Einar's railroad pencilogue

[Einar]

Nothing fancy. Just practice pieces.
I was back home for 1.5 weeks, which meant mostly being on the way and missing the usual drawing conditions. Well, that means back to the roots :-) There is a reason why I named this sketch blog a railroad pencilogue two years ago. And I got the chance to draw again on a train. And on bus, in the airport terminal (flight delayed by 6 hours), on Margit Island in pissing rain and on the green sofa back at my father's place. At least I managed to verify that my Kindle works good enough as a display of reference material for less elaborate stuff.

So hands from the Loomis book (or from the end of my very own arms), figure pieces from the Hogart book dotted by a number of doodles.



Spidey with a crappy leg I couldn't manage (focusing on legs from now on)




Girl is a quicky using ref from the artsy poses site again:



And a design piece for something steam punky in a cartoony style. Needs some follow up.

[Electronick]

I'm liking this latest round of sketches. Keep it up man!

[Senji]

Wow great sketch updates! Really lovin the anatomy sketches :O

[Einar]

Thanks very much for the support, guys.

[Einar]

A warm-up piece where I got a bit overboard so in the end I sat there drawing it the whole evening:-) Photo referenced (find official references: model Amber G, photograph by M. Ranum).

[Einar]

Promises

I made a few promises to myself around drawing throughout the last few years, sometimes even wrote it down in this sketch blog or any other public forum. So it's time to see them happen!
I tried to collect all of them into this list - and the new promise is that I draw one entry each week till I get to the end:-) So:

1) Silver Bride – digital. Ilmarinen's Silver Bride, also theme to one of my favourite songs, a song with the same title by Amorphis.

2) Firebringer – pencils, maybe pastels and definitely digital. Another folk character, Hungarian this time, appearing in another favourite song, Tűzhozó by Dalriada.

3) Steampunk character with fancy gadgets – pencils at least.

4) Slash – digital portrait. In remembrance of his awesome gig at Download 2012.

5) Robert Redford – pencil portrait for a friend. My second ever commission :-)

6) Scottish highlander high-epic picture.

7) (Semi-) Historical characters of the British Isles. Bernard Cornwell type Arthur to start with.

8) Three undefined pencil portraits for friends

9) Myself as a techmarine: digital, at least a bust. Or even a combat shot, attending a broken Rhino

10) Costa cult. To take the piss out of the lovers of posh coffee:-)

11) The 3 Harpies of my life - Head, Hair and Hands. :-) The idea is three witches, each with an exaggerated body part from the mentioned.

12) Max (Csaba Zsilvölgyi) - portrait. My favourite illustrator from my teen age years - book/magazine illustrator, designer and computer game concept artist. I had the chance to attend a few of his drawing lessons before his early and sudden demise. He was a really great guy.

[Einar]

First promise coming true - Slash

Still VIP, so any comments or critics are welcome.
He was sort of easy as his hair and glasses obscure a good deal of his face:-) But I still spent a hell lot of time on the piece, and I still don't really like the hair - I really should learn now how to draw hair properly and not just imitate it.
Original photograph by Paul Brown.




Progress pictures:



It's on hold now as I'm knackered after a friends birthday BBQ. But I still hope that I can get something done for WSG in time...

[Dr. Strange Fate]

I like your style do you ever do any pure line work. Sometime when you shade it covers up drafting problems. I found working in line only, forces you to focus mainly on the composition of your work.

[Einar]

Thanks for looking in Doc and also for the compliment.
That line work comment seems quite a useful one. One of my main problems used to be that I couldn't bring clean drawings and it was quite hard work to make my work cleaner over time. And I also did overrender things. Now I have some stuff which I consider pure line art, but I still would like to get a bit more cleaner in looks. Although IMO pure lines suit more a simplified cartooney style and I would use rendering for more realistic attempts. And the extra heavy rendering you saw on the last pencils, now I just use that one one when I'm doing photo referenced practice as I'm trying to grow my understanding on shape, shadows (and mark making) through that. Anyway now that you raised my attention I would go for some linework pieces later this week.

[Einar]

Some silliness for WSG, which took too much time. Topic was the 12 labours of Hercules, so I decided to give it a Disney twist:-)
Started off in traditional pencils, but after scanning didn't really like the legs, so give it a digital try. And it stole a half of my afternoon, but at least it doesn't look bad and gives an opportunity to try some simple flat colouring. I don't really want to focus on this type of art in general, I just got carried away a bit:-) (and obviously there was no proper planning before drawing again...)


And this also means that I couldn't work on Slash, so I'm already behind schedule with my promises.:-/ Need to double up next week!

[Einar]

Had a busy week, it almost got as far as proper over-time. Scary:-) Also got grumpy on a few days, without any direct reason. That's even scarier:-)
A few shifty warm up pieces, a speedy photo ref girl to see how fast I am now and a crappy foreshortening doodle. Dunno why I try it all the time without practice...



And lastly a finished Slash, unless somebody spots something awful or has some more hints over in the Sketches and WIP Area. (Slash WIP Area thread)

[vrblknch]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Einar again.

[Einar]

Hehe, thanks vrblknch. I guess PJ is enjoying quite an active period as I run into the same problem every second time I try to click that star.:-)

[Einar]

A martian embassador with his baby spider for WSG #270. :-)

[Einar]

Busy work continues, had a few long days this week... Well, two days remaining till holiday, so it is coming to an end (question is what sort of an end?:-)
Quickish practice pieces on foreshortening. (Probably should do simple objects first, instead of figures...):


And Hit Girl for WSG. Referenced the pose (and lights to some extent) from a photo from the artsy poses site, so that I could have direct practice as well. Katana is rubbish, and I don't like the face that much, but the piece is acceptable.

Just realised that I forgot her cape:-)