Some things to work on (Monster of the Week)

I was watching a video about fundamentals by Feng Zhu tonight and was inspired to "brush up" lol.  It's amazing how no matter how long you draw, how long you paint, or how many miles your pencil odometer reads, the basics can always improve.  Lighting, perspective, gesture, color— as much as they seem like elementary principles, they are infinitely deep.

This was a quick sketch from last night that ended up looking not unlike a "Venusaur" from Pokemon lol, though that was not the conscious intent.  I learned a couple of things while working on it, simple concepts, but to me that's what makes them important.  The first thought (echoing advice given me by Justin Kunz recently) was that I need to focus on stroke control.  The second thought had to do with light.  I didn't use a spheretest on this one, and as a result wrangled for a while with my values.  They still have issues.  The thought occurred to me though, that the value patterns on a given isolated object are the sum of their lambert shading (spheretest-based lighting) and occlusion. Basically, in most situations everything lights as simply as a sphere, plus extra dark spots for the crevices.

And that was boring.  Here's an awesome:

Electric Eel Powers Christmas Tree