My Sketchbook - A 15-Year-Old Kid Thinks He Can Draw

[Yakov]

Hello. Before I get down to posting the pictures, I figure I'll write a brief introduction. I'm a 15 year old from the United States. About a year ago I decided to start taking my art seriously, and I'm proud to say it's become an obsession. I think I've improved drastically since this time last year, but my desire to learn has only gotten stronger.

Now I've found this site, and it looks like a perfect opportunity for me to learn from a number of talented artists. Please leave some advice if you feel you have something to say - I want nothing more than to become a more competent artist.

I will update this thread as I make new drawings to share - I go through a few pages of sketchbook per day, so this will probably be often.

[this post has been edited on 3/1/08 to remove pictures in order to get the thread's picture set correctly]

[amazed]

it;s proven that the first step to becoming awesome is starting a sketchbook, so good job on that. I'm sure all the real artists will have much better advice than me, but just keep a it, and try to devlop more of a contrast in your pictures, darks dark, light lighter.

[JamesF]

Concentrate more on light/dark tones, then just build from there, you'll get alot of help from ca =D

[MyOrangeHat]

Nice job. Now keep going. You'll really get somewhere starting this young. I sure wish I had gotten so serious at your age.

A tip; Instead of drawing spaghetti hair (aka trying to draw every strand) try to look for the light and dark shapes within the hair. Don't treat each hair strand as a different object, look at the head of hair as a whole and shade it. It helped me when I first started figure drawing when my teacher set up really dramatic lighting, like a dark room with a bright light on one side of the model because it made the lights and darks on the hair (and the whole figure for that matter) more dramatic and thus easier to see.

Try this link. I don't think his final product is the best I've seen but it's really helpful to see the way he lays out the hair by mapping and outlining the shadow shapes in the hair:
http://www.elfwood.com/farp/theart/m...maeryhair.html

[Yakov]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I didn't notice that I have stopped focusing on contrast and light lately; looks like I need to get back on track.

MyOrangeHat: That's a pretty good point you made. I see that my rendering of hair is rather lacking. And thanks for the link - I'll try to apply those concepts this week. Drawing the hair has always been a bit of an afterthought for me.

[Yakov]

Here are a few more of my drawings. I will update on more time tonight, and that will be the last of my recent drawings. From there on out, I'll be uploading pictures as I make them.

I'm making these pictures a little smaller than the first set - I thought it was a bit rude to make them that big.

[Sedig]

This is a wonderful start. You are doing a great job of putting what you see on paper. I'm definitely going to keep my eye on this one.

A suggestion for now (more will come once you have a larger base of work posted): maybe make the images a bit smaller. It's nice to be able to see the whole image, or most of it, on the screen at once. Play around with the size of them until you find something that works for you.

[Yakov]

Thanks Sedig. Here are the last of the pictures... I've made them nice and small.

[Sedig]

That's just the right size. Thanks. Keep on cranking, I want to see more.

[Podcod]

That mouse is looking pretty good, it looks very 3 dimensional.
I'm not very good at giving advice so i'l just say, use a darker pencil or press harder to get some darker values.
It'll look better and also help you learn faster.
Keep up the good work matey.

[Yakov]

Here's one of the drawings I did today:



The other three will come later.

[lalovergel]

Nice work, it's always nice to see people with strong desire about working their art. You will get a lot of help and feedback from all the people here. About your work, there is a lot already said, work darker tones into your pieces, etc... As for the hair, "spaguetti hair" is fine to define how the hair is oriented, but it's always better to come and shade it all. Take hair not as strings, but as light and dark shapes. observe what parts are darker, and what parts are reflecting light, then fill them all, not hair by hair.

I hope this quick sketch illustrates my point somehow...

[Yakov]

Thank you lalovergel, it's very kind of you to upload that. I'll practice drawing hair tomorrow and post my results when I get home from school.

[Yakov]

One more round of drawings for tonight:

[thesadpencil]

good start man. first off focus more on your darks/lights because they will make the images appear less flat and give a lot more contrast. also try working with some weighted line. (darker and lighter lineart) it will help you with some of the values in the pictures maybe try setting up some still life pictures and try to just focus on the lines not the values. and lineart if used right can really make a picture stand out. also with most pictures you can start it out very easily with simple shapes (circles/blocks) and work from there refining and getting it right. its great to see someone as young as you posting and taking it this seriously. so congrats on that. i'll be sure to check back often and see your progression.

[Yakov]

I didn't go through quite so many pages today, but I did try to apply some of the advice I'm getting.

In this one, I tried to make the contrast between light and dark greater. I'm not sure it turned out so well, but at least I can say I gave it a shot.


And in this one, I tried to do something like what sadpencil suggested and drew only the lines, not the values. I'm not sure if that's what sadpencil intended, but it did give me an interesting challenge.

