August Pin-up - Gordie, The hard-rock crusher! (Patreon)

 Hey everyone!!

 Here's the pin-up for this month! Gordie was such a fun character to draw!! 

 As I always try to do over here on patreon, I try to use suggestions and projects as means to try new things and develop as an artist. I don't know if it pays off as improvement, but I'm trying my best!

 That said, for the first time I'm considering using 3D to help with my work! I actually have done and do studies with perspective, but it's a subject I do have a hard time with!

 I'm kind of insecure about it, and mostly probably because of stupid bias I've learned passively when studying art. What sparked my curiosity towards this topic is webcomics and manga- and how artists that i do surely respect use these to streamline their process, meanwhile doing very beautiful and original work themselves.  

 So I want to try it out! Lots of hurdles in my development as an artist can be summed up to me obsessively trying to do things the way people conventionally do things. So when people are pretty opinionated on how you can't use 3D and photos, you can see why I created a, honestly, very stupid resistance to even TRY it. I'm not a Thomas Romain and that's ok. I can't keep banging my head against a wall because of stuff like this, it's pretty ruthless with myself.

 So, why not try it out? My art, which is only of my own, demands its own solutions. I'm slowly....learning that!

> Here's a model I've grabbed  and set up the scene! 

>But ofc I won't just put it like that. I processed the image, and worked over it to give it my very own original flair.

  I honestly felt it way less stressing than usual. Perhaps this is a path I can follow... I'll keep experimenting. I'm satisfied with the results tbh! What do you guys think of this technique?

 Also this little detail I really enjoyed doing - the crowd making a big shuckle while cheering for Gordie! I still can't get over Gordie having a shuckle. So cute! 

> Now let's go to our big boy!

> I initially the face very very chubby!!! 90% of the face is cute fat cheeks! But the more I looked at him the less he looked like Gordie and more like an exaggeration... Also worked a bit on his bod! specially the position of his pecs. Jewelry got bigger as well!!

> Clean lines! His hair so soooo good to draw.... Also i rarely work on unbearded hunks, have you noticed it? I like beards so muuuuch that the bias just soaks my body of work

> Figures in the background! I drew the coalossal as I went along!

> hard shadows! then again, notice how I didn't do hard shadows on Gordie's body.... I want it to look very soft!

> the famed color sketchy.... really want everything to keep the "rocky" color energy gordie and gordie's gym has.

> Flats! Notice I made coalossal darker, I want the focus to be on Gordie.

> This piece had me thinking a lot about certain things! 

 For instance, I tried flipping it and honestly it looks better. Our western brains read from left  to right, uppermost to bottom.  The way I initially did the composition breaks this and it feels a bit itty on the weird side, but it's one of those things that looks strange but we can't pick out why, as it's so hardwired.

 So in the future I plan to plan my compositions better! Or at least spend more time exploring it! For this one I was so focused on resolving my internal monologue on backgrounds and doing Gordie that I just did them separately and thought I could magically just put them there and make it work. Nuh uh! Composition is hella important y'all!

   I can't use this one due to text and elements being mirrored.