A member of the CGTalk community recently posted a comment regarding my gesture studies and inquired, "What would you like to improve on?" After thinking about his question, I realized that I had lost sight of my initial goal. When I first began creating these gestures, I aimed to capture the essence of any given pose in a relatively short amount of time, so that if I were to come back to this gesture at a later date, I could more accurately render out the pose based on this information. My anatomical knowledge isn't yet adequate enough to do so, but those are studies for a later date. First and foremost, I need to be able to Gesture with a good degree of accuracy. This post is a reminder, as well as an affirmation, that I will keep that in mind.

update on the whimsical nature sketch. Still just having fun with it.

more 60 sec gestures. Took longer than usual to warm up...

:/

60 sec and 120 sec gestures. Seems like with double the time, I should be exhibiting better results than this, but who's to say...?

Dug up and old concept and decided to do some coloring--an area in which I'm still not particularly well versed or confident.

more 60 sec gestures

more 60 sec gestures. Tried the last 30% or so, I drew primarily from the bottom-up, instead of my usual top-down. Can't say I notice any particular difference in doing so, but it was an interesting experiment nonetheless and something I should try more often...if only to become more familiar with different brush strokes.

update on CHOW-341, which is due today before 10pm. Will do some more work before deadline, but this is nearing the final result. Still some readability issues, but I'm hoping that an additional, generalized, lighting pass, will mitigates this issue significantly, thus enhancing readability.

60 sec gestures. First in a couple days. sadface

update on the CHOW-341. Starting to render

more 60 sec gestures

while waiting for some critique on the CHOW-341, I decided to jump into the creature of the week (COW), which is also over on conceptart.org. The idea is a large beast living up in the great white north that resembles an evergreen pine tree. I've done a few thumbs and landed on this one, which I've made a very rough sketch of...No where to go but up, that's for sure.

more 60 sec gestures

Chow-341. Color comp. Not satisfied

Update on CHOW-341. Based on my own observations, as well as feedback from various participants in the challenge, I altered the pose to improve readability. Initial outlook seems successful.

60 sec gestures

60 sec gestures

Refinement of the sketch for the CHOW-341 challenge over on conceptart.org. Not 100% on the belly plates, but otherwise it's coming along nicely

60-120 sec gestures. Getting better for sure; although I've noticed that at times I draw automatically without fully digesting exactly what I'm drawing. I attribute this to the fact that the repetition of certain forms has become more natural for me to draw, which does make sense, and in its own way, provides a certain comfort and confidence to my sketching. However, I need to be mindful that this doesn't make me lazy and self entitled in my work, and also remember that it is my past (and current) hard work that has led me to where I am today.

In keeping with the philosophy to remain goal oriented, I'm participating in the CHOW-341 hosted by conceptart.org. I need something more substantial than the straight forward academic drills of sketching gestures; more specifically, I need to put this knowledge of gestures, poses, & motion to actual use. The challenge itself seemed to me, to be relatively narrow, but I'm using that as an excuse to think outside the back and actual draw something that excites me. First and foremost, I conducted some research on the subject--nothing extensive, just some basic information as well as some image reference. I then started sketching some thumbs.

Quickly enough, I started to sketch the same variation of a basic body type, which frustrated me more than I should have allowed it to. The following night (tonight), I sketched a few more thumbs, which although slightly more interesting, were still based around the same basic idea. I then took some time and thought about what would be interesting and started sketching some thumbs based around that idea. I then sketched one final thumb, which evolved into an actual solidified idea. Based on that idea, I enlarged the thumb and began to render more thoroughly.

Might have been beneficial to explore more thumbs based on this idea, but I liked what I had, so I ran with it.

60 second gestures. Oldest on top and newest on bottom. Changed things up a bit by painting much more zoomed out and with my wacom set to just my one monitor, instead of the usual 2. I find it easier to paint with the wrist, instead of the elbow and shoulder, so using both monitors simultaneously while I work gives me the freedom to do so; however, something about this seems counter intuitive so I decided to paint on one monitor as I imagine most people do. As a result however, I have to paint zoomed much further out than usual, which creates a bit of a learning curve.

more 60-120 sec gestures. 60 on top and 120 sec on bottom. Need more practice.

More 60 & 120 sec gestures--60 on top and 120 on bottom. Generally, I think I'm becoming more proficient and comfortable with curvaceous and expanded poses, where as more linear and contracted poses tend to give me more difficulty.

some 5-10 minute gestures. I think I'm getting to the point where I need to do more in-depth anatomy studies of various areas of the body.

Some gestures from the past 3 days. Oldest up top and newest on bottom. First ones are 60 sec and the remaining are 2 min.