The Sketchbook Fellowship

[Nickels]

I want to create a small group of about 3 individuals who are trying to turn their art into a career and get into college and going to take an art course. It will be a group where each member will submit different ideas to challenge the members such as "todays challenge: 10 sketches of real life objects example: cup, plate, flowers, and people." I want it so that every day there is a challenge and by the end of the day we all submit our works. What I dont want is people uploading anime style drawings all the time and cartoonish looking people. This is a group I want to keep going for a long time until we all land jobs or get into college.

Im attending high school right now and im looking for high school students who already know how to draw pretty well and have a goal either to take their love for art into college or straight into freelance work. A group will be made for this on devient art so that it becomes easier to upload drawings and sketches.

Update 13/7/11: we will no longer be accepting any more people into this group. sorry

[metalhead3]

Hey, good idea for a group! I am also in highschool aspiring to have a career in art and so been studying alot although I've been putting off working on art lately. I'm trying to work from life and as most begginers I am interested in learning about the human anatomy, but I am also learning the basics such as drawing 3dimensional shapes and perspective. Feel free to look at my sketchbook to see some of my sketches. It would be cool to have drawing partners Hopefully I can join in this little group.

[Mind Of Madness]

Not in highschool but I want to join. I suggest raising the number from 3 though, those who are dedicated will stay and I'm sure that will narrow the number down. Challenges a day sound fun. Maybe every other day just cause life will get in the way at times.

[Nickels]

But I think I will keep it at daily challenges and have weekly challenges. So even if you dont get your daily challenges done you can still do the weely challenge also.

[kitfox]

Hello,

I would be interested to take part. Not in highschool anymore, I work full time and I'm trying to get into college (TAD or a local art college/uni). On work days I'm mostly really tired though, so I might not be able to do things everyday.

I'm serious about studying foundation and basic drawing skills, but I have to admit that I find semi-realistic/stylized art very appealing. I mostly do studies in my sketchbook but I'm trying to break from doing just that.

I'd love to be part of a group that pushes me to do more stuff that I would normally do. Let me know if I'm welcome to participate.

PS. Instead of deviant art, starting a shared thread in the sketchbook section or here isn't a bad option either.

[Nickels]

Your in and your idea of a thread on here is a good option I just think devient art has a good group system. We can try to do both but I really like the option in devient art to be able to see individual drawings.

[metalhead3]

Yeah posting in this thread or sketchbook forums would be nice.

[A.J. Gardner]

I also would like to join, if that's alright. Also not in high school, but plan on attending TAD and would not like to suck completely before class starts.

I love the idea of daily and weekly challenges since I have absolutely no idea where to start.

[kitfox]

I think the group we have (5 people?) is good enough to get started, if Nickels is ok with each applicant. More people is fine too, but with a lot of members things might get confusing, not to mention giving constructive critique can end up very time consuming. Just something to keep in mind.

I suggest we post in this thread as a start, just rename the thread to something fitting. I'm a little biased against DA since most of the comments I see floating around there are asspats or gasps how good someone is. I just don't like that kind of atmosphere, not that positive feedback is bad, as long as it's not brainless.

Nickels, do you want to call the challenges yourself or set up a rotation of some sort so everyone gets to do it?

AmbtheCreative, could you set up a sketchbook thread or something for yourself? It'd be nice to see a bit of what level you are. A sketch or two is fine.

[A.J. Gardner]

This is my old sketchbook: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=120599

I just made a new account for a new, more focused start.

[Mind Of Madness]

Im with kitfox, we should just keep everything here on CA. As far as assignments go I agree that it should be a rotating thing. I had an idea and that is to not have a challenge everyday but to have 1 legit assignment every week something tangible that we can solidly critique each other and actually learn from each other and possibly any mentors who want to stop bye.
Any way Im off today I need to get busy with my perspective studies. I hope we start soon.

[Nickels]

This will be the thread for this group, Lets all try and see if we can think of a name for the group. So I will keep daily challenges and weekly challenges but we will all be able to create challenges and post them up on here. You dont have to do daily challenges but we should all get weekly challenges done.

