I always imagine that I'll work hard all summer and be awesome afterwards, and I always waste summer by doing nothing. So this year, I'm having you people to kick my ass if I don't get stuff done. And a sketchbook is also a good excuse to post stuff that's unfinished or crap. I decided to go to university after summer instead of job hunting, so there's no pressure for finished pieces, which is great.

I'm doing this all just to get better, so any advice or criticism is more than welcome.

Everything is done in Blender, Photoshop or both.


Some guy I started after the DomWar and I wanted to do some crazy detail, but it never got far. WWII + Space Marine armour was so cliché that I couldn't stand it for much more than the head.


27th of June: Some mermaid thing. It's pretty lousy, but I'm going to put more effort into 2D than I've previously been doing, so consider this a 'before' image next to which a beautiful 'after' will appear eventually.


28th of June: Expressing an expression of some sort.


30th of June: With all the talk of how Max Payne 3 looked terrible, I got the urge to do some fan art of the original. I figured it'd be easy as long as I got a constipated grimace on there, but it's still off, I think.


30th of June: TF2 Medic in a more realistic style. It's rather hard to find a balance between recognisability and realism, since the original's character is heavily dependent on its stylisation.


1st of July: This was what happened when I forced myself to sculpt something when I really didn't want to. It's rough and crap and it creeps me out with that nasty grin.

There is another answer for motivation; mod crew.

Some great looking stuff in here.

Nice work Zwebbie!

I particularly like the space nazi ;) Im actually playing Max Payne 1 right now, and I totally recognized the best before I even read your description. I think you have the general expression pretty much down, but I think if you moved the eyebrows closer together over the nose it would be a little more like the game - I noticed while playing that Max's expressions usually form a pretty harsh V shape blended nicely with the constipation face. Awesome stuff tho

-N!

Elhrrah: Thanks. That's actually not a bad idea, but I won't be able to fulfill any obligations after August anyway and I like how I can keep switching between different areas of CG now.

Mechadus: Thank you. Not sure if I'll be going back to Max, since he was just the evening's practice, but it's definitely noted .

Some quick-ish studies from today (well, it's yesterday by now, but whatever):


3rd of July: Torso study.


3rd of July: Study after Bourguereau's portrait of Gabrielle Cot. Lots of fun and very educational, so I'll be doing more of that in the future.

5th of July: Another Bouguereau study, this time la Tricoteuse. It's not the best, but it's 2:16 AM and I'd like to get some sleep .

bouguereau uses alot of soft tints and key highlights,

your works are missing the highlights quite a bit
you do desaturate the examples before working from it right, color to black and white doesnt work well

see wich highlights you are missing, and try and add those, they will spark up your drawings alot!

bouguereau should also be studied with real paint! ;)
its a great way to relax and get into lighting on a nice pace,
you will focus alot more on what you do with a real brush

anyway, what ive learned myself is not always to go for alot of pieces quick quick one a day.
stick to one for a bit, work it out into details, that way you reall break it down and get a much better understanding about how its build up,

moar!

Rens: Thank you very much! That's definitely some useful advice. One day, when I'm awesome, I'll actually paint for real, but as long as I'm just fiddling around, I'll stick to cheap digital paint ;) .

I'm not too sure about working on a piece for a longer time. At this point, I think learning about the construction and the lighting is a priority and that detail can come later when I've got a solid grasp on the basics. Studying different angles and lighting once a day sounds more educational to me than drawing every individual hair strand. It's also easier to keep motivation up if you know that you're actually going to get some real results the same day. That said, I already put a bit more time into my drawing today and maybe I'll try a really long piece one of these days.



6th of July: You guessed it. Psyché. Damn, the eyes aren't level. Just goes to show that I should zoom out more often.

Its not about drawing every hair, its about sticking more time in tweaking proportions and lighting. If you put more time in those, you will find out alot more imo then that you try and paint one a day, there is just too much stuff going on wich you skip in order to finish one up

for instance, the skin under her eyes is missing alot of values, wich makes it look flat

i use the liquify tool in photoshop alot to pulling things into place, try it, see what happens

I see what you're getting at, Rens, but I'm doing them all in one day to keep my motivation up; with all the next-gen modeling and such, it's nice to finish something within a couple of hours after starting it. That said, I'm putting more time into fixing the proportions and looking at the pictures from a distance, because I'm making some huge mistakes.

Update:


8th of July: Another Bouguereau study. Irène.


12th of July: Submitted my entry for GameArtisans' 3D comp. The task was to make a video game character cosplaying as another video game character, so I did HL2's Gordon Freeman and Alyx as Sam and Max. I learned some things about painting lowpoly faces and using different colours for shadow, but it's otherwise completely blegh.


