Digital Art Practice Week 1

 This week I worked on creating gradients and learning about shading. I have been personally struggling with these topics in regards to my art recently, and so this week has been very informative. I am specifically interested in learning more about shading and coloring in order to improve my sketching and idea generation in the future.

I first created some various gradients. Creating these was eye opening for me since I never really thought about rendering in this way. This excersize became an important part of my daily repetoire almost immediately.

My first sphere I tried to render didn't go very well. I worked on the shadow in accordance with the feedback to receive a better result. Overall, the shading is not smooth enough here so I decided to work on that.

I managed to improve the smoothness by using the default soft brushes provided in Photoshop. I think this version looks far better, however there is improvement to be made.

 I also worked on some thumbnails to practice my value skills. This is one of my favorite excersizes to do even in my spare time, as it allows me to think quickly without having to draw anything at all. Furthermore it is really easy to later on develop these thumbnails into something larger.

My goals for later study this week are to insert this shading style into my own work a little more, to create more basic objects and shade them using the same style in order to cement the learning, and to develop one of the thumbnails into a larger work.

Line Drawing Practice - Traditional Art Practice Week 1

During my first session in the studio, I received feedback on my first drawings. Acting on that feedback I produced multiple new drawings, the best of which is detailed below. My biggest problems from the start were with my lines being messy, lack of a thumbnail

 and an over reliance on shading to make my drawing look good.

In preparation to the drawing, I sketched out different still life compositions using the techniques described. Out of these, I struggled the most with the blind drawing, although I understand why it is important. The exercise made me look at my subject more than my paper in general which has been a great help.

After arranging a still life, I first made a thumbnail to properly format my drawing.

I also left extra space around the piece in order to give it breathing room. 

I refined my lines by first using ghosting to get a proper and clean result.

 I also started working on my line weight in this stage.

After working on the line weight and cleaning up, I added some controur lines

to the forms in order to define them a little better. 

This week was a good opportunity to revisit some fundamentals for me, and I also learned the importance of taking proper photos of my work. 

First Steps in 3D Modelling - 3D Game Production Week 1

My first modelling excersize with some extra furtniture.

 I struggled with making handles for the cup and the thermos, and decided to work on that this week.

In general objects that are rotating give me trouble.

I also worked on the dagger excersize. I documented every step of my process by taking a screenshot and constantly referring to the provided material to keep me in check.

I started from the primitive cylinder for my dagger. The idea of a primitive always being the starting point for any model interested me very much as this is the way I approach drawing and painting.

I modelled the dagger further my manipulating the edges and vertices. At this point I also remembered to name my objects, and so I did so. I couldn't figure out the way to group objects at that time and so I skipped it for now. I also later learned how to use groups to organize better and their importance in large environment scenes and technical models that I am interested in creating.

I edited the dagger a little further.

I had previously made a simple sword as part of the excersize before reading the tutorial, and here I used the sword to get a better idea on what kind of deformation a strike would cause.

I finished up my model as such. I learned quite a lot and have noted down further topics to study in my spare time. These topics are rotating objects, specifically coils, bolts, handles; using different options in 3DS, such as the selection options and modifiers and some more little skills I will later use to work on a personal project.

 

Starting Out, Drawing Iguanas

 

This is my first blog post and here I was thinking of explaining my general thought process regarding sketching and just the way I approach it. I have added some iguana sketches on top to demonstrate my visual thinking process and approach to representation. These are done solely with the purpose of a study, of course. They were drawn with a great deal of references and not a lot of care put into presentation aspect.

My process for sketching like this involves a few stages; gathering references, constructing with basic shapes, and then adding everything else on top as I see fit. I find this kind of workflow to be simple enough to not get overwhelmed with the many challenges of the digital medium. For the same reason, I choose not to use colors for the most part with my sketching, although I also won't deny the many opportunities colors and values bring to the table.

To be frank, the idea of a "finished piece" hasn't ever interested me that much. Very rarely do I do long renderings of drawings with accurate colors and values and such. I feel like sketching is a much more fundamental part of me as an artist, and a foundation to my idea generation process. It allows me to pump out pages of designs within a couple of hours of work, and manages to keep it interesting throughout. I am certainly more of a sketchbook artist.

Regarding the idea of a study, I feel like a study shouldn't just consist of drawing or painting. Sure, those aspects concern a visual artist the most, but I also see value in watching documentaries and reading a wikipedia page about these creatures I'm about to draw. Videos also provide many angles and lighting schemes that photos never would, and so I see that as a bonus as well.

When it comes to the actual drawing of the study subject in question, I always start with a few loose marks to block-in the subject and to indicate points of interest. In this case those would be the eyes, the tip of the tail, and the curve of the back. I often add contour lines on whatever the subject is, in this case just lines on the skin. These contour lines represent the basics of forms and dimensions in these drawings. I also make sure to add a couple of dark spots to indicate shadow areas.

And finally, with this particular study, I saw it fit to draw something relevant. In this case, I chose to paint the Great Jagras from Monster Hunter World. Trying to draw it before and after some studies really had a night and day difference.