(.:The Fishbowl:.) - contains mild nudity

[fish&lantern]

Edit: If you're coming here from the link in my signature, please skip to the last page, thanks? Advice on old work won't do much xD;...

And sorry, I had to take the original pictures out of this post to change the preview picture for the thread.

...unoriginal title is unoriginal... buuuut, anyway, here we go.

You can call me Fish, or Lantern-- hey, whatever you want (as long as I know who you're talking about xD). I'm 17 years old, so I'm no professional, but I'd like to be- probably either in something relating to concept art or drawing comics. Right now I'm pretty busy with school and all that, so I might not update as often as I'd like.

Advice would be great, but don't be too rough, alright? Construction's much better than... er, destruction xD;.

Anyway, it's not much to start out with, but here's two speed paintings and some pose studies I did--- thanks go to Suibaz (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/member.php?u=123255) and Pose Maniacs (http://www.posemaniacs.com/) for the references, and the stock photo for the rat picture was from... uh, well- I forgot, but point is it wasn't my image, so thanks to them too.

[Jaytea]

I MAY PERHAPS MIGHT BE ABLE TO TELL YOU WHY THE TITLE IS UNORIGINAL http://a.deviantart.net/avatars/l/a/larryplz.gif jkjkjk

if you're supremely confident on your first post and you weren't professional then we'd have to be worried B] everyone starts off like that: when you start begging for critiques you know you're starting to fit in. Anyway, very good start: you got the speedpaint, the anatomy sketches, and the fairly-realistic paint. I might suggest for landscapes that you try atmospheric perspective: making distant objects look more distant by using cooler or less saturated colors. As well, maybe look at some references for water? There are random white and black lines, and I'm not sure what to make of them; they don't look consistent enough to be waves and branches aren't white lol xP

anyway kidding aside, looking forward to more good work and improvement!

[Andromeo]

Hey, Lantern! Welcome to CA, I'm new here too =)
Nice job on the speedpaints, but you might wanna look through Environmentoring (http://conceptart.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=140) to understand atmospheric perspective better, like Jaytea said. The anatomy studies are looking good, have you tried doing them from life? It's loads of fun..
Keep up the good work!

[fish&lantern]

@Jaytea: Oooooh--- muchas gracias for reminding me about the atmospheric perspective thing, I was in such a hurry to finish I completely forgot about it xD;. And yeah, those are supposed to be branches, I probably have them looking blended into the water too much with the brush I was using- assuming the white sticks would be birch or something? xDD But I'm no tree expert.

@Andromeo: Thanks for the Environmentoring link, I'll definitely glance through that and try some of the assignments to get back into painting environments again. And I wish I could draw them from life =D--- but probably not a whole lot of nude life drawing classes until I move out of my parents' house, if you know what I mean xD.

Thanks for the advice, guys! On a side note, anyone who likes amazingly beautiful 2D/3D animation should do a search for the Beatles Rockband Press Conference Trailer. Really awesome quality, and the acid trip-ish part at the end is fun, too xD.

Also, I've kind of been in a slump idea-wise lately; I can come up with ideas, but it seems like I'm just rehashing the same stuff I usually do over and over. Anyone have any tips for coming up with ideas that are different than what someone's usually doing?

Anywayyyy, back to art, I've got a hand study I did. Some are based off photographs, others are from Hogarth's "Drawing Dynamic Hands". And I couldn't just leave the speedpainting alone after you both pointed out the lack of atmospheric perspective, so I tried to fix that and delineate the branches more so they stand out from the water.

[fish&lantern]

Decided to go through some of the exercises in Environmentoring, like Andromeo suggested. So here's the first two there, the ones on perspective- I figure I'll do the nuclear silo exercise, but more like a quick, smaller version of it xD;. I also didn't draw as many cubes, buuuut hopefully the ones I did draw aren't half bad.

