Work Flow Process--Collecting Reference + Adobe Bridge

One sub-project I have been actively been working on the last couple of months is to organize my behemoth reference folder. It is still all an orchestrated act trying to place all my reference pictures in one folder and then sub folders as well. I have about 20gb+ of pictures I have found online for easy access. This is not including stuff I shoot myself and screenshots from all my devices. Which combined is an extra 6gb of pictures. I'm also am not counting the ones on my external hard drive as well, which is about 100gb+

One problem is when the folder is a gigantic mess you don't use all the valuable resources you have gathered. So I finally put all my loose pictures in this one ref folder I have been categorizing all these pictures. Just by categories like environments interior and exterior, animals, people, faces, genre characters, etc.

When the files were jumbled I have a lot of interesting pictures that help with getting the creative juices flowing even at times I don't feel like drawing or have an incomplete idea.
Another thing to note is do not copy your reference exactly to a T. You can run into copyright issues since these online pictures aren't yours. You can base your drawing off of it or simply state if it is for practice and if not you can be misunderstood trying to copyright infringe or undermine the photographer/artist.

If I like something or it catches my eye... I say as from a design point of view I'll name something random like emo hair is very interesting to look at the different lengths and colors the hair is makes a cool video game character. I would never do emo hair myself but I love looking and admiring it.

Someone once said one habit when an artist draws a portrait of someone they tend to draw themselves their own features and things.

Like for example there is an artist that frequently writes tutorials for ImagineFx magizine. She has a particularly long jaw and so practically all the characters she draws have long jaws may it be male and female.

One problem I used to have years agi until someone pointed it out to me is making all my characters proportions short. I am a short person so that is what I am used to seeing. So now the problem I have and it is a struggle to make a conscious effort to not to do so is making proportions too lengthy in the other half of the body. Gramps who is my mentor when he looks at my work he is like you know the torso is the midway point of the body right? Why did you make the thigh and lower leg elongated? I have to usually remind him the reason why for my bad habits. And also most hero proportions do have longer legs. But I will continue to work on trying to get it just right in proportions.

Honestly it bothers me to draw the same thing over and over again. Where it looks the same but in different drawings I like diversity especially if it is people.

I watched Wes Burt draw in a Massive Black workshop and I mean most artists we are relatively the same in certain demeanor and almost same workflow with variations. So one thing he likes to do is get paparazzi pictures of celebrities the poses are natural and random. I started to look at these type of pictures and they do have some random interesting natural poses.

Wes Burt art. He is a artist at MB.

People won't pose like this for you.

Imagine this picture as this guy is injured and he is casting a spell?

Look for the extra ordinary in the ordinary.

What is she running from?

More Wes Burt

I don't remember which concept it was or if it was another one but one drawing was based off of a picture of Collin Farrell walking toward the camera carrying grocery bags with a scowl on his face.
It was awesomely amazing to see this drawing loosely derived from a random reference picture.

When I work

Its either

-Initial Thought or I happen to see something interesting
-Thumbnail
-Look at some pictures
-sketch
-block in shapes
-find more pictures
-Draw

Somehow after or whenever when I'm taking a mental break I look at even more pictures.
There have been times I can get 100-400 pictures for ideas for a single concept. I combine what I see and what I have imagined to create something interesting.

Adobe Bridge

Adobe Bridge is a powerful resourceful to look at pictures and organize them either by name or visuals. I tweaked mine to just have larger thumbnails of images so I can look at numerous ones at once.

Only downfall of Adobe Bridge if you have a lot of photos it will give you no mercy in crashing and repeatedly do so. So if you have a gigantic folder you can work around it by right clicking it and open with Adobe Bridge option. Another frustration is (I have an old computer but it could be different) if you got labor intensive programs like photoshop, premire, corel painter, and mudbox going on it can crash as well.