Prophet's Sketchbook

[Prophet]

After being deeply inspired by MindCandyMan's thread and connecting with other artists on awesome sites like this one and InkSteak (http://inksteak.com), I've decided to pick my CA.org sketchbook up once more. I've brought myself back to drawing a little every day, and hopefully I'll be pushing myself further as time marches on.

I will be updating this sketchbook as often as I can manage, and I always welcome any honest critiques and advice to help steer me in towards improvement - so please feel free to leave a comment!

:lifedrawing:

[ladyknowles]

Looks like something off Borderlands! Amazing :D

[eeedward]

Sweet~ I love how you drew that eye~ Totally looking forward to more :D Keep it up~!

[jNeumann]

The skulls look great, along with the profile portrait. Would love to see more studies and stuff from imagination!

[DSmith]

Hey there!
Sweet start,I like the stuff from imagination,nothing to crit yet!
Keep it up!

[Prophet]

Hey guys, just a little update to get my sketchbook back on track.. the sketch of the dancer was drawn from observation, and the rest is from imagination (or rather, just mindless doodling). All of these were drawn with a generic ballpoint pen.

[Prophet]

I've been trying to work on improving my gestures and figure drawing. I'm currently working through a couple of figure drawing books, and I'm finding them incredibly helpful.

All of these drawings are done in ballpoint, except for the fighter. The fighter drawing was done in 2B graphite just before the dancer, but I figured I'd share it anyway.

[Prophet]

Both drawings from the same reference image.. one closeup, and one figure. Having a lot of trouble with value, especially on how to portray black clothing - and in general, I guess.

I got really frustrated with the closeup face once I realized I was focusing on one area for too long, and how awful it looked in comparison. Must remember to work from large to small..

[Prophet]

Self portrait and some gestures.. I had a lot of trouble with the other eye in the self portrait; I must have redrawn it 30 times and nothing looked right. In the end I just gave up because my legs were going numb from uncomfortably sitting on the floor.

The gestures on the Goodwill card are quick studies of customers from work - I don't really know why I crossed out the address, because it isn't to the store I work at. Whatever, the drawings are what matter anyway. :P

Portrait in generic 2B pencil, gestures in ballpoint.

[Prophet]

I would have updated yesterday, but I got into a car accident and was too exhausted to even pick up a pencil after getting home.

Spoiler alert: getting in accidents sucks.

So, for today's update.. a couple of sketches of myself making some pretty stupid faces, a lot of gestures of one of my cats cleaning himself, and some doodles from imagination - all done in a mix of 2H, 2B and 6B graphite.

[Prophet]

Just a little update - all drawings from imagination.

I've been doing a lot of self-portraits lately and working through the book "Keys to Drawing," but I wish I was seeing improvement more quickly than I am. I'm feeling pretty discouraged by my drawings, and the heatwave we've been having isn't helping. :[

I've realized that I have no idea how to draw clothing properly, so I'm going to focus on that for a little while. I'd really appreciate some advice and critiques to push me in the right direction.

[Black Spot]

Your cat drawings have a lot more life in them then your gestures - mainly because your cat is alive - it shows. Stop deleting posts and work harder.

Re avatar in other thread. Use a SP - if you don't like it - get better. Silly using someone else's art in an art forum where you're meant to improve. Show us.

[Prophet]

Your cat drawings have a lot more life in them then your gestures - mainly because your cat is alive - it shows. Stop deleting posts and work harder.

Re avatar in other thread. Use a SP - if you don't like it - get better. Silly using someone else's art in an art forum where you're meant to improve. Show us.

Thanks for your thoughts; I'm trying to do more drawing from life where I can. My old posts were deleted because they were tied to a Photobucket account that I closed and I didn't see a reason to leave empty posts up, but everything new has been uploaded as an attachment so it's not really an issue now.

As for my avatar, I can't understand why you or Elwell seem to care what I represent my profile with, but I'll take the self portrait idea into consideration for the future.

[Prophet]

Everything but the first self portrait was done with a blue ballpoint pen. Almost everything was drawn from observation, except for the terrible face in the third image.. I was just doodling and ended up hating where the drawing was going, so I abandoned it.

I've decided to start with Roman-era apparel to learn how to draw clothing. What I drew today was mostly armor and weapons, but I'm going to try to get a nice mix of textures and styles thrown in. You can expect to see a lot of similar figures in the future unless I get sidetracked by something more interesting.

I'm also finding self portraits extremely helpful, so I've gotten into the habit of doing at least one a day now.

[JQB]

Nice stuff here, the roman suits look pretty good, maybe you could shade some folds into them though e.g. at the left side of the skirt of the guy on the left. The left guy's legs are a bit off-centered.
The guy on the left is more barrel shaped which makes it obvious that he's male, but I'm struggling to make out whether the right one is male or female. The hips being wider than the waist (which is accentuated by the armor) would suggest she's female as well as the rather thin arms and legs, but it's not really convincing.
The shape of the shield doesnt seem particularly roman to me, but I could be wrong there.
I like your self-portraits, a big plus of doing those is that you can easily compare them and spot errors and stuff. You might want to be carefull not to ONLY draw your own face as you might get habituated to draw every face with your nose or mouth.
In the first self portrait of your last post (the pencil) you gave your nose quite a harsh shadow compared to the rest of the drawing, stronger than below your eyebrows for example; you might want to tone that down a bit. Furthermore I think you may have drew the line of your mouth a bit too far on to the right.

[Amarok]

Nice work so far! I especially like your gesture drawings, and I think doing a lot of self-portraits is great practice (and something I should start doing too!). one other thing that I think might also be beneficial is working on getting your forms to look more 3-dimensional. It looks like your faces suffer from the same thing mine do, which is looking a bit flat/having some of the features, like the noses, just sort of hovering instead of really feeling solid over the planes of the face. Maybe do some self-portraits with different goals in mind, like trying to think about the 3D forms or how to add depth to them. Keep posting!

[skechim]

Prophet you may need to study perspective or maybe how perspective work when it comes down to the head. Other then that keep Improving :muscle:

Note:first time I'm giving a critique

[Prophet]

Yikes, it's been a while since I've updated this sketchbook. Well, time to pick it back up again. I've been drawing every day for the past month, and now that I've finally sorted out a lot of conflicts with having a dedication to art, I'll be making regular updates like I originally intended.

Anyway, here's a few drawings from the past night and this afternoon, officially marking my one month of drawing. :mittenbop:

[Prophet]

So these are little out of order. The hunter-guy was drawn first, followed by the portrait and necromancer respectively. I took a scan of the necromancer as a WIP so I thought I'd share it. I feel like it's the best thing I've manged to draw at this point, but at the same time I don't really like it.

[Prophet]

I realize that the background of the colored sketch is really wonky and asymetrical, but I was tired of looking at monochromatic drawings so I just doodled something I could add a little "flavor' to. I'm also realizing that I have a habit of drawing faces in the same angle, so I'm going to do some portrait studies over the next few days, in addition to landscape studies.

Goal for the next update: portraits + landscapes + more drawing.
Edit: Sorry about the image size, I didn't have extra time to resize before leaving for work.

[Kungfoowiz]

hey man, your self portraits are pretty damn good =) Keep practicing man! =) Go go go! =)