One Nice Day

[Ardescoere]

My biggest complaint is that you're putting off your studies of lighting and working with shadows for direct copies of figures like your hands. I think working on shading and lighting would push your artwork forward really quickly.

Honestly though you're improving very quickly. Keep it coming.

[Taneli]

I'm not sure that is a good advice. Rendering is a waste of time if the construction is off. That doesn't mean you should never do it until you are able to do better constructions, but you are doing fine now, not focusing too much on values just yet.

[Xeon_OND]

Thanks Arde and Taneli! Yeah, realistic rendering will make anything look good (a good example that comes to mind is Helaine's SB), but I'm still not confident in the construction part and my eye-hand coordination need more practice.

Light and shadows is a big subject in itself and it seems way harder than perspective, so I'll give it a miss for now and try to use line quality to suggest form.

Btw, are there books that teaches you "form"? LOL
There's books on every single art subject (contour drawing, light logic, perspective, landscape / figure drawing, portraits etc.) except on form.

See ye all! I can't wait for weekends to come so that I can lock myself in my room and draw for the entire day.
Xeon

[Xeon_OND]

I spent the past week reading Phil Metzger's book (that guy has wonderful paintings in his book, and most of the paintings were his!), and managed to at least grasp something about 3-point perspective and drawing ellipses and curves (especially those in challenging perspective).

School starts in another 2+ weeks time, and I'm kinda nervous. I just hope there are normal people in my class, because when it comes to art / graphic design, I always have thoughts of people in super-trendy clothes with super-uber-ultra-bohemian hairstyles speaking in african rap-talk and keep rapping "YO YO YO!" with that fucking irritating peace sign made with the fingers.

No offense to anyone, but everytime I see some guy rapping with the peace sign going "YO YO YO!", I just wanna grab a chair and slam it hard into their face till they can't "YO YO YO!" anymore.

In order to streamline and cut down precious time wasted on inserting links to the images, I've used Excel to auto-generate the links to my scanned artwork and just copy / paste them here, and in CA. Saves me around 20+ mins of time, and lots of stress! It's always good to have some basic programming knowledge.

As for my artwork, I'm not gonna clean them up too much and I'm using a lot less of the Brightness / Contrast editing in Photoshop cos' as one CA member (TASmith) says, the grayscale is all gone if I do that, so I'm trying to cut down on it. The result is that the scanned stuff looks messy with the other side of the paper showing through, but that's ok with me. As the saying goes, "Never beautify your sketches".
I'm also doing away with the categorizing and just posting the images all in 1 load.

Result: More time to practice. Cheerio!

Click on images below to view undistorted version.


Haven't done my feet for a long time:

The last few hands at the bottom were all done in less than 10+ mins using very fast sketching. This is something I only started trying out seriously last week, and I'm surprised that the result look like a hand. This is a very good method and I'm gonna try to use this way of sketching for most of my sketches that doesn't require insane precision (my sketching is usually slow and meticulous).

















Below are 2 drawings of my (model) wooden house. Such small models are very good for learning perspective! The wheel (ellipse) on the 1st house is DAMN wrong. The 2nd one looks way more correct after I've got a better understanding on how to draw ellipse and see which way they're oriented. They can be confusing to draw especially when the subject in life is tilted at neither-there-nor-here-angles:


I've tried to incorporate some gesture drawing into my manikin studies, but as you can see, my gestures fail hard. I still don't get the gist of gestures and I think I'm the only one in the world who can't get it. Feel what action? I don't feel excited or energetic in my heart / blood / veins, if that's what they're talking about regarding "feeling".















A drawing of my Trasher T-Rex toy, which I got during the Jurassic Park : The Lost World era. I hope they make Jurassic Park 4. T-Rex shouldn't have lost to Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park 3. Screw the scriptwriter:




I'm gonna do more clock studies cos' it has a number of curves and ellipses and I'm trying to master drawing accurate ellipses from life now:



What's next? I'm gonna draw more this week but schedule is quite tight but I'll try. Screw this. Oh yeah, and I'm gonna try doing a drawing of the 2-foot tall Eiffel Tower model which I have.

Have a nice day! See you!
Xeon

*PS: TASmith, I don't have the time to do the line drawings you mentioned, but I'll try to do it this Sun! I hope I've 50 hours per day to spend. SCREW THIS ALL!

