cut the crap! SB2

[mellongcreate]

Pull me up, be blunt and straight to the point with Crits.

Also feel free to visit my study/selfcrit blog mellongdraws.blogspot.com and let me know if you agree or disagree with how I view my work and progress.

The goal here is studying to allow drawing of figures from imagination. So I'm going for mostly line studies, only pencil for now. Changing target to a dump every 2 days, so 3 in a week all including gestures, life studies and anatomy studies. Go go GO!

SB1 Dump (the best of I guess):











Click and enlarge

[Christian223]

Hi, your shading of the sphere is really smooth, good work on that one!. And advice, try differentiating more between the values so that you can easely see what is on shadow and what is on light, number 5 is really good in this aspect, it only needs to be smoother but without loosing its values.

www.fineart.sk and read andrew loomis book called "succesfull drawing", it will explain things better on how to light and shade. Also, stick with pencil and real mediums for a while, digital its a tool that needs to be learned by itself, and if you try to master it while trying to learn to draw and paint, you are just adding more things to learn at the same time, making things for difficult for yourself.

Keep it up!.

[mellongcreate]

Christian223: hey I got that link the other day from mike corriero's blog links. I've used traditional medium's alot in the past and pencil sketch in between posting on here. I'll try getting more of them up in future.

onion!
Onion sitting on my desk, painted straight into Photoshop picking colours from eye for Bumskee's painting in PS thread (linked below)

Steps taken to paint - http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...&postcount=646




Digital line practice for the purpose of getting neater lines in PS
Guess the study text

[kelly x]

The sketches all have energy and life! When your working digital watch the edges, also make sure you work in even numbers on the canvas size or this can create broken looking edges too. 25%, 50% 100% -- not 33% etc... -- the hand looks kind of flat, I can see you got the angles of the painted hand right but the shadows especially the thumb it looked wrong at first but it is not dark enough where it would be in shadow and then graduating in small color boosts to light where light would hit. I like that you are being painterly in these excercises, cool. The onion it looking cool I like the choices under the onion almost graphic. Your sketches look amazing. Thanks for the words on my sketch book!! Kelly

[Serpian]

The onion is good, as are the bridgman studies.

The second hand in your first post is along the right way. It has more depth than the line drawing. But it still doesn't look like a hand. For starters, the fingers are all crooked, like they're broken in several places. And secondly, while it looks more three dimensional, it still doesn't look like it's round, it looks like it's a piece of wooden board with beveled edges.

The only way to fix this is to draw LOTS of hands. And don't bother with colour in the beginning, just focus on structure and maybe some basic values. Make next post include at least ten hand sketches!

Keep working!

[mellongcreate]

Serp: 10 hands? 2 down so far a way to go yet! you'll get some extra bridgman hands as well as from life

Sketch dump, mix of life ref and no ref.

[iambanana]

Your onion sketch is really cool!
However, you seem to exaggerate your muscles a bit too much, making them look a bit unrealistic.

[Kaffinated]

Good work on your studies. Be careful on your pencil work with reassessing the lines. It looks like you have tendency at times to stop mid line and go back and make a new mark. Otherwise keep up the studies and improvement is right behind ya!

[mellongcreate]

iambanana: Thanks for stopping by, yeh I'm a little cranky with drawing without ref so I'm currently studying from life and anatomy books (Brigdmans and Andrew Loomis).


Kaffinated: Hey thank you for pointing that out. My lines are awful! Definatly need addressing. This new SB is just for that, I didn't really try to improve much in my last SB but this one is dedicated to sorting out every little problem I have with my technical skills, please feel free to harshly crack the whip (without the 'H' sound) on me about my lines. I'll try to post as big as I can with my pencils so you can see them.

Hands dump!
Some from life, some from Bridgmans










fast 5 min | photo ref

Some better than others, more of these to come!

