Rock Studies

 

When I was teaching myself how to draw and trying to find a job in concept art, one thing I completely overlooked was the amount of rocks I would have to draw. Almost every scene I'm given (I'd say close to 80% of the pieces I'm assigned) includes rocks in some way. Whether it's sheer cliffs and canyons or small landscaping stones, there are rocks all over the place.

The strange thing, is they hardly ever take center stage. They have their place in the scene, but they never call too much attention to themselves. It becomes important to understand them and give them their proper weight, but not spend too long on them as there are more important things in the scene. This often leads to drawing or painting them from memory or imagination.

It helps to spend a little extra time to observe and take note of their strange, seemingly random shapes outside of work, when you can slow down a little. When it comes time to draw them from memory later, you can feel better equipped to just "whip them out" without having to give them too much thought. 

Black and White Tone Studies

 It's been awhile since I've done any sort of "painterly" work, both in photoshop or traditional paints. Most of what I do at work is a mixture of 3d models and photo manipulation. I did these recently as a quick way to get back into things; just copies of pictures/ other pieces. But it's not so simple. 

Here's the challenging part: 

1. They must be completed on a time limit. (I believe I did these in about 30 min. each)

2. No tracing of any kind.

3. The reference must be in color. No "black and white" filter. You have to translate the color reference into black and white yourself. 

4. Simplify the values to 3 or 4 tones.

5. Simplify the shapes. It's so easy to chase every little jagged outline, but the details don't matter. (Why is that so hard to remember?)

Doing these types of studies don't leave you with the prettiest pictures, but they certainly help to get the brushes moving again. Keeping things simple and constrained help to remove the bigger more intimidating aspects of picture making like design, composition, color etc. giving you a chance to focus on how it feels to move a brush again and how it's possible to represent anything in the world with just a few tones and simple shapes.