Chasing Shapes

[nickydraws]

Don't stop drawing.


Jump to last page for new stuff.

[nickydraws]

Some stuff from life and photo.
Last two are form drawings copied from my Famous Artists Course books. The scanner cut off the pine tree. It took me all day to make those. I can't believe how much time I need to make them look right. Getting clean images is difficult. I even mess up simple things like drawing a circle or a straight line.

[nickydraws]

First Charles Bargue plate I did a while ago. Took me way too long. More than 3 hours per eye. Put it on my door and used a thread for measuring. Used a 2H pencil so the lines are kind of light.

[Nistarn]

Great start for a sktechbook, i hope you draw more and update reall quickly

[Diphallia]

Evil scanner!
Indeed a great start.
Draw and post more!

[N1ck]

Aaaah, drawing on the Right Side of the brain, huh? I'm starting with it too. The Hand is looking good, the eggs also.

Nice clean copies in your 2nd and 3rd post.

Keep on working.

[Diphallia]

Uhhh. forms are stupid
Don't like them but they can be a great help to you.
That face looks like a doll!

Great on the bowl of fruits, from mind or ref?
Check my stupid sketchbook and give some critics you too!

[nickydraws]

Diphallia: thanks, I'm trying to draw every day. The last two in my previous post are just copies of drawings from a book. I visited your sketchbook but I don't think I know enough about drawing to start giving other people critique. Sorry
Nistarn: thanks! I hope so too.
N1ck: yep. It was the first book on drawing I bought. But those drawings are actually from over 9 months ago. I did all of the exercises back then but they're not worth showing.


Second Bargue plate.
(I need to learn how to make better photographs..)

[The Curehead]

nice face studies,keep it up

[nickydraws]

Haven't drawn for over a year. Quit my job last week.
So here's a copy of a drawing by Michelangelo. I could still work on this, but I'd rather start on something new.

[nickydraws]

Did this cast drawing last month to put in a portfolio for art school.
It's a small sculpture, about 15cm in height. I worked on this for about a week but kind of rushed it near the end.

[StephenJ]

You're off to a good start Norkagar. The horse cast is really interesting.

P.S Let me give you an early "Welcome to Laffa." Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

[StephenJ]

You're off to a good start Norkagar. The horse cast is really interesting.

P.S Let me give you an early "Welcome to Laffa."

[nickydraws]

StephenJ: thanks man

I started studying perspective with the book "Basic Perspective Drawing: A Visual Guide" by John Montague. Learning how to draw perspective from plans. I had a bit of a hard time scanning and editing these since I drew on A3 sized sheets.

[Hexism]

nice studies man , your hard work will pay off

[nickydraws]

Hexism: thanks for the comment

Perspective grids.

[nickydraws]

More perspective drawing. Diagonals, Squares and Cubes.

It's interesting what a bit of perspective study can do to your perception of artwork. I've been looking at paintings and illustrations and I noticed I understand more about the placement of the objects in the picture. Pretty neat.

[JParrilla]

good stuff.. and about spending 3 hours per Bargue eye, ya man thats wayyy too long and very unessecary. Keep practicing, your on the right track.

[nickydraws]

biggjoee5790: Hi, Joe. Thanks for commenting.
I don't think spending that long on the drawing was unnecessary though.
The focus of that exercise is to exactly copy the drawing. And that's what I tried to do, carefully copy every angle and proportion, and so I ended up spending a few hours on each eye. I figured speed would come later.
I've seen some other Bargue copies by people who didn't take the time to carefully measure everything out and they ended up with some sloppy drawings. The only reason I felt it took too long was because I had planned on doing more drawings. But because this one plate was taking so much time I didn't get around to anything else.
Either way though, since I did those Bargue exercises and reading more about them I changed my opinion of them. I did see a positive effect on the way I measure angles and proportions but it felt too much like mindless copying. I didn't really understand the object I was drawing. I was just copying what I saw. I'll probably do some more Bargue copies in the future though, but in a less iron-fisted "Sight-Size" way.


Anyway, more perspective practice. Sloping planes and surfaces.
I got a bit confused on how intersecting sloping planes work and how to draw the corners at which they intersect. I think these are correct though.. I hope anyway..

[Chompo]

great studies.
I think in the cast drawing you were too afraid to get to the black value
so most of it is grey. Go further with values, don't be afraid to mess it up.(:

[nickydraws]

Chompo: Thanks. Yeah, I agree I should have pushed the values more in the cast drawing. I could've worked on it for much longer. I guess I didn't have the patience or self-discipline to bring it to a higher finish. =/


The book I'm studying from didn't cover sloping (inclined) planes in One-Point Perspective, but some of my other books had small sections on it. I got really confused on how to mark off the length of the sloping planes (that first one looks really weird..) but I think this is the correct way to do it.