To go through all of them: the first image is the 1 pt perspective exercise, the second is the 2 pt exercise, and the next two are both 3 pt, with the third point on different edges of the document (now I know to move it further away from the paper next time- the angle's too steep with the third point exactly on the edge of paper, I think, if I have the paper horizontally). The next two are the perspective exercises based on photos, and I got both photos from stock.xchng, sxc.hu.

[Jaytea]

cool stuff so far! keep the studies coming, they're nice :D

[fish&lantern]

@Jaytea: I will, thanks for stopping by again =D.

This one I'd say is finished... it's not amazing or anything like that, but it is mostly a study xD. Yeah, anyway, this was done for the nuclear silo perspective exercise in that same thing. Only, mine's not really a silo, it looks more like... some freakish pyramidal thing... well, they've got their nukes, anyway, so they're good. See the tiny little while specks towards the bottom of the pyramid-shaped building? Those are supposed to be people, for scale. Hopefully xD. Anyway, I'd like to thank the people who made the brushes I used- I don't remember where they came from, but I know a lot of them aren't mine.

Also, sorry for not updating much lately- I've had a ton of essays from English, and a lot of painting due for art. I might post a few photos of my paintings, if anyone's interested.

[fish&lantern]

Woooow, inactive for a while, haha. I'll try to make it more active, but for those of you who don't know me, that's probably not going to be happening xD;.

I did get around to doing this image, though, and I've been practicing fabric folds for a few days after because I realized I probably need some work on those. Anything else I should be practicing/specific exercises I should do?

[fish&lantern]

Two exercises I did based on some articles on composition, which can be found on here: http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/11/education-fundamentals-of-composition.html.

Also, I want to know what John K.'s doing. The guy never seems to have one negative comment on his site. Do you have to have some secret password to post that he only gives to people who agree with him or something? I mean, c'mon, on any other site you'd have about a dozen fights going on at once over someone saying the type of things he does. I'm not saying he's not a good animator or something, because I don't know enough about his style and I'm no expert on animation myself, I just find the whole agreeing thing veeeeeerrrry unusual for the internet. Just compare the comments on that site to those on youtube and you'll see what I mean. I do totally thank him for the composition articles, though. They're pretty helpful. But enough of my random comments, let's get on to the composition practice.

Please ignore the horribleness of the drawings; I was trying to focus on the composition part of it more xD;. I think design's one of those things I really need to work on, especially since it's one of the most basic, foundational aspects for any kind of art. So, yep. Design it is.

And I really wish I could get the attachments to display side-by-side so it won't stretch the page as much for all you people, rather than as one after the other. Ah, well.

[fish&lantern]

Been looking through Miles' sketchbook (http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=97046&page=12), it's really inspiring so you all should go check it out 8D. So now I'm going to update more often, and try and include some of the daily sketches I do (usually I just consider them way too bad to upload, but I think I'll try now xD;).

Anyway, here I've got this random... flying monk concept. Well, I guess he can't fly because those wings look completely useless, my bad. It's sort of semi-semi-semi referenced, I guess, since it was drawn right after doing several Bridgman studies.

I included a closeup so you all can see how horrible and uneconomical my way of digital painting is xD;. Anyway to solve this problem? Is it just that I should've spent more time blending the colors, or is there some way to go about painting that helps you be more economical with the brush strokes that I'm not aware of yet?

And a building study. It would've been more finished except Photoshop lost the more finished file I saved. So then I got sick of working on it xD;.

[fish&lantern]

A quick study of lips before I go to bed. Otherwise not that much else to say xD;. I did notice that the lighting seems a little weird, though. The upper lip is usually supposed to be darker than the bottom lip, from what I remember, so maybe they were lighting from the bottom or somewhere around there.

[fish&lantern]

More lip studies; first is based off of a painting by Lucian Freud, second off of one by Yuqi Wang, and the third off of one by William Bouguereau. The Bouguereau one was pretty difficult xD. Then some leg/feet studies I drew from George Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life.

Edit2: Fixed lack of Bridgman study, sorry about that.

