Lance's art time adventures :D

[lancer_idenoure]

well, its about time i finally started one of these.

im an aspiring concept artist from the US (California). i turn 18 in a little less than a month and im going to the university of illinois at chicago for art and design in two weeks.

ive taken a bunch of fine art classes since i was little, so i think i have a pretty good grasp of drawing painting from observation, but my imaginative work sucks :/ ive been doing creature of the week here for a while and i wasnt very happy with how they were turning out because i realized my anatomy was just terrible. i was fine when working from ref with just about anything, but as soon as i took that away, i was just kind of mucking around, trying to figure out what to do and wasting a lot of time. a really inefficient way of working. so i decided that i would take a hiatus from cow and work on my anatomy and shtuffs. i dug up all the old animal books that have been collecting dust in my room since i was little and decided to start drawing from them. started doing that and then i discovered algenpfleger's sketchbook. in just two years or so, he went from just an average kid who just wanted to get better at art, to one of the best artists ive seen period. its the most inspiring and motivating thing ive ever seen.

his work ethic taught me what i was only beginning to understand. there are no shortcuts in art. of course there are certain techniques you can learn from people and tutorials and such, but they only get you so far. the rest of it is up to you. i see a lot of people everywhere asking "how do i render this", "what brush did you use for that". i was the same way. but ive realized there are no magic brushes or tutorials to solve everything for you. you have to just go and draw. many people these days talk about a "visual library": things imprinted in your brain from drawing them over and over that you can look to as reference when drawing from your head. what i want to do is to build up that visual library as much as i can and see where i go from there.

so anyway, enough with the ranting, lets get this sketchbook started!

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[lancer_idenoure]

here are what i feel are my best pieces to date. i really need to stop over-rendering digital things o.o

sorry if theyre hooooge!

[Icedearth15876]

Very cool stuff so far i like your environments and creature concepts, keep up the good work

[Erick Willand]

...wowa... love the alien forest.

[lancer_idenoure]

icedearth15876: thanks. tryin to branch into characters too...and eventually vehicles/props. i got a ways to go

erick willand: you dont even wanna know how long that took me

ok, so heres what ive been doin for the last two and a half weeks or so (plus some other stuff)

for a class im taking we ha to design 5 characters sohere they are. the poses are pretty heavily reffed and i failed at the faces. im still waaaay better at creature design. will soon change that!
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discovered posemaniacs a while back so here are some one-minute poses
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and this is my start on all those animal books. amphibians first. got about another page or two of frogs and ill move on to salamanders and newts and such
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some old vanderpoel studies i did about 3 monts back for the fine art class im taking. its pretty laid back so you pretty much do what you want once you get past the main coursework
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aaaand after that i did some sargent portraits. first one took about an hour and a half and the second about 2.5
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here are some more vanderpoel studies i did yesterday and today. the last section is from life and imagination; trying to apply the studies
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here are some hands from life. trying not to erase so i really have to think about the forms.
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and the other day i went to the getty museum to see the exhibit on the paintings of jean-leon gerome. that guy is just amazing. words cant describe. go check him out. i did some figure drawings from his paintings. took about an hour 45 minutes total
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and lastly, heres a portrait im working on. juno! bout 2.5 hours so far, 16x20 oils should be done on thursday(hopefully)
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[lancer_idenoure]

ok, things i need to work a lot:
-lines
-digital color picker
-anatomy
-proportions
-faces
-light
-speed
-texture
-temperature
just to name a few...pretty much everything

heres some speedpaints i did today. all i could fit in...damn. il do some more later. 15mins on the first, 20 on the second. these suck pretty hard. aaaaaaa i need to get better.

[lancer_idenoure]

ok, got in two more of these. im taking a class at art center college of design so ima be pretty busy tomorrow finihing up this weeks assignment. hopefully ill be able to get in some more studies. we'll see

i realized that cuz i was failing so much at the super short speedpaints, i should take more time and just get a better feel for the colors. 40 mins on the first, 30 on the second. i think these last two went a lot better, but i gotta do more

[Nubian_Greene]

your paintings are looking washed out,trying using cooler colours in your backgrounds and warmer colours in your foreground.

[jskotte]

Your animal and face studies look really good. How long time o you use on the figures? Some of them looks a little stiff. But you need to work more on your colors, pretty much all the paintings have almost depth, they look flat, try some aerial perspective, and like nubien suggest, some coolor colors in the background to push it further away. Also think about your saturation, do use saturated colors everywhere, but save it for the areas of interest.

