[Detlef]

Stuff from past few days.

how the fuck do one hold a shotgun




quick backgrounds with cheap photoshop effects



And some headstudies with Andrew Loomis, I was gonna do more of them but the I had the biggest urge to draw a tank





That's it for now

[LufOo]

I really do like those backgrounds you've made! It reads pretty good and has good sense of depth. Good head studies too, and awesome tank.
Keep up the good work!

[Heroms]

Awesome stuff. Your comic is pretty good too.
Mind if I ask how did you learn to draw with photoshop? Follow some tutorials or was it more of a pick up and go thing?

[Detlef]

I began with other programs like painter pro or something like that when I was 11 years old and moved on to open canvas a little later and finally cracked photoshop 7 ate the age of 15.

So I have been messing around with digital painting for some time, but I have also checked out tutorials for tricks and stuff.

[jeimizu]

The last picture reminds me of dm_overwatch from HL2:DM

[1chains1]

On the subject of holding a shotgun, you should google "how to properly hold a rifle".
With that said the elbow of the trigger hand should be pointing downwards, not outwards, that is a common novice mistake called "chicken winging".

[Matix]

You make me wanna study illustration.

[fylth]

Gah, looking at your work really makes me want to draw something...I may post it in the "does not deserve a thread" thread....

If you think 3v3ryb0dy points out mistakes on your anatomy wait til you see what he does to mine haha

[Big Dumb American]

Detlef posted:

Stuff from past few days.

how the fuck do one hold a shotgun

They need to be a bit more squared up with the weapon. Your characters' bodies are almost completely parallel with the weapon, when they should be nearly perpendicular. Somebody with no training may hold their weapon like that, but anybody with any sort of combat training (police, military, etc, etc) would be almost perfectly squared when firing. It increases the stability of your shot, which reduces recoil; allows you maximum control over the weapon; and, most importantly, better protects your vital organs if you're wearing ballistic armor by putting your plate forward. Somebody standing sideways would just be shot in the side, where there is no armor.

As for the weapon itself, you don't socket them in your shoulder, but rather in the hollow area of your upper chest, somewhat between and below the shoulder and collarbone. Hold your arm out like you're grasping a weapon and feel that area of your chest and you'll feel exactly where the weapon is supposed to rest.

Don't get me wrong, they're well drawn, I'm just trying to help out with proper form.

[Detlef]

Big Dumb American posted:

They need to be a bit more squared up with the weapon. Your characters' bodies are almost completely parallel with the weapon, when they should be nearly perpendicular. Somebody with no training may hold their weapon like that, but anybody with any sort of combat training (police, military, etc, etc) would be almost perfectly squared when firing. It increases the stability of your shot, which reduces recoil; allows you maximum control over the weapon; and, most importantly, better protects your vital organs if you're wearing ballistic armor by putting your plate forward. Somebody standing sideways would just be shot in the side, where there is no armor.

As for the weapon itself, you don't socket them in your shoulder, but rather in the hollow area of your upper chest, somewhat between and below the shoulder and collarbone. Hold your arm out like you're grasping a weapon and feel that area of your chest and you'll feel exactly where the weapon is supposed to rest.

Don't get me wrong, they're well drawn, I'm just trying to help out with proper form.

It's helpful, thank you!

[1chains1]

Re-looking through this thread I have some advice for you.

You are doing great studying anatomy, but you need to DIVERSIFY. I remember giving this kind of crit for your comic, and I can't stress how important it is to learn how to draw all types of bodies.

So far you have gotten the skinny/tone teen boy down and the muscular man, but you need to look at other body types and genders. By doing so, youll learn where to properly place muscle, fat and posture depending on the variables of the human body; Weight, height, age, gender, environmental conditions, etc.

Also with this you will learn what muscles to exaggerate on each form.
An example of this is when you posted that painting of the skinny teen dude who was shirtless. The way his muscles were defined and built up suggested the body of a body builder, not a teen boy in an apocalypse. That contributed to oddity of his body. By drawing different forms youll see that certain exercises build up and change the shape of different muscles. For something specific, the abdominal muscles on the boy were defined in a straight line going down, a square shape.
Like this:


The body type you are going for is not muscular, but lean and low fat. That means theres no fat to hide the muscles, but it doesnt mean he has built them up.
So, here is an example of abs on a lean body.

This guy probably does some exercising on his abs so its not the best example, but it still works. If you compare both abs, youll notice his does not form a square shape going down, but more of an oval shape.