This is one type of layout I was thinking, it is not mandatory to keep up with daily challenges but for weekly challenges it kind of is. If you cant post on any days are just too busy just post up what you got by then end of the week.

Alien space cloud will do the monday challenges and post it on the sunday

Kitfox Will do Tuesday challenges and post it on the monday

AmbtheCreative will do wednesday challenges and post them on the tuesday

Metalhead3 will do thursday challenges and post them on the wednesday

I will do friday challenges and post them on the thursday

for weekly challenges... it goes to who ever wants to do it.

[A.J. Gardner]

I'm a bit confused. Do you mean creating our own challenges and putting them up or will there be a challenge for every day and the designated person has to complete the challenge for that day?

[Nickels]

creating your own challenges and putting them up for the group to do and yourself

[Nashek]

Hi i'm interested too and i'm in hichschool too. But I'm from spain, so the end of the day for me it'll be later than for you all

[kitfox]

So, let me just get this clear. Monday through Friday we'll each post a daily challenge that is due for next week? Also, one person sets a weekly challenge that everybody does? The weekly challenge should also be rotated in my opinion, might as well use the daily order with that?

As for the group name... I couldn't think of anything smart so I'm just throwing ideas here. Let's get creative: "Challengers Anon", "Daily snack, Weekly meal", "Drawing Circle", "Daily drawing damage?", "Band of the Tailwind", "Rising Tide Group."

Kind of became fond of "Band of the Tailwind" while brainstorming. It has something relating to a group, "Band", and the pushing force we can give each other through critique&comments, "Tailwind". (Yes, that's also a manga reference to Berserk. *snickers*)

Nashek, the exact posting time doesn't really matter that much. And me being from Finland, I'm actually an hour or two ahead of you as how timezones go. By the way, do you have a sketchbook thread? I'm just interested in everyones' art style and level.

[metalhead3]

I'm thinking Nickels meant we post a daily assignment for the next day. So since I'm assigned Thursday's Daily challenge..I post the assignment today?

As for names, I can't really think of any besides "sparkle motion" haha

[Nickels]

Your exactly right I thought it was a good way of informing the group for the next days challenges

[A.J. Gardner]

Ah! I understand now.

I only have one concern now....

...What should the challenges be like? I mean, other than looking for a photo I find interesting or challenging and putting it up to study or doing gestures or something, I don't really know what would be good to study at our levels.

[kitfox]

I'm thinking Nickels meant we post a daily assignment for the next day.

Of course, I was thinking something too complicated, hehe.

...What should the challenges be like? I mean, other than looking for a photo I find interesting or challenging and putting it up to study or doing gestures or something, I don't really know what would be good to study at our levels.

I think it can be anything. You should concentrate on whatever your goals are. At the moment, I'm mainly interested in character design and the human figure, so my challenges will mostly focus on figure drawing, probably. More concrete examples: For character design, I could study anatomy, poses, clothes, fashion, accessories, portaiture etc. Or for environments, composition, values, thumbnails, perspective, architecture and the like. I think it's really up to your goals.

The challenges should be something that take at least a couple of hours to do, but nothing absurd like 6-8 hours, even though some people might have that much time. I'd like to have time to focus on more personal things as well, besides our challenges.

So since I'm assigned Thursday's Daily challenge..I post the assignment today?

Go for it!

[metalhead3]

Okay, So how about for example as a daily assignment for thursday, to draw 4 quick portraits of yourselves (or if you want 4 quick head-shots of a random person or character) from different angles.

[Nickels]

Yeah thats a good example metalhead, those are sort of the challenges I was kind of thinking. I think there should be a lot of life drawing, still life, gesture drawings, figure drawings, our own studies, working on hands and feet. Lets try and keep the challenges basic and easy to do in a day.

example:

Still lifes

life drawings

personal studies

You dont have to do all three and there is no minimum amount of drawings to do.

I was thinking something along those lines

If you dont feel like doing certain parts of challenges you dont have to just make sure that whatever part of the challenge your doing has a good amount of work put into it.

[kitfox]

Selfportraits are a good start. I might not be able to finish 4 of them but I'll try to do some. Even if they're "quick", usually takes over an hour for me to achieve likeness.

