Some random updates and ranting

I haven’t been drawing much lately… I can sit down and work one day, but I can’t seem to follow through the next day, really frustrating tbh.
But I’ve been managing some work at least, so fingers crossed! 3 projects are better than none.

I started out with some imagination stuff which is my biggest weakness by far; I’m so fucking visual it’s stupid. Anyway, started out wanting to draw some fairy thing on a leaf, can’t remember why… Did the first draft with pen and paper and then worked on it in PS trying to use a bit of color – I’m banging on all cylinders now!
Goddamn efing damnit that shit is hard when you don’t have any visual reference at all to lean on at all, at some point the leafs kinda turned into a plant I got here, guess that was the only mental reference I had in my memory bank -.- Still found it a bit funny I draw those leafs without noticing it or looking at it :) which raises the question: WHO THE FUCK IS DRAWING HERE!? IS IT ME OR MY SUBCONCIOUS???
Anywho, it’s obviously unfinished but I don’t know how to proceed yet, I wanna fix some sorta glow, but I don’t know how, doing it as I tried now isn’t what I want… so yeah good game, one more thing to come back to when I learn more I suppose.
Oh one more thing, HOLY Biggus Dickus trying to draw a body from imagination is hard “now where was it those breasts go…?” and “shoulders… hmm how the f do they connect to the body??” etc.

I tried to do some gesture drawings, but that shit just pissed me off, it’s like I’ve forgotten everything in my break and I have to relearn it all… well fuck that shit hahaha :P So just started drawing a portrait instead, I’ve been hooked on The Dresden Files series and I wanted to draw someone who I could see as Harry Dresden, I found David Duchovny to fit that bill – for me at least – I dug up a reference from Californication where he plays Hank Moody. I found it oddly simple to work with for some reason and everything sorta just felt natural. I valued in the basic shapes and just kept doing that, basically just one big process of slowly working towards details without ever really drawing them if that makes sense…
I didn’t like the beard I did on my Jens Pulver portrait so I knew I had to change something with that, luckily I stumbled over some youtube stuff about making your own pencils… and well - that works!!  I can download 10 fucking packs of all kinda pencils and none of them really fits me, but when I make them myself and do my own adjustments, then it’s something else (I only got the 3 basic brushes from ctrlpaint.com and 2 made myself – If I had more they will only confuse me I’m sure). Back on track, I made a small scatter brush with some opacity variation and used that to make the five o'clock shadow, made another dual brush for the hair, it wasn’t perfect, but felt a lot better than my previous hair failings.
I cut his hair a bit shorter and stuff, but unknowingly I sorta just changed Hank Moody (Harry Dresden) into Fox Mulder, but only saw that afterwards >< oopsie.
I could/should have spent some more time with the cloth, neck and hair, not to mention his lower lip, but I guess you’re never really done…

I started on a portrait of this Tron chick (name…?), but I made some mistakes somewhere in the start which just turned the whole thing into a brick wall. One mistake I’m sure of is that I started out with a too light a tone/value for the foundation (if that’s the correct word?). In my world I suspect it’s easier to value in from dark to light and not the other way around, which I suppose makes sense… for me at least.

But after the David Duchovny portrait which just fucking flowed and was done with pure gut feeling, I found myself in sheer frustration trying to go back and measure proportions aligning features correct, basically doing all the detail work before the whole value step was done properly… I’m sure that’s a working approach as well of course, but for me it doesn’t work to start out with one plan in mind and then suddenly shift gear. It’s like looking at the whole and working out from that, to putting down a puzzle one piece of the time only having narrow focus on one thing and then trying to juggle everything in place afterwards.

Or maybe it’s because it’s a girl, or the contrast and shadows are just too complicated… grrr fucking excuses. One thing is sure, I don’t like how I had tried to solve it like some fucking math equation in the end, so I’m gonna let it rest awhile and pick up something else…

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Usual process gifs, been thinking about doing a video process, but even with 10x speed the size would be astronomical and I got 100GB left on my HD, not sure that equation would be solvable. Still it would be better than a gif and it shows my mistakes a lot clearer, if you look at youtube there are thousands of speed paintings by fucking masters, but I don’t see many by people who don’t know wtf they are doing like me, so… maybe.

Coloring a black and white drawing...

... is fucking hard!

I tried too color my drawing from yesterday, but I just can't color skin at fucking all.
I bought ctrlpaint.com tutorial on the subject and it's great (yes I actually buy some stuff from time to time - shut up!), but I still can't draw skin. It feels like either I start out painting with colors from the get go or let things stay in black and white.