The squareness of abs that you see in popular media comes from working the fast twitch muscles of the abs, so that they become larger then the slow firing. The slow firing muscle fibers are generally on the anchor points of muscles while the fast twitch are located in the middle. This also applies to abs, with the fast twitch being in the center of the body (diaphragm) and the slow firing being by the obliques (love handle section) and the serratus (rib cage muscles). So body builders make the fast twitch larger and thus the slow firing become smaller from disuse making the square shape.
Tone people like your teen would do a lot of cardio, and unless theyre doing short sprints, this works out the slow firing muscles. So this makes the outsides more defined and larger, creating the taper oval shape of the above swimmer.

This applies to other muscles as well, meaning that the teens biceps (mainly fast firing muscle) wont be as defined, but his triceps (also fast firing but used alot in running) and his shoulders (alot of fast firing and slow firing) would be pretty defined.

This is merely a tiny example of why studying different body types is so important, its the little things that make an artistic work go from great to amazing.

[Detlef]

Thank you 1chains1 your critique is helpfull as always, I will try to study some more body types, but I'm a huge fagget and I like Teen body types.

I should draw some girls or something. Also thanks for providing me with hot pictures.

[1chains1]

After a while studying anatomy makes you insensitive to sexual things so enjoy it while you can. Also I know youre comfortable with that body type, but only way youre going to get better is by going out of your comfort zone and making mistakes.

[Habsburg]

Detlef posted:

Thank you 1chains1 your critique is helpfull as always, I will try to study some more body types, but I'm a huge fagget and I like Teen body types.

I should draw some girls or something. Also thanks for providing me with hot pictures.

Here are a ton of body types you can use

[BipolarPanda]

hot

[MakoSkyDub]

Your stuff is great Det. Quick and effective style.

[theLazyLion]

Critique Incoming:

Now I'm not sure what has been or hasn't been mentioned in this thread, but I'll go forth and mention a few things about some of these pieces since I feel it's due time I give out another critique and Detlef here deserves it..

These are in random order that I snagged outta the thread.



Alright, lemme first mention that I really like this piece, nicely done formations and contrast of light to dark on a gradual scale works nicely.
Now what you could improve on would most definitely be adding atmospheric perspective to really push the sense of depth in terms of values regarding realism. The problem with your values is that you may have nicely placed values in terms of shadows/light, but your placement of values in terms of composition aren't helping your piece in any way. Lets take the tongue in front of the chest. It's nearly invisible, at least on my monitor it is, as well it's supposed to be noted that it's in front of the chest, which I assume is covered in blood hence it being so dark. Now I know red in front of red might be hard to convey but it really isn't especially in a piece like this where atmospheric perspective could come into play.

This is what I find your piece to be overall lacking, atmospheric perspective, not only can it solve your problem in composition but it will ultimately give your drawing a huge boost in depth. What I would like to see is things in the background to merge closer to the value of the background, IE: turn grayish (#1), if you were turn that chest slightly grayer alongside the body that's behind the arms and head, you'll have it looking like it's fading in the background which makes things in the foreground pop out a lot more, especially the tongue. Remember it's the darker points of a piece that bring attention to the viewers eye, so lighten up the back parts of the piece and darken up/contrast up the front parts in focus.

Now, I'd like to mention that as you do have nicely placed values in terms of shadows vs light, I don't like some of the irregular shadow forms you seem to have placed on some parts of the piece. Example: the top part of the tanks head, above it, on his back (#2). The center of that boulder like back seems to be darker than the outer parts, making it look like it's indented inward instead of bulging outward. Even if that is how it would look, it looks awkward and I feel as though it's your duty as an artist to problem solve and get rid of things that make things look awkward regardless of it being there or not.

Another problem I found in here alongside some of your other work, you seem to be defining plane changes and shapes with lines and forgetting or just ignoring their actual formation in accordance to light and shadow. I'll take the abs in this piece (#3), especially on his left side, note the lines I drew to convey the shape of an ab as it would protrude outward, you have flat shading layered on them making them look flat and bland. Even if you were to simplifying them to help keep them away as the focal point, you should at least define their plane changes, and structure formation, even if with just not so contrasting values.




Nice head studies, Good to see you're trying to break away from the typical 3/4 , eyelevel view you keep doing in your full color/shaded studies. Although it would be nice to see a bit more variation in those.

