10th Dimension: August 2010

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Whew 5 years, I must start updating more often. I bought some great books and have spent the last few years (when Im not working) drawing, anatomy and action and quick poses. I purchased 3dsmax and ZBrush, but found that I needed to learn how to draw from scratch to put them to proper use.

I started with Stan Lee's and John Buscema's - How to Draw the Marvel Way. I soon realised that I thought I could draw, because I could sit down and put something on paper, but never could work out why sometimes it was good and sometimes bad. This took the fun out of it and so I didnt do it very often.



I found out after reading How to Draw the Marvel Way, that I knew nothing except perspective and shading, and I learnt them when I was 10, and that was the end of my art training because I had'nt learnt anything from that point on, despite attending classes and searching for the information I knew was out there somewhere.

How to Draw the Marvel Way, has taught me to break it down into primatives, circles sqaures and triangles and cones, and then to capture the action line and gesture. I've spent the last 2 years sketching thumbnails and action poses, silhouettes. I wish I'd had this book 20 years ago.

I also purchased Artistic Anatomy by Dr Paul Richter, and a Gnomonworkshop tutorials by Ryan Kingslien Skull and Muscles (no longer available)but check out his youtube channel, and Zack Petrov - Anatomy Part One. These have been useful references and I expect they always will be referred to.



I bought a sculpting tutorial from Gnomonworkshop by John Brown, and used that to learn how to build an armature and sculpt form and applied the knowledge gained from the anatomy tutorials.

I have had several attempts into ZBrush and have kept upto date with the releases and ZClassroom tutorials and any others I can find especially on youtube, but have concentrated on drawing, I have a very limited amount of free time working 50 hrs a week, so I have to concentrate my efforts. I draw at any opportunity even while sitting at the traffic lights waiting for them to change, that makes you draw quickly believe me.

I made a conscious decision to draw as much as possible while watching a documentary (Scene by Scene might have been Jonathan Demme)one night about writing by DeLuca (sorry cant remember his first name, I think he's a director or producer), whoever he was interviewing said "There's no such thing as writers block, you just have to give yourself permission to do crap, if you do enough crap, eventually something good will grow in it."

So I bought 2 reems (500 sheets per reem) of photocopy paper and started drawing I just got my 3rd recently.

Just when I thought I was making progress I found Xia Taptara's idrawgirls.com and his tutorials on youtube, they looked deceptively easy but it was all an illusion. He was an economist with the line and this lead me to some new insights regarding the line.

I spent a while doing photoshop sketches until I could sketch as well as with a ballpoint pen, but realised I still have a long way to go before I can do work like some of my favourite artists like Feng Zhu, David Hong and Dermot Power and Greg Broadmore.

So back to more sketches and I concentrated on putting thumbnails into scenes and trying to increase the size of the drawing, which I find is very difficult.

I recently started putting warriors into larger thumbs fighting dinosaurs and wanting to get some realism into the sketch, so went in search of info so I might be able to flesh it out into a clay sculpt. With the recent release of ZBrush 4, I saw while visiting ZBrushcentral.com, Cesar Decol Jr's - Sculpting Wrinkles in ZBrush at Gnomonworkshop, so I bought that and while Googling for clay sculpting dinosaurs I found David Krentz's Anatomy and Sketching Dinosaurs.

Thats where Im at now so I can start keeping this blog upto date, well more often than every 5 years surely. Heres a few of the sketches in the order they were done since June 2010.