Gaur 2.0 – Rebuilt Body after Detailing. (c) 2015 Michael J. Barnes.
I just completed phase one of detailing the body of my ZBrush sculpt Gaur 2.0. During this phase, I added panel lines and other stuff to add some visual interest in the model. As before, I have recorded my progress, and if you would like to view the process, visit my Videos page.
Gaur 2.0 – Body Rebuild. (c) 2015 Michael J. Barnes.
An update to my Gaur 2.0 sculpt. I decided I didn’t like my original “body” concept, so I redrew it. From their, I broke apart the sculpt to rebuild it to create a hard-edge model. From this point, I will add more detail to the body parts.
Gaur 2.0 – New body concept sculpt. – (c) 2015 Michael J. Barnes.
If you would like to view my process, I have recorded it and you can see the progress in my Videos page. Let me know what you think.
“Radio Rocket Flyers.” (c) 2015 Michael J. Barnes. (click image to view larger picture)
Radio Rocket Flyers is the second image in a series of illustrations I have dubbed the Gang of 8.
“Waldo.” Creature Concept Sculpt. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes. Click image to view larger version.
Continuing my series of fantasy creature concepts, I am ready to present “Waldo.”
Waldo began life as a very rudimentary sketch (which can be seen in My Sketchbook). When I say very “rudimentary sketch” I mean VERY RUDIMENTARY. I wanted to create a “horse-like” beast, because I will be using this model in a future illustration. Waldo was created in ZBrush, with the final composite produced in Photoshop.
In the above image, Waldo “hams it up” for the camera.
If you would like to see the creation process, I have recorded it and the video can be viewed here.
I decided to take a break from my job hunt to create a new creature concept. I also decided to record my speed sculpt and share it here. This is Ralph, a ZBrush speed sculpt.. The initial sculpt took me around two hours to complete (hi-res details, and final painting took a couple of more hours). I will post the final image later.
After I completed producing this video, I realized I needed to make some minor changes to my website. If you look at my menu at the top of the page, I have added three new categories: “Characters & Creatures,” “Objects and Mattes,” and “Videos.” The first two pages I created because I noticed I had created enough work to build up new portfolio pages. As for the “Videos” page, I felt that I am confident enough to keep a video record of my sculpts and share them. I am also in the process of creating a video portfolio (which I will also share at a later date).
“Characters & Creatures” is a collection of many of the characters and creatures (as the name implies) I have created in ZBrush. “Object & Mattes” is a portfolio of background images, and object I have created for use in my illustrations.
As always, I look forward to feedback.
The first thing you are probably asking yourself is: “Wait a minute? The Amish have opinions about drawing hands?” I honestly have no idea if the Amish ever said anything about drawing hands, and if they did, they wouldn’t blog about it. I got this headline from a Blog Content Generator and it made me laugh… so I decided to use it as a topic headline. Another truth I must share with you is that many times when I draw hands, the results sometimes make me laugh (but mostly it makes me cry).
Drawing hands can be very difficult. Especially for me. When I was younger, I thought I was pretty good at drawing hands. The fact is, I practiced it, and practiced it, and found I could do it pretty well. As the years passed, I fell out of practice of hand drawing, and as a result I find the effort of drawing hands to be just that – an effort.
Before I continue with writing this post, I must admit (just to avoid any confusion) that I am not listing 17 things the Amish were right about drawing hands. I will, however, press the importance of why hands are important in an illustration. Cartoonist Christopher Hart wrote in one of his best-selling how-to books: How to Draw Comic Book Heroes and Villains, “I can evaluate the caliber of an artist by his or her ability to draw hands – and so can everyone else.” By the way, if you are an aspiring artist, I highly recommend adding this book to your library.
In my early offerings of my on-line comic strip Hospitality Included, I discovered the importance of drawing hands (even cartoony hands). I lost a potential reader due to my lack of attention to the characters’ hands. This reader wrote a comment under one of my offerings how my hands were so amateurish that he would never log in and read another one of my Hospitality Included strips. I needed to delete that comment due to the fact that this comment was so explicitly written (language-wise), that it could not remain on a family-friendly comic strip.
Needless to say, I learned early how hands can make, or break, an illustration. As I wrote previously, I still have issues with drawing hands. Fortunately, I recently discovered a great resource (aside from the book I listed above) on how to draw hands. Another positive thing about this resource is that it is FREE. Cartoon Fundamentals: How to Draw Cartoon Hands written expertly and concisely by ,it is a wonderful tutorial about drawing hands. And although the tutorial is about correctly drawing cartoon hands, I find the techniques could be useful for many types of illustrated hands.
I know… this is a long-winded post about sharing a couple of links, but I wanted to demonstrate how important it is that hands are correctly drawn. And one of these days I will actually accomplish this feat again. To help me with this, I have bookmarked this resource, and I recommend any other artist who finds themselves having troubles with drawing hands to do the same thing:
Cartoon Fundamentals: How to Draw Cartoon Hands
If you have any other resources that could help me, and others, please share them in comments section of this post.
By the way, I drew the illustration at the top of this post. If you are a blogger and would like a custom illustration for your next post, or… if you just want an illustration for your avatar or website… contact me. I’m always Looking To Draw.