Just a few random portraits and studies.

















I'm going to try and do more of these more regularly. I haven't done one for a while.

These look pretty tight but they nearlly all seem to lack a good value range. It makes them feel a bit flat because nothing is really receding or coming up as much as it should.

Someone whos really great with greyscale is;

http://www.randallwhiteis.com/

The way he handles value is really fucking awesome!

yeah randallwhieis has his style... it's great.

I think Emil is showing great skill here... the softness adds to the beauty in a way ... i'd easily put that first one up my wall

these look great man, definitely do more.

great start, casey)

Originally Posted by Jackwhat

These look pretty tight but they nearlly all seem to lack a good value range. It makes them feel a bit flat because nothing is really receding or coming up as much as it should.

To be honest, I couldn't agree with you more. I've actually noticed this myself and it irks me to no end. I'm still trying to get through the whole 'drawing what I think I see' and start 'drawing what I actually see'. I do this a lot with colour as well.
But you hooked me up with a great link on #md so I'll be sure to use the crap out of it until I crash the site from excessive bandwidth usage :P

Looks like it's going to be epic value study time!
If any of you have any general tips or advice aside from doing tonnes of greyscale studies to improve on my value perseption. Hook me up, bitches!

Askhat: It was actually your thread that inspired me to make a sketchbook thread and start improving on my 2D. So thank you especially, mate.

bounchfx and Willburforce: Thanks for the kind words, it helps keep the motivation up to do more.

http://www.doctormacro1.info/

I found doin studies of those to be really fucking helpful too! Some are a little too blownout but theres a lot of awesome!

I found another pic I did for a friend that I forgot to post.


Value studies soon... I promise!

Cool stuff dude!

this is some good stuff emil. first one is ace! keep em coming

really nice! clean painting

Man im going to say something crazy, but bare with me, the very first pic in this post, her face is excellent, much much better than the others on this page, Its like a jump up - you must have had a good art day that day man!!

Any chance to see the ref pics next to your paintings ? I find that often helps me when im painting to see where i went wrong!

Thanks for the nice comments, guys.

Here's a quick value study, will keep going and polish this guy a little more. That's about an hour or so worth of painting.
REF Image here - it's big!

dont know how I missed this thread, nice studies man

Awesome work!

Yeah. From cute babies to Space-Orcs, studies are nice Emil. Keep them coming...I'll try to follow this sketchbook aswell.

really nice work. I like your style, looking forward to seeing your sketchbook develop.

It's been a while since I did a digital paint.
Just doing a lighting study.


And my timelapse:

love the very first picture, particularly her face

The first is also my favourite. If you don't mind my saying, it feels as though there is a sort of 'over renderedness' to the studies you are posting, almost like you're using a brush that is too small. If this is a bothersome and pompous critique, feel free to ignore; I cannot tell. I would simply like to see more broad strokes being made to define light and shadow.

The whites of the eyes in your studies are also very white, makes the eyes look flat. Perhaps to shade them spherically would be of assistance. 2¢, hope I am not coming off as a sniveling corndog. Eyes of the latest girl do have a certain art nouveau appeal.

Thanks for the crits, Vrav.
I guess the over renderedness comes from me trying to break the habit of not finishing art work. I will usually start a sketch/paint and learn something from it and once I've learned the lesson I just abandon the piece. It's primarily the reason why I don't have a completed online folio :P

As for the eyes, you do have a good point and it's really obvious looking back at my paints. I do put in some subtle shading, but I generally resize all my paints by 50 - 60% before posting, so I guess the subtlety gets lost in the resize. I'm just making excuses :P
I'll defintely be more mindful of it with my next piece.

Thanks once again.

hey emil, good to see you posting more. now do more!!
thanks for sharing the timelapse too! those are great to watch.

Just sitting in my hotel room, did this quickie paint. No ref.

emil you went from super sexy ladies to a really ugly dude. Bad form bad form...

I think if it had some darker sharper line-like values in there, it'd come together a bit more.

Cool work though, keep on postin

Hahaha, well I guess I'm doing a sexy lady before I go to sleep :P

As for the sharper lines, I purposely tried to stay away from that. I tried to keep the brush and the detail fairly minimal, as I get too carried away with detail at time. But I think I have a mixture of both loose and tight details. I actually wanted the whole thing to be at the same loose feel as the nose. But I guess I failed.

Thanks for the crits, dude and stay tuned for sexy ladies