I'm working on it!

[plasmax]

Hi, I'm Max. When I started this I was 18. Now I'm 20. The journey continues. :)

[Creatinity]

Hi there!
Nice to see you your sketchbook is up!
With a lot of patience and dedication, you will do some progress you'll never regret....
Study the loomis book I passed you and post your studies, they will get you far....

[plasmax]

Thanks man, I've been drawing but still have limited access to a scanner. However, I played around with photoshop a little this evening... might paint more detail/accuracy into this one later, all suggestions welcome!

Attatchments don't seem to be working for me at the moment! I'll use an imageshack link temporarily (help appreciated here!):

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/4628/etcastlere0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Creatinity]

hello there...
it's interesting...it's a nice scene...
but even though it's at night, it's a bit too dark and lacks contrast....
as a consequence it's a bit hard to read....

[Kuutamo]

It's commendable that you decided to work on your drawing skills, it will open many new possibilities for your digital art.

You will want to be able to draw all sorts of subjects in time, but for the beginning I think it's better to focus on just one thing until you're somewhat confident about it (like human anatomy for instance). From that profile in your portraits, one can tell you need to study the shape of the skull. You're at the beginning now, so you need all the practice you can get. Good luck and keep posting!

[plasmax]

Thanks to both of you! I have been sketching quite a lot in my new sketchbook (wore out the old one ;P) but it's not really... post-worthy? I'm trying, though. ;)

But just to put something up here, my lecturer today instructed me to draw some very quick silhouttes to try to express character... it's fun to do, I'm going to do this more often.

[plasmax]

More crappy stuffs... drew the 3 women from ref (can anybody tell me if that helps?) and the rest is Loomis studies and... etc.

Still bleh, but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day...

[RandAlThor]

Good Progress Plas, you on the right track by following loomis, tho there are many other resources available to you, have a look around the forums here and you come up with some gems... plus i think you would benefit from the concept art 101 lessons... again, have a look around and join in some of hte activities, it will really push you forward.. keep posting dude... :-)

[plasmax]

Thanks RandAlThor, there's a lot of stuff on this site that could probably help me, I'll try to be more active. :D

Here's an update of some of the sketches I did in the past week or so... character stuff is from ref (http://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com), but that's only temporary. :D

[Blinckk]

Hey mate nice to see you around here!
I'm really digging your drawings, specially the human figure ones.
Keep sketching everyday, and on photoshop try some 1h speedpaints, it's great for training!
Keep posting!
cheers

[plasmax]

:lounge: Some digital updates (might scan some of the traditional later), with refs attatched, ~45 mins each one.

[plasmax]

Another digital sketch today... it's nice to switch between sketching traditionally and digitally. :D

[Creatinity]

in those landscapes, try to remember to change the brush size a lot...
they look like they have been done using only one brush....
seeing different strokes type, will add dynamism...

[plasmax]

It's been a long while since I posted in this thread.... since then I've filled 2 sketchbooks (lame, I know) but recently I've started picking up the pace. Most from ref. I'll post more tomorrow...

[Oranje Joe]

the transformation from your first sketches to these is quite inspiring to see!

the only i might suggest, is not trying to get the drawing perfect the first time, and then jumping right into shading, but to work out a gesture drawing and then refine it from there.

[plasmax]

Oranje Joe: thanks for your input, I shall make a point of doing that for today's sketches, which should be very good considering that I'm doing action poses and expressions today. ;p

More sketches from the current workbook:

[plasmax]

Something maybe a little more interesting, digital sketch in PS using the custom brushes recently endowed to the public by the mind-boggling Danny Luvisi. :)

Let's say... 45 mins? Idk. ;p Will post some studies tomorrow... in the meantime... anybody have an opinion on whether it's good to use posemaniacs.com to study from?

[plasmax]

Man I love posemaniacs.com, anybody know of other great anatomy reference? (Preferably free? ^^) Also please excuse the crappy scanning, done in a rush:

[plasmax]

Sketch from ref today, maybe 45 mins, mostly playing with custom brushes:

[George Abraham]

Really impressive scetch.