[Xeon_OND]

OK! To further cut down on precious time scanning and uploading my oictures, this time, I just scan them all in, open them in Photoshop 7 (I know it's a dino), re-size and save them as JPEG, done. No Brightness / Contract / Magic Wand or anything now. That results in the images appearing greyish, but time is more important. I know to get a new scanner this week if possible.

I went to the Chinese Garden near my home to try doing some perspective drawings of the pagodas, but this is the 1st time I drew in public and the stuff is so big and huge! The pagodas were detailed as fuck and those skyscrapers and corporate buildings look so simple compared to it. I was nervous, of course, and couldn't get past the 3rd line. In the end, I trashed the whole shit and went home like an effing oser.

Chinese Garden is a sort of big park we have here in Singapore, with nothing but nature aplenty and pagodas / houses / bridges / chinese statues all built in ancient China architectural style. Sort of a humble tourist attraction and it's free too. I even saw a hot blond chick all by herself that day.
This place is one of those few places in Singapore where you can hear the music of tranquility and revel in Nature.
The government of Singapore should stop building those trashy corporate buildings and build more of such scenic parks.

The sad thing, though, is that the government is gonna build some tourist resorts / hotels next to this place a couple years from now, and that's going to really ruin the stillness and calm of this place. It's really sad those clowns can't even leave a place like this alone.

I'm going there a couple weeks from now and try to draw those stuff again. Next time if I go there and leave empty-handed, castrate me. I MEAN IT.

Drawings for this week as follows (click on images to see actual undistorted version):

A wooden model of boat with a wooden man fishing:



The ellipses on a can is harder to draw than I thought, even with the axle method. The watch's ellipse is easier cos' there's non-ellipse edges around the ellipse to guide you.



The little curve looks like a parabola when seen in non-foreshortened view, but in this foreshortened view, it no longer looks like one. And I gotta say I didn't draw this part very well.




A sketch of my colleague's desk again, this time more detailed and larger, but done equally fast and sketchy:


Had some fun drawing dormers from Phil Metzger's book. Phil is a superb painter of landscapes and his book is so fucking idiot-proof. I'm so fascinated by all these drawings of buildings and perspective that after I'm done with this book, I'm gonna read Norling's book and then Loomis's Successful Drawing, then get a book and learn how to draw cool buildings and castles.



A drawing of my wooden, 2-feet tall Eiffel Tower. The overall thing looks ok, but the parabola at the bottom-left corner is so screwed and wrong. The drawing exceeded the paper slightly.


97....98....99....100th hand!....Book of a Hundred Hands! I admit, some of these hands here have fingers that look off. My drawings suck most in the morning and I'm at my peak in the afternoon to evening (4 - 7 PM):























You probably can't tell the stuff below are sliced pears in a plastic container if I didn't tell you :





Some warm-up exercises from Drawing Tutorials Online.com:


Using the axle method to draw ellipses will really help you get the orientation of the ellipse right in any view. The rest depends on your hands :




That's all for now! 1 more week before class starts. I hope there will be lots of hot cute sweet chicks in my class. Best of all, let the ratio of girls to guys in the class be 20 : 1, with me being the only guy.

Meanwhile, I'm at the last part of Phil's book and will do some of the more challenging perspective stuff before going on to more perspective.

Good day!
Xeon

[TASmith]

Lookin good man! The perspective sketches are getting stronger - the roof and the eiffel tower are great! I also liked that still life of your desk. Get some larger paper and try the same thing again. Also, try and get some condensed charcoal sticks to draw with. That would help a ton.

[Bartovan]

Hi man, good to see your dedication to perspective studies! They will pay of later. One advice: also draw the invisible lines of the objects as construction lines. That will help a lot. The same for the hands: reconstruct the basic form and add the fingers. Hope this helps!

[Xeon_OND]

Lookin good man! The perspective sketches are getting stronger - the roof and the eiffel tower are great! I also liked that still life of your desk. Get some larger paper and try the same thing again. Also, try and get some condensed charcoal sticks to draw with. That would help a ton.

Thanks Tas! Yeah, I'm thinking of starting to draw on A3 paper some weeks from now to use my whole arm. Btw, I'm not sure why a lot of people seem to like using charcoal to draw, but they're messy as hell if you don't know how to handle them. Maybe a charcoal pencil would be better.
And charcoal isn't easy to erase unlike pencil (if they're erasable in the 1st place).

Hi man, good to see your dedication to perspective studies! They will pay of later. One advice: also draw the invisible lines of the objects as construction lines. That will help a lot. The same for the hands: reconstruct the basic form and add the fingers. Hope this helps!