I bought the Dobsky Perspective video. It's really helpful. Cleared up some confusion and showed some neat tricks. I'll watch it several times to let all the info sink in. I really like how it doesn't just show how perspective works, but also what you can do with it. The paintings Carl created were amazing. Drawing squares and cubes in space can get pretty boring so it's really inspiring to see how useful a clear understanding of perspective is.

[Pixie Trick]

You look like you're getting the inclined planes right.

A good book for perspective is "Perspective for Artists" by Rex Vicat Cole. It was written in the 1920s, so the writing is a bit complex by today's standards, but it goes over some things that most books don't mention such as how to take into account how the earth is round (not overly useful but interesting) and looking down a hill/up a hill. Also, Loomis has a section in his 'Successful Drawing' about perspective that is quite clear and covers quite a bit as well. Yoitisi has a section in the IDW thread for some perspective related exercises and lessons as well. I believe he's starting up a new mentoring group in the near future as well. He goes over drawing straight lines by hand, and cubes by eye, ellipses, transferring orthos into 3D etc. that's useful. Also, seedling at some point in her concept art 101 goes over shadows and more basic perspective (Yoitisi might as well but I'm not sure). You look like you've gone over a lot of it however. Hope this is useful.

I have yet to find out how to measure angles though. I'm interested in where you found that out.

[nickydraws]

Pixie Trick: thanks for commenting.
I have that book by Rex Vicat Cole. But like you said the writing is a tad complex. It looks pretty in-depth though. The book I'm mainly working from right now is pretty basic and shows how to set up perspective step by step instead of describing it with large pieces of text. I'll try to finish this book first before tackling Cole.
Loomis' 'Successful Drawing' is great. I've referenced it a few times. Figures in perspective still boggle my mind so I'll definitely be studying Loomis too. Seedling's and Yoitisi's threads are great too. I actually went on IRC and asked Yoitisi a few questions. Great guy. He's some kind of perspective master. His threads reminded me of the importance of learning to freehand perspective. What I'm doing right now is very mechanical, using rulers and calculating everything. But I guess in order to get good at freehanding you'd need to know how to do tight perspective drawings first. I'll probably get Scott Robertson's videos to learn more about freehand perspective.
In order to measure angles of planes off the ground you need to use measuring points and a protractor. Here are some pages showing it. Carl Dobsky's video also explains it in the part about inclined planes.


More stuff. I wish I had something exciting to post, but I don't feel like I'm comfortable enough with perspective yet to make actual drawings..

[Holydivered7]

I hope you don't mind my asking, but you keep on menioning "The book that I'm studying says such and such..." but you never mention the name of the book you study perspective from. If the examples you show on your sketchbook are from the book, I'd really like to check that book out. Thanks in advance...

[Frank Gressie]

hey a dutchie. Really like the bargue drawings, where do you find these things? seems you have a good eye, very clean lines! So you are tackling perspective huh? must do that myself soon, very important. some more figure drawings or things from mind soon? anyways, keep it up man!

frank

[nickydraws]

Frank: Thanks for stopping by.
I have the Charles Bargue book. You can find some of the plates online too.

Yeah, I should really do something else besides this Perspective practice. For now though I think I'm gonna stick with just doing this. I feel like Perspective is one of the few subjects I can do an okay job of teaching myself. For everything else I always feel so unsure where I'm going. Even with the help of books. I hope I can learn from some good teachers soon.

I'm using rulers for the straight lines so it's easy to make them clean. When I have to draw something like an ellipse or a curve I have to do it freehand. Most of that looks pretty bad. It's difficult to make exactly the right line. I can't help but 'pet' in the line with little strokes, even though I know that isn't good and will make the lines seem 'fuzzy'. I feel like I have no control when I do one continuous line. It ends up off easily. Even more because I work really small too. Sometimes I practice drawing lines and circles by just filling entire pages with them. I've seen some improvement.


Anyway, circles and curves in Perspective.
Plus a tilted cube that almost broke my brain. Some vanishing points were way off the page. Lines going everywhere. I'm still not really sure if it's correct.

[TheButterBunny]

wow I really admire all the technical stuff you're working at; I'm starting out too, and I need to learn from you and learn all the basic stuff - dull though it may be!

Thanks dude!

[nickydraws]

TheButterBunny: thanks


Shadows and reflections in perspective.

[nickydraws]

Finally had the time to take pictures of some stuff... Been studying at LAAFA.
Two long drawings (5-6 hours) and then some shorter ones.

[nickydraws]

Some shorter poses. About 20min to 1hr, I think, and the anatomical diagrams were done in only a few minutes.