Talo's Sketchbook

[Talo]

Got a new scanner! Still trying to figure out the settings so things don't come out super saturated or contrasted or both or vice versa (under saturated, contrasted)!

1) Holiday card for a friend. Colored pencils.
2) Yet another holiday card. Colored pencils.
3) Something I started working on out of boredom. Reference photograph. Photoshop.

[Talo]

Only 14 spaces left for the Figure Drawing class. School starts Monday so hopefully I can get my counselor's signature then onto the college to register!

Today:
1) My cat prolongs the time it takes to finish schoolwork by sleeping on my desk. I said, "screw it" and drew her instead
2) A few doodle things I drew while watching Planet Earth. I think next time I'm going to try and memorize the basics of a scene then draw it.
3) Horse head
4) Redesigning an oldish character of mine (mostly shaved). Despite current impossibilities, I am going to try and make him more "realistic". Horns on head are keratin sheaths over bone. Probably going to make the back protrusions pure keratin. Maybe make them like iguana spines- flat.
5) The wolf I'm working on when there is a tablet on the desk and not a cat. Probably needs a little more base colors to make blending easier later.

[Talo]

Went hiking today, took plenty of photos that I hope to draw later on. Today I drew my pigeon Ferdinand and cockatiel Martha while they ate at breakfast time Ferdinand has a dodo expression, but pigeons and dodos belong to the same family so it's all good.

I printed out a few "key" Loomis pages, so Loomis on the go (A.K.A. When class is dull)!

[Talo]

Meant to post yesterday, but didn't get to.

1) Doodle on the school bus.
2) Leaf drawn during later half of class period. Didn't get to finish.
3) Trying hand at more human character designing. I think it's one of my best yet, but still need a lot of work learning about clothes (my clothing vocab= T-shirts, jeans, sweaters) and anatomy and flow and patience.

and that is where Loomis will come in! I started reading Successful Drawing. I'm going to do the section of perspective then start some pages of Figure Drawing

[Talo]

Now for today's stuff

1) One of my Government teacher's toys (Yes, he has toys in his room.) I'll try and get better at this drawing from observation while in class.
2) Perspective practice from Loomis. Still need a lot more. Is there a specific distance that the vanishing points should be from/relative to each other?

Also started painting a flamingo , but I don't have that class till Thursday. I will work on it.

[Jasper Flick]

The short version is that the further away from an object you are, the further apart its vanishing points will be, and lesser perspective distortion will occur. Often, diagonal vanishing points are way off the page.

The longer version:

It has to do with the cone of vision, which is pegged at 90º. The four diagonal vanishing points relative to the direction of view (left, right, top, bottom) lie on the edge of that cone, where the horizon or median line crosses it. As your diagonal horizontal vanishing points are contained in the image, it contains the entire 90º cone of vision. Often an image only contains 10º-30º of the cone of vision.

Basically, in order to view your image correctly, you have to look (with one eye) straight at the cross formed by the horizon and median line, and have the vanishing points at a 90º angle. That means the correct viewing distance is the same as half the width of the image. So when looking at it from roughly half a meter away, the perspective distortion is quite big.

So where should the diagonal vanishing points lie, if you want no distortion? Choose your viewing distance from the paper, spread your arms so they're at a 90º angle and roughly at the edge of your useful vision. Where your arms point at the image plane is where your vanishing points should be. Or, mathematically, place the vanishing points at the same distance from the center (horizon-median cross) of the image as your prefered viewing distance.

Of course, artistic licence overrides all this. You could even go far beyond the 90º cone, but like with a fisheye lens, the perspective distortion will dominate the image. Once you understand perspective and how people look at your images, you can start to use that as a way of expressing yourself, rather than being constrained by it. The history of perspective is mighty interesting!

[Talo]

Jasper Flick- Thank you very much for that long explanation! I'll have to read more into the cone, if Loomis doesn't cover it.

Upload:
1) Went back to that toy in Government.
2) More perspective practice! Same one as on the 13th but I experimented more here rather than entirely imitating Loomis. Shading's highly likely to be wrong, so I'll have to study light and objects sometime.

[Talo]

(Blue ink= Done at dad's friend's house)
1) Doodle while writing. It made me realize that I like flow.
2) More perspective practice. I'm learning something new every time from the same exercise!
3) Creature design
4) Had a perspective show-down with a fellow teenager. We both failed. I don't like cities 8(
5) Three of my canine species

[Talo]

1) Beginning Loomis's figure drawing. The manikin looks easier than it is xD When I've done a few of these, I'm gonna draw people in dancey positions to hopefully help me with rhythm.
2) Another species of mine. Profile for general body features. Arrg, I really should be working on rhythm and landscapes and life.
3) Photoshop of #2. Somewhat modified.

[Jasper Flick]

Go Loomis go!
And perspective.