Thanks Bart! I just realize perspective is actually fun, though. Definitely more fun than human anatomy. The more I think about drawing the human figure, the more I dread it. But that's for the far far future.

Good day!
Xeon

[Xeon_OND]

I think I must be suffering from a mini art burn-out now.
Friday was a public holiday, so I drew on Fri, Sat and Sun, and on Sat, I drew for 8.5+ hours straight. When I wasn't drawing, I was reading art articles, art forums, art books, art videos.

By Sun morning, I was feeling so tired that I had problems making observations by eye and every line was a real struggle to get out. Parts are wrong, some lines go off, some angles are haywire....

I'm gonna take a rest for several days and not draw for now. Even watching porn didn't cure my burn-out immediately. I'm not happy with some of my drawings this week.

The drawings, as usual (click images for undistorted view):

Last camera is the best, though. I looked at it top-down, so it has a bit of 3-point perspective.




Made some quick sketches of cars parking at the petrol station from my 7-storey apartment. I think cars are easier to draw when you're closer to them. Some details are too small to be seen. One thing is for sure: my cars suck hard.










































I'm pretty happy with how my messenger bag turned out:










Tried to copy the below picture from a photo for fun:


Shoes are very interesting to draw and I'm gonna draw more:


I've slightly exaggerate the drawing of the table below by throwing in bits of perspective:



Nowadays, my warm-up routine consists of 10-min blind contour drawing, peanut-doodles and hand-eye coordination of negative shapes (for the last 2, check out Drawing-Tutotorials-Online.com by Matt Archambault).


What's next? Well, my graphic design classes starts tomorrow and I think it's good to take a short breather away from drawing. The more girls there are in the class, the faster my burn-out will go away. Yes, gimme hot tall tanned long-hair leggy slim ones, please. Throw them my way.

I'm still studying perspective now, but am going into Yotisu's (spelling?) cubes + cylinders's tutorial at CA.org. After I've understood those, I'll move on to Norling's book and after that, more advanced perspective. But that won't be until middle of next year.

For now, I fucking don't feel like drawing. I'm really really tired!

That's all!
Xeon

[Xeon_OND]

It's been a hellish week. The workload just gets heavier and heavier, with considerably less time to draw, and the school projects are starting to bog me down completely.

That said, I've pretty much cut off all video gaming altogether since a couple of months ago to maximize my time.

I've also signed up for an event or two with a local sketch group to have the chance to draw still people in different poses etc.

I now have about 112 A3 papers awaiting scanning. I found the guy (a religious man) and he is now scanning the shit for me. Should take some time before I post them up here.

Last Saturday, I went to the BodyWorks exhibition at the Singapore Science Center. For serious figurative artists, this is Paradise. You will probably learn a lot here than from all the figurative books you have read. More than 10 human corpses on display, with their muscle fibres all intact, exposed and shown in various dramatic poses, including exposes organs in some of the displays. They also have a couple of life-size real human skeletons for you to study, as well as a huge giraffe corpse and giant squids too.

I'm not a figurative artist or anything, but it was a challenge trying to draw those things, so I went for the overall contour or pose, if you call it.

These displays are harder to draw than living humans, because their muscles and flesh are all exposes and the details are highly distracting.
Of course, top dogs won't have problems drawing these.

The admission fee is expensive, but I'm gonna go there twice per month as a drawing challenge. The exhibit ends in March.
Bad thing, though, is that no photos are allowed, but sketching is.

Below are my sketches. Some of the Egyptian mummy ones are from the sketching outing to the National Museum of Singapore, where they had an ancient Egyptian exhibition. Some of the rooms were too dark for me to see my own sketchbook.

Below are done on my A5 sketchbook. Click on images to see actual versions:



I deliberately exaggerated the nose of the 2nd mummy below (the female one), as I've always like girls with beautiful large slightly-oversized noses.


Extreme perspective can be seen below. I've always like to draw such extremes as it poses a big challenge:






Below are stuff from the BodyWorks exhibition:




The text below is quoted from a panel in the exhibition.
It reads, "Nobody grows old by living a number of years. Years may wrinkle the skin, to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul".











I'm very ashamed to be using symbols in the 2nd sketch below (the basketballer). The arm (the one not holding the ball) is in a very foreshortened view and I was tired so I just rough it in.





I would have probably fared somewhat better if I had drawn on A3....maybe.