[plasmax]

Thanks zaorr. :D Nice to have someone posting in here again. ;p

Another 45 min speedy from ref today, and my first posemaniac sketches in PS:

[aiRaGe]

Hey Max :D keep posting, looks good!

[Jiang.YiFan]

Hey, I am fond of your landscape painting very much. Believe that your human body also will be in the future the before long extraordinary drawing is good!

[Abrodos]

Love your last speedies! keep them coming!

[plasmax]

Abrodos: Thanks! I plan to. :D
Jiang.YiFan: Hopefully... I'm practising that too. :] Thanks!
aiRaGe: cheers buddy

Today's speedpaint! Now back to my sketchbook.

[plasmax]

Another speedpaint today, took longer. From ref. Doing more posemaniacs and ref drawings in sketchbook, but I don't post those because I'm too lazy to scan and imho they're not worth it. Yet. ;]

[plasmax]

Parrot speedie! From ref :D

[plasmax]

Another speedpaint from ref:

[plasmax]

A concept I've been wanting to visualise for years... tried putting it together today but it didn't come out well... on the left, the failed concept, on the right, the WIP of the figure put aside for when I feel I have the ability to depict exactly what I want to here. ;p

[Oranje Joe]

WOAH!!!!

these are kick ass!

the canyon is an epic win!

really really well done

>:D

[aiRaGe]

For the concept, the perspective of the ellipses is off. Also the stuff in the background/around the basin distracts from what is happening in the picture along with the heavy contrast. You could try a more dramatic camera angle, that would improve the image a lot.
I hope that helped a little! Keep posting, good to see you progress :)

[plasmax]

Oranje Joe: thanks!
aiRaGe: Thanks for the input mate, I decided to start the image again because I got a new vision of it as I was falling asleep. ;p If I ever finish this, this should be an early wip:

[plasmax]

Some concept sketches:

[plasmax]

Ref speedies and concepts. Might post some lifedrawing stuff tomorrow. But probably not worth seeing. :)

[aiRaGe]

The image from post #32 is pretty problematic. The perspective is wrong on nearly everything, the lighting isn't clear and the composition is very overcharged. Try doing little black/white sketches first where you work very zoomed out or at something like 600x400pixels. So you can focus on the most important things first; composition, value, light source... then move on to detailing. But if you don't have a solid base to start with, you can detail, detail and change some things here and there but the overall image won't work no matter what.
Have a look here http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm and here http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3275&page .
I plan to study the lighting one once more, copy the images very rough and try to apply. Join me if you want to :)
Hope that helped a little :D

[plasmax]

Thanks man, you know it helped. :) Haven't seen you on msn for a while!

Just wanted to keep this threda updated, most stuff is in sketchbooks and i'm too lazy to scan, so here's two hyenas and two lions. ;p

[plasmax]

No ref sketch today! About 10 mins... could be a lot better but I'll leave that to future updates. :D

[plasmax]

Some recent stuff.... scanning takes ages so I don't usually bother to put this up here. :D

[plasmax]

Comic. :/

[aiRaGe]

Yo Max, looking good! But its a little hard for me to find out what's going on in the Comic. Keep working!

[Bartovan]

Great studies man! I like the landscapes: great sence of color. Keep practicing proportions in figure drawing. Keep going!

[plasmax]

Hey I got replies! xD Cheers guys, I'm keepin' at it...

Moar sketchy:

[plasmax]

Sketchy sketchy!!! MUST DO MOOOOOOREEEEE

Stuff from ref pics:

[plasmax]

Stuff from life, including a beach (my lil sis.. something wrong with her chin, LOL) and Gunther Von Hagen's Bodyworld's exhibition in Tampa, Florida (going to make it a personal mission to visit every one of his exhibits, SO good for sketching!!):

[plasmax]

Yeesh, didn't expect that last skeleton to come out so large... hope people have large resolution screens :D
Here's some stuff from imagination... will be playing around with markers and watercolour on these tomorrow ;]

[plasmax]

Onwards! I'm enjoying this much more now :D Going to have to revisit digital soon, but the masters here say get value right first before colour, and what better way to achieve that than with good ol' pencil? Started experimenting a bit with markers too... want to do that more. :D Also, I made a scene using two refs, whee...

