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The Knight of Bone

#I've changed this so often #so I'm just calling it done now

All the little master studies I did January-March. I tried for 30 minutes every day, but only managed to pull through in March. They’re mostly landscape studies, which is weird because that’s not something popping up in my art much. Sometimes I just like painting something different, though, and my main goal was to gain a better feeling for light, colour and atmosphere. This month I’m moving on to portraits including some longer studies that allow me to bring pieces to a finish.

#practice things #One of my main problems is that I'm not bad at copying but that alone is not doing the trick #I'd have to do more pieces from memory where I try to use what I've learned and them maybe get back to refs #anyways #my general philosophy is that when I do a lot SOMETHING has to stick eventually

#sketch based on a tree I saw in the woods

#hollow queen unrelated composition and painting practice piece #half way through ended up in my usual digital painting trap #which is everything becoming flat and boring once I start rendering/refining things #so I scrapped all my progress and started new without zooming in #and considering brush strokes

btw one of the reasons I’m having this as a side blog is to allow myself to be crappy at things. When I started studying I simply posted everything without having to worry about clients and brands any anything and I learned a lot (sharing is a good way to keep track of what you’re doing and gives you some feedback), but now I that’s not really possible anymore and I ever so often find myself remembering the good old days with 39 followers on facebook. So this is my learning blog where I do things I am not good at (yet).

Composition value sketch. Using the tree design in a scene. (book cover format again because that’s what I mostly need to make compositions for) Focus on the tree. Initially the figure was missing, but since the lantern has a rather high light/dark contrast it pulled the eye to much and adding the boy (especially with the dark hair against the tree trunk) help drawing the attention more to the tree. Snow is so good to bring different elements of a comp together, show depths and mark directions. An easy trick maybe, but very useful.

#I'm not completely happy with this one either #I think the scene could be pushed a little to the upper right corner #hm hm #but not going to redo

Composition and painting practice. I’m using a story I’m working on to have some fodder for practice work, so I don’t need to come up with new ideas while also getting some visual inspiration for writing (and I’m excited about my practice work, which is always good!) The goal was to create a composition with a strong focus, and the scene I picked required the circular window, nighttime, snow, warm interior and the people inside. One of my biggest issued was to be clear about actually looking down through a window instead of there being a spotlight on two figures sitting in the snow. Possible solutions would have been to add more details to the rim of the window e.g. twigs to signal a size difference, a clear difference in the detail of the rendering, overlapping figures and windowframe. I went with using the snowflakes as a size indicator and having them being affected by the light from the window. Another issue was that the room is supposed to be illuminated completely from all sides (sans window, there’s be cooler moonlight coming from the top, though). I have no real answer to this besides cheating and using this overall lighting only to affect the atmosphere/hue of the scene and adding another, stronger lightsource that allows actual shadows, even if that wouldn't be accurate. People in a glowing cube is simply to very interesting to draw. It also gives no real sense of environment. I’m also not sure about the distance of the figures to the window. Having them closer would allow for easier overlap and more focus on features, gestures, etc. I assume I’ll need to go and do this again, but better.

#don't mind me chewing this through #what I like about this work is how much I still need to think about everything #so a lot of it is bad #but I learn

Hollow Queen comps. I did these to play around with compositions (initially I thought of interiors (2nd row on the left was the first sketch), but things got so much easier when I got back into cover mode. I’m having a hard time coming up with more narrative compositions.) and the design for the tree. There are several in there I’d like to create a final of one day ...

#by the way that's what all my initial comps look like #putting down shapes and values #when I do client work I like to do 4-6 ideas #because it usually starts to get harder to come up with something after 3 #and I want to force myself to go down stranger roads #also for client stuff it's not enough to have 4 ideas/comps #but to have at least four I think are good and I'd like to finish #to making one preferred sketch prettier and hoping that's the one that's chosen #because that goes wrong anyways #never send in stuff you don't want to do

hollowqueendom

Amaria Grimm

hollowqueendom

#below the first try #much happier with the reworked one #looks more like what I imagined and anatomy is not as off #probably still though #anyways

Amaria Grimm

#of course I do pictures of minor evil characters first hello #my favourite bit is the button #I do these from memory and in a medium I usually don't work in so I have general low expectations #but that button looks like I know what I'm doing ...

Esk

#first character design thing and also composition practice #I can't do concept stuff #I'm a book cover person #he ended up too young looking #but ok

Hollow Queen

#hollow queen #tree #art #digital

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