Anyway, hope my workload eases in the upcoming weeks, or I'm gonna....

Art and drawing is more important to me now than anything else.
I can give up my job but not my journey to become good at drawing.

My "Perspective! for Comic Book Artists" is coming next week.
And maybe in my next post, I'll post a picture of my easel which I got last week, but which I kinda gave up after 1 week of using it (it's just insanely HARD).

Btw, I'm not sure if I'm petting my lines or anything; my lines are kinda long, just that after drawing the initial line, I tend to go over it a few more times in slightly different angles until I "feel" it's right.
Some comments on my quality of the lines would be cool!

See you!
Xeon

[ajvenema]

you ask for comments on line quality. here it is
if you say you use long lines, and then adjusts them, i would say dont adjust them. dot go over them again. force yourself placing each line only one time. the confidence will improve your drawing, and the results as well! maybe sometimes your line is a bit off, but you can leave it that way. its not like its getting prettier when you adjust it. just finish the drawing, and start over again.


your hands are really ahead of your other work i think, but thge watches and stuff are getting there as well!

[DiR3Kt]

Hi,

There is lot of improvement since post #1 you are getting there so keep it up!!

I would like to speak about 2 things:
1) Perspective. Sometime your perspective is correct, some time it is off. I think the reason is that you know how to put box, cyclinder and spheres in perspective. But you do not know how to use them to draw more complicated objects. The trick is to simplfiy what you see and to try to describe everything in terms of basic forms. For example a head can be seen as a sphere (skull) and a box (jaw). Once those basic forms are put down and correct you can move on, adding more basic forms to create more details. You can repeat this process how many times you want. But take care one step should be correct before moving on. So always check what you did. I guess that this process is called construction, at least it is how I would name it.

2. Line. You know and are fully able to draw lines. Now you need to learn how to vary the pressure to create lines with different values. Start with very light lines (for construction) and as you advance in your construction and get more confident put more pressure. Those lines with different values can also be used to indicate shadow, lights and give more deep to your drawings. But for the beginning I think it is better to use them for construction purpose only.

Ok it is wordy, sorry. I do not know if this makes any sense to you, just hope it can help.

[mike butkus]

Keep drawing! it's all about millage, and your doing a great job!

[Xeon_OND]

you ask for comments on line quality. here it is
if you say you use long lines, and then adjusts them, i would say dont adjust them. dot go over them again. force yourself placing each line only one time. the confidence will improve your drawing, and the results as well! maybe sometimes your line is a bit off, but you can leave it that way. its not like its getting prettier when you adjust it. just finish the drawing, and start over again.

I always thought that sketching is supposed to be messy and making lots of re-statements (doing the same line again and again till the direction / angle of the line is right etc.), but maybe I was wrong. I'll try to change this habit by making less and less lines. [/quote]

Hi,
There is lot of improvement since post #1 you are getting there so keep it up!!

Are you that computer guy who also loves drawing?
I remember someone here (not sure if it's you), who works at a computer-related job but also draws in his spare time.

I would like to speak about 2 things:
1) Perspective. Sometime your perspective is correct, some time it is off. I think the reason is that you know how to put box, cyclinder and spheres in perspective. But you do not know how to use them to draw more complicated objects. The trick is to simplfiy what you see and to try to describe everything in terms of basic forms. For example a head can be seen as a sphere (skull) and a box (jaw). Once those basic forms are put down and correct you can move on, adding more basic forms to create more details. You can repeat this process how many times you want. But take care one step should be correct before moving on. So always check what you did. I guess that this process is called construction, at least it is how I would name it.

Thanks for the tip! Sadly, there does not seem to be a lotr of good books on the construction method. Pretty much all of the beginner books on drawing emphasizes on using the eye to see the subject and then draw the thing based on the contours etc. So, this construction thing has always been very uncomfortable to me, but I think I'll try it tonight.

I can understand the basics of perspective but yeah, like you say, applying them to draw complex objects is another thing.

I was reading this book called "Drawing with your artist's brain" by Carl Purcell, where he emphasizes on accuracy. That must have screwed up my brain, cos' these few days, my drawings have been wholly concerned with nothing but accuracy from the beginning, which is bad and stiff!
Gonna fix this strange mind bug tonight.

Ok it is wordy, sorry. I do not know if this makes any sense to you, just hope it can help.

