Clem's Sketches

[crabbyclem]

Hey there,

New to the boards and thought I'd post some of my stuff for crits. A lot of ridiculously awesome artists around here that I was hoping to learn from. I'm an amateur artist trying to hone my skills.

[crabbyclem]

more sketchbook dumpage

[Bai Fan]

Man I miss figure drawing. YARG!!! There are no sessions around here.

Pretty good start.

I like the muscle work.

[Bai Fan]

Oh yea,

And welcome to the site!

[crabbyclem]

More sketches; some from my head, some from references. If the proportions look proper, it's probably from reference.

Must get better.....must draw more....

[crabbyclem]

Bai fan! You again!

Thanks. Muscles aren't too bad to draw when I have some anatomy books around but without a reference my drawings look pretty butchered.

[kuroart]

studies are looking good. keep it up.

[thespianmonsalvo]

keep working from reference. Always check and double-check measurements while drawing and that'll help a lot in your anatomy. keep posting.

[Oden]

Nice pencils...page 006 is my favourite. :)
Keep drawing/sharing

[crabbyclem]

photoshop sketch. I have no idea what that rat-thing is, just something to fill the whitespace.

More to come tomorrow

[c.cut]

I like the sloth page, and the figures are working in an interesting way.

[Fshoo]

Solid figure work, but I like your stylized stuff too. Don't draw too many muscular man, or you can't do anything else :P

[crabbyclem]

more sketches, mostly without reference.

[crabbyclem]

and again...sketching daily...

[crabbyclem]

rocks on paper...they were rocks, not potatoes. I cheated and put some sandpaper underneath my drawing and rubbed on some texture.

more coming tomorrow....

[crabbyclem]

last one...time for the weekend.

ginger is from observation...that rooty thing is from imagination. I'm not sure what it is exactly.

[Stefefef]

nice!
I like your last post a lot, especially the roots, how they're bleding with the white. makes the atmosphere silent, mystical & creepy! Really good! :D

[Gerre]

hi,
your drawings and grayvalues are really nice, i'm jealous :P. But I think you should practice your painting skills some more (not that i'm that good at it :D).

[Sigit]

Wow your drawing not bad especially your shading.

[Mumph]

Nice sketches. Your figure studies are great. I expecially like that second image in post #5, the face, and also your animals.

On that digital piece (the tomato) I think you should work with darkes shadows and some blurred edges. I really like the shading on the octopus.

Post #14 is great :) Just awesome.

[crabbyclem]

yeay, visitors! Thanks for all the comments.

I've been trying to finish the piece for the COW but I discovered it WAAY too late, but I'm working towards it anyway.

Onion is done from life.

the pregnant-thing is a WIP... some beast with a bunch of undigested food in the stomach and a giant parasitic embryo growing out of it's esophagus (which will later crawl into the stomach and eat the contents)

I'm just trying to figure the details on the arms, legs and back. The shape and pose is pretty much settled. I'm open to ideas!

[Whitevillage]

Very promising sketchbook. Your drawings feel like they really have a volume of mass. Great figure drawing and still lifes.

[Cohen]

damn beautiful anatomy work! keep it up and your no-ref pieces will be pure gold.

[tias]

Great pencil work! That digital concept is looking crazy, especially the creature.

[eminkey2003]

Super volume in the ginger root and onion. Those look like they really have solid mass inside them. Not that I know how to achieve that, but it looks great.

I think you should study proportions though, as in the relationship of heads to body parts and body parts to other parts. This guy (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=517321&stc=1&d=1226523162)'s ribcage looks very small compared to his legs and arms. Also, I think your latest creature could use some feet to hold up the body. Toothpick legs are uncreative anyway! I've seen those dozens of times. :)

[BRINKMAN!]

What can I say? eminkey beat me to the draw. The ginger and onion are fantastic. It looks like you are placing eyes too far apart/close to the edges of the head. Keep up the good work, I'm excited to see where your art goes!

[Knarf]

Crabby is not too shabby! awesome stuff so far.
some things I do notice is in some of the pencil sketches, the faces you give seems a little large in proportion to the rest of the body.

[crabbyclem]

Hey, thanks for the crits!

Yep, my heads are usually too big for the bodies. I gotta keep an eye out for that one.

The veggies are from reference. The box is testing out some drawing techniques: masking off areas and using a brush to apply the graphite. Cool effect I think, but probably not too practical....and the lid looks like it's floating.

[Mumph]

Really nice job with the onion but I think the edges are too sharp, like with the tomato, maybe that´s just me :) but I think you can blurr some parts, to create some variation. Great job with the bounced light.

The creature is cool, maybe he could also have some of those pads on his forehead? or maybe his horns could somewhat resebmle those blue pads?

In the vegetable pic I think some of the shadows/highlights end too abruptly (on the onion for example). The box one is very nice!, just missing a cast shadow :) Cool technique.

[eminkey2003]

Great form again in the box. I think the newest onion is confusing. Looks more like a bag filled with gel. The shape of it seems to be warped. Also, try doing these without contour lines (I'll be doing the same).

