2024 Part 4 Part 2: Studies and Observation

The last dump from 2024!

 

Yellowroom painting studies...their brush control is really good.

References: 1, 2

 

 

Crom study. I love his character and shape design. He's a machine

Reference: 1

 

I stumbled into a Frank Frazetta art book. Truly one of the greatest draftsmen I've had the pleasure to study from. Really masterful.

 

Composition and likeness studies from Twin Peaks! I wish I could take the quality and energy of my studies into my own work.

 

 From porn. Can't find the sources :(

 

 

SaryBomb's Break Protocols! Truly just slutty subby twink (the sad trash boy on the right) wish-fulfillment fantasy. It's fantastic.

InCase's Library comic and Midlife Crisis. What's there to say about this man? His comic output is ridiculous, and despite his level of refinement and quality he's constantly experimenting with new media and formats and projects. One of the few men who can rival WLW artists in terms of drawing hot sex. I hope one day to approach his level of talent from even like a decade ago.

Yeah, that's it! As I may have mentioned already my goal is to release an illustration every month this year. Heading into 2025 I want to have an established process and some foundational knowledge in all the components of finished work--line, form, color, value, rendering. I can't afford (time-wise nor money-wise) to work on art for more than, at most, 1-2 hours a day, and to improve I need to be really deliberate about my time and adopt practices and techniques that correspond to the time I have.

V

Feb 24

Well, this isn't the last 2023 post. Nor did I try to learn from the stylistic choices I linked in my previous post. Also this is over a week overdue. 2024 is going great!

Honestly, I still like this picture. I wanted to do something more than just a pinup, use some reference, keep it desaturated, think seriously about light, color, and shadow shapes, have a coherent palate, do a simple background, etc., and I think I hit all those. I really like the speculars on the dildo and her dick, which is a technique/process entirely stolen from RCD here. The contrast and shapes on her stockings turned out well, too--I was really struggling with those. And I love the little black widow tattoo detail

Some things I still need to work on:

• Tattoos are fun but I had a hard time include them in her design without introducing new focal points and pulling away from the composition
• I rely on piercings wayyy too much in character designs. I think the last three pinups I did had characters with nipple piercings.
• Soft-edge brushes (like CSP's gouache) are a bit of a crutch for me at the moment. I should really focus on only hard edges, like I said last time.
• I need to get better at painting cum! I think this is too translucent. I should study other artists.
• I could be a liiiittle more bold with the shadow value on skin. And by a liiiittle I mean a medium amount.
  

I made a lot of personal work in February. That's my excuse. I have some good ideas for March's illustration. This took probably 4 sessions for a total of 5-6 hours. Not bad.

Last 2023 post is coming literally tomorrow.

Hard Rendering Lesson

The lesson is: Don't try to figure out a process while doing it!

I wanted to make a second illustration this month. TBH I kind of set myself up for failure with this one:

I wanted to do something with multiple figures, more dynamic anatomy, really practice linework, and also use colored lighting. The drawing went fairly well (obviously there are some issues: hand anatomy, varying scales, varying line width, consistent face styles...) but this is more I can handle WRT actually finishing the work.

I wanted to airbrush in some basic hue variation/a little tone before going to work painting, since I had some success with that in a personal project:

...And here's where I just ran into a brick wall for two hours. This is as far as I got before my partner literally forced me to stop because of how late it was.

It's extremely inconsistent and doesn't read very well! I think I did ok with the top left figure but her face shadows might be a little severe and I can't use that detailed approach for five figures without really going crazy.

I'm pleased by the fact that the tones and hues read despite the limited value and color range, and I think the shadows are *generally* well-placed, but the point is that I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to rendering or choosing light/shadow colors/values.

I think this is really exacerbated by the colored light and the variety of skin/hair tones. I want to return to this one day but for now I need to move on for my own sanity.

I wanted to explore my own painting/rendering skills so I did some paintings from imagination in the style of Sinix's anatomy quick tips videos:

These are ok but I'm not really satisfied. Here's what I learned.

1. Even on my favorite parts of these, my brush control is GOD-AWFUL. Literally terrible. It ruins my shapes and blending.
2. Vulva anatomy is so hard and confusing! With dicks you just plop it down there and it occludes everything, don't have to worry about tendons in the thighs or whatever.
3. My other anatomy isn't a focus for me right now, given that I did an ok job without reference.
   
4. My ability to place highlights and shadows as well as choose colors for them is fine. Not great, but not something I want to devote time to right now.
   