Wordy advice = best

[DiR3Kt]

Yeah I'm that computer guy^^

Books about construction exist:
- "Vilppu Drawing Manual" by Glenn Vilppu, he also has dvd.
- "Figure Drawing: Design and Invention" by Michael Hampton.
- "Draw It" by Sheldon Borenstein, he mostly has video (the book is used like a school book with the videos).

[ilmenhin]

I admire your dedication with studies. They're getting better. Keep it up. My only crit would be that you use more contrast or tune up the contrast after scanning. You'll then start to use less sketchy lines in your work. ^^

Also, always good to run into someone from SG here.

[Xeon_OND]

I admire your dedication with studies. They're getting better. Keep it up. My only crit would be that you use more contrast or tune up the contrast after scanning. You'll then start to use less sketchy lines in your work. ^^

Also, always good to run into someone from SG here.

Thanks Dir3kt and Ilmenhin! It's always good to see a fellow Singaporean here, but I think you're in Australia now.

And now...

-------------------------
First of all, I'm not happy with how the A3 scanning of my drawings turned out. The service was bad, but the scan quality was worse. I told the guy to scan in 200 DPI grayscale but it seems their machine don't have grayscale, so it became black-white scans. Lots of the details, line quality and halftones were all lose. Result? The drawings become hard-edge black-white drawings.

Worse yet, my drawings now have greyish zebra-like stripes horizontally across them. Fortunately, these stripes ain't so dark, so it doesn't show up in the scanned images.

This is my 1st time I'm getting people to scan for me, and also the last time (other places that do A3 scanning are charging a freaking US$8 per piece / grayscale). I've decided to get this Plustek OpticPro A320 scanner. It costs a bomb over here in my country (almost a thousand bucks), but it will be way cheaper in the long run, and I'll have more control over quality too.

Below are the drawings which I've done the previous 2 months or so (in un-sorted order). Bear with me; the black-white shit isn't pleasing to look at (click on images to see un-distorted size):























































Below is the pagoda in the Chinese Garden I was talking about some time ago. A couple of months ago, I went to draw it again, and although it's no Rembrandt, at least I managed to get the thing out. It was overwhelming with details and I've already skipped like 80% of the details, otherwise it's too hard to draw!























Below is a sketch near the Singapore River. I believe this bridge is called Governance Bridge or something. Compared to most bridges here, it does look like something from a fantasy game with all those spiky drawbridges. Unfortunately, as you can see, the perspective of the 2 columns is all wrong. I should have corrected it before darkening the lines:





Below is a sculpture drawing from the Asian Civilization Museum. The sculpture's head is bigger than the body, so I drew it as such. Next to that is a black straw vest. The actual one looks very cool like some battle armor:





Below is another drawing from the Asian Civilization Musuem. This type of ship is called "twakang" if I'm not wrong. Our Chinese forefathers came to Singapore from China via this sort of ship several centuries ago:


Freehand perspective of a corner of my living room:





That's all, I guess. I went to a figure drawing event organized by a local sketch group here, and am gonna post those trash after I've got my scanner, together with my more recent drawings.

I'm gonna go back to reading my Perspective for Comic Book artists tonight. Meanwhile, I've also revved-up my schedule and I'll be drawing 2 hours from Mon - Fri, in addition to the usual schedule on weekends.

I find that if I don't draw from Mon - Fri, my standard of drawing plummets to a total low and it's hard to get back up. To be honest, I nearly fell back to Square One during the past 2 weeks when I didn't draw at all. Line was shaky, huge fears in me, no confidence...scary as fuck. Thank god it's all good now.

As a side note, I don't see myself improving at all, though. I'm kinda stuck at the same level as I was a couple of months ago!

My graphic design course....aye. I don't wanna talk about it except that I totally regret going there. That $$$ could be better spent on more useful things, like a basic western art course at NAFA. Come to think of it, I think if I had a choice, I would prefer to burn that S$5000 away as an offering to the gods than to spend on that school.

Chinese New Year is coming!

Good day,
Xeon

[mpdpsy]

Hey man your output is great, lots of practice from life which I need to do more of, I definitely see improvements in your understanding of structure in your drawings, I can relate in feeling like I forgot everything if I stopped drawing for a period of time..scary. Anyways, I think you're going about this the right way, which is basically to draw a lot nonstop, looking forward to more

[williammartina]

If you want a private sketchbook, then why make a thread?

