Challenge 4 - Day 14

Was so happy to find Life Drawing sessions after so long! So I used some of the time to draw the head of the grandpa modelling. He jokingly scolded me at the end of the session for making him look grumby...he is indeed the sweetest thing ^_^

Challenge 4 - Day 13

"Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view."

Challenge 4 - Day 12

After the summer upset my routine, it was about time I got the exercises (*cough* Challenges) back into my every day life. After all, the most challenging thing was to remember to leave time in the day for drawing.
Eyes not great, I tried to draw my glamorous sister from memory (I did look at references before that) but turns out both my memory and proportions are not up to speed yet.

Challenge 4 - Day 11

I had another go at ZBrush. I started with the intention of making a girl, but I was failing so I changed it to this.Which is not much of a win in terms of anatomy. I spent time tweaking the shape of the head, looking up references, tweaking some more, but something was always off.
I was taking decisions as I went along, so my workflow wasn't very good for this one once I thought "Hey! Maybe I could texture him too!"
So I exported in .obj the lowest poly one I had, unwrapped, brought him back in ZBrush, redid some details because of the UV mapping (which I did not have before), created normals, went to 3dsMax and applied the textures (which were done in Photoshop) and the normals.
Rendered with SSS and Mental Ray.
I attempted to paint the hair in Photoshop whilst making the preview, but it looked off so he is now hailress. Hihihi.

Challenge 4 - Day 10

My first Z Brush sculpt! Started sculpting on a thin cylinder. I found that thinking about how I would draw this helped in bringing out some shapes, like the lips. They are not great,but they got much better after I started thinking about where the shadows would usually be and the reason why they form at the places they do.
I wanted to work on it more and maybe attempt some texturing as well to get the feel of how it is in Z Brush however I naively saved it in the wrong format..so it is forever lost *sob*
I created a Movie though, from which I was able to take some snapshots so I think it is a sign for me to start from scratch and so something better!

Challenge 4 - Day 9

Challenge 4 - Day 8

A dwarf mechanic. Still in his forge, the fire burning, taking a break before finishing the forgery of the missing pieces of his latest machine. His scars are not ones from battles. They are those of creation, earned from hard work, putting together the pieces one by one. Testing, failing, then testing again. Until one more step is taken towards advanced technology.

Approximate time: 12 hours, over the course of 2 days

I felt the need to draw the portrait of a dwarf. I made a bit of a back story before starting the sketch as I wanted to not simply draw a hairy face, but draw the portrait of the character. I did of a lot of back-story thinking, some of which I did not write down and now regret. Here are some of my main notes:

• Being young (for a dwarf) he has ambitious eyes and a mind that wants to achieve big things, even if going against the traditions of his battle dwarf and gold greedy ancestors (mining for gold and hammering for weapons, not for strange moving things)

• As a mechanic he is someone who follows practicality, so when his hair got too long he would tie it up if not just cut it. The beard tucked into the robe so they don't get in the way.

• Working with metal, fire, machines and greasy parts, his hands would be dirty during work. Scars  from burns and cuts are not elements missing from his arms and body.
• The cigar is part of his break and recollection-of-thoughts time.