[fish&lantern]

Gesture studies from the exercise "30 Second Drawing" on posemaniacs.com. There are 25 of them total; some of them I like, some... noooooot so much xD;.

[fish&lantern]

Sorry for the lack of updates- I had a ton of different homework projects at once, something due for my ceramics class... but I'm sure you all know the usual excuses already, right? xD; Anyway, here's a study I did off of a painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, titled "John Tait and his Grandson".

[fish&lantern]

A study on "Le Dernier Grenadier de Waterloo", by Horace Vernet. Spent about as much time on this one as the other one, except it was more complicated, so I ended up just blocking out colors xD;.

[fish&lantern]

Decided to do a drawing in just black and white for today, because my sense of contrast needs improvement. It's not all that good, though >>;.

[fish&lantern]

Decided to practice some clouds- I think the two on the left are my favorites of these ones. Anyone know some tip on how to make clouds look fairly good without spending hours of work on them? Besides practice, I mean, I already know that xD.

I've been drawing stuff out of Andrew Loomis's "Successful Drawing" book, too, but it's just copying and I've been getting lazy with it so I decided not to post it.

[fish&lantern]

Finished this today, not much to say about it xD;.

[fish&lantern]

Done to practice some animals xD. Drawings in watercolor, backgrounds in photoshop.

[fish&lantern]

Practice drawing fire/explosions/etc. More sketches to come soon.

[fish&lantern]

Some drawings based on the book "Anatomy for Fantasy Artists", and a painting of a skull. Ooooh, skulls~ -pokes-

[fish&lantern]

A speedpainting I did of a pear. I don't know why I did a pear, but it is what it is xD.

[fish&lantern]

A quick landscape practice, partly referenced and partly from imagination.

[fish&lantern]

Alice in Westernland - Silhouette Concepts/Silhouette Line-up

For http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=131799, an exercise where you have to take Alice and Wonderland, give it a different setting/plot, and redesign Alice, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts, the King of Hearts, and the White Rabbit. I'm not really participating because I found out about it too late, but I decided I'd try it anyway.

I changed the setting to a Western instead. The basic idea is that Alice is moving with her family from back east out west when their wagon train is attacked by a thief (the White Rabbit), who steals an important watch given to Alice by her father. She follows his trail to get it back and eventually ends up at a western town that is being "run" by the town sheriff (the King of Hearts) - really it's being run by the wealthy lady (the Queen of Hearts) that is so skilled at manipulating him. Most of her wealth is due to organized crime, and the White Rabbit is only one of many thieves working for her. Along the way Alice runs into a cat-like spirit (the Cheshire Cat) who helps her along her journey. And that's as much as I have so far xD.

[fish&lantern]

Sorry I haven't updated in forever and a half... so, here, have the silhouettes I actually managed to finish xD;.

[LAL]

awesome works !I real like the last post 25#, lovely style, keep up my friend.

[Reutte]

The western idea of Alice is really cute! I like how it makes her more pioneerish rather than British aristocrat.

[fish&lantern]

@LAL Thanks! Style is funny, I'm never really sure what mine is, but thank you anyway~ :D

@Reutte Thank you~ I'm glad I didn't go with the Post-Apocalyptic setting I was thinking of, I saw someone else's paintings for that and they were way better than anything I could do xD;;.

Anyway, here are some deer studies from a book called Artist's Photo Reference: Wildlife, by Bart Rulon.

[fish&lantern]

Here are some more studies from the same book, this time of bison and Dall's sheep.

[fish&lantern]

Some Pose Maniacs 45 second pose studies and some Bammes studies. Sorry if they're at too high of a resolution, I forgot to change that on my scanner xP;.

[fish&lantern]

More Bammes and Pose Maniacs studies.

And, yay, I finally reached the second page! =D

[fish&lantern]

More poses, more Bammes xD. I'm trying to get better at drawing from memory, too, so the bottom three on the Bammes studies (the ones at the bottom) were done from memory.

[fish&lantern]

Sorry for the long time, no updates. But I'm back again with a WIP of an image I've been working on~