[lancer_idenoure]

nubian greene: ok ill try to push that a little more. digital colors are probably what i need to improve most. started out traditionally so im havin a little trouble O.o

jskotte: thanks. yeah, again, i need to work on my colors. the poses are a minute each. go to posemaniacs.com, click on the 30 second pose tab, and it opens up a slideshow thing and you can set how long you want each pose to be up for. shortest is 10 seconds, and the longest is 90. its pretty awesome

eeh didnt get much work done in the last two days. at least not as much as id have liked. its the last week of the summer class im taking and for the last week we have to go back and improve/finish all the work we've done so far and display it all next thursday kind of as a final. so basically im gonna be super busy this week; no time for studies but instead ill be doing stuff for that class, which ill hopefully post every so often. heres what i got done the last two days:

sharks!!! these were fun...and good line practice. they have such fluid shapes!
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heres an update on that juno painting. another 2.5 hours. didnt finish, but i got the face done. the colors show up a lot better on the closeup...at least on MY monitor...i need to calibrate it O.o
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aaaaand im redoing one of the environments i did for the class. i though it had some potential as a portfolio piece so i spent a lot of time trying to make it kick-ass. ill color it probably sunday. any suggestions on it?
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and yeah thats it so far...i need to get workin!

[lancer_idenoure]

damn, sorry i havent been posting. it was the final for the class i was taking and i spent pretty much the whole week doing this:
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and heres the steps
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still not quite done...ill work on it later

i leave for college on monday, which is in chicago (im from california) so ive been saying bye to all my friends and family and stuff so i havent had much time for art even after the class was over. ill do some more stuff as soon as i can.

[richart]

Fantastic traditional stuff! I love your ambition with pieces too, especially the avatar-ish forest

[lancer_idenoure]

richart: thanks man! haha it kinda screws me over with deadlines though

ok shiiiiiiiiiitttt i havent posted in FOREVER!!!!!!! moving in to college took about a week and then classes started and things have just been crazy. ive been trying to find time for art but ive had a lot of other things to do and gaahhhhhh im just making excuses! ive been lazy!!! i picked up my motivation a couple days ago so heres what ive been doing. its a pitiful amount of work for the 6 weeks since i last posted but its something. back to work!!

here are my entries for teen challenge 100
round 1(this one sucks):
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round 2(this one was rushed):
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and here are some speedpaints ive been doing. for some reason one wouldnt upload because "the file was too big"...even when i made it like 200x400 pixels so ill try to upload it later.
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and i have about 16 or so sketchbook pages, but i wont post em till i make a best buy run to get a scanner

thats it for now!

[lancer_idenoure]

ok heres 2 more duplications i did. theyre copied from other peoples art, im just doing these for learning purposes. again, these are COPIES! im gonna be doing A LOT of these. i have a folder with exactly 300 im going to paint...its gonna be a while. im learning a lot though. its fun to try out different styles too

oh, and i found out why the file was too big earlier. my photoshop somehow got switched to CMYK color mode instead of RGB, which made the file size like 10 times larger

[lancer_idenoure]

heres another duplication. little longer on this one, bout 3.5 hours. done after a piece by the amazing ukitakumuki. if you havent seen his stuff, go check him out, hes a beast. ill be doing more duplications of his stuff, theyre just pretty far down the list. ive got a folder full of 300 duplications to do, this was number 4...:/

[.:WoLf:.]

What is the point of those duplications? What do you learn?

[a la bapsi]

What is the point of those duplications? What do you learn?

I'm pretty curious as well.
I'd like to know what your focus for these copies are.

[MiladThaha]

Your painting are brilliant! I like the sharpened 'softness'

[apacalyrical]

Haha I love the title of this thread... because THAT was the EXACT same reason why I started mine. Literally, after checking his thread, I have been more motivated to bust my ass than ever. We always know there are the guys who draw ALL the time and those are are true competition... but to actually see an example of a person with that work ethic, and to go through the chronology of the beginning to the amazing present day is truly inspiring. It makes me realize that I too can reach that level if I just focus on that too. Cheers on bein inspired brotha.

Dude for being under 18 you're already becoming dope man. Those first couple of pieces are def better stuff than mine. That still life of your clock made me go gaga haha. Only suggestion I got is that your figure drawings are purely contour. Do more anatomy studies. Pick up either the following

George Bridgeman's Complete Guide to Drawing From Life(Or any book of his as a matter of fact)
Andrew Loomis
Stephen Peck's Atlas of Anatomy
Michael Hampton's Figure Invention book

Either of those will definitely help you in building from the inside out. Also figuredrawing.info is Michael Hampton's site and he has alot of his lectures available.

Also check out posespace.com and posemaniacs.com if you haven't already. Good luck.