Nothing to see here...

Just a quick scribble, no details... but entirely a product of my own fucked up brain and state of mind. I wanted to first draw a hand squishing an eyeball, but went with this instead... while drawing this I thought about drawing the other eye and have a finger covering the entire pupil, but maybe tomorrow. Also I could go further with the hand acting as eyelids..."should've would've could've"

The gif.

Long time no see (pun intended)

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks now and fml etc. [short rant warning]

I got some shitty autoimmune disease that likes to scar my cornea from time to time, the last 12 years I’ve had a big scar on my right cornea which blurs everything on the right eye, but my left eye was okay, so it didn’t affect my vision per se (the brain works in mysterious ways I’m telling you!).
Anywho a couple of weeks ago, I got a little scar on the left eye as well, it’s not as bad as the one on my right, but enough to blur my overall sight, facial details blur together after a couple of meters and I’m squinting when reading and writing, I can still do both luckily… but to put it gently - it fucking sucks.

The 1/10-12 I’m going to see a specialist team here and they will decide on whether or not I can get a cornea transplant, but what I’ve been told by my own eye doctor the chances aren’t good.

As one might imagine this shit kinda puts a damper on things, everything not only drawing.

So naturally I’ve been playing Diablo 3 and not drawing at all.
I’ve been focusing on limitations and all the shit that could happen and bla bla bla “what use is learning to draw if you will lose your sight at some point?” etc.
The way I work is very “all or nothing” everything is on a scale, like this drawing business, while I was doing that it was the only thing I was doing - literally.

So what do you do?

You apparently talk… and after that you finish a depressed drawing.

It’s a portrait of Jens Pulver which I didn’t get to finish before this shit, but managed to put the last touches on it yesterday as the first thing I’ve worked on for weeks.

I guess you could say I got a bit angry with everything, but if for nothing else that shit can be turned into fuel at least.

I didn’t want to bother with details or doing anything slow and meticulous, I just needed to draw/paint some fucking anger and frustration.

It should be Ed Harris, but I didn’t really care I just wanted to blow off some steam, I won’t be adding details or anything, it is what it is… a fucking fist in the table, fuck the rest.

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The process gif's

Still very uncertain about everything, but I do remember my ol' favorite quote.

- Kurgan: I got something to say! It's better to burn out than fade away!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bOKsOveYD0

Digital painting continued… ”pratice is pratice”

Not really keen on drawing portraits that much, but it can still be fun from time to time and even if I don’t think I get much out of it, there is prolly still tons of hidden shizzle I pick up without giving it a single thought, practice is practice and it can never be time wasted imho!
It’s a slow process though, digitally painting takes an absurd amount of time, that’s prolly in part related too my lack of knowdelegde about the media and base drawing ability, but that’s life :)

I started out with a Russel Crowe portrait (reference from Gladiator). I wanted to try and just block in the rough values and not depend on lines to much, dunno if I prefer that approach over a line sketch start, maybe it’s easier in a way since you don’t overly commit to anyway in the start, so it gives you a bit of freedom, but ofc too much freedom can be an issue when you’re not really sure of yourself ;)
The ear was a really big obstacle for me and I couldn’t really break that code, also the nose got a bit too wide I think and I didn’t really capture his line of sight or what you would call it, so in the end it turned into a portrait more of Walter Matthau than Russel Crowe - haha :P

Then I’ve been working on a portrait of my favorite female model Ariel. I wanted to try out some coloring, but the whole grayscale to color process is still very strange to me and when I try it looks like she lived on a diet of nothing but carrots or tomatoes, so didn’t really go full out on an attempt yet, instead I just worked on painting and rendering the drawing further along. This is still very much a work in progress, her hair (WHICH IS FUCKING ANNOYING – WHY ON EARTH DOES HAIR EXCIST?!?!) and clothing specially are just started on, I would like to pain the whole pose with a full body, but the time that would require… ehh yikes :S

Kinda annoying when you really just wanna cut out all the rest and just have the small thumbnail version -.-

Also I can't get the fucking cheekbone to work AT ALL, so been thinking about just changing her haircut, to something like below... lazy much? hahaha

And then a quick little texture effect just for the giggles – yay for being easily entertained :) (texture is from the hubble telescope - I so need to do my own enviro study of that shizzle!!!!)

 Have a good weekend :)