[Sedig]

Is that a stapler's ass in the second image? Good deal.

These latest drawings are great, because you are going outside of your norms. That's the road to improvement.

That drawing of the apple shows a big difference. That really dark dark makes it jump off the page. Something to keep in mind, though:

When you are rendering something, like the apple, it is important to pay attention to the relationships between different values. When you pick out the location of your darkest dark, remember that every other place on the apple with the same value (in life) as the location of your darkest dark must be just as dark in your drawing. The same applies to your lightest light, and all the values in between. I don't know how clearly I explained this, so if you have questions, ask. I'll see if I can dig up a good post somewhere on the subject.

I really like seeing those contour drawings in this post. Linework is really important, and this is great practice. When we work with lines, we can't hide anything with rendering.

Keep this up. You are giving us some really great work.

[Yakov]

When you are rendering something, like the apple, it is important to pay attention to the relationships between different values. When you pick out the location of your darkest dark, remember that every other place on the apple with the same value (in life) as the location of your darkest dark must be just as dark in your drawing. The same applies to your lightest light, and all the values in between. I don't know how clearly I explained this, so if you have questions, ask. I'll see if I can dig up a good post somewhere on the subject.

I see what you're saying. If I choose a specific shade of red to be 60% black, then every place that shade of red appears had better be 60% black as well.

[thesadpencil]

good stuff, definitely an improvement. and yeah thats exactly what i meant for the line work. now you can try to use the weighted line i mentioned before,(where the light hits it would be a lighter line, where it would be a darker tone put a darker line) but indeed an improvement good stuff. keep at it.

[Yakov]

I'll give that a try tomorrow; I'll post it up as soon as I get home. Doing the contour drawings is a fun challenge for me.

[thesadpencil]

good as long as your having fun its all good, because challenges will only do one thing, and thats help you improve.

[Yakov]

I skipped a few days this week because I've been sick and I've been taking midterms. Only a minor obstacle! But since I was feeling worn out from the studying and testing it got hard to find artistic inspiration, especially in my boring little junior high school.

So I've waited until now to post these up, just so I can provide a substantial update. But here they are...

First, some desperate doodling. My attempt to rid myself of my 7-hour-long artist's block:


Next, a drawing of a little plastic toy on my teacher's desk:


And a sketch of my pencil:


Here's a pose I saw from across the room:


And here's a friend who's letting me draw her, giving me an opportunity to practice drawing hair:


I think that whole drawing's tilting to the right a little, although that could just be the way I scanned it.

[thesadpencil]

definitely an improvement man i can see your trying to use the weighted line i told you about and its coming along nicely also your using your darks a lot better now. the portrait looks good for it just being started i wanna see the finished piece. keep it up.

[Earendil]

Dude, keep it up. Better to start at 15 than 23. You've already improved a lot with your values and linework. Keep drawing those sphere and shapes, they will only help you more when you get to more complex forms.

If want a challenge, maybe try combining shapes together, choosing a light source, then rendering them out fully. It might be best to do this from reference. Check your school's woodshop class for weird cuts of wood that are small, and easy to clump together.

[Yakov]

Here's something I made quickly in Photoshop. I had fun making the background for this. I could have made this better, but I just wanted something cool to put as my Facebook picture so this is the result I settled for:

[Sedig]

Nothing makes me happier than drawings of people from life. I definitely recommend lots of this.

Also, you did a nice job on that elephant. You seemed to have no trouble picking out the exterior contours. Good deal.

Let's see that finished portrait!

[Yakov]

It's been a busy week, but I got to do a little drawing today.

At a loss for inspiration, I resorted to drawing a Pokemon:


But I then tried drawing a flower. It didn't work out well but at least it got me back into drawing from life.


And despite that poor result, I finally got the hang of it with this drawing that I'm actually happy with:

[thesadpencil]

nice i like the facebook picture a lot, all i can say is push your values a bit more (darks especially) and you can do linework and you can also do values now try do some pieces that combine both of them. for instance the tissue box would look a lot sharper and more refined it had some lineart over it, you wouldn't really need lineart on the tissue paper because of it being tissue paper its not as rough as the box and it doesn't feature sharp edges. try adding some weighted line to just the box and it will help it a lot.

[l0stinth0ughts]

we all lose inspiration at some point, but the thing that matters the most is to keep pushing yourself and soon you be over that barrier. Its kinda like leveling up, its gets really hard the closer you get the next one, but when you pass it, you feel relieved. Atleast this is the way i view things.
Furthermore, your drawings have improved drastically, but if you keep going more into depth, you'll be amazed the difference between your first drawings and your last. Hope this helps

[lacadam]

well, you like to draw still life, thats a good way to start but it will also be cool if you started drawing human figures, well do what you want, its that that is the thing i do the most so i tend to tell everyone to do the same but great start