My armour studies and building a visual library

The idea of these  pieces is to draw armor using some reference and then take the reference away and redrawing the armour to see how much you can remember, this is great for building your visual library when it comes to drawing armour, something I struggle a lot with and still have a long long way to go with! This means that you should eventually be able to draw some bad ass armour off the top of your head with no reference :P

I got this idea from Alex Negrea, he is currently my favourite digital artist, his skills are incredible and he is very dedicated to his art, I definitely recommend checking out his work! :)

So these drawings are a little bit.. rough, because the idea is not to spend too much time making it neat and rendering it well, it's to build your visual library, anyway I have done a few pages of these which I will post below. I also recorded a video for one page of them just so you can see the process, thanks for watching :)

digital painting realistic skin for beginners, tutorial video

I decided it was about time I get another video made as it has been a little while. People have been requesting more tutorials and my subscribers are very gradually increasing which always makes me feel good to know people can learn even from me :)

So anyway.. I decided digitally painting realistic skin could be a really good video to make. I am by no means a master of it myself but I like to think I have at least learnt enough to teach a beginner or provide them with some tips. When I first started digitally painting I was struggling with this the most so I thought my video may be able to help someone out in the same situation I was in.

In the video I show you how to make the skin more realistic by adding colour to shade the skin and using imperfections to really bring the realistic skin to life. When I first started digitally painting I used to just shade everything with black, which I show in the video, looks absolutely terrible, so if nothing else, that is a great point to take away from this. I have tried to keep this video tutorial down so it's not too long but hopefully you learn something from it.

As always please do subscribe and share the video to see more content - Youtube Channel
And please show your support by liking my facebook page - Facebook page
 Thanks! :)

Realistic pikachu

Hello everyone.
I haven't been updating my blog recently because I have not had that much new stuff to upload due to uni work :( That being said I do have some things and I am going to work harder to get them done now and keep posting more on my blog.

You may have already seen my realistic bulbasaur image and video that I painting, someone commented on the video requesting I did pikachu, it started off mopre as a doodle then anything but it turned out okay :) So here is the Youtube video of me painting a realistic pikachu and the finished image below. let me know what you think :).
As always please do subscribe to my Youtube channel for more videos and be sure to like my Facebook page to show your support. thanks!

More portrait digital sketches using the andrew loomis method, improving slowly

Hello all, I have quite a lot of work to upload and update my blog with, however it's midnight now and I am shattered, so for now I will leave you with some digital sketching I did of 3 female faces. I used the Andrew Loomis method for the structure of the heads, things such as an equal distance from the chin to the nose, the nose to the eyebrow line and the eyebrow line to the hair line as an example. Then I had reference loaded up which I used for the features, The faces did not turn out exactly like the reference but I am still pretty happy with it over all.

The first face of the 3 did not turn out as good as the others. From memory I spent about 1 hour on the first face, an hour and a half one the second and just over 2 hours on the third one. I also recorded the full process for you guys to watch with me babbling on in the background :)
See the image and video below.

And of course the video.. please subscribe and comment for more, would love to hear from you guys!

As always please do like my facebook page to show your support - https://www.facebook.com/learningasidraw Or give me a watch on Deviantart - http://learningasidraw.deviantart.com/ Thanks guys

Darth maul time lapse painting

So i decided to paint Darth Maul from Star Wars episode 1, it could have turned out better... but it could have gone worse so I wont complain.. I didn't have the highest resolution image which made things difficult, but here it is below anyway, done in photoshop with photo reference ( a print screen from the film )
Also the Youtube video of me painting it is below too :)

Video below - please subscribe and comment for more content :) also please like my facebook page in the Youtube description :)

How to design and draw a dragon head from the side profile!

Hey guys, sorry it's been a really long time since I updated my blog, I have been working hard with more videos and studies which I will post up soon. For now though I wanted to pose my latest video, uploaded just now!

How to draw an awesome dragon head from the side view using animal reference. The video is of me drawing some animals used for reference and then putting those studies together to come up with a cool dragon design. Below is a link to the video and below that is the image showing the animals and dragon.
I am really excited about this one so I hope you guys like it! :)

Realistic Pokemon Bulbasaur video and image

I have just finished uploading my latest YouTube video ' drawing a realistic bulbasaur Pokemon'. This is my first creature type painting but here is the video and the image, be sure to subscribe if you like it guys :)

The hobbit - Gollum study

Just finished painting a still from the Hobbit movie, as you can tell (hopefully!) it's of Gollum. The background was not working at all and I was very close to giving up but then I painted Gollum and he actually came out really well for me. I think this is one of the best things I have done so far :P. Because I am pleased with it I decided to post it here. first one is with the background, the second just Gollum.

