Starting from square one

[Dyeonyx]

Hello everyone.

I've never really tried to draw anything more difficult than stick figures until today, but it's something I have always wanted to do.

I have no idea what I'm doing but I have to start somewhere so LET'S GO.

[otherscape]

For never drawing anything more than stick figures, the nail clipper is pretty good, though I'm not sure what the other things are. Purchase "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" and do the exercises in there. It's for beginners, and it teaches how to see what's really there instead of what you think you see there. Also, do more still life.

Good luck!

[Dyeonyx]

Hello, thanks for the feedback. I'll check out that book. The other things I drew were a pill crusher, a glass, and an egg respectively.

As for today I picked up some drawing pencils and a sketchbook and drew another egg. I had a hard time getting really light marks while shading. Then again, I had a hard time shading in general.

[Dyeonyx]

More stuff.

Spent at least 30 min each making the circles for the base of the lamp and the top of the mug, and they still don't look right. And those pencils in the mug leave much to be desired.

Those two shapes by the lamp are blind contour drawings of a toothpick box.

Should I be using some kind of reference when making a value scale?

[forestdino]

The lamp looks pretty good. Like Otherscape suggested "Drawing on the right side of the brain is a good book for beginners. Check this guy out, he has a lot of free video tips and advice for beginner.
http://www.ctrlpaint.com/

He helped me out quite a bit. and keep drawing, drawing, drawing.

[Dyeonyx]

Hello, thanks for the link. I ordered that book today so I should get it in a bit.

I drew my hand a few times. The first two times I put my hand in an awkward position and it started to hurt after a while so I rushed/stopped. Definitely going to do a lot more of these, because I feel like I got a lot out of it.

And my apologies for the really light lines. Next time I'll make them much darker so you guys can see them easily.

[Dyeonyx]

Hello, sorry I've been away so long. I had a carpal tunnel scared and had to avoid using my hands until they got better. But enough about that.

Here is today's studies. The weird looking blobs are some kneaded eraser that a molded. And for some reason I have a tiger statue in my room so I drew that, along with some wooden blocks I brought.

[jinny]

Great start so far! You should look at Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy

[Dyeonyx]

Great start so far! You should look at Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy

Thanks, That books seems to be above my current level of study, but I'll differently look at it in the future.

Here is some stuff from today.

[Dyeonyx]

Cats, bad Loomis heads, spoons, and more. The lines going through the ovals are just me trying to understand form better using the heads of spoons.

[Dyeonyx]

page from yesterday

[Dyeonyx]

Stuff for today, really happy that I seem to finally got into the habit of drawing everyday, let's keep it that way. On the other hand, cubes are really hard to get right.

[Eleyon]

You are improving, I can only suggest you to continue with the hard work! Try to give some volumes with the shadows and draw draw draw draw

[Mewball]

Keep it up, man. As long as you stay in the habit of drawing everyday you will improve!

[wutangclam]

i can see your progress already! keep it up!

[Dyeonyx]

Thanks for all the kind words everyone. Unfortunately some of the pictures I did are way to faded to post.

[Dyeonyx]

Stuff, really surprised how that tiny cuttlefish in the third picture came out.

[Marian Rowling]

Hey Dyeonxy it's great to see you doing all this drawing from life. This is the very best way to learn and improve. I think it's more important at this stage to take your time and focus first on getting your proportions right. It's always best to take your best guess first but then you can check to see how accurate you are. Just hold your arm out straight holding a pencil and slide your thumb along until you only see your objects width with one eye closed. You can then compare this measurement to the height by twisting your hand round so the pencil is vertical. Check how many times the width goes into the height or the height into the width. You can also check angles sighting with your pencil but always guess first then use measuring to see how close you are. Hope this helps.

[Dyeonyx]

Thanks Marian Rowling, I have been using my pencil to try to get the proportions right, but I never thought about using my thumb as a marking point, makes the whole process a lot easier now.

[Marian Rowling]

I'm glad it helped Dyeonyx. I think you've done a good job with the cat. The proportions look good and I think your lines look more confident e.g. Not so scratchy. This is very much what you want to repeat. Well done also on your ellipses on the cylinders and cone. Keep up the good work.

[denzalan]

alot of your pics are so bright that it is difficult to see, but it looks like you are doing quite a bit of studies on simples shapes, with varying angles and sources of light, which is always a good thing to practice!