[Christian223]

That onion is awesome, great job. A critique, when doing those stick men dont forget to do the chest and pelvis area, at least with a box, since this are very important masses accoring to Bridgman. Loomis also has stick men with chest and pelvis in his book "figure drawing for all its worth", keep it up!.

[matty_mcmullen]

your last dump is really powerful, but what i would say and i will try to explain this as best i can for instance the stick man studies, the human form can be easy to make using curved lines rather then straight also it can bring emotion and movement into your drawings alot more. like through the leg theres an energy flow curve which gives u the basic forms of the muscles. if you have no idea what im talking about tell me and i will draw an example.

[mellongcreate]

Christian223: hey thanks for coming back! Yeh, that was a fairly old SB dump and I've since discovered the Bridgman compilation of his 6 books, before I only had a small hardback copy of 'The Human Machine'. I'll get some pose dumps from ref and imagination done of the weekend.

matty_mcmullen: Hey thanks for that! I am aware of what you are talking about but I stupidly forget fundamentals when I am sketching! I have made a list on my wall above my desk of things that I need to keep tabs on (so areas of attention that people highlight here will be added) and whenever I draw I will read it first. Funnily enough I'm at the 'Rhythm' chapter of Bridgmans right now! I study visual communication, just finished first year. I've sadly been pushed this year into not drawing so much for my graphic design briefs and finding other solutions to making images (type, photography). After this terrible year though I'm just going to fit in illustrations anywhere possible in my briefs. It's primarily what I want to do so I 'need' to fit it in to keep me drawing in uni! Seeing your work and blog is great to see.

I'll edit this post with my next SB dump tomorrow of more hands. I think my biggest problem at the moment is my line quality, I will be addressing this from now on so please comment on errors I make and suggestions to improve it.

[Newman101]

Hey Mellon, youve got some good work here. I really like how you simplify some of the stuff and then progress from there. You need to watch your anatomy though. Most of your sketches are a bit off, some more than others. If your having trouble getting it right just try going to the mirror and getting in the pose. You might not have the exact musculature that your going for, but the basic proportion should give you some help.

[mellongcreate]

Newman101: hey thanks for stopping by. Yeh I have problems with proportion, something that I'm trying to sort here. I've been practicing alot with making my lines more fluid and natural. I think the sketchiness and just general awkwardness of how I used to draw curves and lines (not drawing full lines, kinda 'brushing' the line millimeter by millimeter) caused me to not pay attention to proportions as much. Please continue to crit, just rip into my stuff.

Latest dump, trying to improve lines, I think it shows. Proportions getting a little better but I still disregard the fundamental shapes before starting to get the inside anatomy in there. Some sketches are different studies and doodling. Trying to find a style. No where there yet but just paying attention to what I like, dislike and want to be like.















bah! still over exaggerating some studies.......

[kelly x]

Hi and thanks these hands are looking great I am sure you are going to be the hand expert on the forum! I like the idea of hand as drapery, cool=dude.

[Serpian]

Thaaat's more like it!

Bridgman is the shit. But what is the shittier is life! Keep on studying, and remember proportions!

[mellongcreate]

aaaaaand I'm back. Some dumps may be down temporarily but they'll be back!

serp: I'm going to focus on life studies every day starting with very general gestures

Some Life sketchiness (In the town and some in a zoo) and some unpaid building concept for a pc game (WIP, Help needed with building design!)

[algenpfleger]

whoooh! you're working hard. great job on those.

cool to see you're tackling life drawing as well. when doing this, watch out for the humps and bumps that you learned about during the studies, and construct what you see on your paper, rather than just copying it, if I make any sense Ö_Ö

your lines are still a bit scratchy, but so are mine, and that goes away with practice. remember to draw from the arm, not the wrist.

keep it up!

[mellongcreate]

algenfleger: Thanks for the small tips, little reminders of things forgotten go a long way.

Dump from the past couple of weeks. This is all the drawing I managed to get done between working 3 weeks of 10 - 15 hours shifts 6 - 7 days a time Money for the Wellington workshop and holiday to Hong Kong at the end of August to meet my other half's father eeeeeeep! (no I can't speak cantonese yet!)

