Botanical Gesture

Today I wandered into the forest with my friends. While they were having fun on the "S.S. Beached 3" (Their pretend boat...>_>) I was gesturing a tree. I drew the tree basically without even looking at the paper, I spent most of the time on the forms....

In fact, focusing on form and volume as opposed to lines, seems to be bringing me some very nice results lately... I have done a lot of gestures lately, but hopefully I can get to uploading them soon.

Thanks!

In progress botanical texture

Here is another botanical study in progress. I took my watercolor block to the park and literally sat down and started painting this interesting looking tree! I must say, it is a complicated texture... I need to take a photo reference shot of it, but basically...

the tree's bark is peeling off like sheets of paper... Add in lighting as a factor, and the texture of the trees bark becomes very complex to paint.

So far all I have is the base color down and a little bit of the bark texture down ontop of that...

I need to finish adding the bark texture, then touching up with various shade and light details.

My mind is a bit too "micro" and I need to macro up a bit. Getting down the shape of the texture first, then moving on to detail might speed up the overall process.

Botanical study

Characters? Or environments? That is the choice I am constantly faced with in my major. Well, I love them both, So I am going to practice both.

So in order to practice environments, I have started off with doing a basic botanical study of the trunk of a tree.

Most people wouldn't bother to study their own body, much less a tree. Two parallel lines with a few shades of brown and we are done, right? Wrong. Trees in many ways are more complex than human beings in form. Despite standing straight up, trees have curvature, they have form, they have motion, and they have very gestural poses. Not only that, but trees have more gradients and more complex textures than a human body would ever have.

It's the background artist job to master all of these elements, and believe me, there are more aspects to a background than there ever will be with characters.

Every videogame is 20% character 80% background. And believe me, it's a very complex and diverse 80% that requires due respect and attention. So today I have begun to pay my respects!

btw, this was done in watercolors. Watercolors and various paints are primarily how I will gesture my botanicals, landforms, and environmental surveys.