When I started my sketchbook, I was really scared and embarrassed even. But that temporary courage turned out to work in my favor and I feel more motivated than ever to work on my weaknesses. Seeing so much great art makes me want to work even harder.

Hello JJacks, you have a nice attitude. Maintaining Sketchbook is really a good thought. Keep on continuing with this art.

[Nemome]

Oh nice!
NOW i see reaaaally improvement!
I love your first trys for shadow and form.

Really great!
Go on like that!

Silwynar

[Taneli]

You are saying you are not improving but that's wrong. A lot of these are better than ones you did before, but that sewing machine in particular looks very nice! You've already done more studies from life than I did in two years. Maybe I've been too obsessed with anatomy studies...

[Xeon_OND]

Thanks for your replies, Silwynar, Mpdpsy, Taneli and williammartina

You are saying you are not improving but that's wrong. A lot of these are better than ones you did before, but that sewing machine in particular looks very nice! You've already done more studies from life than I did in two years. Maybe I've been too obsessed with anatomy studies...

LOL, I'm taking your advice and not gonna move on to rendering until my construction is better.

Currently, though, my drawings are a bit inconsistent, in that sometimes, it's good, and sometimes it sucks. I hope one day, everything I draw will be good.
Honestly, I don't really see that much improvement in my drawings since the last time I posted. Maybe I'm just immune to it.

Anyway Taneli, I find that you don't update your SB much nowadays! Last year, it was pretty active, with plenty of sketches, but now, it's slow. And others like Helaine and Alucid have stopped updating their SB altogether.
I learn a lot of all your SBs than I can learn from old masters' paintings (I don't even understand those paintings).

There's a portrait drawing session this weekend, and hopefully, I will be able to scan in the new batch of drawings next Sat or so.

See you all,
Xeon

[Kamber Parrk]

Hey Xeon_OND,

I think yer now ready to do the customary couple dozen pages of Bridgman studies to prep yourself for "life drawing" where you learn that drawing the nude human figure "in situ" is pretty damn hard!

In all due respect,

Very Best Regards,

[Taneli]

My sketchbook might have seen more frequent updates, but on the other hand now my drawing is more active than ever before. Still, everything I produce is so abysmal that I can't be bothered to waste time scanning them. I will try to update a bit more though!

That A3 scanner is hugely expensive. I googled a bit and found a cheap one, Mustek ScanExpress A3 1200 Pro. Mixed reviews but at least five times cheaper.

[Xeon_OND]

Hey Xeon_OND,
I think yer now ready to do the customary couple dozen pages of Bridgman studies to prep yourself for "life drawing" where you learn that drawing the nude human figure "in situ" is pretty damn hard!

Thanks, Kamber, but I'm not going into "serious" figure drawing until I've become better at perspective, construction and gesture drawing.
I treat these life drawing sessions which I'm attending now only to improve my line confidence and observational skills, because drawing the figure is really hard.

During the last session, I didn't see anyone use the pencil-sighting method, so I didn't too. Maybe they're all experts lol. I'll try to use sighting next time.

And I'm staying far away from Bridgeman and Loomis.
Their books are the absolute bane of any beginner. Nowadays, Amazon.com has books which are written in a much more friendly way.

Vilppu's interesting, though.

That A3 scanner is hugely expensive. I googled a bit and found a cheap one, Mustek ScanExpress A3 1200 Pro. Mixed reviews but at least five times cheaper.

Yeah, that Plustek is expensive, but it can scan a colored A3 paper at 300 DPI in 8.5 seconds (based on the website). That's freaking fast, so imagine what it can do to a A3 grayscale at only 200 DPI. I bet it's probably gonna take 3 seconds or less. I'm going down to the shop to test this beast this week.

The Mustek looks good, but it doesn't ship to my country, and the reviews I've seen are kinda scary.

See you around!
Xeon

[Kamber Parrk]

Hey Xeon,

Civardi's books show a pretty good way to do traditional "blocking in" for figure drawing. And, though you (quite accurately) see Loomis as more of an intermediate teacher, his description of the "pencil sighting" method in Figure Drawing For All It's Worth would prove quite helpful to you at this point.

One of the important aspects of "sighting" is finding the "mid-point" of the figure-- something that Bridgman utterly blows off, BTW!

[teapo]

Very very very great posts you've put up lately Xeon_OND! There is much improvement in your perspective, it shows.

Although, I'm not sure if lighting and creating form is your goal at the moment, I can however suggest that you lay on more values on more of your drawings that you do in the future, just so you can practice form and rendering at the same time.

