From 0 onwards

[heSlimedme]

keep drawing man!!! repetition can be a key element

[dracken]

Here is the stuff from the past couple of days. Nowadays I managed to get into a routine where I do 3-4 hours of drawing every night. I divide this roughly 1 h for misc studies and 2 hours+ for Bargue or life studies. The idea is to get much better at measuring and seeing shapes.

Aside from these drawings I spend quite some time doing Loomis heads, but there's nothing exciting there. Just copying his designs then doing them from memory, then copying again and so on.

Anyhow, here is the good stuff (values more or less fucked by the scanner. The Bacardi bottle was all done in H pencil so it was very faint... guess that meant half the lines were lost and the rest look very dark.).

Gave up on the last two since the measurements were way off after hours of trying to get stuff right. Better stuff tomorrow... hopefully.

[Warforce17]

Nice to see you keep going. I think you are improving steadily which is fun to watch. So keep on doing what you are doing and thank you for your comments in my SB.

[Rhubix]

Fun stuff- I gotta do some Bargue studies.
With the measuring stuff- have you tried using grids to help measure? So far there's definitely no glaring issues with proportions and stuff- so I don't think your doing as bad as you think you are
I really like the portrait in 149- super cute girl. and the bottle in 152 has a nice life to it.

Happy sketching

[dracken]

Thank you everyone for the comments and encouragement. I need to get back into posting regularly and answering people.

Here are some things from the past two weeks. All digital stuff, trying to improve everything about my digital workflow. The idea was to do everything quickly and improve my line and color picking ability. The idea is to be able to do what I do traditionally on my intuos.

So far failing hardcore, but it's all good. Someday I'll be awesome.

[shiNIN]

Oh head planes, I need to study them more myself. The most elaborated head in the bottom row, with that thing on the top of his head looks great, the one above him is cool too I don't see your still lifes bad.
The figures has some small differences/flaws, I'm pretty sure some more anatomy knowledge would help you a lot. I seriously focused on anatomy in the last few days and it's a very good feeling to understand and see things more.
I like your woman drawing the least, you missed something I deeply appreaciate in the original. The photographer included both nipples in the outline The closer breast isn't even present in the outline in your version
I would suggest some hand studies but I'm not the one who should talk But the hands are really rough.

[dracken]

Thank you, thank you.

I'll have to go bbck and do more anatomy. Right now the focus is getting comfortable working digitally. Then I'll study heads a bit more and focus on anatomy after that... then maybe master studies... sigh a long road ahead.


Anyhow here is a 2 hour life study and a few heads from imagination. I'll try to get a lot more imagination/ memory work in. This is all crappy, but the tablet makes it so much harder... have to improve!

[Jamie Romoser]

keep drawing everything you think looks cool
have a good one
-Jamie

[dracken]

In no particular order here are my traditional studies from the past week. Loomis mostly as well as photo studies. Focusing on portraits and faces. Some value studies and a full body from imagination. Nothing too exciting, just more work.

[dracken]

Double post because for some reason all the images weren't showing up properly. Fun times

[dracken]

Why are colors so hard? Here are 2 hours from tonight.

Did about an hour of heads from Loomis as well, but I think I covered my quota of Loomis heads with the previous two posts.

[dracken]

Tried some new rough textured brushes tonight. Failed pretty bad, but at least I'm learning. Tomorrow I should try only a soft brush and see what happens.

EDIT: should have also pushed the values more... a lot more....

[dracken]

Another day another life study. This time a small cardboard box. Should be more gray and brown than yellow... well, better luck next time.

Also a quick and very failed photo color study. The idea was more to try and match colors than really get a final result. I spent hours trying to "guess" the right hue and value for her skin.

[Warforce17]

Nice to see you going, too! The skin study really seems to pay off. At least I can not anything to complain about it. And last but not least:
The apple isn´t crappy at all.

[dracken]

Another day another life study.

Finally got myself some busts/ good reference. Here is the first of my Chopin studies. More will follow

[dracken]

Friday my PC crapped out so I had to re-install everything... anyhow. long story short I basically lost a day of studies and today's work looks horrible.

I think I got sucked into details too fast. I also picked a harder light situation with an almost parallel light and a softer secondary source from the front... I might have screwed myself here.. anyhow here is Saturday's study.

[dracken]

Did two studies today. Another life piece and tried to do a photo study that destroyed me. I should have spent a lot more time on the initial drawing, a lot more. I drew the head quickly and messed up the angles as well as the proportions of the face, then almost randomly I started throwing some colors down. The whole process was more guessing than actual painting and the result looks like shit therefore.

I also realized that I need to make my workflow and my digital painting something more conscious and driven. Everything I do should be planned/ intended. No random colors and especially no mindless blending with a soft brush.

