Sketchbook

[minamongoose]

I though I'd make myself a sketchbook thread, I mean, why not?

[minamongoose]

Hey the attachments are working now

[minamongoose]

more sketches

[minamongoose]

a very... awkward looking attempt at a skull

[shiNIN]

Yay, you have a sketchbook! I usually put such ones (an sb of a beginner who's promising in my opinion) into my collection (my too many subscibed ones). I love to see such ones to improve, too bad many people disappear

It seems you have some patience and draw different things.
The realistic face (I bet a photo is used as ref) is nice.
The still lifes shows what your piece in the Critique Center: you sometimes tend to make things angular, even if they should be more rounded and soft.
The blue and yellow girl's arms are melting.
The last girl has some proportion problems, I won't adress all now and her little finger disappears at a point.

I rarely can give general advice after looking a bunch of pictures so that's all for now.
Keep it up

EDIT: A skull!!! Yeah, draw skulls, they are important if one wish to draw heads Not the worst skull I saw in my life at all (You can't imagine how many messed up skulls I drew in my life but it means I practiced them and it's a good thing)
The jaw seems to be a bit small and the eye sockets too far apart... Is it an asian female? It looks like one to me (without any logical thinking, just looking at it).

[minamongoose]

The blue an yellow girl was meant to be turning to smoke but that is an old and strange looking drawing, I just wanted to draw down the idea before I forgot it :p
but thanks for looking at my sketchbook and giving feedback

Hmm well I was looking at this for the skull http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/e...lsize/8915.jpg
but I didn't really copy it exactly, I was just trying to look at the different shapes in the skull

[wooden mango]

some gesture drawings and figure drawings could do you some good too. Just practice blocking the human body out into basic shapes, it really helps train the minds eye. Andrew loomis has some great books on it that you can get here as PDFs. ALso there are some great tools for gesture drawings such as www.posemaniacs.com and www.pixelovely.com. Pixelovely has both a human and animal image generator. Again, the purpose of these is not to render everything in perfect detail but to get the shapes and gestures of the subjects down as close as possible

[minamongoose]

my first try at gesture drawings

[minamongoose]

practicing drawing faces

[wooden mango]

good start on the gesture drawings! One tip would be though that instead of doing silhouettes (he outside lines of the figure) try building the figures out of lines and shape.As it is, it is like putting up walls of a house without a foundation without a foundation.

Start with a stick figure to establish motion and the spine. then add in the the rest of the body segment but segment in basic shapes. This makes the fugure more solid as it gives you a better sense of how things line up.

Here are examples of figure drawings everyone has their own way of filling in the form but it all comes from the same basic approach









A similar approach shoudl be done with faces. In the book link I gave you up above Loomis has a great book on constructing faces and you can download it there free as a PDF.

Anyway, I will stop bugging you now. Just trying to help!

[minamongoose]

Thanks for the advice!
I'll work on that with the gesture drawings next time. I wasn't really thinking so I set them at 60 seconds and I couldn't really keep up with it, so next time I'll slow down and try to draw each shape.
With the faces I wanted to try focusing on the values but I'll be sure to keep that in mind too.

[wooden mango]

No problem. I usually start off with two minutes to warm up. It's a good amount of time without being too much. And values are a indeed good thing to work on.

[shiNIN]

Nice faces, they have character and beauty... and anatomy flaws as well, of course. Watch your eyes Most beginners (you and me are not complete beginners, but beginners) has problems with eyes, even in front view. Eyes are tricky.
But when the head starts to turn... everything is even more trickier. Look at some eyes in 3/4 view. We don't see the outside corner of the farther one and what we see is rounded. The shape of the nearer eye changes as well. Our head isn't a box but it isn't a sphere either... So the eyes aren't so trivial to draw (and they have their own interesting shape as well ).
Hmmm... it might be better to draw the whole head to practice it as well but when you draw the whole hair you do it right so you must have some idea about where the cranium is

[LordLouis]

What do you do that you actually get a paintover in your SKETCHbook?? >__>''

When I saw your thread with the star-holding girl, I actually thought your sketchbook would be a lot weaker than what it actually is- I think the star-picture is one of your weakest images, and having worked especially hard on this is very positive indeed. I like the life studies, especially the first one! Keep it up!

