Final Piece

Here is my final piece, a full body portrait. I've added both flips sides as I haven't decided which one I like the best, but I'll submit both just so you can see both sides.
There has also been some edits to the body while I was painting this which you can see at the bottom, most of the edit is on the right sided arm.
Overall, I am really happy with how this turned out like and if I had the time I would of done more scenes and have him interacting with other characters, but this still could be done in the future. I have learned a lot from this project and would love to continue on with this character in other personal projects.

References

These are the refs I took to try and get a better sense of how fabric works. I tried a few different angles just so I have more views and pictures to choose from.
Below are the original lines, the new lines I created using this refs and then the new lines in red on top of the old lines. Using these refs as helped me a lot with the line art of my final piece and in drawing fabric in general. I'm happy with how the final piece is coming together.

Final Piece Layout

Here are the sketches I made in the making of my final piece. I really wanted to get the body to work before I started adding cloth to it. I wanted there to be a twist in the body rather than having the character just standing there in a boring stance. I also thought about what I wanted this painting to say and as the character is so awkward, I thought he could hold up a piece of his garment in a sign of pure awkwardness, as if the viewer is the painter who's frustrated with him because he keeps doing random boring posing as this is the characters response with a "maybe if I hold this up they'll stop shouting at me and it'll be over soon..."

After talks with a few people, I was told to take it a step further and get my own referencing with the cloth and it looks a bit odd up at the shoulders, so this is my next step.

Final Character

Here is my final character design, tall and slim. As I've said before I like the contrast of this characters personality against him being a Cardinal. My next step is the beginning of my final piece.

Clothes designs

Here are the line art with the body underneath of some clothes designs and the colour blocked versions underneath. 

For this character I think that having him as a Cardinal would be a great contrast to his personality as he is a shy and nervous, good character whereas Cardinal's are seen as higher beings, surrounded by wealth and power. I think a final turnaround sheet is needed before I start my final piece, just to focus on the final character design. 

Hair styles

These are the side and front of my characters head, then I began to try out different hair styles. The one I think looks the best is the longest hair style, the others are too modern looking and I just don't think they suit the shape of the face.
Next I will begin to test out different outfits for this character.

Body sketches

These are some body types I was experimenting with, I'm wanting my character to have a tall and slim build so I gradually changed the body type until I was happy with the outcome. I want him to be slightly stretched as his whole design will be slightly stylised.
On the far right you can see some sketches I made before studying different body types, they are horrible and limp with no structure to them. Below them are two sketches I made after doing the different body. They're not perfect but they are considerably better than the one before!

Face variations

Here I've taken another one of my character sketches and did some face variations. I like how these came out like, just trying different things to see how this character could turn into. I think this characters face suits a more shy and scared personality rather than an angry one. I think I'm going to take this guy further and start to think about body types and clothes etc.  

Render Test

Here is one of the character sketches I took form my previous post, I did a profile view sketch and then a render test in the style I plan on having my final piece in. The style of the sketch and render do fit well together, if I changed the character to look less cartoony it would be great. Also this weirdly turned into an awful Benedict Cumberbatch painting which I did not intend at all! So obviously this design will be scraped.

Character sketches

Here are some character sketches, I aimed to have a variety of faces and used simple shapes to help me start off with each sketch. Some of these are in different styles like the sketches towards the left where they would be more suited to animation than a digital portrait.
I really enjoyed just doing little sketches like these, however I'm a bit worried about the style of some as I'm not sure they would suit/look right with the style of painting I'm wanting to do. Therefore I will pick on and do a quick render test and take it from there.  

Behance Comments

I didn't get many feedback comments on Behance but even just posting my wip online has helped my confidence a lot as I'm always scared and hate when people see my work when it's not finished or I don't like it myself, so this has helped me in the process of showing my work to other people.

Paul Kidby

Here is a mood board of the work of Paul Kidby. He does a lot of illustrative work for Terry Pratchett books, which means that his characters must show the massive personality of the characters in Pratchett's books and world. I'm personally a big fan of the work of Kidby and although I don't want to copy his style, but I do get a lot of inspiration and ambition for my own work to resemble his - as well as keeping apart of my own style too.
At this stage of my project I want to start creating characters thinking of my final piece while taking inspiration from the work of Kidby.

Anatomy Master Study

Here is a full body master study I painted. I actually learned a lot and quite enjoyed painting this, normally the thought of practicing drawing anatomy is really annoying and seen like a chore, but I've learnt so much doing this. Even though there are some aspects of this painting that are wrong/misshapen, I feel that the overall position is strong. 

I'm going to do more of these studies in the future but for now and for this project I feel like I should move on and start to think about my final piece and how I could get there.     

Anatomy Sketches

Here are some human anatomy sketches. I still need a lot of practice but this is something I'll be practicing throughout my career, this is more of a snapshot of where I am with my human anatomy knowledge at the moment.
I want to continue these sketches and help develop my knowledge while experimenting with different characters and planning my character for my final piece. I want to be able to know how my final character moves with their body as well as through their personality.