[Dyeonyx]

I think the reason why most of my work is so light was because I was using a 3B pencil, everything I drew seemed to start to fade away as well. I switched to as 2B so we'll see how that changes things, if everything is still way too light please tell me and I'll see what I can do about it.

Anyways, some more blocks. I'm kinda happy how some of these came out proportion/shape wise, mainly the arrangement in the center, the pyramid just to the right of it, and arrangement in the lower right. I just could not get the cube to look right on the lower left one though, It might have been because I got the angles wrong on the pyramid shape.

[Trase]

You're the most awesome beginner I have ever saw!!! It's so inspiring to see you improve post by post, keep it up! One thing I can suggest you is that EVERYTHING fits in a BOX. Person, ball, pen, teacup, everything. Draw a box first, then construct your object in that box - that way you will get a great perspective.

Here, I made this little example in two-point perspective for you. Mind, I'm a beginner myself, but I do know some theory

[Dyeonyx]

Hahaha, thanks for the picture Trase, that car is really cute.

Perspective stuff seems pretty hard to grasp, I don't really know how to implement it when drawing from life, but I guess that just comes with practice.

Anyways here is some more cubes and stuff. All the super straight lines were done with a ruler.

[Trase]

Life drawing is great, but you should learn how to construct it first. In life drawing, you don't just copy what you see on paper, you actually re-construct it in "3D". Here's a great example: http://youtu.be/bKKff0TXJR0 watch it fully. As you see, he doesn't just "copy" the objects onto paper like camera, he scans it like 3d scanner, makes a "skeleton" for the object and then draws it's "skin" (the part that you see).

I think you shouldn't do life drawing before you know how to do that. Here are my very-very first pages when I first started: http://imgur.com/a/KFHKq As you can see, it's just a bunch of cubes, everywhere, every day of the week I drew cubes, cubes, cubes. Then I drew lots of cubes in one place, after that I began shading them, but that's a different story. So try to do that. Here's something that will explain you what perspective is: http://www.olejarz.com/arted/perspective/ Notice the text under and left to the image before proceeding to the next step.

Hit me up on Skype: 'bluetoorange' if you will have some quick questions, I would be really glad to help!

[Caturtle]

Great job! You seem to have passion for drawing - keep it up and everything will come to you.
I must agree with Trase about learning construction first, though I think you should not stop with real life drawings in the meantime. There are a lot of things you must learn in order to be able to produce a good drawing, you should begin with: perspective, shading, mass and form, use of line. Later, when you can express form and value, continue to: color, composition, anatomy etc.
Learning perspective will help you understand what you see when you draw objects. You need to start drawing using your brain and not relying solely on your eyes - it will improve your skill drastically, and it is also the only way to be able to draw from imagination later on. To be a good artist you must learn to analyze everything you see - form, color, structure, composition, perspective - so you can translate it into 2D.
Start with a theme - perspective, for example - and learn everything you can about it. But keep your life drawing going - try to see how what you learn applies to what you see and you will improve rapidly.
Also a great learning tool is observation. Look at drawings you like and try to understand why you like them - is it the color scheme? Is it the composition? Maybe the line-art? - try then to apply what you've seen to your drawing, even if it is just a study .
Keep on working and don't forget to post here!

[Dyeonyx]

So uh, something like this?

[Caturtle]

That's the spirit.
For the perspective study: try making lighter lines for the "buildup" and darker ones (like you used) for the actual figure. Complex forms - the star - is a great try, but pay attention to the fact that it is 3D - it must have depth, you must define it's width.
Now you should practice 2 and 3 point perspective, and try to understand how different objects fit into the "box" in perspective. Start with fitting the base figures: cone, cylinder, ball, pyramid. Try constructing from these figures. Like taking a cube in 2-point perspective, adding a cylinder that "grows" from it's left plane and subtracting a pyramid from it's upper plane etc.
It is a lot of work and a lot of things to learn. What you did here is a good first step, but don't stop here.
There is a nice book called "Perspective Made Easy" that you can get on the net or buy.

[Dyeonyx]

Stuff from today. Thanks for the info Caturtle, I'll check out that book.

[Trase]

Throw of the ruler. If you want to draw you need to have a steady hand.