Quest for Improvement: A Sketch Diary. (Requesting Heaving Critique)

**Katiebug** · November 12th, 2010, 02:18 PM

Hello friends. My name is Kaitlyn Nasalroad. Katie for short. I'm a 20 year old college student currently pursuing an Associate's Degree in Liberal Arts. I hope to transfer to a four year university and pursue a career in teaching. I intend to dual major in art education and either science or English education.

I've always admired ConceptArt and it's my hope that I can gain a lot from it's members by posting my studies here. I was originally stationed in DeviantArt, but I need to be around professionals willing to give me the critique I need. I am a newbie here, and I am a novice artist. So please forgive any mistakes I might make.

Current focus of my studies: Human Anatomy

Images coming in a second.

**Katiebug** · November 12th, 2010, 02:25 PM

Two sketches referenced from photographs.

First was referenced from: http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs51/f/20...rt_Concept.jpg

Second was referenced from: http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs26/f/20...artdibujar.jpg

**Dacountno2** · November 12th, 2010, 02:29 PM

Hiya! First, gj for posting! a good start, I'd say lighten up on your outline & keep working on the forms & their relations to each other. Keep it up!

**Katiebug** · November 13th, 2010, 12:50 PM

Just for fun, a portrait study of a famous male celebrity. If you can correctly guess who it is, then I was somewhat successful in my endeavor.

**Katiebug** · January 9th, 2011, 01:18 PM

A recent sketch from an Opera magazine, done while I was waiting to see a student counselor. Done in roughly an hour with some cleanup work done later. Relatively happy with the proportions, though the proportions of the arms seem a bit off. The breasts also seem a bit lop sided, but it may have been due to the shading.

**Anscenic** · January 11th, 2011, 10:02 PM

Nice stuff; I agree in lightening up your outline, the key is just to relax and sort of try to let everything flow. Instead of taking pains to get each line looking just right and ending up with really thick outlines, practise making an entire line or line section in one curve. If it's not right, just make another stroke over it. You'll probably find this tricky with a tablet, but for the basics it's worthwhile and good fun to sketch on paper anyway. Try to keep it light, as once your light curves have made something you think is right, you can go over it a bit more heavily towards the end.

From your first couple of images I can see you've got the idea of using a skeleton and basic lines and shapes for proportion and pose before going in with the countours. That's good, and you should get into the habit of doing that consistently. Drawing from life, doing studies and checking out some tutorials will probably be your best bet.

Cool stuff anyway, keep at it!

**arenhaus** · January 12th, 2011, 02:36 AM

Loosen your hand. A lot.

Do exercises with a pencil in violin bow grip, drawing LARGE with the side of the lead. Use your whole arm. Draw straignt lines, curves, parallel lines, spirals, ellipses, trace the same line repeatedly. Find the flow of motiion that works best.

Don't use photoshop or ballpoint pen. Neither is good for development of proper drawing form.

**Katiebug** · January 13th, 2011, 01:00 PM

Thank you for helpful comments guys! I'll work on loosening up my hand to draw softer sketches.

**dsacc** · January 13th, 2011, 01:21 PM

Try and study anatomy and proportions (Try Loomis). The ballpoint picture does not look like a woman at all, the body needs more curves and the necks far too short. Also try using pencils first instead of pens.