Espresso vs. X Chris vs. RetiredOldie vs. johnway vs. ??? !

[X Chris]

I like the emphasis on texture this time around. The difference in focus between the foreground and background works pretty well.

I understand your question about "following the original" a little better now. The idea of the SE is for everyone to try and redraw someone's original sketch, then post an original of their own that the others will follow. The label "SomeFace" didn't mean "any face;" it was just Espresso's name for that round in the SE. For comparison, here's what his original + responses were:

Each response followed Espresso's original concept, but interpreted it in our own style. I had fun translating extra details out of some of Espresso's looser brush strokes ("that dark patch could be a chin beard..."). RetiredOldie gave him a more likely shirt and fleshed out the expression. But our responses were still basically a bald guy with glasses.

So with that said, what would you say to us considering this your first Johnway Original™:

(last updated 07 February 2015: JW's Clown)

________________|_ES_|_XC_|_RO_|_JW_|
BookWarrior     | O  | x  | x  |____|
SwordGal        | x  | x  | O  | x  |
PointingLady    | O  | x  | x  | x  |
Angrybirdy      | x  | O  | x  |____|
SnowglobeLady   | x  | O  | x  | x  |
Gunslinger/Clown| o  | x  | o  | x  |
ShortsDude      | x  | x  | O  |____|
SomeFace        | O  | x  | x  | x  |
SpaceSuitGal    | O  | x  |____| x  |
DogKnight       | x  | x  | O  | x  |
ManyFacesGuy    |____| OO |____| x  |
SnowHairGirl____|____|_x__|____|_O__|
                | 10 | 13 | 9  | 9  | total
                |4.5 | 4  |3.5 | 1  | originals

BTW: The "x" and "O" characters are links, so you can see the other entries in a round. An "O" is the original for that round.

It would be much better to resize the image in Photoshop instead of BBcode. BBcode leaves the resizing at the mercy of the browser (which isn't always pretty). Huge images also load slower, even if they are tagged to display at smaller dimensions.

[johnway]

Whoops. I'll do another one for some face. I should have really noticed that the face had to be male. Oh well, my next one is swordgal anyway. I might spend tomorrow doing some mocks. I have an idea as to what i want to portray.

It will be most likely she is leaning against a wall to keep with the original theme. Question is what is she doing? My idea was to have her casually leaning against the wall with a bemused/evil grin/smile. But beyond that i'm not so sure. Perhaps she has eliminated some thugs and left the last one cowering, maybe she's amused by the number of swordwelding mercs/thugs/guards that surround her? The next is what to do with the sword. I was thinking having her hugging the sword between her arms/cleavage.

like some sexually suggestive-

[X Chris]

Response to SnowHairGirl:

[johnway]

damn that's nice. A few words as to how you created it and your thought processes? I assume you used a chalk brush for this?

[X Chris]

Originally Posted by johnway A few words as to how you created it and your thought processes?

Hoo boy, you would ask that...

The tools:

• I used Painter X3 + three brushes:
  • real soft chalk
  • real soft pastel
  • a palette knife (I think it was the blender)
• I used those brushes because they change their angle with the stylus' tilt direction (Painter calls it "bearing").
  
• 90% of the painting was done using the real soft chalk and 10% was done with me wishing I'd stuck to the real soft chalk.
  
• The difference in texture was provided by cranking the brush Grain or the paper Contrast in one direction or the other.
  
• Most of the blending was done by dialing the chalk brush Resaturation down to below 10%. Occasionally I strayed a bit above 10% and played with the Bleed to get a softer effect, but that didn't always work.

The process:

• My "process" in a nutshell was I didn't know what the hell I was doing:

Painting with color baffles me, and my response this time was to throw down a lot of brush strokes until adding more made it look indisputably worse. I should really see how some of board's painting badasses like moof, Jeanox, or astropho do it. They probably start with something exotic and painterly, like underpainting, or skill. In any case, I ended up with three layers:

• The bottom layer was the canvas with the chalk drawing.
  