[lancer_idenoure]

.:wolf:. and a la bapsi: hmm i though it was obvious but i guess not. (sorry my explanations kinda long ) well, its just like with drawing from life or doing anatomy studies, whenever we draw something, we store some of the information of whatever we drew and it gets easier to draw that thing from imagination. that goes with for anything, from anatomy to the way light bounces off things. i went through literally over 2500 pieces of other people's art i have saved on my hard drive and picked out the ones i thought i could learn the most from. for the most part, i picked ones that are fairly realistic-looking because i like that style more and i can learn more from them. but there are some in there that i picked for other things, like colors, rendering, or how dynamic the pieces were(action poses and flying dirt and such). of course, i could probably lean more about light by painting from life, which is why im doing still lifes and paintings from photos too. but another thing im getting from these duplications is style exploration. some of the subjects in some of them and just the way they are painted is SO so different fom what i usually do, so they are great practice to really push your boundaries and try new things. ad im trying to do them quickly, so i get faster at laying down colors. plus, theyre a lot more fun than still lifes hope that covers it.

miladthaha: thanks! these are just speedpaintings, but im really trying to get better with edges (soft and sharp)

apacalyrical: ohoho, another hannes fan, i see? cheers to you too! thanks a bunch man. and i most definitely am doing anatomy studies. ive got some loomis saved as a pdf (2 books) and another really great book i found. its by giovanni civardi if you want to look it up (its REALLY good ) im also looking into bammes. ive got about 16 sketchbook pages of anatomy and animal studies, but i dont want to upload them until i can get a scanner. ill post em when i get one. thanks again!

and heres another duplication. took about 1.5 hours, maybe 2. i did thisone cuz i thought the colors were really great, even though its not terribly realistic.

[lancer_idenoure]

heres my entry for creature of the week 190. i didnt get to finish it all the way and the colors are ridiculous desaturated. i need to work on that >.<
other than that i like how it turned out. ill try to finish it in between this next weeks cow, more studies, and possibly teen challenge...O.o im gonna be busy.

[lancer_idenoure]

heres another study i did. from a photo this time. i learned A LOT on this, especially about color

added a step too (sorry its just one)
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i also started cow 191, but i dont think ill finish it in time for the deadline due to me being busy as f--k and also needing to do a lot more studies (such as mr kitty up there). here it is. not even close to being done...oh well. i might try to finish it sometime later when i have the time or interest

[Dana_T]

Your observational paintings are super good but I would say your figure drawings could use some loosening up. Don't focus so much on the outline but more of the gesture of the pose, the weight, the "feel". Have fun with it! : D
Great environments, my favorite falls between the forest harvester and the waterfalls.

[Danny_K]

good stuff dude! more figure and anatomy studies would help.
your environments are awesome, try using a wider range of colors in your pallete dont get stuck with just two kind of greens and two kinds of yellows play with it use as much colors as you can its fun and gives the painting a richer look.

keeeeeeep it on!

[lancer_idenoure]

Dana_T: Thanks a bunch! and yeah, i need to work on the whole loosening up thing. ive gotten so used to really tight rendering and drawings...i need to branch out :/ working on it!

Danny_K: i knoooww i need to do study anatomy mooorre! O.o thanks though

well i ended up redoing that cow a lot sooner than i thought haha. its really based off that puma painting but i like how it turned out...cept the people look crappy. that last study helped me with colors a lot, but i still have a LONG way to go. aaaurrgh! i need to do so much more aaarrt!!!!!

[lancer_idenoure]

heres another photo study. about an hour and a half i think. im really trying to force myself to use brighter colors cuz thats i think my weakest point right now. getting better!

[lancer_idenoure]

alright! portrait AND a color study all in the same piece!!! nuther photo study before bed. hour and a half again. this one was really fun. the colors are so gorgeous
(wasnt really focusing on the drawing part, so i know its off)

[lancer_idenoure]

two more spedpaints. both took an hour and some change (got pretty bored withthe second one though). i think im gonna do some animal studies next. i like big cats...and bears...and hyenas...and baboons...hmm what to do?

[lancer_idenoure]

just went through defiledvision's skecthbook here. hes got some awesome stuff in there, his colors are amazing (and hes not much older than me! O.o) haha anyway great motivational boost there.

heres some creature sketches. i think im gonna just draw out a bunch of sketches and not paint them yet. im planning on doing a photo study with similar lighting to what i invision and then try to apply that study to the sketch. that way (hopefully) ill learn a lot more than if i just did a photo study and moved on.

defiledvision's got some great dragon paintings early in his sb. theyre mostly from a side view, so those kinda inspired this
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and heres another one. when i do paint it im gonna have a bunch of fish and big strands of kelp floating around...it looks very cool in my head.
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defiledvision also has some pokemon paintings in there so i just had to (me being half asian and all). when i first started this i thought the colors were going a lot better tha my previous pieces (theyre not all super desaturated for once) and then i think i lost it somewhere...but then i played with some overlay layers and...im not sure if its working or not. i know i need to use a lot more varying shades of green and blue, maybe some oranges and yellows too. thoughts? i could use some help.
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(i know the perspective on the flower sucks)

[lancer_idenoure]

here are some bird studies from a while back. more than 2 months actually...
sorry for the super crappy picture quality. i need a scanner :/

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i think i need to go over birds again though; i never applied what i learned so i kinda forgot a lot of it :/
important lesson learned: APPLY YOUR STUDIES!!!!!!

i have about 15 more sketchbook pages but ill wait till tomorrow to post em, im tired.