[Arroyo]

I love this sketchbook, especially your traditional pen work. The contour drawings are wonderful! Very cool that you're applying your photo studies to work from imagination. It could help to start with even smaller thumbnails...that's what I'm doing until I can gain a bit more speed and confidence with environments. I think having solid shapes as a foundation, and moving on to textures and detail only after you're satisfied with that beginning stage, could also help with the compositions.

[SayasPerception]

Beautiful sketchbook. You have a lot of love for your work and it shows. And God I love that teapot.

[Noukah]

Oh dear, you're getting SO incredibly good..
Don't stop, keep going!!

[AlexTooth]

Yoyo homies! Hope you had nice Christmasses etc, if you celebrate it. Thanks for replies <3 I shall make and effort to visit y'all!

Agelaos Thanks bud, yeah Ill try the saturation thing, it's so hard seeing what's there in real life!

Arroyo Thanks for the tip, yeah I'll try some thumbnails, I was impatient that night as I lost a psd file of 5hours - so I tried to make up for it quickly lol.

SayasPerception Thanks

Noukah Hey Noukah, good to see you here too! Thanks also!!

Some updates, I spent 3days looking at art, so this is mainly from today and yesterday. I finished looking at art so I will update more often now, until NYE when I go partaaaaay!!!

Started a new picture for monthly competition on IFX, this is completely from my head so I'm quite happy I stuck with it and came up with something - it's so hard starting out, coming up with a composition I find quite stressful, because so much doesn't work. There were many times I almost jacked it in but I am continuing to try and put it on crit forums,though I only have 3days left for deadline.

B+W shizzle



Some leg stuff, memory and ref













Poses 5min each - haven't done gestures for months, bit rusty :S





Surprisingly I don't have naked men stock images on my pc, I found these though! I really need to get some naked dude pictures if anyone know where to get some for free!





Lil Rubens study, kinda crap, rubbed it out 4 times, almost gave up but pulled through 5th time, still not right. Gah I need to draw children too, surprisingly hard.



Contour of where I work!

[AlexTooth]

Started to paint up one of my gestures, damn, skin is hard, never painted human skin in colour before hardly!! Maybe twice :s This looks ok as thumbnail so I think I have the colours right-ish, just making it look like skin is going to be hard.



Continued with still life a bit, values are better now, shape is all wrong though, ill start a new one tomorrow.



Started my pic in colour this time, once I decided on shapes, now I need crits so I posted this ca and here, hopefully someone can help

[AlexTooth]

I got a really nice crit on my rabbit piece so hopefully i can improve it tomorrow.

Some late night Environmentzor - quite fast speedies, all photo studies. I know the rainbow one was pretty heavily colour changed photo but i liked it anyway

[Black-Spot]

Nice update. You can find male pics at Flickr or DA. The Alice pic is coming along. The grass on the rainbow pic came out well.

[Arroyo]

Good god, man...that is one hell of an update. For starters, your anatomy is phenomenal. I'm not sure what was from memory vs. ref, but any little errors I see you quickly correct in the subsequent drawings. I didn't realize that the soleus bowed out like it does in the upper right-hand corner of this drawing--what book(s) are you using? It looks really good! I haven't done enough studies of muscles that aren't superficial.

I love where you're taking the Alice in Wonderland image...main crit would be to make sure the perspectives of the table and the characters are correct and matching, as it's looking a bit distorted like we're seeing it through a fish-eye lense at the moment (which might be what you're going for). Love how dark and moody it is.

EDIT: oops...overlooked the latest images. Looking great! Love the colors in the ocean pic. In the rainbow pic, only crit is to watch your edges...since the grass is so blurry and the tree is so crisp, they look like they're not part of the same image. Maybe you could try bringing a bit of the hard edges of the tree into the surrounding grass, or somehow breaking down a clearer foreground, middle ground, and background?

[AlexTooth]

Thanks black-spot! I'll check those places for male pics, probably draw some more today

Arroyo - Thanks for comment! Well my anatomy isn't great yet :s the main stuff I know from memory at the moment are the bones of the lower leg, and it took a long time to remember that. My muscle knowledge there is still pretty limited - I'm trying to draw from a few sources and then draw some pages from memory.