[Kiera]

hi there, I just had a superquick look over your sketchbook, it's good that you try to learn the anatomy and that you try to get your animals down..
your human poses are good, but your animals are stiff and 2d
- mainproblem is that you don't show dimension of the body (just profile look) and that you don't use body language.
They remind me of heraldic animals.
Watch out for the animals feet, in the whole sketchbook the feet always look copy- pasted.
Here's 3 times the same foot:
http://conceptart.org/forums/attachm...1&d=1221626610
Repeating elements like these are absolute killers for dynamic, keep an eye out for those little things :3
Good luck and keep up the pose practices

Another thing is that the construction part of your sketches is done careless, put a lot of work into that, than the rest will be much much easier
(I just saw that there is basically no proper construction behind the wolfface but that you already started at doing detail work on the eyes. Also the perspective sketches look bad because the lines are done bad (verticals not vertical, some lines don't follow the perspective, perspective points too close together - you can do life drawing of such things by just drawing books, the principles apply also to smaller objects - and the shadow theory looks just wrong). The humans with the rythm don't have a proper pelvis construction, the construction you use now suggest that you can move your pelvis like shoulderblades. And where's the spine between ribs and pelvis?

[Talo]

(Nothing to post today, been cramming schoolwork )

Jasper Flick- Yes!

Kiera- Thanks for the extensive criticism. You managed to pinpoint most of the things that irk me about my stuff xD I love heraldic animals so I guess that stuck on me quite a bit. I absolutely forget about body language too(bad animal behavior student, bad!)!

I know I should work on construction, but I think I have a dim understanding of the definition. Is it paying attention to angles and how they relate to other angles and such? The mannikins are reproductions from Andrew Loomis's Figure Drawing for All it's Worth, but I think you make a great point. Maybe I should try and incorporate more realistic anatomy into it. I think it would help a lot.

So yes, thanks again for the wake-up call!

[Jasper Flick]

Construction is first building a solid and correct framework and only then incrementally adding details to it. It is taking the whole into consideration before focusing on details. Also, each incremental level uses all the previous levels as a guide. A well constructed drawing is built like a house: first a vision, then a design, then work begins with the fundaments, then walls and supports, the roof, the non-support walls, the plumbing, the windows and doors, then the paint, etcetera, and only then the furniture. You can't build a solid house one furnitured room at a time. The same goes for a human, but the steps involve pose, bones, tension, motion, muscles, fat, skin, expression, clothes, etcetera.

Basically, it is divide and conquer. Analyze something and incrementally reduce it to simpler shapes and guides, then reuse those simpler parts to incrementally construct the complex shape you want. For example if a house can be ultimately reduced to a box, start with a box when drawing such a house. A human could ultimately become a line of action and nothing more.

So it is not as specific as focusing on angles, it is that and lots more. It might be your heraldric mindset that constrains your thoughts to 2D.

The point of the Loomis mannikin is to show some very simple and rough guides for the initial step of drawing a human shape. There are some invisible connections in there, like the pelvis area, which won't work unless you know how they're supposed to connect. The second stage of the Loomis mannikin is more of help there, as it does connect all parts explicitly.

[Kiera]

I know I should work on construction, but I think I have a dim understanding of the definition. Is it paying attention to angles and how they relate to other angles and such? The mannikins are reproductions from Andrew Loomis's Figure Drawing for All it's Worth, but I think you make a great point. Maybe I should try and incorporate more realistic anatomy into it. I think it would help a lot.

So it was Loomis.. I didn't read the book but I trust him to be a good teacher.
construction: there are several ways of doing a construction, the most popular way when you want to draw things out of your head is using a basic skeleton-like shape that you use as a base. Basically what Loomis did, i just never saw that hip construction, maybe it's just something to make one point clear (balance? dynamic?).
If you wan't to get your animals out of the heraldic poses, look at this tutorial:
http://tigrin.deviantart.com/art/Dyn...awing-24974156
When she constructs a dynamic pose she draws the spine, the skull, the ribcage, the hips: that's basically what I saw on some of your animaldrawings.. she just takes it into the 3rd dimension by roughly knowing the skeleton and roughly knowing where the muscles, fats and fur is and knowing how the joints and spine can bend - you don't need anatomy books for that, life-drawing is much better to get a feel for the movement and mass of the animal - I recommend either trying to draw life animals (slower animals like horses and cows are fun) or look up some animals in slow motion on youtube)

[Talo]

Jasper Flick and Kieran- Thanks! Both of you have been a tremendous help.

Today
Ick, finals are coming up next week and I am totally drained from studying (not even done yet!). I'm also kinda miffed cause some genius had the bright idea to throw popcorn into the meerkat exhibit, so now we can't go to the zoo during Lunch unless we're there for schoolwork and have a note specifying that. I think it's a message from the Gods saying "Well, if you're not gonna use the privileges you're given. We'll just take them! 8[" Sorry unseen Gods

On the bright side, Figure Drawing class is comin’ up February 6! On that note...where's the best place to sit? As close as possible? Further? Or center? I'm thinking center.

