using 3D as reference

Pics 1-4 are by Tatsuya Kerada, a legendary illustrator who I am currently inspired by. 

I wanted to start off briefly going over this guy's work bc he's seriously a legend. it's a shame I don't own more of his art books, I only own this one which is a joint artbook between him and the other legend Kim Jung Gi. I could seriously talk about how long I've been obsessed with both but I wanted to focus on these 4 pieces that Tatsuya Kerada made. I'm going for a sci-fi look with brightly colored metal and I'm aiming for this level of work. I know I'm decades from his level of experience but it's worth trying.

back in 2012 in my first painting class, my teacher kept nagging me about photo reference. he understood that I was a decently advanced illustrator for my age (not to toot my own horn but your girl did not speak english when she first migrated to the US so she sat alone and did nothing but draw for the first few years ok). he knew I had an ego about it too bc every week we'd come into class and I would be painting without reference.

He basically told me that it's kind of a common thing for talented illustrators to stubbornly work without reference bc they THINK they know how light affects the object. I mean, if you can draw a perfect car, why would you think you can't paint it? You clearly know how perspective works, light should be easy! This is how I thought, like many other young illustrators. 

Turns out, all the good painters and definitely the best painters work from reference. The art of painting isn't just knowing what's there, it's SEEING what's there and mixing the right colors to recreate the lighting and shadows. I didn't understand this early on and my paintings suffered until one day I finally took a damn photo and it changed my life. 

Fast forward to today, I was working on my painting and I realized I was designing this crazy Katsuya Terada inspired metal headpiece... with absolutely 0 reference. I was drawing from my imagination and while it made sense on paper, it came out completely trash on the canvas. After 5 hours of painting last night, I rage-quit and sulked to bed. I thought "damn I've completely crashed into a wall and lost all my motivation" BUT! I woke up this morning with a brilliant idea...

Pics 5-7: I decided to 3D model out my sketched drawing and recreate the lighting scenario on the model so that I would have a perfect photo reference of my own creation to work from. It took me less than an hour bc I was so excited. It's not even 2PM yet but I feel like I've turned a complete 180 and I'm ready to try again.

Pics 8-10: I am now wishing I had a photoreference for everything else but I think I'll be okay making the characters a bit cartoon-ish. I re-worked my original sketch in Clip Studio Paint to define the characters more since they were ambiguous blobs up to this point. I may also add some fish or flowers so I’ll find reference for that when the time comes.

Hope this motivates someone today to look at things with a new perspective! I've always used 2D sketches to guide my 3D work.... but today I'm spicing things up :)