• The second layer was a copy of the first, smeared about with high grain texture and low opacity. I softly erased a few bits on the layer that seemed too smeary so the original chalk drawing would peek through a bit more.
  
• The third layer was a single-color wash (the horizontal striping) at low opacity, with the idea that this would harmonize the colors a little more.

Hope that helps.

[johnway]

Most appreciated xchris. When it comes to things that i don't know or understand i always try to find method in madness. Order from chaos and in this case documenting what i do in the hopes that i come across something that i could use as another tool. Its probably why rivenphoenix's anatomy guide was so enthralling. When ever i reference anything these days i must know WHY its why something looks the way it does. I could list a few example but we would be here all day.

Anywho i'm doing some practice on paper for the face on the sword gal and i'm trying to perfect her face atm. I'm hoping to give her slightly subtle feline features like how her messy hair (un)intentionally resembles cat ears. Still trying to get the nose and mouth right and then i've got to draw the expressions...

[johnway]

My second attempt at some face. This time its a male and he's wearing shades!

Comments will be up on my sketch book.

[Espresso]

johnway: Welcome to the party thread. Keep it up. Looking forward to seeing all the catch up images too!

X Chris: Useful script. Is the barefoot mask warrior different than the pointy warrior? I ask since you drew both variants.

[X Chris]

Originally Posted by Espresso X Chris: Useful script. Is the barefoot mask warrior different than the pointy warrior? I ask since you drew both variants.

Thanks. Johnway drew his pointy warrior as a spin on the ManyFacesGuy, so I just left it at that. I guess that makes my pointy warrior a leftover. Perhaps the script should handle double-ups?

[johnway]

Hi Espresso Many thanks for the warm welcome. I have been working on swordgal for quite some time now. Will probably practice more this weekend assuming planetside 2 and the terrible weather doesn't wreck my weekend. I did do some work last week but frankly it was crap so i decided to not upload it.

[johnway]

Having had a look at the last picture it appears that i've worked on the swordgal exercise for over a MONTH. I didn't fill in all the details they i wanted and i got caught up with the details and inking. Still need to upload the videos, but i'm done now.





So... what next. I doubt i'll do the boss fight contest as i doubt i can come up with anything as i've lost 11 days already.

[johnway]

My submission for dogknight

[johnway]

Pointing lady pic

[Espresso]

Is this still going? Or do people want to change it up a bit, etc.

I've been trying to draw the SnowHairGirl and the ManyFaceGuy but keep messing up and starting over. Eventually I'll probably get it to look right and then post

[X Chris]

It's still going as long as someone wants to play, as far as I'm concerned. I haven't been posting because I'm caught up with responses.

Originally Posted by Espresso I've been trying to draw the SnowHairGirl and the ManyFaceGuy but keep messing up and starting over. Eventually I'll probably get it to look right and then post

Do you think it would help to tackle another subject before those two? I still owe the thread an original.

[johnway]

i was working on this until i hit a artist block on the book warrior and never truly recovered from it. I think i did do one for the snowglobe lady some time ago. But that was me trying to kill 2 birds with one stone.


Here it is again:





Perhaps i should do something similar. I was doing something this afternoon and drawing a background (WIP, its still very rough and hope to finish it off once i have the figure in place).





Just need to figure out what, where and why. Part of my problem when it comes to sketch jams is that i always attempt to go one step further with everyone's ideas to improve on it. What i really should do is honor the original and draw something similar and then go on a tangent and do my own version afterwards.

Speaking of ideas, the last thing i thought about the book warrior thing was to have him walking down a country path, the sky is a orangy yellow and his little whimsical apprentice girl hoping from one fence post after another. then i realized that the book warrior/librarian looked a bit like an assassin from AC and promptly ignored it and moved onto something else later.

Oh and also half of the things i wanted to do i couldn't draw properly so that also didn't help.

[johnway]

Clown exercise complete.