'creative' stuff...you use your reference and ADD to it....say, find a picture of a canyon scene with a river running through it and then after getting down the textures, lighting and geography as a base, you then add some alien eggs/plants to it.

I also noticed from all your paintings that they're all half done...you kinda focus on the most interesting thing and once that is done, you quickly put in the background stuff....this is probably because it's really boring having to make up mundane details like...how the grass lays or how a river erodes it's banks....so, if you were to use reference for that, then you wouldn't have to make up those details and maybe the rest of your drawings can have the same amount of detail/effort as the 'centerpiece'

Aldo, thanks. You are correct on every point. Just what I needed to hear. I've been thinking "I should use references" but some thing you just don't do until someone tell you to I will research for my next image!

Right. So here's today's work. First I tried drawing an astronaut. But since I've practically never drawn any real characters he turned out pretty bad. Foreshortening on arms are badly done however I couldn't figure it out and it was hard to find a reference pose with google. There's probably some pose library somewhere though. Also I tried using a reference but that was almost a step back in this case cause I started worrying about details. Also the pose was totally off from what I wanted... I was thinking more of a swimming pose or... reaching out to something in space.


Second image I tried starting with the boring background first and add something interesting later. I used a canyon image as reference and I guess the quality of the background is better than before. Still lacking.. too much white stuff going on. Also the "interesting thing" got off perspective I believe.



Also on both images I tried sticking to simple color schemes. I don't think I used more than one color for the astronaut except for the reflection on his helm. The canyon image I used mainly two colors for the background. One for the flying thing and some red stuffs for effects.

Erh.. and by color I mean picked colors.

You're getting better already! The rocket fighter through the mountains looks superb in comparison to the sun and desert one ;)

So I tried painting a person. I figured that what Im really lacking is an idea behind my pictures. A story so to say... and I haven't really done any characters so I thought I'd try it out. So I picked a reference image of Aki Hoshino to keep me interested. I didn't manage to get that cute asian look and well.. it doesn't look like her at all :p But it does look like a girl!

I spent so much time on the face and it still looks a little bit off from a real human :/ I think it is mainly the eyes but ya..

Argh.. and now I accidentally opened Adobe Bridge (I hate it!) when I was going to find the reference...



EDIT: Right, I didn't explain what storytelling had to do with painting people. Basically people are really good reference points for other people. If I just make a mountain is it hard to tell... well.. a lot of things. What it is.. why it is there.. uhm.. well.. the story. Having people around makes it easier to tell the story. Also Ive been avoiding characters but ya.. I felt it was time to try it out.

I also made some silhouette tests but ya.. gotta train some more on those.


EDIT#2: For workflow... I basically picked my own colors (always good to try picking your own colors). I didn't really use the splotches you see on the image since I just pick from the image instead. Also it was kind of difficult to match the colors with the one from the image cause of color relativity. Like I kept thinking I picked the right color... and I did.. but it looked off cause of neighboring colors.

Actually I didn't pick the colors until I had a basic sketch that looked decent. Didn't care too much about the face on the sketch except that the nose/mouth/eyes had well.. decent proportions. In the sketch stage I had most problems with perspective since she's.. uhm... half-lying down.. not sure what that pose is called.

What kind of underdrawing do you have for your painting of the girl? It looks like you need to get a better understanding of the form instead of just repainting the image.

try to think about the shapes that make up the form C:
keep practicing!

You don't want to know what it looked like. But here is how it looked..



And I think it is just a case of me being too impatient at the beginning cause I have a hard time to see what these line drawings are gonna give me at the end of it all so I tend to rush through to the phase where I can see how the end result is going to look. I think more patience, planning and care at the beginning should get me a more accurate result.

But you are right though..

I'll give it another shot tomorrow.

Thanks for taking your time

I thought I'd revive my attempts at this painting thing



So ya.. trying to make those things look better and more interesting.. but I'm having a hard time doing it atm. Focusing on design but the only thing I seem to be capable of designing is crappy panels, haha.

I think u can try and do less lines to define the object/person. or you can try using straight lines to do the underdrawing and add curves later when ur coloring. hope this helps

So after ditching painting for a few months I decided to try again. I think I actually made progress by doing nothing, which is very convenient