Volcanic Environment

Hello everyone and anyone! I don't have a lot to say today, but I do have a concept piece I spent most of the day creating to share! I wanted to spend most of my day trying to really make a piece of concept art that looks decent. So that's exactly what I did! I went with the volcanic concept from the thumbnail I drew, but I changed it up quite a bit. I also incorporated a different tactic to get the gears going in my head by taking a real world rock/mountain and building off of that. I do like what I've created :) For my first major piece I am very happy with it! Here it is!

I didn't really make it that great of a size honestly...but I just threw in some numbers and went with it! I started off with this rock/mountain/formation to get my mind working...

I like this approach to creating things! It gives you a real shape, but allows it to be freely altered to match your needs! I did learn in this though that lava is not that fun to draw. It's rather hard to make look like actual lava...oh well!

Well I hope you enjoyed this quick post! I will be back with some more work later this week! Probably not for a couple of days as I work, but man when I get into college...I'll have so much free time to doodle! All right, I'll talk to you all later! Have great days!!

Hands, Armor, and Environments!

Hello there everyone! I am back with an exciting post! I know I said that I would try to draw that environment I was having issues with the other day, but I decided during my drawing that I am going to leave a lot of my pencil and paper sketching for the human anatomy sketching. I have found that to be where I am struggling the most with drawing. Bodies and the like. So the two sketches I have to show today are some that I watched videos on how to draw and tried to imitate them. Personally I am very pleased with how they turned out!

These are two different hands (male and female) that I drew while watching Mark Crilley. Actually both these sketches are from Mark Crilley video tutorials! I figured that starting with the hardest part about the human anatomy would be the best place to make the road ahead get easier (hopefully). I like how they turned out! I have learned a lot about shading and light sources from his tutorials.

This is some armor that I sketched as well. I've never really drawn armor before so I think this turned out well! Much more proportionate that I thought it would end of being!

I have exciting news. My parents know the field that I am interested in and did a lot of research into what is required and what I would need for it and so...they bought me my own Wacom Intuos Pro (medium)!!! And I have been doing some fiddling with it and have come up with some environment thumbnails! I'm not all that great with it at the moment but I am learning more and more on making proper depth and lighting and all the fun stuff that goes into creating the environment artwork! So I thought I'd show you the thumbnails that I have completed so far!

The top left one is kind of a marshy swampish environment. The top right one is someone looking out over a volcanic area. And the bottom right one is in a forest of sorts. Obviously I have not done the bottom left one, but I will tomorrow! I've been doing these thumbnails to get an idea of what type of environment I like and want to explore more in depth. I currently like the volcanic idea, but it is not the best looking out of the three. I might go for a different angle and make a more upclose to the lava because it just looks like spider veins right now.

Well that's what I've been working on for the past few days! I'll post more once I've created some more thumbnails and possibly a focused in environment. Maybe a character too?? Who knows! I'll talk to you all later! Have great days!!

Pencil and Paper Sketch Work

Hello there everyone! I have a few sketches that I worked on these past couple of days and I am going to share them with you! As the title of this post implies, I sketched these using pencil and paper and the reason for that is it is just simpler to get my ideas down and also have control over my line work. I am having to learn how to exactly draw with pencil and paper because I honestly have never really drawn sketches besides little doodles here and there when I was bored in math class. I think this will be very interesting for me to do and I have so far kept to my schedule of when I will draw so that is very good! So without further ado, here is my very first sketch!

I do have to apologize for the lighting of the picture as I am in a room where all the lights are rather dim and yellow which gave the drawing an odd orange color, so I used a bright flashlight to attempt to make the picture as clear as possible. If you couldn't tell from my drawing, this is my attempt at making a cave environment that opens up to a moonrise of sorts. The human figure is purely to give a sense of how large this cave really is. I did have some issues sketching the cliff sides for each of the two pieces of land that reside inside the cave, but hopefully with practice and research I will be able to get that worked out. The central portion is supposed to be water as well and I personally can make it out to be water, but that's also coming from the creator's perspective.

The next picture is of rather simple thumbnails that I drew for environments so I could test the waters in just coming up with ideas for environments.

