The road to creature design

Hi :),

Hope everyone had a great week. I was supposed to work on female anatomy, but since I couldn’t find references I was happy with I did something else.

I was watching an interview with Terryl Witlatch on the cgchannel. She’s an awesome creature designer. She said that any artist who wants to be a creature designer should know how to draw animals inside out. and also to start collecting references from magazines and whatnot. Maybe i should plan a trip to the zoo when i'm free. do some sketching. So yeah, I practiced animal anatomy this week.

I followed a tutorial by MarshallVandruff, who explains on basic form and anatomy. Getting the basics welded in your brain is very important. If you don’t get the basics right you’ll stumble with the rest.  Apparently it takes a slight error in proportion for a horse to look like a dog and a dog to look like something else.  

I'd also managed to find time to do a little digital painting. I really want to learn how to paint, I mean traditionally. I practiced doing the color wheel using water colors. Boy do I need more practice. I should put “mastering the color wheel” on the list of things I should do. Although my target now is to learn how to paint using oils. Someday soon I hope :)

This week I’ll be going back to doing male anatomy. Till then, happy drawing and have a great week everyone :D

horses are such beautiful creatures

and here's the painting. dedicated to Dorothy
you're awesome and i miss you <3

body parts and then some...

The beautiful monster

Hello again :)

Hope you all had a good week. I was suppose to update my blog yesterday, but I came home very late from a friends office and just went straight to bed so I can wake up early to do my sketching. It was a very long day. Mainly because I spent a couple of hours driving to and from the airport and the rest of the day at a friends office. My better half just left to the Maldives for her two week holiday. How I’ll miss her…sigh!

And I spent the rest of the day as I mentioned before at my friends office, which cheered me up…a lot, cuz I got to take this monster out for a spin.

the Cintiq 24HD. Haaaaallelujah!

here's me being a happy fool

My god this thing is so awesome. I can’t tell you enough how utterly and immensely easy it is to work with. The accuracy is out of the roof. it feels so natural, like sketching on paper, only much sleeker and sexier. Sigh! I think I’m in love hehehe

I also did some sculpting in Zbrush. I did a lot more in an hour than I’d normally do. It’s like a wonderful dream that you don’t want to wake up from. thanks hafiz! you da man!

doing some sculpting in zbrush, like a baus!

Ok, back to reality. It was a very good week. I really enjoyed myself with all the sketching I did. I found myself spending an extra half an hour or so sketching so that I have more stuff to upload by the end of the week. I did male anatomy and some extra stuff this week. Next week I’m planning to do female anatomy. I haven’t really practiced it as much as I have with the male figure. Looking forward to it :) apparently the trick to drawing the female figure is to draw as few lines as possible with beautiful curves.

I’m going to plan ahead each week of what I’m going to draw next. I guess I’ll have more consistency in terms of what I upload rather than drawing random stuff for the sake of posting something.

Have a good week everyone, and happy drawing :D

here's how far i took the sculpt. happy with the result :D
click for larger view. go on, click :)

a study of heads

obviously i need more practice using the stylus. but i'm happy with the progress

A good first week

I’ve set a goal to draw every day. So I’ve been waking up at 6.30 in the morning for the past week and the first thing I do is draw for a couple of hours. It took a little bit of adjusting, but I’m getting used to it.

I’ve been drawing straight in Photoshop for the first time. I’ve always had difficulty when it comes to using the stylus, mostly because I’ve never really tried sketching regularly with it. I’ve been avoiding using it, until now. I always do my sketching on paper first. I like how the pencil feels against the paper, it just feels more natural and I’m able to quickly execute my ideas.

But I stumbled onto something recently while I was trying to do some sketching in Photoshop.  All this time, when I use the stylus, I’ve been holding it at the edge and I’ve never been able to draw accurately. Even drawing a straight line which I’m easily able to draw with a pencil feels like a chore in Photoshop. So I started holding the pen in the middle like I would use a pencil, and it made all the difference. A lot of you may probably already know this, but for those of you who don’t, I suggest you give it a try. Hope it helps :)

here's how i used to hold the stylus

here's how i use it now

who knew?

I’ve decided that I’ll upload my sketches once a week rather than uploading stuff every other day. I’m thinking it’ll be a good way to see my progress in terms of how much I practice. I’ve been using a book called “Drawing the Head and Hands” by Andrew Loomis. Awesome book by an awesome artist. I was able to do about 30 pages this week. Simply love his approach. I can’t recommend the book enough.

I’m looking forward to see how much more I’ll be able to do this week. Have a good night everyone and keep drawing :)

sketches_01

there, done! goodnight :)

A time for change

hi, welcome to my blog :)


i've always felt that if i wanted to say something or reach out to someone that i'd prefer doing it in person, because it has a bigger impact that way. i'm starting this blog for a couple of reasons, mainly to share my artworks, sketches and things that inspire me.


i recently read this book called "the perfect bait" by artist bobby chiu. its about how he became a successful artist. its very simple, straight forward and insightful. after reading it i felt like most of the things that he talked about are things that i'm already aware of but fail to act upon. one comment really struck me by artist dylan cole ( the book includes comments and advice from a lot of successful artist in the industry)


"there's so much talent wasted by laziness, its disgusting"


and i felt like thats how i am now, and i should really change as a person if i want to become a better artist. being lazy is a choice, so i'm deciding that i won't be lazy anymore. that i'll strive to be better every single day. stop making excuses of why i can't do something and just simply do it.


so yeah, i'm gonna go do a couple of sketches now before i go to sleep :)