A good friend of mine bluntly pointed out that my handling of hard surface metallics in my art is disgustingly bad. After reviewing my work I had no choice but to agree hahaha. I’ve never been one to immediately discredit another artist’s (or person’s) critique because most everyone has something you can learn from. I would be far worse right now if I didn’t listen more than I talked and respected advice from all walks of life. In this case a VFX lighter and shading artist that has tons of experience with materials in space.

I decided to go about fixing this issue the old fashioned way. Observational studies with pencil and paper. Yes, I could have opted to use PS for these or another faster program but the point of these isn’t to be fast. The point is to be slooooooooow and take your time to truly see and analyze the surface. Every divot, every shine, and absorb all the subtle tone changes of the material. I’m no where near perfect yet but with a few more months of these studies I’ll be tons better. I’ve used this method every time I have to start from the ground up on something. Once it was perspective, then atmospherics, vegetation, gesture drawings and so on. I’ll probably continue learning things this old fashioned way till I die haha. Below is my pencil sketch of the hilt of my Trojan Blade that I picked at the Renaissance fair some years back ( I knew it would be good for something!)

I’ve also “finished” this guy. Once again I’m not too happy with it so I’ll just keep doing more studies.

Well that’s the end of my rant.

Greg Mitchell, Study, study, study let’s all get tested!