Summer sketches

Been too long since I sat down with real brushes and sketchbook - every time I sit down with good music and begin I totally love it - gotta remind myself that! So this summer I've been having a few plans, targeting areas that I feel like I needed to improve in. First of all, I drew hands for a month and I realised that I might need to spice it up with a few other topics in between. For July and August I wanted to focus on perspective and compositions, as well as head construction and facial expressions. So here follows a variety of sketches:

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Hands:

(In my sketchbook I did a total 24 pages of hands - a mixture of sketches of my own hand, cartoon hands from ref, real hands from ref, photosketches of people in situations etc. - These were some of the betters ones)

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Compositions/Perspective:

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Faces:

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Abstract colors

Some experimental abstract color-thumbs.

Inspired by Bato Dugarzhapov's color palettes.

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"Home"

This is a piece I did in my two exam-weeks together with some other mixed stuf (character designs, turnarounds, thumbnails, reference etc.). So the initial story behind the picture is the following:

"A team of two alien scientists returns after a thousand years of absence from their home world, to see their planet having radically changed since the flood of chemicals and ice overwhelmed the planet, making everyone leave it. Perhaps the changed ecosystem is not the only surprise waiting for them on their journey?"

I basicly digged really deep into world-building, and researching into a lot of various areas, like glaciology, biology, figuring out which plants can grow in the arctic and lots of other stuff. It's probably been the most interesting experience with world building and reference I've ever had. You can see the madness-map I ended up having created here:

http://mrl.li/1kIevUf

I plan to do several pictures w. various things for this universe, like creaturedesigns, propdesigns, more keyshots, finalized character designs and such.

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Sand runner

Just felt like doing an experimental little sketch - spent an hour or two. Had fun while listening to this song. Success!

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Sonderso - pastel

Pastel by the Sonderso lake today

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"The Return"

Step by step:

And for once, here's a wallpaper-size version in excellent quality - if youre into that!:)

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"Cuddly Hue-Party In Space"

This week I've had the pleasure of having Joaquim Royo as a teacher once again - and it's been fantastic! I've learnt a ton of things and been presented with fantastic artwork and analysis of these. I decided to go for a space-snowlandscape and this is the result - the final piece and the colorkey I did before.

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Moxie 2107 - Selfstudy

"Moxie 2107"

This is the selfstudy-project I've been working on the last couple of months at school. The story I came up with is as follows:

"A fictional story set in the future, year 2107, where climate changes, flood and polution have changed the world - mostly 3rd world countries like Malaysia, Philippines and Bangladesh. We're the observer of this changed world through the city of Moxie – a sinking city, that keeps rebuilding itself upwards to survive. It's the story of a perserverant and adaptive society that despite the challenges, have an incredible determination to survive."

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Left Hand Drawing pt. 2

I'm still stubbornly practising my left hand sketches, and I'm slowly gaining more control over my movements. It is indeed slower, but the results so far is encouraging to me. I don't get to do these left-hand sketches as often as I would like to - but still it's a steady proces. I'm particularly happy about the last two "copy-drawings" 

My sister Emilie Bach

Copy sketch of Santiago Montiel

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Paris sketches

Sketches from a 4 day trip in Paris a month ago. Got the chance to see Louvré, Musée D'Orsay + Art Ludique's Pixar-exhibition with clay-sculptes and original pieces of art. Great stuff!

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Nerdy Observations - "Bambi"

For a long time I've admired the background-paintings of "Bambi" and found them to have incredible draftmanship and delicacy. I've looked at them many times, but I haven't sat down and "really" looked at all of them, taken my time and figured out why they're working so well. First of all I want to mention that all of these background have incredible and solid layouts and valuestudies as seen here - so in my analysis I don't go too much into that aspect. The biggest realization for me personally during this analysis, was the way they make transitions: From dark on light, to light on dark, or from crisp->soft. In addition to this, paying attention to thin/fragile versus massive/thick. On a general note, I think what really works well in these backgrounds is just how controlled the edges is - soft, sharp, transitions - they all blend beautifully together.

I hope you enjoyed it!

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Nerdy Observations - "The Lion King"

Occasionally I like doing a bit of analysis on movies or artists I like. Recently I was re-watching "The Lion King" for the first time since I was a child - and this time I couldn't help but notice all the color work in the movie. This lead me to a little cozy session grabbing screenshots from scenes I liked, and compiling it into this little "Nerdy Observations"-post.

I hope you like it. Let me know if this is something you'd find interesting to see more of!

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Pastel colors

Inspired particularly by the works of Bill Cone - I felt it was time to spend more time using traditional mediums - so I went ahead and bought a massive 72-color pastel-set w. fixative-spray, a wooden plate w- clips, lots of various of pastel-sketch paper-sketchbooks. So after 4-5 various tries with this challenging medium, this is the first one I feel was somewhat succesful :)

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Smudgy + Speedpaint

Various environments using mostly the smudge-tool

"The Black Plague" - 30 min.

Tried some new technique painting the picture 70% with the smudge tool's fingerpaint-setting. See Marco Bucci's tutorials for the technique

Good fun!

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"Lae" - Faery

"Lae" - Faery

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"The Last Samurai" photo study

 

Couple of hours. Photostudy from a scene in "The Last Samurai". Tried to be economic with my strokes and keep it simple. Too much lineart-background work recently, feels good doing something loose and painterly!

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Project "Moxie 2107" - Selfstudy pt. 2

Snapshot of my progress after week 5.

2 more pieces to go - and then onto polishing and comping!

Oh, and it appears when downscaling the pictures they get very "sharp looking" - the finals will not look like that.

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Left Hand Drawing pt. 1

Realizing my right hand have wrist-problems from time to time from too intense painting and use - I've decided to start practising my other hand and become ambidextrous! (Michelangelo and Da Vinci was both infact ambidextrous).

It will be a long journey, and it's going to look crappy for quite some time, but I must admit I'm positive over my results thus far. It's a lot of about re-learning the mechanic thing that is drawing. And in fact, when I do a left-hand drawing - sometimes I wonder how I used to do "that" or "this" stroke normally, with my right hand. In that case I slide it over to my right, and try to imitate what I'd do and how I'd use the pencil. As soon as I've seen how I would go about it with my right, I know what to do with my left.

And on a second note, I must say I get some interesting different shapes, designs and happy accidents out of being "clumsy" and "unprecise" so to speak.

Anyways, a few left-hand sketches:

 

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Project "Moxie 2107" - Selfstudy pt. 1

WIP-shot from my selfstudy after Week 1.

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Pixel Go Nuts Exploration

Tonight's exploratory fun sketch

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