1) Heraldic horse-unicorn creature. Drawn before January 24's helpful comments.
2) Oreo the rat doesn't move much, but when you want to draw her she runs around everywhere.
3) Griffin the cocker spaniel is too furry for his pack leader to learn as much dog anatomy as she'd like.
4/5) Loomis inspired mannikins of the horse and dog. Need to do cat. I'm going to follow Loomis's books and apply his knowledge to humans, but I'm also gonna see how I can modify it to fit animals.
6) Doodle drawn in class. Droopy muzzle :<
7) More class doodles.
8) Little doodle in between studying.

[Jasper Flick]

Glad to be of help!

Just wanted to point out that the skulls of the animal mannikins are at a higher detail level than the rest of the bodies. And that the front and side view of the dog are misaligned.

[Talo]

Long time no post! Been busy preparing financially for college in the Fall. BUT I did start my Figure Drawing class

Sketches are not in complete chronological order.

1) Class doodles.
2) More class doodles.
3) Figure Drawing (FD) exercise. Uninstructed drawing of hand.
4) Another FD exercise. Contour of hand and shadow.
5) Another FD exercise. Drawing hand starting from fingernails.
6) Self-portrait for FD class. No shading, only shadow shapes.
7) More class doodles.
8) Our Government teacher makes us draw things on the back of every test and quiz we take
9/10) Figure drawings. Teacher wants us to see positive and negative space before we get into the body's details. At least for now.
11) An ink doodle. Photoshopped to remove the lined paper's lines.
12) Gesture drawings from Figure Drawing class.

[Talo]

Started university. Quite stressful. Not much more time for drawing, but here are some things I've drawn. Not much for improvement, just for destressing. There's much more stuff, but I'll upload those during the next few days. As you will probably be able to tell, not much in the way of taking you guys' suggestions x( I have not logged onto CA in a while.

But I began wondering, why neglect art for academia? I'll try to do more studies and such, cause my university sure ain't going to let me minor in art.

[Talo]

Some older sketches, a newer one. Finals coming up, yay studying! (Not)

1/2) I recently got The Weatherly Guide to Drawing Animals and it was somehow a lightbulb moment. Really inspired me to work more on animal drawing, as well as human. Bridgman will make much more sense now.

3) Some destressing

4) Horse skeleton. Also been working with horses. I feel like the past 18 years of my life have been deprived of these awesome creatures.

Anyways, for some reason I've been itching to draw a human pelvis so that may be coming up soon.

[Talo]

Finals week! Yay!

So just speedpaint off photo I took.

[Talo]

Will the rustyness of my hand go away if I spray it with WD-40?

[citrusfrukt]

Wow, lots of really lovely animal sketches here. Something i really want to do at some point. Wish i could leave some feedback but i'm to tired to think properly right now :C

[mike butkus]

Keep drawing, this is where it all starts!

[Talo]

citrusfrukt: Thanks. I'm kinda stuck on animals, I must branch out more to humans!

mike butkus: I'll try to actually remain active. Must keep drawing!

Today
Many things occurred today. Bought me some soft pastels, which I love because they're like a combination of colored pencils and chalk (two things I like!) Originally I was going to try oil pastels, but the feel of them is uncomfortable to me.

Also discovered the art books in the library. AND a "garden" with redwoods and ferns.

[Talo]

Horses are wonderful

Also found figure drawing group in town

Finals continue. Yay?

[Talo]

Random stuff from past two weeks.

Must really work on NOT drawing profiles

1. On a many-hour drive along the coast there was this beautiful view of mountains and a cliff. A few days later...I tried to draw it...attempt failure.
2. Some critters. I like the bird the most
3. Thunderpaws are humans with the ability to shapeshift into bears. However, due to what is known as the Dying (the gradual decline of circulating magics) this ability was lost all together. This resulted in many "half-forms" that would not have occurred otherwise.
4. Snow drak attack!
5. I figured I ought to add a person on there.
6. Puppies?
7. Taking leaf out of Joe Weatherly's book for horse construction. Below...leg conformations, cause horses aren't all perfect.
8. At Joe Weatherly's advice, simplified horse muscles. Much easier to remember than the one I did a year ago?

[Talo]

1) Squirrels
2) More squirrels. The second page amuses me. I got into a fight with the squirrel.
3) Part of tree, person, horse eye, horse leg
4) Various horse parts. Horses like sniffing my sketchbook.
5) Me trying not to go insane doing schoolwork. Creature from a dream I had.

You know, I really miss the days when ideas would just keep coming. For now, I draw randomly so my skills don't deteriorate further. [/endrant]

[jskotte]

Some really good studies, all I can say is keep practicing
I really like your animal stuff, specially the birds.

[catukas]

nice studies. Keep up the good work.