Also if you do like seeing my work and studies like this, please do show your support and like my facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/learningasidraw
Or even subscribe to my YouTube channel if you like to watch videos :) - https://www.youtube.com/user/learningasidraw
Thank you! :)

Robo bean drawing from Proko's videos along with 60 second gesture drawings

Hello everyone, haven't posted anything in too long so just something I have been practising over the last few days to improve my figure drawing and anatomy skills. Not the most interesting of images ever but it has to be done, about 6-7 hours of work. Also a quick colour study from photo reference taken from http://stefangrosjean.deviantart.com/ with permission.
I didn't spend too long on it hence why it looks pretty bad, but I am posting it anyway, we will call it a 'colour sketch' lol. see images below.

Value portrait of model

I decided to do another black and white/ value portrait study from photo reference, I am not sure who the lady is to give credit to her, I just found the image on google and decided to give it a go, I changed it a little and to be honest my values were quite far off and it didn't look exactly like her. That being said it took me around 3 hours, maybe just over, which for me is super quick. Don't get me wrong it could do with a bit more work but I am still happy with it, especially the hair :)

Life study of light on eggs

Quick post of a study from life I have done, I am really trying to get the hang of lighting at the moment, truthfully I am finding it a lot harder then I probably should be but I will keep trying! I have been advised on the concept art forums to work more from life to understand it more so I not have a small table and a lamp next to my 'work station' ( a crappy little desk with my cintiq on) so hopefully this will help with my understanding of light and drawing from life.

The first 2 eggs (top 2) were very rough as I was concentrating soley on the lighting and not worried about making the eggs look good or realistic, the 3rd egg I spent more time on and tried to add a little texture and blend it a little better to see if I could make it look a little more realistic. I have also started up a sketchbook thread on the concept art forums which you can see here - http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=276607&p=3794019&viewfull=1
Although it's mainly the same  work I post on my blog anyway just with some extra sketches for people to give me feedback on how to improve my skills further.

Quick life drawing attempt of material plus lara croft comic attempt

Sticking with the theme of drawing everything and anything from life, I threw a t shirt over a pencil pot and stuck it on my desk whilst I drew it on my cintiq, it isn't exactly great or anything but its slightly recognisable I think (especially if you view it as a smaller thumbnail, maybe not so much when zoomed in though). And further down is just a little attempt of drawing Lara croft with reference from the Tomb Raider comic.

New video on drawing the basic human head from the front

Just a little post to show a video I have uploaded to Youtube, it's a tutorial just showing the basic placement for features/ the proportions of the human head for beginners. It's a method I came across recently and find it more useful then many others I have seen, I thought it would be worth while sharing so please see the video below and as always.. subscribe for more :) Thanks!

portrait head without reference, just a quick one

I haven't posted as often as I would have liked recently so I decided I would post up what I was doodling today, I am still studying heads, struggling a lot still but hopefully getting a little bit better as I go without reference. I tried to colour it too although my photoshop colouring knowledge is not brilliant yet! I was just plain around with the structure of the face, features, hair etc and threw in a red background so it's not quite as boring. So nothing special today but it's something :)

The nose isn't perfected but it's nearly midnight and I am tired :) I am also sketching a lot of heads at the moment using paper and pencil.

6 months progress since starting digital art

just a quick post showing the first painting I made on a graphics tablet, which was a bamboo Wacom fun ( i don't even know if you can buy them now!?) and then last week I decided to re do the basic painting of an eye, this is with a cintiq 13hd again from Wacom . It's not exactly brilliant but hopefully the progress is noticeable. I also posted a video of me painting this which you can see below. Maybe I will re do this in another 6 months, who knows? :)
Video: please subscribe for more :)

Nikola Mazgutova grey digital portrait + video!

I have finished another grey scale portrait, this time of the model Nikola Mazgutova, once again using photo reference ( With Nikola Mazgutova's permission ). It took me a while but this came out pretty good in the end, I also recorded this and put it on Youtube so please do give it a watch :)

Below is the finished pic and below that is the video.