[shiNIN]

LordLouis: I thought the same And she's a cute little critic in Critique Center as well now She reminds me of myself a bit (though I'm not cute).

[minamongoose]

So, I'm trying to draw a portrait now using lines and shapes now instead of the silhouette way I was before.
But I feel like I'm going about this wrong, I don't really know how to start.

[Velocity Kendall]

this is hella cool!
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/att...1&d=1302056503

[minamongoose]

hey, thanks!

Also thank you to ShiNIN and LordLouis for looking at my sketches and all-- I will definetly make note to study eyes some more I enjoy drawing eyes anyway so it won't be a problem.

[adamsimons]

for head construction I started with andrew loomis as a lot of people do, i got the most out of him (and other anatomy books) when i started drawing from ref and imagination directly after a session of drawing from the book.
I also recommend ron lemons dvds from gnomon is a really good primer on reilly head construction.
apart from that
e m gist has some pdfs.
micheal hampton is pretty good but his book only has one chapter on heads.
you might also like to check out ccsears and IKage here on CA.org

anyway thats my little esay on the subject
keep up the good work!

[shiNIN]

I study Loomis as well but I Kevin Chen's head studies the most... Maybe not right now, but later studying caricatures may be an eye opener like in my case when I met Tom Richmond's blog He has tutorials
I learned from Stanislav Prokopenko's tutorials as well, I learned a few things none of my portrait drawing books mentioned.

But the most useful regarding drawing heads... that was studying real heads It's amazing how much more information is there in a face before you, compared with photos, no matter how great they are. Life studies. Do them.

Hmmm I can't say much looking at your last drawing. It's obviously isn't right... and why don't you draw a whole head? It would make more sense. I don't really know if you are familiar with constructing a head by yourself, it doesn't seem so... if you can't draw one by myself, get a reference, some good tutorial and do it. Front view and profile view is pretty easy compared to the others. And the tricky features change a lot when the head turns... Study their 3d form.
But I guess basic proportions and whatnot comes first. Are you familiar with the proportion "rules"? Draw me more heads to see what you know You need to practice anyway.
{And tell me if I get too enthuastic about teaching you with my oh so much knowledge I can't use well enough myself, okay? I don't want to bother you at all.}

[minamongoose]

thanks for the tutorials everyone, I was using one from here but I got very confused on how to know what shapes you are supposed to build the face with
I know about the proportions of the face and head but when I am trying to match what I know with a real person's face it gets confusing.
I will try to draw a whole head soon, I was working from a photo (kind of silly because it was going to be a self-portrait anyway, I just don't have a very good place to draw with a mirror)

[shiNIN]

I can't wait
Yay, a self-portrait sounds good (I did it only once, I prefer drawing pretty ones you know... but I studied my face a lot), a life model is so much better than a photo!
So you used a reference... The new method must be the cause it doesn't went so well when with the sexy girl heads... But I don't know how you did it so I don't know which step should be improved...

I know about the proportions of the face and head but when I am trying to match what I know with a real person's face it gets confusing.

Hm... I'm not sure I understand it... When I use a photo, I just draw it as I see... Real people don't follow the rules so strictly...

I cheer for you
(I really wish to give real advice to you, not just spamming your sb... so draw a head )

[minamongoose]

Well when I try to just draw how I see it doesn't turn out well. So I thought what I was doing wrong was measuring the proportions or something but maybe it's not that either.

[minamongoose]

Self-portrait in progress... I feel like theres not much resemblance to myself here but I will work on that once I get the face better

[dsacc]

Good so far, keep up the facial studies though, they are the area that needs most work. Keep it up!

[shiNIN]

Well this is much more promising And it's good you don't just throw features together but think about structure and construction... Such studies are important I think.
The mouth should be a little closer to the nose.
Good luck, I'm looking forward to your future updates

[minamongoose]

I think everything needs lots of work, not just the faces haha but thanks

worked a little more on the portrait, hope this is better

[minamongoose]

sketches

[minamongoose]

gesture drawings and other things

[minamongoose]

a thumbnail idea for a drawing. Trying to figure out the window first