14th of July: Study of Charles Baudelaire as photographed by Nadar. Quick, but fun.

I'm totally neglecting this Sketchbook, just when I was off to such a good start.

So here's some more stuff then:



18th of July (or somewhere in that neighbourhood): entry for GameArtisans' Explosive Personalities mini comp. I tried to make an homage to Dr. Strangelove, but there's very little sculpting for a sculpting mini. On top of that, I still regret not changing the eye brows, they're the poorest part of the piece.






22nd of July: A German MG08, the blatant copy of the Maxim they used in the First World War. I dare say half of the time spent making it was gathering and interpreting reference. NOT AS MUCH FUN AS IT LOOKS!





23rd of August: A Steampunk guy. Good practice.

Ohnoes, after all that while, an update!

Firstly, I joined the LPC2 and got in fourth! Very happy with that, even if it may have more to do with quantity than quality.

Only after the competition did I actually buy Watchmen, so I was able to make some changes afterwards, most notably on the environment, which was completely redone. Comparison:




(Of course I don't think iPhones can handle Catmull-Rom anti-aliasing, but who cares ?)

Secondly, a new and improved portfolio. The old one wasn't designed for more than the original six pieces I had, and it was hard to expand because the index and pictures were on the same page. This one should be able to host an infinite amount of projects, which is good since I'll be less strict about adding stuff - it's not for a job anymore after all, so if it's cool, it goes on the website.

Long timey no updatey, but I've got a sculpt:

Nothing new here, just updating this with things I've made recently(ish).

Entry for GameArtisans' Return to Oz competition:


A couple of quick sculpts. Need to do more.



'Fancy collar girl':

Oh no! It's been a year and ten days since this thread was started. And a long while since it's been updated. Busy, busy.

Anyway, some stuff that everybody has seen by now:

Two (rather disappointing) entries for the Polycount Pack contest.
Soldier
Heavy

And some 2D studies of busts by Bernini:

Wow man these studies look awesome. And all of the models are done in blender? Man that's just wild to me, probably the best quality blender art I've seen.

*blush!*

I like to think of myself as an artist who just happens to use Blender though, rather than as a Blender artist, so I always think it's a bit pointless to compare only to people who use the same software.

-

Here are some more Bernini studies, as seen in the WAYWO thread:

love your stuff, Zwebbie

Your mastery of value astounds me. How do you do it, man. Genius!

Seriously, tell us. :O

Originally Posted by Makkon

Your mastery of value astounds me. How do you do it, man. Genius!

It's in the subject matter; statues rely purely on value, then someone places it in nice lighting, then someone takes a nice photograph. I make a cheap and incorrect copy.

-

Well, I promised myself to post stuff even when it's bad, so here goes. To finally use some colour, I took a screengrab from the first scene of a Beautiful Mind and tried to recreate it. It became pretty clear after a minute that the colour picker was essential. Good practice, though, and I'll have at it again soon.

I think no explanation is needed by now.

Moth clothing!

Ohnoes, almost pushed to page 2! Time to update!

First, this is a couple of days older, from the Concept Tag thread. Tagged after Ferg




Furthermore, another study from A Beautiful Mind. This time without comparison, because that just brings me down.




I also wanted to do some drawing from life, but alas, nobody around but me. So here are two self portraits. Now you know why nobody guesses me at the 22 years that I am ( ).

Hehe, that's right you look like 12 ( no offense ... ) and your Drawing skill's are really good and improving! Good Job!!!

Zwebbalicious, you have a beautiful mug, regardless of age appearance

One thing I would say though-- don't cheat yourself by using the color picker on reference images. It can work in the short term, but it's a handicap. Being able to eyeball color values is one of the most important tools for an artist, and you need to develop it. I know, because there was a time once when I too was in that dark, dark hole of reference color picking... BUT NO MORE!!! What I find to be most helpful is to lay down some big swatches of 3 or 4 colors that are most dominant in an image and then blend them and color pick from the new combinations on the canvas. You end up with a much more natural looking painting that way.

Cool stuff man.

DarkStar: Err, thanks...

wake: Thanks. You're being quite an asset to the Sketchbook forum as of late. Concerning the colour picker, as I'm rather new to this whole 2D thing, I didn't want to tackle too many things at once. But I suppose that colour is more important than the subtleties of composition and all that, so I'll focus more on that .

-

Another self portrait. Especially for DarkStar, I put on an angry face and used harsh lighting to make me look older. Especially for wake, it's in colour.