Joel's Drawing-From-Life Sketchbook

[sur-mata]

Hi everyone, I've been lurking around these forums for a while now and I think its about time I started a sketchbook to get some feedback on what I'm doing. At the moment I'm a 17 y.o student 2 months away from starting my game art and design studies in Australia. Like most people in this forum, my dream is to someday work as a concept artist in the game development industry but I'd like to build up a practical skillset alongside whatever I'l be learning in the digital design course.

Here I'l just be posting life studies - focusing on figure drawing since that seems to be the best way to build drawing skills and an understanding of anatomy. At the moment I will be using these two websites (http://lovecastle.org/draw/
and http://www.pixelovely.com/gesture/figuredrawing.php) as substitute for real figure drawing classes.

Thanks for visiting and all feedback is welcome!

edit: apologies for the terrible scan quality.

[sur-mata]

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[Zephyrion]

Take good gander at "Figure Drawing for all It's worth" since you have some proportional issues going on. Also, start pushing your values more. Don't be afraid of black

[Blueflies]

Welcome to CA and we're glad you decided to start posting! That's awesome to hear about your plans for education in Australia - good luck!

I agree with Zephyrion that you should definitely be looking up some of the Loomis books, I'm pretty sure there are links or references here in the Reference Area and some other good stuff to go through for the basics. I would recommend trying to sketch out the frame of the figure and not just the outline, with shading. I received that advice myself and it has proved helpful. The Loomis books have a nice frame to work with and you'll see others as you scan other people's sketch books. Find what works for you, practice the proportions of that frame and apply it to the figure pictures you see. It will help you get things in the right place and then from there you can build flesh and shadow on top of that.

Keep practicing and keep posting! We're all here to learn.