Am a bit embarrassed to post that LOTR sketch page (not for the freeze-frame sketches, those are too much fun to be embarrassed about) but because the monster/vampire-bat dude is referenced from a sculpture by the great Evan Campbell (http://evancampbell.deviantart.com)... so I'm only posting it to show that I sketched it, for fun and monster design practice!

Speaking of which, anybody got some tips on designing stuff? Like buildings, creatures, vehicles, characters... etc ;D

[FAST ART]

the environments in post 34 are great... keep drawing.. you will get it ;)

[plasmax]

@ FAST ART: Thank you! I'm trying. :D

Still drawing lots, but I've decided to keep updates smaller because of the huge page loading times! So just 3 things here.

[bloknayrb]

Awesomeness! I'm so glad I found this you have no idea!

[plasmax]

Waterfalls.... approx 1 hr. Didn't colour pick! :)

[plasmax]

Hey Bryan! How's it going?

Here's a quick marker sketch from yesterday.

[bloknayrb]

Woah nice, I've got some catching up to do ;)
I've started my own sketchbook thread, take a look: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2286082

[plasmax]

I really shouldn't leave it so long to update this thing! :)

A selection of random sketches
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/8581/previews2010.jpg

And a 40min sketch from yesterday:

[plasmax]

A work in progress from today... might not finish it, but I might, because I like the concept. It's called "Light House"

[plasmax]

And here's a matte painting I'm working on for a film. It's about 25% complete, which is why I feel comfortable posting it here. Still very sketchy. Would appreciate feedback if at all possible. :)

[plasmax]

A couple sketches from photo ref to stay loose. Ha-ha. My hand's cramped. At least I have a better idea of what sort of atmosphere to give my film's main matte painting!

[plasmax]

Cheers to Robert (airage) for motivating me to update this (because I follow his sketchbook which is awesome: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=75418&page=12) It's really been too long since I've updated. I've been busy with making a film, a website (www.miragemax.com) portfolio, 3D projects, learning to drive, my job, festivals... but mostly it's just because I don't like the scanner I have to use, it gives really crap quality scans. Also I do most of my sketching on scrap paper ;D So these sketches are really only from my sketchbook that I don't use much!

First sketch is just something I did for fun on this awesome website: http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/
Pencil sketches below, some from observation (on from the deck of my parent's house in washington, one in the national history museum (I love going there), some monkeys/mask from photo ref, and some planes, mostly from photo ref. Then there's a design sketch I did for an interior spaceship environment. Unfortunately the marker sketch is completely ruined by the scanner...

At the bottom is a work in progress I started today after chatting with a friend of mine about concept art. :) A couple hours in photoshop.

[plasmax]

Hey ladies and gents! Here are two sketches from imagination I did for fun recently. I've started transforming that dragon sketch into a matte painting but it may be laid aside in favour of more serious matte and 3D practice. Maybe.

[plasmax]

A sketch from imagination I did for fun this morning. :)

[NyeAlexandaFrayne]

some of this is really good man, keep it up, think ima do some now :P

x

[aiRaGe]

I really like that pencil work, especially the one with the garden is great. Keep working hard, you're getting better and better!

[jdeegz]

you have a good eye for building forms. I think some of your study time could be applied to learning more about perspective to help your landscapes and building drawings.
The landscapes have a ton of strokes used, and i think you might benefit by trying to use less strokes, and see if you can get similar results. you could even say in your head, ok, this picture, 15 strokes. what forms are most important, what forms need to be read first ect ect.
i hope you are enjoying your work, i am :)

[plasmax]

Thank you nyje, Robert, and jdeegz for your helpful input and motivation! You're awesome. :) I'll try using less strokes on my landscapes, I can see how that would be more effective. Thanks!

Here are some sketches from imagination, pencil then touched up in photoshop. Skulls are from ref.