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Random DS sketches.. moving back to pencil for a bit now.. want to do some nice detailed rendering that’ll help me greatly when it comes to zbrush..

I painted this watercolour of Old Supreme Court and Raffles City while waiting in line to get tickets to the last of Neil Gaiman’s upcoming talks during the Singapore Writers Festival.  I thought I’d be doing sketches of the people in the queue, but this view from the Arts House of such stark architectural contrast sustained my interest for most of my time there. Many flaws with my technique, but it was still fun to paint. Next time I think I’ll try painting a simpler subject in more detail for practice. Oh yes, special thanks to the generous girl who shared her umbrella with me.

Woo.. been so busy that I forgot I prepared this post sometime in July and somehow neglected to hit the publish button. This was the first after work life drawing session conducted by John Mahoney (the concept artist/sculptor/all round visual guy, not that dude from Frasier). It’s been pretty cool so far. It’s really great to have an opportunity to work on my drawing and design skills in addition to the CG related stuff from work. In fact, combined with daily painting practice on the DS it’s directly improving my painting skills.

I realise now that before this I’ve been approaching life drawing sessions reaaally seriously..  It’s been fun exaggerating proportions and not being a slave to reality, and drawing inspiration from assorted artists to inject a little more life and colour into my work than I would usually add.. Muting the cynical, perfectionist critic in my head has lead to a lot more finished drawings – that’s a big plus..

Click on the thumbnails to zoom in.

1st 2 done in the morning on the way to work, the rest was done on the homeward stretch. Still very sketchy, working on injecting more life and gesture into these first. Detail will follow naturally. I’ll also be trying to simplify things where I can and have more contrast. Well, it’s only Monday, that’s not a bad start at all..

Painted over 2 bus journeys home. What was initially two gigantic weapons mounted on this guy’s back evolved into just part of a giant mech stomping through the forest. Will try and use colour more boldly next time, this one’s still pretty muted. My perception of travel time has shifted thanks to daily painting, waiting for the bus is a good thing now cause it means more time to paint, haha.

Got my first corrupted save while painting this, so now I’ll be more careful when it comes to saving stuff. I made the mistake of closing the DS halfway during a save as I was getting on a bus, and when I opened it up again the save was stuck at 50%. Thankfully I lost only about 10 minutes of work. Ah well, moving on..