Xezor's Sketch Book

[Xezor1324]

Hi everyone! Thanks for checking out my sketch book; I hope you enjoy it!

A little Background:
I've been drawing and painting for about a year now. I'm a college student and have attended 3 different colleges so far but I haven't decided on a major yet, I am thinking graphic design, but would love to work in a concept art field.
I work as an illustrator and draftsman for a log home builder part time while I go to school and I have done some freelance design work, mostly websites.
I'm terrible at rendering the human figure, but I'm working on getting better. I enjoy painting digital landscapes the most :D

Leave a comment if you like; I always appreciate critiques :)

Here are my latest works. The first I have posted in the work in progress section, I need to make a point of finishing it some time :P The second one is a speed painting from ref, it took about 15 minutes. The third one took about 6 hours, I couldn't resist, Indiana Jones rocks haha :D

[Amir the night wolf]

welcome to CA :) Good works keepem commin ;)

[Xezor1324]

Thanks Amir

Here are a couple more speedies. About 20 minutes each just for practise. Ref used.

[Arteater]

Awesome work, keep it up!

[Xezor1324]

Thanks Arteater. I will :)

[Xezor1324]

One hour spent on the first one, about 30 min on the second.

[Xezor1324]

A couple quick sketches.

[Einen]

That winter setting is really nice, and the last pencil sketch looks great. I like your architecture. I'm not much of a landscape-artist myself so don't expect much constructive criticism, though. ;)
Let us see some characters, creatures and portraits as well!

[Xezor1324]

Another digital landscape painting. I was experimenting with textures on this one so critiques would be great :) I'm taking a figure drawing/life drawing class at my local community college over the summer so I'll be posting some of those soon.

[Xezor1324]

A few figure drawings.

[Xezor1324]

More from class.

[Xezor1324]

More figure drawings and studies and a robot concept.

[FightingSeraph]

Nice stuff; especially the first piece of your most recent post, as well as the robot.

[ArtZealot]

nice stuff. i especially like your drawing of the treehouse, it's really nice. That would probably look awesome colored. cheers'

[Ash888]

Keep studying the figure, looking good.
Your landscapes are really good, love your ideas.

[Xezor1324]

More figure drawing practise.

[Ash888]

What are you drawing from?

[Xezor1324]

The last post they are all from life. Any posts before that the ones on the darker newsprint are from life as well.
Edit: Except for that muscle guy ;)

[Xezor1324]

Practise painting a scene two different ways.
and a random doodle.

[Xezor1324]

Some quick sketches

[ChrisBefeld]

everything looks great, lol yeah i did notice you didnt have any people in your paintings, but w/e, im kindov in the same boat, i suck extremely bad at hands and feet lol. Landscapes look b e a utiful
keep posting
-chris

[Xezor1324]

Thanks Chris :)

Some 1 minute pose sketches and an environment concept thumbs.

[Xezor1324]

A study in one point perspective, a digital landscape painting and some thumbs before the painting.

[Xezor1324]

Digital figure speed paintings...

[ArDis_MC]

Hey Xezor,
I wanted to get some knowledge on web design. Got any advice to give t o the ignorant...lol! I'm really bad at programming. Later man!

[Xezor1324]

ArDis_MC: www.w3schools.com will teach you a lot of the basics. Or you could get a program like dreamweaver or frontpage but in my opinion they suck (especialy frontpage). I like notepad.

More from figure drawing class and another digital speed painting.

[Xezor1324]

More fast sketches.

[Xezor1324]

A piece I've been working on. I'll post more steps as I work on it. Critiques for this would be great.

[JParrilla]

your enviroments are really good.. your figure drawing lags behind your environments a bit.. Its obvious you practice enviros more. Youve only been drawing for a year? Thats very impressive

[Xezor1324]

Update on the last one.

[Tmza]

Good detalwork with those environments. I assume you paint all textures without any custom brushes?
I especially like third image in post 23.
Tho, you might pay more attention to cast shadows.
Also remember how distance effects saturation. I personally use very big soft brushes to paint atmosphere and haze to push things back in space.

