deep_in_food's basic mentoring thread

[deep_in_food]

Hey guys, hm where to start :D
If you have any of your artwork post them here. I'll see what exercise I can give you

Mentees:
Zanroth
Big Nutter
ZombiesAteMyDad

Edit: If you happen not to have any, just tell me :)

[Big Nutter]

My DA Gallery is Here: http://bignutter.deviantart.com/

My Sketch Book, has all the recent Images are intended for a set, which I've not named after 3 years, Which is how old the two small images are! http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v255/bignutter/Gamma/

[Zanroth]

Thank you for allowing me this oportunity for self improvement.
Seeing as all my stuff is already on my DA page (linked in my signature) Do I really need to waste more bandwidth here?

[deep_in_food]

We have ZombiesAteMyDad joining this thread as well :)

[deep_in_food]

I guess you guys already have a tablet, but just in case you don't you can consider getting a cheap one. Currently I use this one since I have a much better one over in where I study. It's a pretty cheap one but then it is good for starter. Well, once you got it and start to use it, you won't want to do digital painting without one.

http://www.amazon.com/Genius-MousePen-8X6-Graphic-Tablet/dp/B000LEI95I

(will put up something soon, one sec0)

Introduction - skim it if you used photoshop for a while

Since you guys probably used photoshop before I'll just mention what tools you will and will not use frequently. If you are a complete newb to it tell me, and i'll put up some more stuff.

Tools you may want to use frequently

Paintbrush - pay attention to effect of pen pressure and the opacity. It gives you the most control
Dodge and burn - I saw people abuse it and screw up drawings that they shouldn't, so be careful with it
Smudge - Not a tool for realistic drawing
Pen tool - if you decide that you want to trace a lineart accurately it's a good tool to use. Only drawback is it is really time consuming.

Tools you may not use alot

Photoshop filters - Not even people that manipulate photos use it that frequently. Not that you don't want to play around with it but it's really not frequently used.
Blur/sharpen - If you want to blur the whole background you will as well use the blur/sharpen filter to have that effect. Other than that, I never use it.


Drawing a human figure

Measuring the height of the figure
To measure the height of the figure, we take the length of the head, then measure the rest of the body using the length of the head

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/1806/skateboardin2byintergalqj3.jpg
intergaliticstock.deviantart.com

[deep_in_food]

Capturing the gesture
The first thing is to draw a stick figure of the real figure. Doing this enables you to locate where the joins are and to correct them if they look wrong to you. It's much harder to correct the problem if details are drawn already.
(sorry ugly diagram here, but later on i'll draw mine in the assignment too)

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/5940/71110741br2.jpg

If you don't understand anything, or if you want something more specifix, tell me :)

[Big Nutter]

About Tablets, I've got a APITEK/TRUST A4 model. The issue is that they're very cheep and my screen is not Sheilded as Much as Like.

[deep_in_food]

If there's anything you don't understand here tell me :)
Or if you want to go on some other stuff or whatever

[ZombiesAteMyDad]

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3077/stickfigurezf1.jpg

I tried

[Zanroth]

*In a mechanical voice*
Attempt complete

[deep_in_food]

Zombies: Oh you always have to start somewhere lol, so don't worry too much about that

Now to the figure thingy :batgirl:

Note #1: Splines are made of many smaller parts of bones, means that you can curve it. So instead of marking a dot there, you can draw the spline part in a curved line instead.

Note #2: That's okay, but just wanna say that you may want to pay attention on this if he's going to hold something on his hand.

[deep_in_food]

Zanroth: It looks to me that you know something about human stuff already, but in the drawing, you seem to have the tendancy to have the body too long and the legs too short, which you should pay attention when drawing figures.

[deep_in_food]

To all: It surprised me when I see attempts that comes from the stuff I posted. Perhaps sometimes I need to start learning to do that too. However if you screw up on this or whatever, don't worry, since in the assignment you are gonna need to go through this concept again.
I need to smack my head for not knowing this >_<, I suck at this kind of stuff

Anyways, I don't mean that you are not free to attempt to try out whatever's in the tutorial, and I welcome all to do so.

Your assignment :heart:

Pick a figure from some stock pictures or something that you take, then draw its outline using the method I show you. For beginners you can always pick something easy to start with. For those that drew figures before, you can pick pose that are taken from top or bottom view, which is much harder to draw. For example, looking at a tall person while you are short.

Oh forgot one thing, do try to keep your original stick figure and post it here, also the photo you chose to draw, and your finished outline. No need to draw the face nor the detail yet, although if you want, you are more than welcome to do so.