[krabat]

try to be more sensitive with the silhouette, don't circumscribe figures and other object too much with that strong/hard line. But keep up the productive work up with your sketch book like you have !

[crabbyclem]

wip.

My underpainting was a little weak - I didn't have a full range of values and I started getting lost in the details. I think this one is going to get abandoned for a few weeks; there's no way I can make the COW deadline.

[BRINKMAN!]

Clem, this character design is pretty nice, but the lack of a clear light source and consequently lack of value shifts means that the forms aren't very well defined and it lacks a sense of volume.
I also think the way the mouth opening extends all the way down to the collar of the shell is a bit strange, but I really like the turtle/crab mashup idea.

[Giow]

oh my...i like your digital painting.
you're also getting to know the body dynamics pretty well.
something i really should need to focus on more.

keep it up.

[Mumph]

I agree with BRINKMAN! and I also like the design of it. I like the look of the claws, nice texture job. I also think those scales should be on the head too. You should add castshadows from the arms onto the legs and body and from the head on the body. Some parts of the stomach should also be in shadow.

[BRINKMAN!]

Where you at buddy? :)

[eminkey2003]

I love the design. It reminds me of the tektites from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I think the pose and the lines are very stiff though. Sort of awkward too, like a hard cardboard box.

[DaStreets]

Wow, beautiful studies, and still life. Great stuff. Keep posting, comment me if u like

[crabbyclem]

sketchy sketch sketch

[ihatemexies]

I really like the elephant in the last page

[Mumph]

Awesome sketches! The birdman and the rodent rider I like very much! :)
No crits.

[crabbyclem]

more work....the more rendered drawing was from a magazine

[eminkey2003]

Eyes too big! Sweet rendering on the top right girl (1st page) though. Bottom right girl (2nd page) has a bit of a spoon head though, with the concave side facing us.

[Mumph]

Yeah, the eyes are too big and her right upper arm seems to be a bit to short. For the hair I think it´s better to try rendering it in masses.
The girls on the bottom left seems to have a very big head. For the eyes you could get a mirror with some magnification and do some studies from that, and look at for example where the folds go.
Keep it up!

[BRINKMAN!]

CLEM! Great to see these two nice updates. The bird man is by far the strongest offering here, really nice work there! The rendering on the girl in your most recent post is also very nice.

As the others have said proportion is an issue in general (as it is for a lot of us). I think doing some foundational anatomy studies would really help you out. I've been doing a lot from Hogarth and Bridgman and they've really helped me out. When I get to a stopping point it's much easier to step back from my drawing and pinpoint exactly what's wrong.

Great work!

[Knarf]

Very VERY impressive rendering you got there with the pencils. to strengthen your portraits check out some general guidelines on where the features lie in the head and also proportions of the features, as recommended by brink up there hogarth & bridgman does wonders.

[crabbyclem]

hey guys,

I've abandoned my sketchbook for a while. I won't be posting daily for the next few weeks - it's becoming a busy season for me....I'm not spending quality time with my art and I'm rushing everything.

[Mumph]

Man, the latest update is very sweet :) I really like the sharks.
I think it´s better to draw hair in masses rather than drawing each strand of hair. The doodles are great!

[eminkey2003]

Great volume in the portrait. I think the eye looks a little out-of-place and flat, but the rest looks fine. I think you could loosen up the doodles though. They look a little stiff and harsh.

[crabbyclem]

sorry for the long delay! Thanks for nagging me for an update.

Christmas is busy busy busy. Haven't been quite as motivated to draw but I'm still at it.

[BRINKMAN!]

I think you have plenty to be motivated about because you are making good progress here! The octopi and crab are really nice and have nice hatching. MOAR!

[eminkey2003]

Yeah, looks super. Great idea with the double duck bill on that... crab...monster...thing. I say, more innovative ideas like that would be really nice to see. Just try not to make things too flat.

[Mumph]

Great stuff man! You have a nice imagination :) I really like the shading on the octopus. Keep it up!

[Kristo Novo]

hi crabbyclem

the last few sketches are rocking ;)
your getting better and better... realy nice to see this process
keep going!


greets
kristo

[crabbyclem]

I thought I'd post some stuff that I did a couple months back...I'm still learning to paint. The biggest problem I have now is that I'm pretty comfortable with a pencil, and when I spend a ton of time rendering something out with graphite, it feels like a weird, technical process to make it into a painting...I'm guessing I need to keep the pencil sketch loose and do the rendering/modeling with paint in photoshop instead...

Suggestions and crits appreciated!

[BRINKMAN!]

Clem, these are really nice, especially since you're just getting started with painting. If I may, I'd like to pass on a few nuggets of wisdom I recieved from painting teachers past.

One of the most helpful tricks when starting a painting is to use this method:
1. Start with a simple line drawing on a mid-tone canvas, mostly straight lines, no shading or volume, just general shapes that dictate where edges of forms and hard cast shadows lie. When making your beginning drawing, focus on getting proportion right and use comparative measuring to make sure everything is where it should be.