Edit: So I whipped out the first selfportrait. Not exactly quick, spent a bit over 2 hours on it and felt like I needed another hour to get it right but oh well. I'll do more in the evening/at night. Probably with less rendering to save time...

[metalhead3]

kitfox - The self-portrait turned out really good I think. Can I ask what your process was on this portrait? Oh and I know what you mean about quick self portraits taking alot of time. I didn't realize this until I started working on mine haha. So I guess 4 was a bit much.


Only did three. I spent about an hour and a half on the challenge.

[kitfox]

metalhead3, I'll try to explain my process a bit. I did another selfportrait since I didn't manage to do it yesterday and there's no new challenge posted yet. I took a couple of process shots, hope they help.

I started by taking a photo of myself with my phone, and moved it to my computer screen. I started drawing lightly with 2H pencil, it's easy to erase with kneaded eraser. Only taking note of the general position of the head, I constructed the basic concept based mostly on my anatomical knowledge, at this point I didn't look much at my reference. Basically I lay down a ball, the jaw, rough block of hair and the neck.

After I had the general idea on paper, I started measuring the proportions more carefully, simply putting my pencil on the screen and using my thumb. I worked the contours first and then moved to placing the rest of the features in their approximate positions. The first WIP-shot is at this stage.

Then I moved to detailing the features more carefully, paying close attention to my photo. I noticed some features and proportions were slightly off and tweaked those. Also tweaked the contours. For some reason I often don't notice mistakes in proportions until I've detailed the features a little bit, so this stage can take a while if I have to redraw features many times. Luckily, I got most of them right fast this time. The second WIP-shot.

All that is left is adding value and rendering. Since the lighting was pretty bad in my photo, I ended up guessing things and trying to add a sense of form without referencing the photo. At this point I moved to using my HB mech pencil more to put down darker lines and values. Finished stage (3rd WIP-shot).

I had to heavily darken the first 2 WIP shots to make the lines visible. They're actually very lightly drawn stages. All in all I ended up spending about 70 minutes on the drawing.

Ask away if you've got further questions, I'll try to answer.

[Nickels]

ok my computer was derping out on me last night so I will post some challenges today


Challenge -

feet: side view, front view and any other poses

Personal studies

and figure drawings

[metalhead3]

Kitfox- Oh so that's what the 2H pencils are used for. I have H pencils but i never used them cause I never knew what they were for haha. I always just draw with the 2B, 8B, and mechanical pencil. Thanks for sharing your WIP shots.

And have we decided on what the new name for this thread to be?

[Mind Of Madness]

had alot going on yesterday, but I want to try to do everybody's challenges especially when there ones I struggle with, which is faces.
Kitfox your really good at them thanks for the tips, although getting the first big shapes first is still hard. But measuring is my biggest problem, I think I just need to take more time with the measuring, faces get really complicated. Also metalhead you did a really good job hopefully kitfox helped you.
Anyway here is 2 self-portraits. The one the right I was being crazy and stylized it a little the left one is more accurate, and the third little head is how I usually start out portraits which an overall shape and then I do my best to measure, but there is so many things on a face to relate to I have trouble with simplifying and I get too complicated.

[metalhead3]

Alien Space Cloud- May I suggest starting of with a sphere when drawing the head to help know the volume of the cranium. and then adding guild lines to where the eyes go and drop a line down the sphere to know where the middle of the face is. From there you make more guild lines to where the nose and mouth go for proportions. Then you can develop the jaw.
So basically you can start off with a simple sphere and establish the tilt and proportions of the face. Then you can start building the face with other simple shapes.

Sorry I hope that helps. I'm bad at sharing what I've learned :p I'm not so good at drawing the head and its proportions (mostly because I haven't studied proportions of the face yet) because some(most) of my head drawings turn out to be pretty deformed even with the guild lines haha, but I guess it takes practice.

Here's an example of what I mean. Also I think it's best in the future to do a bit of studying on the structure of the skull to know the planes of the face.

[Nickels]

Ok heres my self portrait and it's done with an Hb and a 2b.