so i decided to start one of them sketchbooks threads in hopes of getting some feedback on the experimental things i've been doing lately. no transform manipulators (unrenamed, even) or viewport cubes, just drawings and paintings. although, somebody promised me i'll start learning 3d now. who was that?? where is he??? outrageously late painting again??? how reckless.

so a few month months ago i set myself down in front of the mirror and drew myself. it seriously sucked (after a long time of not drawing, don't try this at home kids). it got better gradually and, although this posed as a serious challange to me some days it became a sort of daily battle where i beat my own doubts, and usually win. I draw and paint very differently than i used to these days and i'm not quite feeling home yet... if you get my drift.

ok, enuf banter - here are some earlier scanz,







after about a month i switched to recycled paper where highlights got involved. this taught me to stfu and wait for the highlights.











sometimes i'd start touching it in photoshop (no, not in an intimate place, you perv)

this ultimately (and unavoidably) brought me to just paint in ps. first i was scared of colors....









Snowfly suggested peppi's bristle brush, so i tried it here:







this was the last one i finished, tonight's will remain undisclosed for now :&

hey al, eyal, ha ha

looking good, could not tell how you really look like but that's kind of a thing with self portraits, they don't necessarily look the same.

Some are really nice with the forms popping out nicely others seem a bit flat and skewed, also seems like you are forcing yourself a bit much into understanding your facial form. I mean, what do i know but my guess would be doing more quicker sketches, not necessarily full featured, would be good for you.

Love some of the pieces with the highlights, good composition, your new ava is great, like the colour. (bristle brush for win)

Well anyway, you suck and i think you should go back to bashing little Palestinian kids and falling in love with goddesses from different dimensions.

very interesting collection of self portrait/studys, inspiring, Ive never done one before could be fun to give it a try. I really like your colour choices and the way you handle light and shadow in some of the pieces is excellent

IMPRESSIVE ! admiral_shotgun.JPG is awesome !

MORE plz

Yeah very inspiring. I appreciate that you had the patience to just sit back and set everything else aside. Your skill and confidence has seemed to improve in the process. So props to you. My favorite piece was the yellow one you did in Feb. Superb.

AK

thanks for all the replies, i'm glad you find this inspiring. doing this has been giving me a lot of strength and confidence in trusting my instincts and trying new approaches.

here r a couple more i left out, as well as a silly experiment from last night. don't like it.

HOT !

Hey hey hey! Cool stuff buddy! I'm not a big fan of the last one outside of your color choices.

thanks scoob, that one was an attempt to work completely against everything i taught myself. well, some of it anyways. a brave attempt! but not so successful! next time, we shall see ;)

renaud, its very nice to see you post so much enthusiasm, i respect you a lot as an artist. post some more u 2 plz ktnx

here i wanted to share some recent misbehaviors. i attempted to bring some of the paintings elements from above into these. don't know if i successed :& but i like the ideas anyways... anything to sabotage the player's progress (and still look cool in the process) is desired in video games, right?



and this one im still working on

good stuff. Your self portraits are interesting, mainly 'cause of the directions that start flowing out when you do the same subject over and over.
Andrew Jones has a whole thing dedicated to about 1000 of those he did over a couple years, worth checking out.


I'm definitely digging the direction that second painting is going. Has a nice quality to it. Although, there's a lot of wasted space, in which you could enlarge and elaborate your little thumbs on how it works.

Nice /me thumbsup

i was lead to believe there would be crazy golf?

The wonderful thing about creating art in large numbers is that everyone is bound to find a winner among the turds eventually. That being said, you sir have very few turds here. (this is my roundabout way of saying that I dig your work)

I think Fliff had a good point in that these are great portraits but we don't really have anything to judge them by. Not that these don't stand alone, but I think we might be able to be a little more specific when looking at your work if we knew more about it-- do you always work from life? How long do you spend on a piece? etc.

Lastly, it might be interesting if you posted an actual photo of yourself in a selfportraity pose so that the rest of us can see any points of departure. Just a thought.

Great stuff, keep on truckin.

truely inspirational stuff eyal! i had a time too where i was really fokkusing on switching the line or style with each drawing, but those are just way better developed with a nice finish on top ;) - after seeing them i realize i should pay more of that attention in my stuff too ...

no crit i say! - your approach seems to develope directions and improvement on its own, just keep filling up this sketchbook, just sweet stuff!

Thanks for the crits earlier-- anyway, I've got a question for you; You manage to be highly expressive with the conte while actually drawing very little. Do you start from a pencil sketch first or are you just very meticulous about your application? I know conte gives me plenty of trouble because i tend rub it all over the page as if were compressed charcoal and then get confused as to why the finished piece doesn't look good

If you're still working with the conte I'd love to see some progress shots of how you work.

Oh, and great sketchbook on the conceptart.org forums-- some of your stuff reminds me in a cool way of Barlowe's Inferno.

good stuff man. very nice self portraits. I need to get back to more sketching like that done for sure

here's one from today:



i will try update this semi-daily, i haven't done much of this recently. back on track tho ;)

coldcokiak: thanks bro, ur stuff r awesome (just ease on the saturation heh). i plan to do exactly what u suggested.

wake: these portraits not describing how i look, its more about how i feel, without looking. if that makes any sense. think of me throwing something on the canvas - and then opening my eyes to see how it turned out. (i do peek in the middle tho . i spend from an hour to 3 on each, usually from life.

the contes on that ca.org thread r very old, the technique was very different. it was very shape oriented, i'd just copy the flat image in front of me unto the paper. i'd usually start with hair or something "safe" to feel my scale and position and then go from there.


HAX



(good for image resizing)

nice shot!
glad do see some 3dimensional stuff too, you should go with it, no doubt.

About damn time! :P Let see some more!

someone seems to be in love with themselfs ;)

love your proxi mine and alarm system though

thanks! here's tonight's experimentation. Tis be my cyborg mad proffessor (in a moment of contemplation).




Autocon: glad u like those concepts! i'll be finishing that turret soon. the portraits are a show of how much i love myself, how much i hate myself, and how much i dont give a shit haha

i dig man, i always liked how you pushed volumes with strong contrast and color, i really like those machinery/plorp concepts, hope to see more of tem from you. also mudbox MORE !

tnx johnz, mudbox coming up!

here's a sketchy 'sculpt' from tonight: "the driller"



needa fix that foot... and more renders (even colors)

here's another loosy-loose



some street-fighting, persian/barbarian warrior
not sure what those gas canisters on the back do yet... :?