Stocks you can use:

http://www.sxc.hu - basically if you're not gonna sell the pictures you can use them anywhere
http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/stockart/model/?order=5 - to make stuff easy I chose the stock category for you guys, but you need to pay attention on the rules from the stock account. Sometimes they put it on the submission, sometimes in the front page


(removed the pic until I find the actual deviant)
------------
One more thing -
introduce yourself please :P :D
put anything you want us to know about you

deep_in_food is only one of my forum nick, and I have many more than I should in online games and such. jsiu123 is the most boring one I got by copying my dad's nick. I draw too much and play even more flyff in my spare time, and other than that I'm a noob in rest of the stuff :D. My hobby is eat and sleep and spamming smilies :P

[ZombiesAteMyDad]

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/5706/wowcopykg9.jpg
http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/1283/wow2copyzl8.jpg

[deep_in_food]

zombie what's that leg thingy? :o
I see no issues on the first one, but do note that sometimes you only use a certain pose as a reference. Using a reference to draw your own stuff is hard, though

You can try another pose, such as looking at a tall person when you are short or the other way round, while I go get around with other stuff and assignments

[Zanroth]

So, we are to draw a pose from a photograph, and redraw the person from that pose, or am I mistaken?

[deep_in_food]

basically just anything you can come across for pose, but there are poses that are harder to draw than others

[deep_in_food]

Hey guys how are you going? Anyways, if you skip the last work it doesn't matter since it's just a practice. For this one I'll give you guys plenty of time before moving on.

The eyes of the human is located somewhere in the middle of the head. The head I mean, is the actual skull excluding the hair. Usually people draw the eyes too high because they take account of the hair too, which is a mistake beginners will make, including myself.

As you see in the drawing, the horizontal line on the head is where the eyes will be located, the verticle line is for the nose and mouth.

From the drawing:
1) this is the stick man figure, if something goes wrong laters it's always helpful to modify it, so put this in a seperate layer and do not delete it.
2) this is the shape of the figure
3) shadows and highlight go onto seperate layers
4) now the base colour has its own layer, as well as the face

You may have your own way to draw stuff, so you don't need to follow the exact way if you think you have a better method to organise the drawing

Assignment will come soon

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2598/humanallstepscopyfu2.jpg
original pic from http://www.sxc.hu


http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/760/93464423164631cq2.jpg

[deep_in_food]

Assignment post

The drawing I did was done with hard edged paintbrush tool (not pencil tool), with the size jilter set to pen pressure since I used my tablet for it. Main technique is to use the layer feature of photoshop.
(and alot of practice >_<)

Organisation is important too, you don't want to overmerge layers or having it in one big flat layer. If some major mistake happens it's terribly hard to correct. Note the "background" layer when a psd document created does not support transperancy, and when the eraser tool is used, instead of erasing the colour and leave the area transperant, it will choose whatever the background colour you set is, and leave your work an ugly mark.

This is the reason why it is a good idea for highlights, shadow and base colours to go on a seperate layer. If you a dodge/burn tool fan, use that tool in the highlight/dark layers instead.

Shadows are hardly as crisp as my drawing. In reality there are different kinds of shadow vary from crisp from a sunny day, and blurry shadows from a cloudy day, or weird looking shadows from multiple light sources. I'll come to that later

So what to do @_@

Choose a half/full body figure you want, then use the technique I used to draw it. Don't worry about how to make the shadows look smooth yet, we will come to that later.

And one more thing, please don't choose the model I used x_x, that will lead to copying instead of really learning how to draw. If you put the model under the layer and draw over it, you won't learn anything. You have to remember, that sometime you will be drawing your own character and use something from a model you chose as a reference.

Hope you do learn something here. Good luck guys, and take your time. If you desire, post your work progress here for more comment. You don't have to show me the stick figure etc etc, just the finished work. But still, show me anything you want, or even random work for opinion.

[Zanroth]

Will get on it asap.
To be honest I didn't really understand what we were supposed to do with the first one. (the "practice" work)

[deep_in_food]

ah don't worry about it, since the 2nd assignment will cover it anyways ;)
do take your time though, unless I know you are on a holiday without exams like me, then I will surely beat you out >: D

(joking :P)

[ZombiesAteMyDad]

sorry for being inactive work :(

[deep_in_food]

you mean you need to work now? what happen D:
Oh yeah, you guys want me to get more mentors? or stick to what we have as a small class?

[Zanroth]

you mean you need to work now? what happen D:
Oh yeah, you guys want me to get more mentors? or stick to what we have as a small class?

Apologies for the inactivities.
I have an unreasonable examn period upcoming next week, and preparations are already going half the expected rate.