That drawing of your house phone is a great example of what you should do more of, if you have the time for rendering that is . But other than that, keep drawing and don't stop!!

-m.guiang

[Xeon_OND]

Hey Xeon,
Civardi's books show a pretty good way to do traditional "blocking in" for figure drawing. And, though you (quite accurately) see Loomis as more of an intermediate teacher, his description of the "pencil sighting" method in Figure Drawing For All It's Worth would prove quite helpful to you at this point.
One of the important aspects of "sighting" is finding the "mid-point" of the figure-- something that Bridgman utterly blows off, BTW!

I'll check out Civardi later. However, though, David Chelsea (in his Perspective for Comic Book artists book), mentions that blocking in the figure using cubes can prove a challenge because of the need to deal with a "myriad of three-point perspective cubes" and he says sarcastically, "Remember how easy that was?".

Very very very great posts you've put up lately Xeon_OND! There is much improvement in your perspective, it shows.

Thanks! Well, DiR3Kt said previously that perspective is complex to carry out, and it really is a challenge. My drawings always comes out looking screwy....I may need to step back and view it from afar to see whether it has right perspective before I bold the lines.

Although, I'm not sure if lighting and creating form is your goal at the moment, I can however suggest that you lay on more values on more of your drawings that you do in the future, just so you can practice form and rendering at the same time.

LOL, yeah, I'm actually practicing a tiny bit of value and rendering once in a while for fun, but am following Taneli's approach, whereby it's better to be solid at construction first, then rendering.

-------------UPDATE FOR THIS WEEK-------------

I'm (very) probably not gonna update my blog next week, since it is Chinese New Year.

I've got my Plustek OpticPro A3 scanner, finally.
It costs SG$950 ( approx US$668 ).
Expensive as fuck and there goes my month's salary.

However, it's very worth the money. Regardless of A5, A4, A3 in grayscale / PDF / color in 100 - 300 DPI, it scans them all in exactly 8 seconds.
I've yet to try color scanning in 1600 DPI, but the specs says 8.5 seconds, and I'm not surprised.
Here's some pics (click to see full size):




Organisation of Illustrators Council (OIC) - Portrait Day : 6th Feb 2010
There was a portrait drawing session organized by the Organisation of Illustrators Council (OIC), a local sketch group. I was late by 1 hour and there were no seats left when I reached there.
I MUST change my punctuality attitude. It is very bad and I'm always late. It was a pity - everyone was drawing and all. I did hang around a bit to see some of the drawings by others, and a couple of it were really good.

A fellow CA member here went there too, and he uses purely pen (no pencil) to draw the full figure + face without any re-statements. It was perfect. The line confidence was the best I've seen so far and I think of Matisse's line power when I saw that work. It was out of this world. In the portrait day next month, I'll bring my camera and take pics and post them here. I can't even draw a decent portrait to save my life.

Fort Canning
I went to Fort Canning on Sunday to draw some of the stuff there.
This is the most historical part of Singapore with many parts of it dating back to the 13 - 14th century. It's a very tranquil place compared to many parts of Singapore.

Here are some pics (click on images to see full size):
Below text are shot from the info panels at Fort Canning:









And below are my sketches at Fort Canning:











Trashy? You bet. All these drawings are done on my A5 sketchbook, and this sketchbook is going to end up in my trash bin sooner or later.

I realize that I have problems drawing small and I don't want to draw small. Thanks to those folks at CA like DPaint and JeffX who insists to always draw large. I really feel like buying A2 paper sometimes. Sigh.

With the souls of the dead artists as my witnesses, I vow to always draw on A3 or larger for my outdoor sketches. I drew on A5 previously to reduce attention from passer-bys, but I don't care now. Quality of sketches is more important. I must endure the torture of unwanted attention and curious looks.

And below are the sketches of still life which I did last week on A3:









Below 3 drawings are my new couch. The 1st ended up horribly, the 2nd is better but still wrong, and I redo and that was the 3rd:












Below is a drawing of my living room's new glass table. Full of curves and hard to draw as hell due to wrong approach (focused too much on details of the curves at the beginning). I had to re-draw 2 times before I got satisfied:


The couch from another vantage point:


I can never draw a realistic self-portrait. I've drawn the eyes and nose and face shape EXACTLY as I see them but the result has only a bit of likeness. It looks like a 7-year old's work. I guess the line of the bottom part of the face went haywire when I tried to darken it using 6B pencil. It wasn't like this at first:











Sketch of wooden Eiffel Tower model in extreme perspective (tower laid flat pointing towards me):
The 2nd one is a better one, but still doesn't look real:





The hand sketch below is based on a pose by a fellow CA member here....can't remember his name. Hands + many pens:




Plustek OpticPro A3 scanner:



xBox 360 controller in extreme perspective:





After finishing this, I realized pendulum at the bottom is wrong! Should be an ellipse:


Below are some sketches drawn from a live model in a session last month (the ones you see here are 10 - 20 mins poses....the 30 seconds type is too much for me).

