Mindbenders Works In Progress

Hi, happy to see that the old IFX forum is alive and kickin' albeit in a new form. That forum is where my artistic journey really started back in 08/09, have been drawing every day since.

Great initiative, happy to have found you and wish you all the very best. Keep drawing!

My first (and latest) WIP is a drawing of Jon Snow and Ghost from GOT. Hope you like the start of it.

Welcome to the nexus!

Admittedly, I don't know what the reference is for your picture, but I do like like the very textural feel you've got going here.

Keep it coming!

Thanks guys, no paintover or tracing used, but sight-size method using the amazing "Interactive sketchbook" app.

Todays WIP, another GOT, this time one of the ladies:

Hey Mindbender, glad ya made it over.

These are pretty good. Proportions are fine, there's a good level of detail and they're instantly recognisable. As Charlotte said, even though it's clear that you worked hard on the drawing there is a paintover/filtered style to them. I think this happens when people focus on the two-dimensional proportions of the reference and the accurate positions of the features, it's then all too easy to forget about the three-dimensional form, the transitions between the planes and the way light falls across the shapes, and all this can result in a picture that looks a little flat and you can't work out why. The same thing can happen when you use a grid and you end up treating the details as just co-ordinates. It's a trap that many people fall into with digital work, I struggled with it for while (and perhaps still do) until I started trying to learn caricatures (and I'm still learning there.)

I can see from the Bridgman study in your sketchbook that you have a decent grasp of form and the ability to describe it with line and shading. Like I said, these are good, you've nailed the hard bit of making the faces accurate and recognisable, the trick now is to combine this with your knowledge of 3D form to give the portraits more solidity and life.

And as everyone says, keep drawing! I look forward to seeing how you develop these further.

Thanks, you're absolutely right, Valence. For a while my goal was photorealism, my recent portrait gets more and more loose, especially when i paint over my drawings using a more painterly style (see example below)

Also posting my pre-study for my latest drawing, this one of Catelyn Stark

Todays WIP of another GOT character, this time Cersei:

Ooohhh.....

That's what GOT meant!!

Sorry, should have been clearer - meant "Game of Thrones"