Composition practice

Felt like I needed some more practice on compositions. So I took a random bunch of pictures I had saved which I found to work really well. I tried to understand the essence of why each picture worked really well for me. Each is done in 10 min or less.

More landscape studies and a piece of fan-art

I feel like something finally clicked today. Did these 2 in half an hour per piece. Somehow it's clearer now when to use sharp edges and soft edges. I still end up neglecting basic shapes and go into detail right away. So gotta try to start off with putting down the shapes first.  

Below is a piece of fan-art for the game Beyond good & Evil (which I love)
I'm not happy with the composition because it's a bit chaotic and the diagonal effect didn't really work. But I'm really happy with the lighting and the action poses.

Clothing studies

Time for some clothing studies today.
I do these to learn about how folds work with lighting and what the values of the tint will be.
I learned some more about how robes fall and wrinkle. At the same time it's a good practice for my anatomy.

Quick landscape sketches

I need to work on landscapes more. I've been so busy with gesture drawing that sort I sort of forgot to do these. I want to learn to simplify more. 

That and reading colors. I completely miss some important colors sometimes. 

Anyway, 15 minutes each.

A little bit of process

Some of you might have already seen this piece on my deviantart account. 

Decided to share a little bit of process of how it came to be.

 I started this off with a very bland and a bit chaotic composition. I liked the designs so I decided to keep at it.

Rendered it a bit. Worked some more on the background. But didn't like the colors that much. It's still a bit bland and the background is too eyecatching. I want the two figures to be the center of attention.

So here I added some dramatic lighting to contrast against the cool blue background. The background is still too important and the light looks weird with these colors.

Pushed back the background, which is now a lot more abstract and blurry. The lighting works better now and I added some designs on the armor. The face of the right character is now almost completely darkened to add mystery. I like how it looks now so it's time to render and add the final details. 

So this is the end result. Added a bunch of details, shiny parts and a detailed suit for the right character.

Jeremiah 10:12

I read this part in the bible and it inspired me to do this study. Jeremiah 10:12-14

He has made the earth by His power,
He has established the world by His wisdom,
And has stretched out the heavens at His discretion.
When He utters His voice,
There is a multitude of waters in the heavens:
"And he causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightning for the rain,
He brings the wind out of his treasuries."

Exploring

These are a bunch of really fast black and white sketches in which I try to explore some options for a short story I'm working on. I changed up the way I drew like three time because I felt like it :)

Stage lighting

I absolutely love with stage lighting sometimes. It makes for incredible rim lights, great dynamic and really unfamiliar colors. The top one is Patrick Watson in concert  (Fantastic band!)
And the bottom one is Keira Knightly in the new 'Begin again' trailer which I quite like. Done in under 40 minutes.

Sketch board

I made this while learning from Nathan Fowkes. I was exploring composition and values before choosing one scene that I would render and finish.The result is below.
As you can see, I picked the bottom left one.

Simplistic portraits

I love to do portraits every once in a while. This is a step back in it's simplicity. It's about finding the most important shapes and curves.

Some more detailed pieces

Making a detailed piece is tricky. In concepts you can just lay down color and roughly create the illusion of detail. But if you want to create clear and detailed objects you need to know where what goes and exactly how light falls and bounces off objects

Some old character designs

I made these after learning from Andrew Hou at Schoolism. It's a way of working I should get back to soon.