2. Decide where your darkest darks and lightest lights are. Block them in broadly and develop a simple three tone composition of dark, mid and light.

3. Once you have those three blocked in, start working in transitions between them. This is the step where things get complicated and you must tackle things like warmth, relative value and line/shape edge hardness, which are all big in and of themselves...

This method is a good way to start because it is the easiest way to tackle one of the most fundamental problems in solving a painting, relative value, as well as automatically establishing a light source since you start by focusing on shadows and highlights.

These paintings have nice mood, good texture and nice color variation but suffer from a lack of a defined light source, limiting the amount of volume present. I would say these are a really good place to be starting from, though!

I hope this is helpful, keep up the good work!

[Royzy]

Really good drawing style, it is very distinctive! Love the surreal crazy ones.

Keep it up!

[eminkey2003]

The old painting is definitely too stiff. If you could do an angular style without it looking spiky, you win. Mike Mignola seems to do that well. Another problem with that is that things don't fit onto each other, like his legs-- they don't conform to the shape of the rat, so they appear to be flat and floating.

I also think that the colors are metallic, or maybe it's just the values. Not everything has dark shadows and bright highlights. That works fine as a style, but not if you're going for more realistic colors. It ends up looking like this: http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/p/images/pretty_bunnyneggs.lg.jpg

I think the house in the background has more natural colors. One more thing! The sky is more saturated than the mountains, so it appears to be closer to the viewer. Nice imagination as usual though. Push it! Be even more creative with your creations!

:assspank:

[Kristo Novo]

hi again :)

for me it´s the same problem being comfortable with pencil...
coming over to color is still a kind of mystery to me ...
for now i think it works best for me to keep sketching loose and
transfer just the idea of a sketch to a painting not the technique

if you get behind this mystery tell me ;)

[Mumph]

I like the paintings a lot, expecially the second one. Try loosing the graphite lines and instead define the edges with color. You´ve already gotten some great advice on those and I don´t have anything besides that to add :)

Keep going!

[BRINKMAN!]

Wanna see an update, my brotha!

[Carg0re]

staring at the farmer boy for 10 minutes now, ... this one got me! excellent!

greets, Ben

[Knarf]

hello my fellow mia ssger, hope to see you soon!

[Peetaer]

Love your style dude, your "dementedness"; I dig that kind of stuff myself. Your sense for proportion and values are excellent, as is the amount texture you like to add to your works. Would love to see more of your pencil work!

[crabbyclem]

I've abandoned the drawing for the last few weeks and have been trying to learn 3D Studio max... I'm not getting any younger and really feeling like 3D has more job security/opportunity.

I think I'm a semi-decent artist, but going from here to a professional full-time illustration-related job sometime soon, seems like a bit of a stretch. I've reached the point where I need to take a break and do something else for a while - drawing and painting ought to be fun, not frustrating with the looming thought of getting good enough to get paid. I'm still going to post, but not as often.

First one is a page from my sketchbook I attacked with a marker, scanned-mirrored-painted in PS. It's hard on the eyes but was fun to do.

2nd is all PS. Big mistake I made with this was spending too much time all zoomed in and working with little details of the bird-head and dress, but it's mostly lost when you look at the whole thing.

Thanks for the comments!

[eminkey2003]

I think the motorcycle appears to be sinking into the ground, or the wheels are melting a bit on the bottom. Also, some elements look a bit cut 'n' paste, like the lady's bird-head. Overall, I think it could stand to loosen up. Nice clean and clear job on the dress though. Solid! Some places seem to be lacking full form though, like the octopus's arms. Those have the "portrait on a coin" look to them, where it appears to be full on one side and flat on the other. Also, it looks a little see-through in the shadows.

I wouldn't worry too much about getting a job, just keep working on everything. Are you in/out of/going to college?

[BRINKMAN!]

Clem, I like the colorful piece, it's not hard on my eyes! :) There is some super nice rendering happening in that dress, but as eminkey suggested, it looks as if some areas got more love than others. This is an intriguing concept, though, so keep working on it.

Keep up the good work.

[Mumph]

That first one would look cool as a poster :). No crits to add on the second one.

[Knarf]

so when do we get to see some of those 3d studies that you have been working on vigorously?

[Peetaer]

Damn son, that psychedelic mirror paint one is fuuuucccckkkkiiinnnnggg awesome. Nice color palette on that one. Very cool stuff.

[eminkey2003]

Hope to see something soon!

[crabbyclem]

Hey guys,

I've been busy with work and haven't had much time to work on personal projects or my sketchbook. I finally got my online portfolio up at www.crabbyclem.com Come check it out!

[eminkey2003]

Sweet. 3D stuff looks stupendous. The traditional paintings have great volume too. I'd like to see that kind of volume in your digital paintings.

[Mumph]

Yo man, how are you?
Nice website and portfolio. I have to agree with eminkey2003 about the digital paintings. Man, that elephant illustration is really cool! The sketchbook is also very sweet, hope to see updates from you in the near future :)