A Pencil Party - Critique Welcome!

[PencilParty]

Hello there!

Welcome to my thread, my name is CJ and I go by the username "PencilParty"
I am an Art & Design Student and have been for several years but only recently began to post my sketches online, I am in no way a Professional Artist and do not claim to be so please don't expect any masterpieces to come from this.

With that said I am happy to accept critique and review on any of my pieces and would quite gladly appreciate it, don't worry about being too harsh or nit-picky as I will take every comment into consideration and try to improve from it.

Kicking off the thread with a colour pencil sketch inspired from the recent Judge Dredd Mega Collection MECHANISMO.
This sketch is a few days old so I will be posting catch-ups for a little while, I hope you enjoy.

[PencilParty]

I thought while I was here that I may aswell upload my current Profile Avatar, This was my first attempt at digital colouring and while very very basic I felt doing this digitally really saved me time with choosing the correct colours.

[PencilParty]

Starting to practice with traditional brush and painting styles.
Here is my first Ink painting of Rocket Raccoon (although I feel it looks more like Fantastic Mr Fox)
My own personal gripe about this is that the neck is FAR too long, will try to adjust in future sketches.

[PencilParty]

At 2/21/15 01:00 PM, JojoDodo wrote: This last two look way better than the first one. keep it up, mate.

I appreciate the positive feedback, trying to narrow down a style or focus point for the next little while.

[PencilParty]

Due to recent portfolio preparation and college work I haven't had much time for personal work.
(that and a recent PS3 Purchase but that's not an excuse at all...)

I recently completed the 2014 release of the THIEF video-game by Square-Enix and decided to celebrate by putting myself up to a challenge of doing atleast 1 Drawing for each Video-Game, Movie or Book I complete.

My personal gripe about this is that I really struggle to draw faces and facial features, which will tie into the post following below this.

[PencilParty]

Aside from my own personal work I have been having to work on a "Portrait Project" for college which requires me to do 2 things that I am very uncomfortable with: Painting and Portrait Drawing.

Due to the restrictions of the assignment I have had to focus my work on "Self-Portraits" which makes each painting I do remind me of how Self-self conscious I can be...

[PencilParty]

Just as above, this is a second self-portrait practice piece.

[PencilParty]

Back again, still continuing with the portrait work as I know I am incredibly weak at it.
I have decided to begin working on portraits with one feature at a time, so here are some eye sketches.

[PencilParty]

Following up on the eye practice, here are some more portrait sketches however this time I did not use myself as a subject.

Please note that I am not doing these portraits as a "Boast" I am very very uncomfortable with Self-Portraits and dislike drawing the face in general, I am continuing these studies to try and improve overall (and provide proof of study for a painting assignment)

[PencilParty]

At long last the portrait assignment I have been working on is coming to a close, out of all the sample pieces I created this is the only one that I had the slightest bit of hope for.

[PencilParty]

It's been a while since the last update however I am now off college for Easter (2 Week Break) and hope to get some more personal practice drawings uploaded.

I've also recently gotten into the Infinite Crisis game and freaking love Atomic Wonder Woman's design, here is a sketch of it below.

[PencilParty]

These sketches (excluding the bottom left ghost guy) are from the Freak Kitchen animated music video "Freak of the Week" which is an insanely well produced and animated music video, I really recommend you give it a watch.

Freak Kitchen - Freak Of The Week (Animated Music Video)

Anyway I thought the Bass Guitarist had a really awesome design and wanted to give him a few sketches.

[PencilParty]

At 3/27/15 11:26 PM, JojoDodo wrote: Your last works show a lot of improvement, man, way to go. I'd say you should spend some time studying some anatomy basics, there's plenty of books around...here, Zanezansorrow has a compilation of loomis' books right here.

Keep it up, map

Thanks again for stopping by, I dabbed in and out of proportional work from time to time and read up on Michael Hampton's Figure Drawing Book however I have trouble really learning from books, I'm all fine for reading but don't know when or how to apply what I'm reading and when to move on from a section.

I'll give Loomis a try, I've heard him being recommended countless times so I appreciate the link.

[PencilParty]

At 3/28/15 05:32 AM, JojoDodo wrote: yap...sometimes is hard to figure out by your own what the writer means, especially for people who doesn't have some background related to art. There's plenty of how-to-draw for beginner-beginner, but i find they also have the same problem when it comes to get across an idea. Give it a try, and if there's something I can help you with, don't hesitate asking...or the guys at the art workshop.