McManus Gallery

Here are some of the sketches I did while I was at the McManus Gallery. The ones in pencil are the ones I did on the monday and the blocked out one with pen is the one I did during my class visit.
Also sorry for the quality of the pictures, whenever I scan them using uni scanners, it washes out all the detail ie not usable. I always find it fun walking around galleries and sketching what appeals to me, because of this project I decided to stick to faces/portraits. My favourite sketch is the one below, I always find old men and woman easier and fun to draw - mostly because of the texture and visual interest in the face that young people don't have.

Drawing: A Complete Guide by Giovanni Civardi

Here are some scanned pages from the book Drawing: A Complete Guide by Giovanni Civardi. This book is very useful in terms of reference and the human anatomy, these are only a few select pages I've scanned. I will use what I've learnt from this book into my drawings and sketches to help my further understanding of the human body.

Experimenting with Self Portrait 2

Here are some more edits I did of my self portrait. I just did this for fun really, this could turn into something outside of this project with a bit more work like, like business cards or something. But again, this was mostly for fun.

Experimenting with the Self Portrait

I recently watched Big Eyes at the DCA and thought it was really interesting so I made some more edits to my self portrait just for fun. Below is a picture of one of Margaret Keane's painting along side one of my sketches I did of it. Also the edits I did to my self portrait too.

Self Portrait

Here is my work in progress screenshots of my self portrait. I used a picture as reference to help start me off with the initial sketch but then moved onto using a mirror as reference. 

Throughout painting this I felt quite awkward, mostly because it was a portrait of me. I don't think I got the same effect I got with my Rembrandt painting, but this does look more like a modern self portrait. 

Below is the first intial painting I did, then theres the altered one when I used the liqufi tool to help me correct some of the mistakes I made with the face. I changed it so my face isnt as long or my forehead as large, a much more rounder overall shape. 

Overall I do think that this edit has made this painting much better and I'm reasonably happy with the over all outcome of the painting. 

  

Digital Photo Study

Here is my digital version of my photo study of Rembrandt's self portrait. I am alot more happy with how this turned out, I'm far more comfortable with digital painting than I am with traditional.

However, I feel like I haven't learnt as much with this painting as I did with my traditional one, I do however have a new favourite brush! I feel like I need to move on from photo studies and fast if I want to develop as an artist, my fear is that I'll come to rely on images too much.


Over all I really enjoyed painting this and will take what I learned into my other projects and put it into practice as my next step will be to create a self portrait in a similar visual style as this.

Traditional Photo Study

Here I attempted to create a photo study of one of Rembrandt's self portraits. I went out and got some paint supplies from The Works, they were all very cheap so I wasn't expecting much of quality from them however I didn't expect the bristles from the paint brushes to come off constantly while I was painting which was extremely annoying. 

I did a quick sketch of the painting, not in too much detail because I will be painting over it etc. I haven't done traditional painting properly in years, so this was a bit daunting for me and I didn't know what the result would be and I was anxious about disappointing myself too. I had difficulties that I hadn't encountered since I moved to digital such as being able to have the line art on the top layer until you're painting could support itself. With traditional I had to paint over it which was horrible and I felt lost for the first part of the painting. I did however enjoy it.























As you can see below, is some of my process when painting this. Throughout the process the painting kept changing shape and expression. Again this is not something that I'm used to when I paint digitally as I usually have a plan in my head and know exactly what I want to create. This could hinder me in the future and I think its a bad habit over all, I should take the time to learn to just paint without a massive expectation which is what I started to learn while painting this.
Overall I'm not too pleased with the outcome of the painting but I have leant a lot from this painting and I hope to incorporate that into my future paintings.

Rembrandt Van Rijn

Below is a mood board of the artist Rembrandt Van Rijn. He was a Dutch painter and etcher, born in 1606 and was generally considered one of the greatest painters in European art and Dutch history.

What I particularly like about his work is not only the skill and beauty of his portraits, but the cheekiness of a lot of his work, mostly the ones below in the mood board. I also really admire his visual style of painting and it's a style that appeals to me which I try to convey in my own paintings.

I plan on doing a photo study of one of his paintings in both a traditional and digital medium, to help create a better understanding of how he works as well as how I work compared to traditional and digital.

CAP Proposal

My future goals are to be an Illustrator and Visual Development Artist for films and for this project I am going to focus on the skills needed to achieve this.

In my previous semester I did the 2D character design brief, it helped me a lot when it came to the design process however due to time management and other issues my rendering skills fell short at the final hurdle. The project has made me more self-aware about the work I produce and the design process and pipelines of projects.  

  

For this semester I want to focus on my digital painting skills. My future goals is to work in the film industry as an Illustrator and Visual Development artist and enhancing my rendering skills will be very beneficial. I’ve also little experience when it comes to human anatomy and character design so this will also be a major focus for me during this semester. 

I want to start this project by getting back to my roots of when I would paint portraits all the time, except I want to challenge myself by focusing on character design and my painting skills. I would like to sketch and design a varity of different characters and then focus on one that I am happy with, get to know this character in the way they move and think before starting a final piece. This I believe would help me in my painting and drawing skills and improve my design process for future projects.