FWIW I used no reference because I really wanted to test my visual library and knowledge. I do use reference whenever I'm not just sketching for fun.

I really want to pursue the rendering style of these artists for now:

• InCase: https://twitter.com/InCaseArt/status/1736695983981854970?s=20
• Lady Santos: https://twitter.com/ladysantos__/status/1736667741074124902/photo/1
• BlancLauz: https://twitter.com/BlancLauz/status/1747793043019935906
• Maren Nerei: https://twitter.com/rhabarberei/status/1604344523911487489/photo/1
• Crom: https://twitter.com/cromafterdark/status/1656739982873096209

I know a lot of these artists work in different styles and do a lot of rendered work, but I want to pick a lane and stick to it for now, and that lane is basic light/shadow shapes with limited hue variation and very little rendering. I think these works of theirs do a good job showing that off.

The reason I'm picking this approach is because understanding hard light/shadow shapes is a building block for being able to make fully rendered work.

Let's keep going.

(I promise the last 2023 post is next)

://x.com/InCaseArt/status/1736695983981854970?s=20https://x.com/InCaseArt/status/1736695983981854970?s=20 hasdfttps: //x.com/InCaseArt/status/1736695983981854970?s=20 

2023 Part 4: Studies and Observation

 I did a lot of studying last year, much of which bled into doodles/sketches.

I sort of default to drawing naked people. This means I practice a lot of anatomy and it's useful practice for erotic art, but that means I'm woefully bad with lingerie, normal-ass clothes, cloth, and props (the less said about my background skills, the better). These were part of my work to build clothes of all types, styles, settings, and spicy levels into my visual library.

 

 

I spent some time last spring sharpening some foundational digital painting skills. I took this forwards into some personal work. The caricatures on image three are really fun I think.

The last one is a copy of an old Jen Zee illustration. I feel like I say this all the time when talking about my inspirations but what a legend! Love her!

 

I am not consistent or clean enough with complex forms and features, so I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out and build that visual library. #3 is a lot of InCase studies (I really like his eyes) and #4 was inspired by this video, and specifically the claim that studying cars is a great exercise for curvilinear forms, industrial design, and complex forms in general. Spoilers: He's right!

 I thought this was supposed to be the last 2023 post, but it turns out I have too many studies! More later!

2023 Part 3: Inktober

 Here are some of my selected Inktober works. I mostly worked with water-based Tombow Brush Pens and specifically limited myself to four tones:

1. The white of the page for light surfaces and highlights
2. A light tone such as N75 or N95 for midtones/darker shades in the light value range
3. A dark tone such as N45 for the dark value range
4. N15 for dark shadows, blacks, and sometimes outlines

This was an attempt to force myself to think in big color blocks and light & shadow shapes. For the most part, I think it worked! The vast majority of these are from reference or outright studies. I'll link the original where I can find it/remember.

 

 

This is from reference, before I started using the brush pen method mentioned above. My process here was kind of like last year's.

 

The first one that I did with this new method. A study of this illustration from Crom. His work is incredible!

From reference. I invented the face since the reference cut off at the neck IIRC. You can tell because the neck is too long given the perspective. Also really went too heavy on the shading on the face. The bad thing about traditional inking is that recovering from a mistake made with a darker brush is messy and/or not possible

Study of a Renaissance landscape painting

 

All from reference

 

This was from imagination. I wanted to do something creepy for the spooky month. It was a lot of fun

 

A study of Nat the Lich's fantastic Maneater Mildred pinup. I love her(?) style and how readable her forms are!

 

 Top one from imagination, bottom a study

 

Copy of TotK Gerudo

 

Top left from reference, top right from imagination.

2023 Part 2: Sketching

 A lot of my practice this past year was studies that turned into sketches trying to apply that knowledge. You can see some of that here but I mostly saved that for the studies dump.

Yeah, you can see some photo reference work, some InCase studies, etc in these. I think my visual library is straight-up worse than having some kind of reference at least--I think I should make an effort to pull from reference without just copying whenever I'm doing original work. I know this is just kind of doodling but looking back over the last year in totality I think my best work is other peoples' work, which leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Not dissing observation as an artistic skill, but that's insufficient for my personal goals.

2023 Part 1: Gesture

I'm going to post some of the work I did in 2023, and I'm going to try and show the good, the bad, and the ugly (as well as all the fucking work it takes!) as per my original mission. We'll start with gesture:

From August, I think

Not timed, about October sometime. Ads and models are good reference for clothes and also interesting poses!

This and the above were from last month. Timed. As we go the times got longer.