A massive Thanks to Nikola :)

Veronika black model 'work in progress' sketches with fininshed image

Just a quick post today, a few people have asked to see some WIP (work in progress) images of the Veronika black portrait, I don't have many but you can see some below.

Veronika Black portrait part 2 finished!

So today I started where I left off yesterday, on the hair for the portrait of Veronika Black, this actually didn't take long at all and was fairly easy to do, I think this is due to the fact she has such dark hair and with the shadows you can't really see too much detail, so there was not that much to do!

Anyway below is the finished image, I hope you guys like it. Please remember I have permission from Veronika herself to use her photos for my digital art studies. The main purpose of this was to improve my portraiture skills but also improve working with values (grey scale). I am really pleased with how this piece turned out :)

I will be doing more studies from Veronika's photos too. Veronika has seen the picture and said she loved it. I cant ask for more then that :) Next time I will try a full body shot, after all she is a model! On another note I am working on another piece at the moment very similar to this, it's not too far off completion and I will be posting it up on Youtube for you guys to watch as a video. So make sure you subscribe to be notified when it's up!
 Massive thanks to Veronika Black :)

My youtube - http://www.youtube.com/user/learningasidraw

Portrait of Veronika Black part 1

Today I have worked from photo reference in grey scale of the model Veronika Black, I have concentrated on just the face today. Please note I have Veronika's permission to use her photos! This has taken up pretty much my full day but I really enjoyed doing it and although I did have to touch up some bits with the liquify tool I am really happy with the way it came out. I have not yet worked on the hair, just blocked it in to give an idea what it will look like. I will work on the hair next but I am not sure if I will start straight away or if I will have some practice runs at hair first, purely because I am not sure how to digitally draw hair to a good standard yet, anyway here is the picture so far :)

Veronika Black part 1
by Stephen Hopkinson

quick attempt at real life, painting a spoon!

So I posted on the concept art forums some of the work I have been doing recently, asking for their advice. They suggested a few things, one of which was working from real/still life, which is something I definitely need to do more of. So today I had a little attempt at digitally painting a spoon, I thought this would be something helpful in future projects for the metallic finish it has, maybe to help with weapons and armour in future pieces. It turned out okay, nothing amazing but it's not like I spent all day on it so I am happy with it :)

hair painting experiment and a concept character attempt

I will still be doing the last 4 portraits to the challenge but I am not going to do one a day. Just when I have enough time as I would like to study other things too!

So last night I bought a concept art course ( 50 mins long for around $20 ) and it was fantastic for creating characters in a 'concept art' style, which I would love to be able to do. I gave it a go today and have a picture to post up. It is far from 'good' but for my ability I thought it turned out alright for a first attempt. It doesn't look 'finished' but I got it to the stage I was trying to get it to. So the pic is below, I also included step 1 and 2, which is basically the silhouette, you can see how basic it starts out.

It is supposed to be a barbarian / warrior type guy, just in case you can't tell :) I keep meaning to get in some hair studies too, but for today I just did something really quick and then duplicated it and played around with colour and saturation, this didn't take too long and I enjoyed this :) + I thought it looked alright! that being said it doesn't exactly look realistic, not cartoony either though. hmm oh well I will work on it..

I am also posting these on my Deviantart page, feel free to follow me :) - http://learningasidraw.deviantart.com/

Day 10

I managed to get this one out the way before lunch time ( for once ) It isn't really the best one I have done but I was trying to cut the time down a little, as spending 2 and a half/ 3 hours a day drawing the same face was really getting boring, I managed to get this one down to about an hour and a half, it's not too bad considering it's at least an hour less work. When I had finished this one I compared it with some other faces and quickly used the liquify tool just to put the jaw line and chin in a little bit, so at first the face shape wasn't great.

I should probably have spent longer at the end neatening the image up and sorting the contrast etc.. as usual I think the eyes are a bit off :/

Day 9 of the portrait challenge

Day 9..
Today's face is not too bad, or at least it looks okay to me at the moment but this is what's really weird, every time I finish a face I look at it and think 'yeah that's not bad at all, big improvement!' then the next day I look back on the picture and think ' wow, how did I not notice how freaky that looks!' So I may end up changing my mind about this one after a nights sleep.
But for now I think this is the best one so far, messed up the eyes a little, or couldn't get them exactly symmetrical  anyway, and I think I could start making the chin a little bit thinner, that being said that's not really a mistake as much as a preference or a habit. Monday is my busiest day but I managed to get it done in time luckily, so here is it.