[Mattinian]

nice ones :] try warming up the colour schemes by running some reds/oranges on low opacity and in different
colour modes with a big brush over the whole image... you studying anything art related? if not - you should definetly look into it.

[Xezor1324]

Tmza: Thanks for the comment. Yes, I paint almost everything with just the normal round brush, you can tell some of them I don't though, like the second images in #19 and #23 for them I used custom brushes also.

Mattinian: Thanks :) And thank you for the tips, I'll try that. In fact, I'm going to studying Graphic Information Technology at a university this fall.


First one is a commission, the rest are just sketches and doodles.

[Xezor1324]

Community activities.

[HFix]

your landscapes are beautiful and definitely your strong point! keep up the good work!

[Xezor1324]

Thanks HFix :)

Another doodle. Haven't used ball point pens in a while.

[Ajene]

nice drawings man i love em

[Xezor1324]

More sketches from class.

[Xezor1324]

more sketches

[Trashy]

Ah another fellow Arizonian:)

Good solid range of wide studies. One thing to watch for is your values. I know this sounds basic but try studying simplistic objects like squares and spheres to get your lighting down more.

[Xezor1324]

Hey thanks for stopping by.
Thanks for the suggestion. :) I'll keep a close eye on that in the future as well as do some studies.

[Xezor1324]

Playing with mood and atmosphere.
First one is a sunny day, second is cloudy/foggy and the third is dusk/night.

[Xezor1324]

Some ink drawings and a still life thing...

[Xezor1324]

Some pen studies.

[Xezor1324]

Pen drawing of a medieval building complex :P

[Xezor1324]

Some face studies.

[Gadbury]

really great environments, something I really need to work on. Awesome pen drawings too, that last pen drawing is awesome - Keep going

[Shard]

cool enviros and studies dude!! :)

[Djinn]

Wow, your environments are incredible at every stage of production. You have my thanks for posting the stage-by-stage of the waterfall scene, very helpful since a couple of my biggest weaknesses so far are environments and digi-painting. It's also incredible how much your figure drawings have improved since the start of the thread! Keep it up! I'm sure we're going to see some amazing envo's alive with characters soon!

[Xezor1324]

Mr. Gadbury: Thanks :)

shardana: Thank you for stopping by.

Djinn: Thanks :) I'm glad I could be of help.

here are some digital figure paintings, which just suck. I gotta start a figure to put in the critique center for some help :/ But, if anyone wants to offer up a crit here by all means go ahead ;)

[Xezor1324]

More ink :P

[algenpfleger]

That medievil building kicks some serious ass. Loving all the girls too! Work on the colors though, especially try out some extreme lighting situations, maybe paint from life a bit more?

[azekariel]

I love your enviorment concepts! They make me want to do more myself... The colours and compositions are great. Do you have any advice on where to get inspiration for compositions, if you know what I mean? And also, textures. To use texture brushes or just use a basic brush and do it all that way? What are your thoughts?

[Xezor1324]

algenpfleger: Thanks for the advice. That is one thing I have actually never done, paint from life. I draw from life all the time but not paint, I really need to.

azekariel: My thoughts on brushes? Experiment ;) You'll have to find what you like on your own.


And! More studies... 60 seconds each. Drawn from posemaniacs.com.

[Xezor1324]

More pose studies. This time with a sharpie ;)

[Xezor1324]

Some sketches.

[Xezor1324]

More sketches from a few days ago.

[Hamorhage]

wow. I'm so impressed, you're such an inspiration. Your landscape paintings are phenomanal,a nd I love the ballpoint drawings. Amzing stuff. Your figure drawing did start off rather poor in comparison to your landscapes but that's quickly changing. You'll soon master both and be a kick ass concept artist. Man, I seriously need to work harder!

[Xezor1324]

Hamorhage: Thanks :) Yeah, I need to start working harder as well. In fact, I recently made it my goal to use a sketchbook per month. (That's about 70 sheets.)

And so, here are some sketches from yesterday and the day before.

[Xezor1324]

I like blue :P

[Xezor1324]

Today's sketches.

[Xezor1324]

Some faces drawn from photos in magazines/internet.

[Xezor1324]

more crap.

[Xezor1324]

My EOW entry for this week