Anyways, overall good job on these studies, few things I'd like to mention. on #1, Based on your angle of the head, some of the underside of the jaw should have been visible, I mean excuse my crudely redlined piece I'm showing as an example, even that was done wrong, it should be less of the underside of the jaw that what i'm showing, It's just that someone looking upward where you can see plenty of the underside of the lip, nose, and arches of the eyes, I'd say some of the jaw would be visible too based on that perspective.

Now I'm sure you already know this, but to keep proper formation, generally the lines of the face should move in the similar/parallel direction, unless they are pulling a facial expression. So unless It looks like they're pulling an expression, it would be wrong to have the angles be off, it's not wrong to draw non symmetrical people, but during head studies, it's good to stay away from that sort of thing until you build a good foundation of structure you can work off of for people with different facial characteristics such as non symmetrical faces.

As for #3, I'd like to mention that the ear is generally placed in almost dead center of on the sides of peoples heads, an equal space from the ear to the face and from the ear to the back of the head.


Alright these are only speed paints obviously, or digital thumbnails, at least something of those sorts, so I obviously won't go into detail of these pieces, just major things that paintings of this size should have had done by the time they were done/planned out.

First painting, I like it, it's nice, has a nice mood and compliments of blue orange work nice in this kind of setting, now what you should have worked on is separation of the 3 layers of background, middle ground, and foreground. The separation of the foreground and middle ground only seem to be separated by color, which is good, but value is also a requirement, darker things in front usually seem to work during the day, while during the night you'll want brighter things in front and darker in the back. Here would work better with a day lighting setting, darker in front and lighter as you head back. I'd have less contrast, just a wash of dark gray in the foreground, with heavy light to dark contrasts in the middle ground, and a lighter color/value in the background than the middle ground. The middle ground and the background are sharing the same color, the background does turn blue eventually but by then it's too late and doesn't help with the separation of the back to middle ground.

Second piece, Great, separation of the grounds look at lot better than the previous. Some placement of atmospheric perspective is placed here and I like it, thought it could do with a bit more tint of blue in the background to contrast that heavy orange. One thing That I'd like to mention is that in a mechanical design (pipes, framework, structures, etc.) you would want to always have straight as hell lines. Any line that bends (marked by X's) in a mishapped way is a huge loss in mechanical structure drawing. Organically drawn lines are only for organic like material, mostly anything man made is always going to be drawn with straight lines. Even if this is a doodle like speed paint, it's initial lay in of structure that's important, why do your first lay in wrong, then go over it later when you can just get good at doing the first initial lay in structurally correct and not waste time going over it again. I am also not too sure bout the heavy dark rock int he middle, it seems as though it would be your focal point, because of the huge contrast of bright behind the dark rock. This would be fine if the rock was both very detailed and had reason to be the focal point, and wasn't in the center. Unless you are working on an advertisement like piece trying to advertise something, placing your focal point in the center is a big mistake in the industry of fine arts and illustration.

Third piece: Excellent. Two things I'd like though, you have incorrect perspective lines that weren't really hard to make out, you just have some lines going 90 degrees upward while some are on a slant when they are obviously a part of the same wall. The other is a slight atmospheric perspective to give depth to this piece, it's currently only sense of depth is perspective lines guiding it to the left, what it could use is as the piece goes towards the left, the contrast reduces and maybe slightly lightens. Basically add a slight gradient of light gray. Make sure to keep a separation of that celling and the back part of those windows, as they are in different planes of depth though if you do decide to add the atmospheric later on.



Nice idea of studies. Not nicely executed though. The first top left one, main problem is with the way the angle of the hand rests on the gun, the gun facing towards the left while the tip slightly slanted towards the viewer. Now the hands angle seems to be pointing upwards slanted a bit to the right instead of perpendicular to the rifle(towards us). The knuckles of a hand holding the underbelly of a shotgun/rifle should be the most visible and not have much of the back of the hand showing. The fact that I can see the back of the hand means the thumb isn't firmly gripped on the other side which makes it look flimsy.

Bottom left I like, one thing I would have wanted, is a better plane break between the trigger hand and the forearm, you have the forearm flying back off into the distance very nicely. But there is where I would have liked it to stop, then snap, the hand should be almost perpendicular to the forearm. You need to have that overlaying separation line that can help define the plane change going from the forearm to the plane of the hand. Also the thumb should probably not be visible so that the stock of the gun covers it, meaning the hand should have been placed higher so that the indent between the index finger and the thumb have the stock resting on it. Bottom right drawing is nicely done, just be careful about snapping that wrist there and having it too thin. Beefen up that forearm as well, so it matches up with the foreground forearm, also it'll help with tapering the form from thick to thin so you wont have a awkwardly thin wrist.