Feeling very tired today so not going to babble on too much, the lips maybe stand out a little too much/too sharp and the eyes are very wide open, but I think this one is okay!

Day 8 of the portrait challenge

Back on the challenge today.. I started off with some construction lines as usual which took quite a while, however once I had done these I would say the rest of the face maybe did not take as long as usual, that being said over all it still probably took just short of 3 hours. I managed to get feedback on my work last night so had an awful lot of info to take on board for today's portrait. I thought I had drastically improved today's portrait but I have compared it with my last few and it is not all that different to day 6, that being said there are definite improvements but whether they are very noticeable I am not so sure. Anyway the pic is below for day 8.

I think maybe the drop shadow on the nose doesn't have a sharp enough edge and the cheek bones have been blended too much :/

1 day break from the challenge, mid point, hand study instead!

I decided to take a some time off from the portrait challenge until I managed to get some criticism.. and now I have some! the lady who does the challenge got back to me and started with my day 7 image in the live stream, unfortunately it's about 10pm now so I am not going to start the next face, but I will start it tomorrow, which means the break I had was only 1 day at least, I got plenty of notes for feedback, it's going to be challenging but hopefully it will be worth it!

On a side note before I knew I would receive feedback today I started drawing some hands, because I am awful at them... The website http://artists.pixelovely.com/ just uploaded their hand photos with timers, so basically I did x amount of hands for 60 seconds each, then I moved on and did 2 mins per hand, then I finished with two hands, 10 mins on each. The 60 second ones turned out awful for me, too fast for me at the moment but it's all good practice, I think I did just short of 50 hands by the end of it, took about an hour and a half. I need to work on hands a lot to get better at them but they are really boring!
Anyway the image is below, click it to view a larger image.

Anyway... back to the portrait challenge tomorrow!

Day 7 of the portrait challenge, putting it on hold until further feedback

Day 7..
Today's face started out looking pretty good and most of the features finished that way, I was especially happy with the lips and thought the eyelashes looked pretty cool too. However one thing that is really bothering me is the eyes, they just don't look right at all! I don't think it's the actual eye itself, but more the positioning of it, I tried to liquify it a little and move it round a bit but I just couldn't improve it. I am pretty disappointed about that because I think if it wasn't for that this would have been my best attempt so far. But every time I see this image, something really stands out that is not right about it. On a brighter note some features are an improvement at least so it's not a complete loss.

I have decided to put this challenge on hold for now ( day 7, the half way point) because you are supposed to get criticism / feedback each day on your work which I have not being able to get. So without knowing how to improve the faces I just end up drawing the same thing each time with a lot of guess work. I have contacted the lady who created the challenge so I am thinking I will wait until I hear back from her and then I can carry on with the next 7 :)
Anyway here is day 7..

I am not gonna lie though, after about 3 hours each day of drawing the same face I am pretty bored of drawing them in this style, looking forward to being able to draw something else for a little bit now. We will see what I come up with for tomorrow :)

Day 6 of the portrait challenge

Day 6..
Very busy day today so I have barely had any time again, luckily I have managed to get it done by 11:10 pm. I was determined to get it finished and uploaded before midnight. Mission accomplished :)
Notes on this one.. took me around 3 hours which is a little disappointing, was hoping to get a little faster at the portraits by now, however I am still struggling with bits so I have to take my time to make it look half decent. I have noticed, comparing this portrait with every other one up until now I  have been erasing too much of the lower face, trying to make the portrait look feminine but taking it too far and completely erasing the jaw line. I have tried to change this a little bit today, I have also managed to get things a little brighter. One thing I did get wrong though.. the eyes are a tiny bit far apart. I am also considering squashing the head a little more so it is not as wide, not too sure about that one though! Anyway the pic is below..

Still having trouble with the eyes, however the eyebrows are a little better this time.