[mellongcreate]

more anatomy from last night. Will post more from tonight later.

We have: very quick stills from the bank today, some Kevin Chen, Hogarth and Bridgmans.

[SEVANS]

Some good studies and decent work from your imagination etc.
Just watch the length of the torso's on your figures, some of them are getting far to long in the abdomin/stomach area.

[mellongcreate]

SEVAN: hey thanks for visiting! Yeh, you're right on that. My imagination drawings are very poor and this is what I'm working on here. Just need to get into the routine of daily gestures, anatomy studies, life studies and sketches with no ref to close a day. It'll come I guess!

Some eye studies. I need to really draw in the day and dump at night to make this productive (and DAILY like I claim in my first post!).

[Sedig]

A good, solid start. But what happened to daily? Just joshin'--I know how it goes with work.

It's great that you are working from life, reference, and imagination. There are, however, some inconsistencies. The biggest thing to me is line quality. When you draw from reference (bridgman, etc), your lines are solid and fluid, but when you draw from life, it goes out the window. Your lines end up scratchy and unsure. Take your time when you draw from life--be confident with your marks.

[mellongcreate]

Sedig - yeh i agree totally. It takes a slightly different approach to draw from life as you never know when the person may walk away but I should be more careful when committing to a line.

Some stuff from past few days. Not overly happy but I made my marks each day. Some bus and restaurant observations, some hatching practice (not value just getting the lines parallel and direction), some poses from an old pose book I found in a local book shop and going back over proportions (because I need to badly!). Lastly understanding 3D form of finger and going to apply the muscles to it in layers.

[Sedig]

Nice post. I don't know if you'll agree, but I feel that it is better to leave a sketch "unfinished" than to rush through it so that you can finish it before the subject leaves.

[Serpian]

Very good studies! You're doing all the right things. Keep up the life drawing, remember that the Bridgman book is really "Bridgmans guide to DRAWING FROM LIFE", not a substitute for it. Try to find some local figure drawing classes if you can. They're really interesting and loads of fun!

[mellongcreate]

Sedig: Yeh daily is out the window lol! I do draw daily and post the best of what I've done not every little doodad. Yeh I like unfinished sketches from life. I have to stop myself from adding in details after though I am glad I left the eyes out of the long haired guy in previous dump. Although I'm not fond of the sketch at all. Or the last dump for that matter.

Serp: I have some life drawing classes coming up during uni term time starting October. For now I'm happy drawing everyday people, much more interesting to me. I just do the studies from Bridgman's as a process of remembering the basics of what muscles go where and how they function. I'm getting into using many books at the moment though. But yeh more life alongside book diving is needed XD Thank you for your continued support!

Ok, after all these studies from bridgman's, hogarth, kchen and Louise Gordon I've decided that I'm not appreciating the 3D forms of anything really. A quick depressing read through the perspective section of Andrew Loomis' Successful Drawing made me see all of the important knowledge my old college tutors just didn't give me. They were so hung up with modern art and blind to the huge return of the more 'academic' approach to drawing. university is a little like that too, I mean I like 'unschooled' style illustration but it's not for me! So I'm going back to my teens and filling the gaps of knowledge by going over EVERYTHING again. Starting with A.Loomis' Successful Drawing and going on to A.Loomis' Figure Drawing For All It's Worth. I'll be skipping ahead etc so not being too laborious about it all. Just want to finally 'understand' form.

Starting with the recommended T square and Triangle drawings for the purpose of clarity although my freehand lines aren't all that bad!

Last is some notes on the 'outside' forms of some samurai armour in a local museum. I'll be returning their next week to finish my notes and to make full drawings from different angles of the armour. Understanding how the armour is constructed will help later when drawing from imagination..... hopefully.

[Serpian]

So, you died or something? Where be the updates?

[kelly x]

get back to us!!!???!!!

[Serpian]

Hey..