The male model was wearing blue boxers, not nude.
I drew these by eye, so if you've any comments on proportion or has feedback, let me know so I can do better next time. I didn't see anyone use sighting, so I didn't use either.
I'll use sighting next time.

Click pics to see full version:








Where am I headed now?

Well, I realized only yesterday that it is impossible (at least for me) to wholly perfect my life drawings. Meaning, no matter how hard you try, you'll find that the drawing / sketches can be further improved. Just like gesture drawings....you can do them your entire life and still find there's lots of room for improvement. So, I think it's time for me to move on.

After I've finished studying the Perspective Drawing Handbook by D' Amelio, I'll move on to studying the construction method of drawing, followed by gesture drawing. Then, I'll very likely move on to intensive portrait drawing, followed by figure drawing. I feel like learning from Vilppu's method.

My drawings needs lots of polishing, as you can see from all these shit posted above. I really need to step back and look at my drawings, because although I understand the basics of perspective, my hands won't listen to me.

That's all! Happy Chinese New Year and herald the Year of the Tiger!
Xeon

[TASmith]

Your last anatomy studies look good! I liked the couch and shoe, try more of those along with hand studies. Two problems with your hands. First, your shading is very scratchy, and doesn't follow the forms and planes of the hand. Try holding your pencil on its side to shade, and think of wrapping around the form as you do it. Second, there's no hierarchy of shadow. You shade one point very hard, like the thumb/palm, or one finger tip, while the rest of the hand is blank. Your hand's covered by the same skin, and mostly the same color, so try to make the shading more even. Unless you're right in front of a lamp, there's not going to be so much contrast. Try making the whole hand grey and working from there lighter/darker as needed.

[williammartina]

Hi guys! Sorry that it's been some time since I update this but I was kinda busy last week.

Many thanks to everyone here for your kind words. Every freaking time I come to CA, I always feel a bit like sobbing as I'm so touched.

Below are scans of my work done last week and the week before, together with my comments.
There's "words" on the drawing paper cos' it's recycled paper at the back and the scanner can pick that up too.

The key below is supposed to "go back" and extend away from the viewer into space, but it looks like it's floating in thin air no matter how I draw. I think I may need to draw a table to "give it context".



The line quality of the paper clips is TRASH. The stapler is my first version.



The stapler (2nd version) looks better now:



The object at the upper-left is a tiny souvenir. The head is kinda off, though. Curves are very hard to estimate and draw!!!! Shit it.



And the contour drawing of my hand below. I think it's recognizable, though the anatomy and parts of it is wrong. I didn't draw this myself, though. I used the plastic viewfinder to help me in gauging the proportions etc (as per Betty Edwards' exercise in her book). Spent 1.5+ hours or so on this.



Another contour drawing of the hand. As you can see, some fingers look a bit fat and off, and the finger that's touching the thumb is too obese.



My 1st perspective drawing of a corner of my room. Took nearly 4 hours to do it as the sighting of proportions and angles is MIND-BOGGLING and a bit stressful. I keep closing one eye and my left eye was kinda tired yesterday. I wanted to draw a bit more but I started out too large and paper has no space left.
If you can identify what these stuff are easily, maybe I could consider giving you a virtual kiss. LOL


Feel free to critique! My line quality is crappy, btw.

My conclusion: Drawing is addictive and now I really like it though my art truly sucks. I'm gonna work hard at it and I've come to a point where I'm not gonna give up ever and my resolution is set and sealed in stone.

I'm gonna do more practice on more subjects. It might be some time before I update this thread here again.

Best wishes!!!
Xeon

Great Xeon... You have got realization on your career. I congratulate you on your success towards your improvement in drawing... Go ahead with this kind of commitment, success will be yours... By the way your drawings are so nice... I like waterfalls and flowers very much. Can i expect those types of paintings from you????