I spent a few hours looking at the Peer project by Idiot apathy and reading up on edges as well as consciously picking colors. Good, eye opening stuff

[shiNIN]

Poor Anya (last update), she's so lovely and motivating though... It's the worst type if you ask me . Every time I find a sweeeeeeeeeeeet girl face and get fired up and wished to do it near perfectly, I can't draw it well at all, loveliness often has subtle things and subtleties are very easy to mess up...
Aside proportions and shapes and other anatomy things, your version is bad (I can't find a nicer word for it, sorry) because of the colors as well. It's muddy. The original is warmer, orange-reddish. This alone matters a lot.
Your "color choosing study" has the same problem but to much less extent. That one isn't bad, the colors aren't very desaturated, just quite different from your reference, the ref were lighter, more pinkish, the colors alone gives a more feminine and soft feel.
Keep at it, skin coloring is very tricky, every time I do a skin coloring study, I spend hours on it and my results aren't great... But one day I will make a breakthrough Just like you if you continue to practice.

I like your cloth and box study (even if I couldn't keep myself to work on it more if I were you... I love to make cloth smooth) and you apples has a nice round feel and details, something is missing though, I guess you should vary your hues a bit.

[dracken]

Well, obviously my rendering is shit. The issue is basic stuff. I'm finding myself guessing about colors and brushes and basic lines...in other words I'm working on too many problems at once. Back to the basics!

Since I want to improve my digital rendering this means doing the peer project and bumske's digi painting approach. Here are the studies from tonight, done very slow and carefully choosing each color/ each brush. I also did a value study and an imagination planes study based on Loomis.. Need to do more of these.

In total about 4 hours here. Doesn't look like much, but I think this was more helpful than anything I've done recently.

[dracken]

Today was an expansion on what I started yesterday. Used the same principles as drawing the spheres to do some simple value studies.

This was useful on two levels: got me to practice my lines and workflow and got me to practice digital painting. Used strong brushes to place the values and then softened/ blended some edges. Not sure I'm doing the right thing here, but it feels like I'm learning a lot.

[shiNIN]

Your metal object paintings doesn't look bad What is "strong brushes" mean? Hard ones? High opacity ones? Blending is best with low opacity hard brushes imo, but I can't blend well... Whatever, keep it up! You can learn a lot when you draw objects, especially if they are simple and you can focus on light and form.

[dracken]

By hard brushes I mean the hard round brush with 40-70% opacity or the chalk brush with 40-70.

I think the low opacity brushes muddle colors too much, but I'm not sure. Will have to experiment more.

Today I spent most of the day just practicing what I studies yesterday. Did some color study and tried rendering a little clay figure. More or less failed all around, but some good practice.

More object studies will follow

[dracken]

Didn't upload for a few days because I've been working on a longer still life study. Spent around 7 hours doing this apple. I experimented a lot with different texture brushes, although it all kinda looks like crap. Also I tried to apply what I learned from the peer project... more or less successful.

Anyhow here is crap apple 4 or so...

[Rhubix]

oh Dracken, you shouldn't be so sullen- it's not a bad apple at all
I recommend doing some research into warm/cool colours for stuff like that painting. Your cloth is a pretty flat colour which I thing is giving it the lack-luster appearance. Working in some colour variation can give a lot of vitality.
There are some good resources in the fine arts, and tutorials forums

brushes muddle colors too much

I've certainly found this to be true
Below I did a quick overlay- It's a cheap and dirty way to add tonal and colour variations on a painting.
Process was to copy the image onto 2 layers:
on the top layer- add noise -crystalise (under pixilate tab) > then set layer to overlay on 2-20% what ever looks best- this one is about 12%.
The left is the result, right is original.
Ideally you want to work this way from the start, because you can controle which areas you want warmer, and which cooler- but this is a good cheap trick to add some life to a piece so it doesn't look as digital.

[dracken]

Did a bunch of anatomy which I'll scan in eventually.

Also re-did a portrait drawings of some friends. Version from a week or so back first, then more recent version





Also did a quick texture study. The colors are very off on this, but I tried to get some texture in there for the leaves and background since that was really lacking in all my still life.

[Snyder]

I see improvement, a lot of improvement! pld: *Yikes*!!!

[dracken]

First of all thanks everyone. Every little bit of encouragement helps push me even more

Christmas ruined my motivation... however here is some recent stuff. The first is a WIP for the crimson daggers swamp elder challenge. Way too hard for my current abilities but what the hell, it's my first illustration almost 100% from imagination. Will try to polish it more and next time will be much better.




Here are also some studies that were meant to help





And some digital "pencil work"

[dracken]

Here is some stuff from tonight, keep going with the head studies. Loomis, some Hammpton as well as some imagination and picture studies. I still can't get the distance between the eyes right, but will get better.

[Sushy]

Wow your still lives are getting better and better

Good job on the head studies too ^^

[dracken]

Golden Boy submission- December.

Mostly head and anatomy studies as well as color/ still life studies.