Sketchbook of The Creature Called Syhn

[Syhn]

Well, I've been lurking on CA for almost a year now and I'm still timid about this sketchbook thing, but here goes.

Um, I regard myself as a fantasy and concept artist mainly. I'll admit though that for the last few years my art stagnated into a focus on character illustration and expression and it's only been lately that I'm trying to break out of it and expand.

I guess to start out I'll post a small variety of pieces to give an idea of what I do:

119071
My latest sketch. Dreamed about it, woke up, ran over and put it on paper. It's only my second avian ever and no reference was used, so go easy on me, heh.
119072
A larger version of my icon. I threw the color onto one of my concept sketches in about ten minutes or so.
119070
An illustration I did for an artist friend. He did a beautiful sketch of a dragon for me, so I returned the favor and drew his avatar in a "Life Drawing Class" with a dragon as the model.
119059
A random creature I had drawn in an older illustration and decided to try redrawing in a different pose. It's partially colored with prisma markers but incomplete because my 20%'s died.
119060
Random attempts at cartooning. Nothing special.
119061
A sketched illustration for a book I read as a kid (The Lost City by Scott Ciencin). I'm having difficulty drawing stone wolf heads at the front of the armrests, so it lies unfinished for now.

And that's all for now. Will post more as I go.

[Envisor]

Welcome to the boards. Cool creature and character designs. i like the first pic the best, its just a cool concept. Keep up the good work, would like to see some life drawing, and figure studies if you have them.

[Syhn]

Thank you for the kind words. They're much appreciated.
I do in fact have life drawing and figures studies, but they're done on sketchpads far larger than I could scan, even in increments. As soon as I find a solution to this, or I do some more studies on smaller paper, I'll be sure to post them.

Welcome to the boards. Cool creature and character designs. i like the first pic the best, its just a cool concept. Keep up the good work, would like to see some life drawing, and figure studies if you have them.

[Syhn]

I finally grew a pair and started pushing myself towards getting this digital painting thing down, so almost every day I try and do a one to three hour speed paint and experiment with something new. Been going well so far I think, at least in comparison to what I've been at.
Here are a couple of the ones I'm more proud of:
158093
I've had the pleasure of speaking with James Gurney recently and managed to acquire his limited portfolio and a signed copy of his first book, Dinotopia, so of course I'm going to draw dinosaurs :)

158094
Evironments, especially rocks, are my bane both digitally and real media, so how else to get better but to keep drawing them.

158594
Was looking at vacation photos of when I went snowboarding at the sand dunes in Arizona and got this idea. I've already been told it resembles something from Dune, but I haven't seen the movie so no clue.

And that's it for now. Hopefully after a couple weeks of these speed paint exercises I can get good enough to participate in the COWs and someday the EOWs.

[adraude]

hehe, the idea with the avatar drawing a dragon from life is really cute. like it, guess he was full of joy for that one. keep it up. :)

[DeJakhalz]

Loving the first drawing, real nice linework you got there! Keep it up man!

[Syhn]

Figure it's been a while since I've updated this thing, so I'll toss up a couple recent items I've done. I have more than this, I just need to get around to scanning it.

243686
This was done as an exercise shown to me by my friend Anthony (http://fyreant.deviantart.com/), where you have someone scribble some random lines all over the paper and then turn it into something. Done entirely in ballpoint pen.

243687
This was commissioned by a private party. I had read a certain quick-technique for rendering metal in ImagineFX or something, but couldn't find it again, so I had to improvise and create my own method. Didn't turn out as well as I'd have liked, but live and learn I guess.

[portal] I'll post more when I finally finish this delicious cake and get to scanning some other stuff. Thanks for looking!

[Arekkusu]

Yo man, great creature concepts. That avian at the top is kickass! Keep posting and If you have any, post some life drawings.

Keep up the good work.

[Arekkusu]

Yo man, great creature concepts. That avian at the top is kickass! Keep posting and If you have any, post some life drawings.

Keep up the good work.

[Syhn]

I recently had the priveledge of joining a friend at his college for one of the figure-study classes. I'll admit it gave me a bit of a reality-check on how out of practice I am, but all the more excuse to get some practice in, right? To push it further, I attempted this using a completely foreign medium to me: charcoal.
Anyway, for you folks who were asking, here's some recent figure studies:

313379
Warming up and trying to figure out how the charcoal behaves.
313380
More experimenting as well as getting back in the groove of drawing from life (Honestly one of my biggest weaknesses)
313378
Human faces are not my forte, hence why I prefer to stick to creatures and robots.
313377
Probably the better of the bunch. Was the last pic I finished for the day when I'd finally gotten a handle on the charcoal.

The rest of the stuff was sort of a train-wreck as I fought with the charcoal, so that's all for now.

[XSsithi]

Love your ink style work. So much detail and really neat concepts. Your digital is coming along pretty nicely, only thing to say to that at the moment is to keep on plugging and get to know the media and the "brushes" Until your really familiar with everything and can make the tools do what you want it will probably be a bit of a struggle :) I like your life sketches even if you are out of practice. I do enjoy the last one, you got some nice textures and gray variations. Keep it up!

[Arteater]

amazing work, you have a talent for sure

[RandAlThor]

Nice creatures dude, good to see you tackling the figure also. ;-)

[Mitze]

good start to a sketch book. Nice creatures hoping to see more form you.