As for the Soleus comment, well that's drawn from Richer's 'Artistic Anatomy' really cool book. It's the only "underneath" images I've drawn of the lower leg so far so I don't have much to compare it to as far as accuracy is concerned - it's not far off the book illustration though.

Yeah I know what you mean by learning superficial muscles. I basically made a decision to learn everything, kinda have this obsessive thing, I won't be able to continue unless I know it lol These books seem to think it's all important anyway - same with the names, some people say you don't need to know them, but I think knowing them helps a huge amount rather than just identifying them in your brain as "that muscle which goes over the top of the thigh" etc etc.

I am using a few books; the one mentioned above, loomis, all the bridgeman books, the joseph shepherd "anatomy" book, anatomy for the artist and some other bits and pieces - I have quite a few life drawing ones, but I want to learn the muscles properly first! Oh and drawing from 'Anatomy lessons from the Masters', and the drawing lessons one - written by the guy that worked on the Richer book, he's awesome and explains well.

As for the Wonderland pic, yeah the perspective is all weird, that's kinda the idea, though I might make it more coherant - got lots to do on that tonight!!

As for the enviros yeah that grass is a bit fuzzy, I shoulda turned off pen pressure and made the grass sharp, oh well>.<

Thanks for the comments I will try be more critical in your sketchbook - kinda hard when you don't know a lot!!

K, well I have only done one drawing since the stream>.< time to switch off that internets...

[Agelaos]

Cool new work man! I really enjoyed those line drawings you did in zachs stream. Keeppem comin you're doin great.

[Dona]

Your studies from life are so nice!

The male pics; Janaschi asked the same some time back in her journal on dA and people answered - here. You'll have to dig around the comments a little, but it's really worth it

[AlexTooth]

Thanks Dennis and Dona

If anyone can give urgent crit on how I can improve this

Pretty sure it sucks, probably the colours and values arrrgh

[AlexTooth]

Ok well I'll continue when I get back from NYE! In a real hurry now, ill definitely miss midnight lol

[Black-Spot]

The hare stands out as it is more complete than the other characters. Maybe bring the rest up to the same level will help.

[vatsel]

ooh check out the studies!
Good work in here mate, esp. lovin the leg anatomy studies

On that piece I'll say watch the edges - your brush work seems unorganized. Get some custom brushes and watch the perspective.

[Dy-lanea]

I have no comments other then keep going strong your doing great!

[Salthewound]

Danm dude!! your killing it man the anatomy studies are really dope
keep up the hard work
best wishes
-Jamie

[AlexTooth]

Happy new Year guys! Thanks for the everyone comments, critiques, advice, encouragement and general freaking cool awesome friendiness - please know that I am nothing without you guys. I take every piece of advice seriously and try to incorporate it into my next drawing, no matter how small or big - I pick it up and try to improve.

Please don't think I ignore anything - At the same time I am now starting to try and explore my own ideas and experiment now - outside of the general art rules, "mistake time" as Craig Mullins calls it. So don't think I am trying to create the perfect work of art every time. Sometimes whether it's anatomy, contour or my own thing I will generally piss about, have fun and try to mess it up a bit - so yeah, anatomy will be off, composition will suck etc!!

I hope everyone had a good 2009, and lets show the world we mean business in 2010!!



Pretty pathetic update here, I took a week off, naughty I know - but I had a lot of things I wanted to do. Last night I completed a quick Photoshop sketch to get back into the swing of things.

Photo study, about 1h - yeah I could have done better and sharper leaves.



Speed painting based on a tutorial



Personal work, someone on a forum I use requested a "Dandelion" as part of a daily sketch group, so here's my contribution. Btw, this is more the style I am aiming for, it's more cartoony than I would like but I only did it in a couple hours - as for colours and feel, this is getting closer to my heart.

[Dy-lanea]

Hey Alex keep on rocking! You can find a bunch of nude male photos on this blog.

http://markichester.com/draw/model.html

[AlexTooth]

Thanks Dylan, I bookmarked the naked dudes!

Today, Sargent Study