Day 5 of the portrait challenge

Day 5.. Today's portrait took about 2 and a half hours, I worked pretty hard on this and it started looking looking promising quite early on, however as things went on it didn't really improve all that much and ended up looking pretty damn similar to yesterdays, I did manage to get a little bit of feed back on yesterdays, things such as using more of the brighter tones, I kept note of this throughout however, when you compare it to yesterdays it looks pretty similar, although it turned out 'okay' I am a little disappointed for how hard I worked on it. Also it ended up looking very circular and wide with a thin nose so I had to liquify a few bits and drag/squash the head to make it thinner. The more editing I have to do like this at the end the more disappointed I am as it means I had it pretty wrong in the first place :(. Could really do with getting the lady who does the challenge to give me some feedback but unfortunately have not heard back from her yet, fingers crossed soon though. My portraits look like they could be improved a lot, but I am just not sure what the next step is to achieve this, this is why getting feedback could be very beneficial, see the image below.

I think I have done the chin too big again too :/

Day 4 of the portrait challenge

Day 4 of the portrait challenge and today was a stressful one! I had already been working on uni work all day, getting very frustrated so when it came to drawing the portrait I did not have much patience at first and was very close to giving up a lot towards the beginning! Still really struggling with the structure especially the eyes, just cannot get them right in terms of positioning and size. They are not too bad in this picture but I had to use the filter>liquify option a lot to get them right. That being said as frustrating as this one was I think it was a slight improvement on day 3, so it's a good job I didn't give up ( and trust me I really was close! )
It took me around 2 hours today I think.

I am thinking I did the nose a little too wide and possibly the eyes too wide open too. Definitely a slight improvement on the bottom lip if nothing else, I also get her a pointier chin, maybe too long still though?
I am hoping for some criticism back from the lady who set this challenge, no word yet though.

Day 3 of the 14 day portrait challenge

I have barely had any time today to get this done due to being in uni all day and having plenty of work to do. However I managed to spare some time for day 3 ( wouldn't miss it! ) I spent a little longer then usual on this one, probably over 2 hours, maybe 2 and a half. This was because I spent more time structuring the features. If you saw my day 1 and 2 portraits you will know my faces looked more like aliens with pretty huge eyes. I decided to look at some proportions of heads online, they are a little different to the ones in the video tutorials I have been following for the challenge, so I am pretty confused now and unsure which are the 'correct' measurements. I think the tutorials for the challenge have the eyes a lot higher up then this one I found, but I gave it a go, I am sure it's not perfect still but hopefully there's some progress of some sort in there.

Looking at this picture side by side with day 1 and 2 I can honestly say there is a big improvement. Although the chin is slightly too big here and could do with being thinner for a more feminine look. I am not sure if the shape of the head is off? Again not too sure though. Lips and eye brows could do with some extra work.
Day 3.. DONE :) 

Day 2 of the portrait challenge

Sunday afternoon and I have the day 2 picture out of the way. I tried to concentrate on making the eyes a little smaller today, again it looks more like an alien then a human but hey there's still 12 days left to improve :P I hope this is a little bit of an improvement on yesterdays, although again something still looks very off and the eyes might even still be too big, not too sure. If nothing else though I managed this one in about 1 hour 25 mins, slight improvement on time, by about 20 mins, see image below.

I am thinking the eyes are possibly a little high up on the head? damn those eyes..
Or possibly the head is too stretched / elongated ?

My first post and the start of the 14 day portrait challenge

Hello everyone! welcome to my first post :)

I am digital artist, although still very new and learning the basic, I decided to start up a blog which if nothing else will be a good way for me to track my progress and keep me on target. If I post something I set as a goal for a week later, having it written on a blog post, and even having people following my blog, will help make sure I stick to it and don't start slacking. Or at least that's the plan ;)

So yeah, Hopefully this is the start of something good! I have been working on digital art for a few months now and am using a Wacom cintiq13hd. You will see me posting links to my deviant art and my Youtube channel throughout the blog, so please help me out by subscribing :) links are below.

Deviant art 
Youtube


Enough with the boring intro.. This first post is the first day of me starting the '14 day portrait challenge' (you can see the link for this below) the idea is that by day 14 your portrait skills should have increased a lot.
http://istebrak.deviantart.com/art/The-14-Day-Challenge-Guide-Lines-433450654

So here is my portrait drawing for today, I can see some HUGE mistakes already, especially seen as the eyes are wayyy too big for the head, however even though it looks a little silly I am posting it up anyway, gives me more of a reason to improve if I post it! I am not too sure what to do with ears at this point so they are very rough and the lips are not perfect either, The head may be a little too long as well, not entirely sure.

This took me around 1 hour and 45 min. Considering I am usually very very slow with my art work I am actually pretty happy with this for a day 1 attempt.