Not bad line quality, structure is nicely done, just minor proportion/angling issues.
Alright first I'll mention the angles in #1, they are pretty much all over the place, you have the top of the shoulders matching the protruding part of the elbows, while you have the top of the biceps matching the top of the trapezius. When you have a standard pose like that, of a figure just standing, you'd definitely want symmetrical bone structure. In this piece I'd suggest moving the figures left shoulder and left elbow up slightly to match the right side. What I think messed it up was the huge left trapezius, it's basically pushing most of the arm down.

On #2 I'd like to point out the shoulder sizes, I'm aware that he is flexing and could be flexing them both differently but you wouldn't get a muscle size that different, I sized out his head to show that one muscle is bigger than his head while another is almost halfway the size of his head. So this definitely is a proportional error regardless of flexing or not. Although I will say I encourage muscular asymmetricality, but not at this magnitude.

What I have done with the blue lines is not correct any form or shape, but I'm trying to display what parts of the lines should have been thicker. This would improve your line quality a bunch. Use thick lines when you want to display separation, the thicker the line the farther apart the objects are from each other. The thinner the line the brighter an area is or the closer it is to the object it's overlapping. With proper use of line work you will be able to portray a whole new level of depth using nothing but lines.



Alright, now I know that this was done off a reference, but the thing is, as i mentioned earlier, as an artist it is your duty to portray what you see in a visual sense that is improved, rather than copied. What I would like to say here is, place your values in a compositionally sexy order. Don't just copy what you see, worst thing you could do as an artist. Always try to improve what you see, as I will mention here, the contrast between the man on the right's face (#1) isn't working with the composition of the background, they are both dark gray and he's fading out. Now if you would like the solider on the left to be your focal point of the piece, you would have to come up with a way, maybe by darkening up the left behind the solider to pop him out so that you have room to pop out the guy on the right a bit, because the one guy that needs to be intimidating shouldn't be faded out but highly contrasting with the background to give him a scarier oomf to it. What a run on sentence lol sorry.

Anyways, also again, too much cluster in the background (#2), calm it down, it's distracting away from the two characters for no reason. Take down it's contrast.


I like this piece, one major thing that is troubling me, and would probably get you an F in perspective if you had my teacher, Joko. Basically when taking a bunch of people surrounding a person. Quick lesson in perspective via horizon line and eye level.


This example is based on your eye level is looking at someone else's eyes, then if everyone else was the same height as the guy you were looking at their eyes would be on the same level no matter how far they are, or how close they are. If they were to be above the horizon line/eye level, then you should draw them a bit taller, or vise versa with under the line. Now your character in this panel seems to be either floating, or standing on something. But The angle of his guns suggests he's supposed to be aiming straight outward just like where his eyes(eye?) are looking towards. So this makes me think it's a perspective error. Now In the correction I know I showed the eye level at his eyes when obviously the eye level is at the guns, However I just thought it would be easier to see the placement if I were to show the heads of the zombies rather than the shoulder heights which is what you should use as measurement in this piece.

Also you showed signs of a muzzle flash which I thought would be a cool addition to the lighting of the piece, adding some dynamic harsh contrast of yellow/orange with blue, not necessary but would be a nice addition. :)

And your best piece so far


I Do like this piece quite a bit, I feel as though critiquing this on my end would be mostly nit picking. But here's what I think anyways.

First off, I'd like to mention that I love the way you did the blood, rarely do I see anyone take this method of dark blood plus white slick highlights. Anyways, #1, I'd like to see a better plane change segmentation of the nose. Right now the only reason the nose has 2 different planes facing the viewer is that string of highlight you have running down the nose, this is good. However, this is still a form of defining plane change with line, you'd want to define it better by using darker vs lighter shapes. Have one side of his nose darker than the other, because obviously one side is going to be facing slightly different from the light source than the other, and hence they shouldn't be the same value or temperature.

You have overall around the entire unfocused side of the painting, a blueish tint which I find beautiful, and really helps push the orange focal parts forward, however where I circled #2, you have an orange streak of highlight that is inconsistent with both your composition and the light source overall. You have the orange shoulder in front of the neck, and you have the blue chin in front of the neck. Now shoulder is infront of the chin so I understand toning the blue of the chin so it resides a bit back and push the shoulder outward even more, however the neck should be behind the blue chin which means the neck should be bluer and more desaturated than the chin.