The top sketch is another cave idea, but much simpler in detail. The bottom is not my favorite honestly. I really dislike the tree on the right and the water doesn't look like water. The sky is not seperated from the mountains very well and that pillar/rock formation in the center was going to be another tree...but it totally failed so I made people worshiping it instead which is the saving grace for me on this piece actually. Now that I look at it, I see all the flaws and such but I also see how I turned a mess up into something that actually was kind of neat! Sure it isn't much to look at, but I bet if I re-drew this with more detail and on a larger scale I would be able to make it much more appealing. Maybe that's what my next environment sketch will be of. You know what, I'll challenge myself to drawing that bottom sketch to try and grow in some area on it.

This final sketch goes back to the cave environment theme, but is about the sort of creatures that reside in it.

I decided to go with a bat like creature since bats live in caves (and I totally failed at drawing a snake which is the random scribbling above). I would like to continue this sketch into further detail as well because I see potential in it! It was at first going to be a spider, but then it morphed into a bat when I didn't narrow the chin as I was going to. I am not sure how I want the body to look however? I see this face and think of a couple different body styles. The first is a muscular, more human-like figure with enormous wings. Bulging arm muscles and rippling legs, etc. But the other is more frail, yet still powerful. Thin legs and arms, but still show signs of strength. Built more for speed rather than brute force. I am leaning towards the thinner, faster body style as that fits better with the bat idea, but the other could be an interesting twist! Any thoughts on that?

Well everyone, that is all that I've truly worked on in the past couple of days! I'll try to make a new post in a couple of days, but I am going to steer clear of quick, daily posts as those bore me  and probably you as well! Have fantastic days and wonderful evenings!

Starting Concept Artwork

It's been quite some time since I last posted, but I'm back with another post! I however am not going to be talking about Landmark this time, rather I am going to be sharing some of the concept artwork that I've been working on. I am quite new to drawing concept art and I am not the best equipped right now, sadly. I have drawn everything on my two-in-one laptop/tablet so I haven't had any sort of pressure sensitivity available to make decent drawing marks. Most of the time I start off in grayscale and get the shape defined and then go back to add in some slight coloration, but I think I am going to stop drawing on my laptop until I can get an actual graphics tablet. I am going to be making a set schedule of drawing every night after 10pm which should give me a fair amount of time to get creative!

Now this picture is not my own concept, but it led me to the first piece I created. I wanted to try and recreate the image above by as closely as I could, while also giving it my own look. 

I realize this looks rather different than the original piece of work, but I did my best with the tools I had! I've realized that it is very hard to draw with depth when you have no pressure sensitivity like when you draw with a pencil. Hopefully I will be able to get a graphics tablet of sorts for my coming birthday/Christmas. 

This next piece was just me messing around with a different brush style. I like this piece because I was looking off of a picture that I was going to try and recreate, but I ended up just turning it into my own piece because I thought of different things to do.

My most recent piece I have two renditions of it. I was first just creating a somewhat cave environment, but wanted to see how a village would look in it so I also added a village. 

With this piece I've realized I struggle again with depth and a lot of the midground detailing. I find it hard to add textures to the terrain and making it look good.

I will say I'm not a huge fan of the village I put into this picture. But it was just a fun thing to add in to see how I'd do on it and I will say that you at least know it's a town of some sort. It was getting rather late when I made the mountains to the right of the town, so I could definitely work on them more. The mid ground flooring also is very very sparse of detail which is where I'm really struggling. 

I do like the foreground of the picture. I like drawing jagged rocks in the foreground, but I always fall short in the mid and background which disappoints me, but I know with practice I will get better. I know I will be my harshest critic, but I would love other people's opinions on each of these drawings. 

I hope to be able to save up enough money to be able to get a graphics tablet as well as buying a subscription for photoshop. I'm currently drawing all of these in Gimp. That is all I have for you today! As I said early, I will probably stop or slow down on the tablet drawing as it is a much harder process without having the control of pressure, but I will be doing pencil and paper sketches. I hope you have enjoyed reading and leave a comment if you like!