Thanks for offering your help again, basically the problem I have is not understanding what the writer is saying but putting it into practice, I could read through the entirety of a Loomis Book and take nothing from it.

How would you go about learning from a book? ie: do you read a section then practice it for a day or...?

[PencilParty]

I've been (slowly) reading through Loomis books and have to admit that there is alot to take in, In doing so I have decided to spend some time working digitally as I'm burning through sketchbook pages without much improvement and would like to make a change with how I draw and overall learn to paint digitally.

Here is a life-drawing I've worked on throughout parts of today, planning to add colours tomorrow and experiment with mixing.

[PencilParty]

Adding on from last nights update I've added colour to the piece and with alot of trouble too.
I'll be spending some time looking at ways to colour pieces digitally as I feel very disappointed in this painting although I really enjoyed the sketch that it began with.

[PencilParty]

Still working my way through the Loomis Books, I really have to thank you for providing me with them JoJo they have been a great help with construction and I plan to work through the majority of them especially to improve my figures later.

I'm still working traditionally in my sketchbooks (finished an old one yesterday) but I also want to get more accustomed to digital so I'll be repeating the studies digitally, killing 2 birds with 1 pencil really.

Anyway here is a quick sketch page of skull's, I heard it's best to work from Bone to Flesh for the head.
The bottom of this page is me attempting to simplify the skull for quick sketches when out in public (not too pleased with the result) the upper page however has some referenced skulls with more time put into them (much better I feel)

I've got plenty more of pages similar to these in my sketchbook however I don't like spamming the replies so I'll leave them out,

[PencilParty]

At 4/12/15 05:06 PM, JojoDodo wrote: Useful Tips Go Here~

Thanks again Jojo for the tips, I understand what you mean by the X,Y,Z axis (having used Blender and Unity in the past) I've been trying to look at construction in a similar way, I found it most useful however when trying to base a perspective shot, looking for where and what would show if it was a box in the space instead of a figure or face.

Sadly my course has not picked itself back up and we're still tumbling down the To-Do List, as of late there is a slim chance that any of the people in my course will even achieve a pass (not due to us) but I don't want to spend my time ranting here and I'm sure anyone reading this won't either.

In the meantime I have been told that I can not paint and need to learn it ASAP so I will watercolor painting (or trying to) all the future sketches I do, I would much rather not do this but if it helps then It's probably for the best.

[PencilParty]

Here are also some Gesture Practices I did as warm-up this morning, Gesture drawing is something I've never really practiced so I'll be combining this with the painting practice...hopefully.

[PencilParty]

Wow it's been awhile since my last update, Sorry about that.

One of the main reasons that I haven't engaged in the art forums for the past while was due to a heavy artist depression, In the past few weeks I went from a case of art-block to art-depression and almost gave up on my college work entirely, even considered removing my application for University (Yikes)

While this sounds both serious and stupid I realized that after watching alot of "Stephen Silvers" videos regarding artist depression and self-criticism that I was just having a case of the blues and needed to work my way out of it.

So that is just about all that has happened since my last update, I am still continuing to learn watercolour painting along with the technical aspect of drawing, for once however I feel somewhat in control of my art and have a clearer mind-set on what I want to do with art as a career. (Which has led me to branding and creating various social media accounts)

[PencilParty]

Time for another update, I'm still on my little Hotline Miami binge and still finding myself in love with it's colours, here is a banner I created for college work using mixed media (Marker, Ink, Digital & Pencil)

[PencilParty]

Update time!

Been taking sometime to just enjoy drawing again, college has finished and I'll be moving and begging University within the next 3 months, which I'm both nervous and excited for.

Anyway, here are the last few pages of my June Sketchbook, still sticking to a sketchbook per month and enjoying it so far, really just taking inspiration from less instructional books and looking more towards other artists sketchbooks and works, just enjoying what they have created and how it was made.

On another note, I HIGHLY recommend checking out "Sketching from the imagination: Sci-fi" by 3DTOTAL, it is an incredibly inspirational book featuring the sketchbooks of illustrators and concept artist in the industry, all relating around the SC-FI Genre.