#3 Slightly choppy work on drawing the fold in the neck with a gray blue. It looks just like a random line curving with the neck. Add a slight highlight to the side of the line to make it look more like a fold that follows the rules of the light and shadow system.

#4 The cheek seems a bit flat, the cheekbone itself is fine, just the transition from cheek bone to front of the face doesn't have enough value change to determine enough plane change to show 3 dimensional form. And with #5 again it's a plane change that needs to be more defined by either a value change or a color change. in #5 you have an initial layer in at the top, but it needs to continues to blend out too easily to be considered a good plane change. Remember using values to determine plane changes are the best way to show better depth and 3d form in any kind of structure.

And #6, such a good painting, somewhat ruined by a shoddy drawing of an ear, lines aren't consistent, ear shape within the ear makes almost no sense in general. I suggest taking a reference of an ear on your own and redrawing it or at least fixing it up.

I also forgot to tag this in the photo but you seem to be missing out on adding plane changes and form and structure with hair. Think of hair as a helmet, the way light and shadows would interact around it. You would need a highlight on one area, shadows on another. Your hair seems to be washed out all over, no sense of light direction. Also atmospheric perspective is a very beautiful thing to master with hair, I'd suggest trying to add a bit of that in there as practice.


Anyways hope you find this somewhat useful, and other members of FP be sure to read this as this is not only for Detlef but for you guys as well. Reading critiques online is an excellent form to broaden your knowledge on the arts and art forms. As well as creating critiques, finding errors in other peoples works helps prevent you from doing the same.
   Also excuse me if I have any spelling errors or anything, I just got back from the gym and need to shower, no time for proof reading :)   

[Dead Madman]

You should do concept art for future games, bro, it's fucking amazing art skills you got there.

[Detlef]

theLazyLion posted:

Critique Incoming:

Holy fuck thank you so much! I can't believe you dedicated so much time writing this it's fucking looong. You seem to know your stuff I defently have use of this.
Again thanks, you have gven me the best critique ever.

[Detlef]

I have been amazingly lazy this week, but here is some stuff

Don't really like anything i did this week

fagstudy



It's a siren... a very big siren. 1 hour sketch



bg design...



photostudy....



and I still like to draw cartooon stuff, but I try to maintain some realistic poses.

[Fiskepudding]

That last photo study looks bitchin

[Occlusion]

You've improved by miles. Superb stuff.

[Greeneyes]

Nice work!

Also, less cock more boobs.

[Chezhead]

I love this stuff. It is pretty original, as well as being great art.

I have to learn how to draw better.

Edited:

Greeneyes posted:

Nice work!

Also, less cock more boobs.

Also, this. Attempt to draw a girl or two, not just for the sex appeal, but to liven it up. I haven't seen a single one from you yet.

[Habsburg]

Did you look at those body types I linked?

[Emz]

Detlef posted:

bg design...

That's really nice. :h:

[Rusty100]

draw me!!!!

[lexus04]

Fiskepudding posted:

That last photo study looks bitchin

well duh, it's Sean Connery, how can it not be bitchin'

[~ZOMG]

Detlef posted:

Something about this one makes me uncomfortable...

You are an amazing artist. I hope that one day I can be half as good as you.

Edited:

And I'm about to get caught up with your webcomic which I haven't read in a few weeks because it's amazing.

[Detlef]

~ZOMG posted:

Something about this one makes me uncomfortable...

You are an amazing artist. I hope that one day I can be half as good as you.

Pretend it's a girl, then I'm sure it'll be fine

Edited:

also thanks

[Tahrok]

Love your work. Lurked for a while on this thread and definitely see improvement.

Edited:

Oh and thanks to theLazyLion. I know it was directed at Detlef but it was really helpful to me too.

[Detlef]

Rusty100 posted:

draw me!!!!

I have no idea what color your eyes are

[Bobie]

oh my you are amazing

but this is becoming a bit of a sausage fest however

[Rusty100]

Detlef posted:

I have no idea what color your eyes are

amazing
they are olive btw

[krowten]

do this and i will love you :D sorry for big image and shitty quallity http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/136/f/b/insane__by_krowten.png

[Rusty100]

only rusty gets drawing privileges

[Aurain]

This is excellent.
nice work, detlef.

[Detlef]

I don't take requests.

Rusty was an exception

Edited:

And he is pretty so it's okay

[lexus04]

draw compwhizzle next

[WastedJamacan]

lexus04 posted:

draw compwhizzle next

This would be awesome.