Just Another Noob Trying to Improve :)

[Beartankmaster]

Hey thanks Oushua-J if you think I work hard you should check out Mindcandyman and Algenpfleger lol

Did some perspective gridwork today. I'd kind of just draw a bunch of planes on the field, then erase, then draw a bunch of forms, rinse repeat. These are decent example I guess. There were about 15 more grids that got erased. It's just so tedious to stop working and take screenshots, etc. I think I'll set a goal or something like 50 3d environments maybe. Idk it's been difficult to work, not to whine about it but my eyes keep watering and my nose won't stop running :/. The reason I'm working on a grid is to try and internalize it at the moment. I can feel it starting to stick in my head. It's funny how you know the world is in 3d but never really think of it that way until making a concerted effort to see it as such. I've been noticing converging lines in my day to day life a lot more sense starting this whole thing.

Also I tried to make some color wheels by mixing primaries in Photoshop and it's nothing at all like acrylics(durr). This should've been obvious because I'm working in light, not pigment, but I still wanted to try and mix some stuff. I found that I could mix things like purples and oranges okay but if I tried to do greens or any subtractive primaries I just couldn't mix them; it'd come out gray :/.

This is probably a disappointing update. I'll be working more when I recover from this flu. I promise =D

[Beartankmaster]

Update. More grid practice

[Beartankmaster]

bleh.

[eroquii]

Been a while since I posted in your sketchbook, so I just wanted to wish you well. Hope you get better quickly. And hey, don't feel bad about the perspective studies! They're not boring, at least not to me anyway. They all came out cool. I like the mecha body one the most though. Are you just working on cubes in perspective or are you actually doing ellipses too? Seems like the ellipses are off in the crane portion of the mecha body pic, but maybe that's just me. Regardless, good job bro! Man, I gotta do some grids like these.

[Beartankmaster]

Thanks man appreciate it. The ellipses were thrown in carelessly. They're definitely off. I'll focus on making them better but the general purpose of this was to just do enough grid drawing to where it "sinks in" and then proceed to doing them without one.

[nouge]

I think these are great! How do you make the grids? I see they're even fading towards the horizon, nice touch.

(One thing: The people about to buy tacos are off on size. If they're of equal height, the heads should be along a line that ends on the horizon, which isn't the case now.)

[Beartankmaster]

Hey thanks nouge the grids are made from a psd on Matt Kohr's perspective DVD. If you drop me an email at the address I'll PM you I'll put em in a .zip and send them to you

[Thistlegorm]

Hey man, awesome perspective studies! you've really gotten a strong knowledge of it. Always glad to see you improving

[Beartankmaster]

Forgot to take my camera to class today but I took a picture of the still life I'm working on with my cell phone. The quality is awful though the camera I have won't be much better :/ the teacher wanted us to put an emphasis on linework and try not to shade though she allowed hatching after the forms were set in.

[Beartankmaster]

Thanks also Thistleborn I feel like I'm still a beginner with perspective but I appreciate it

[Beartankmaster]

It seems like every time I start rendering by establishing any sort of midtone it comes out worse. I'm probably gonna do two other mannikin's on this page. While I was doing those perspective grid thingies I was listening to some Crimson Dagger interviews and I got bored with just drawing random boxes. I'm going to try to make my drawings tell some sort of story or have some sort of engagement from now on I think. I was gonna have this mannikin chasing after another one or something maybe. I'm not sure. I might try and put them in perspective even! =D I need to sleep first though.

Looking at the "finished image" I'm facepalming so fucking hard at those legs. I might scrap it. My homework assignment is to make three of these. You're gonna see me do nine; but the teacher won't.


edit: by the way I really wouldn't recommend a "Master's Touch" brand mannikin. Probably the stiffest I've ever used, and I heard cracking noises when attempting to put the thing into perfectly reasonable poses. For $8 what can you expect though eh? *shrug

[kamikazel33t]

I guess perhaps the issue maybe because the paper itself is white. Try shading around the drawing to give it a back tone.

[Beartankmaster]

@kamikazel33t that's probably a good idea. I might also give toned paper a shot in the future. thanks for the tip


I'm pretty sure these aren't in correct perspective.

[Beartankmaster]

Tryin to clean up my lines a bit with these in the later ones. These are some I've done in figure drawing so far. Some of them were done blind by the way. So if you see random looking scribbles that's what that is. They're on 18x24 newsprint. Some of them are like 2-3 minutes but most of them are 3. The last few are my favorite I think, but a lot of them came out really fuzzy :/ I'm a mediocre photographer lol. Also the camera isn't all that great.

[lionheartGFX]

oh man oh man oh man, im so psyched for you entering any level of art instruction, dude work your ASS off i know you can get better! if youre working with grids why not use carapace? is the most amazing thing ever programmed for making perspective grids you can see how to use it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akBuqIdEp00 look it up on google its from epic games i think its in their blog haha those lates figures look alot more constructed than the ones before, work from simple to complex this is the ultimate lesson i have learned in all of my ventures in to the drawing shebang, anyways im gonna stop rambling now haha and btw dont apologize for making heavy text entries i fucking love those! im entering art school myself in a few months and i would love to read your expierence on it so you better dont stop! and come by my sb if im slacking i give you permission to kick my ass once in a while!

[Veneq]

Yo just dropping by to give you info on Crimson Daggers - I saw you asking for info in Dave's sketchbook. Joining is simple - just sign up on the forums over there and start posting stuff: http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/

Then stay on top of who is streaming here: http://livestreamstatuslist.appspot.com/

But the group itself isn't really that active these days as far as official challenges go - it's run by Dave and Dan Warren but both of them are way too swamped with work. So maybe check out the mentoring stuff and try to latch onto some of those mini groups.

Anyway, see you over there and keep up the hard work!

[GrayPersona]

hey dichotomy nice studies I think though you would benefit more from doing exact studies than loose sketches try doing a bargue study or a still life where you copy exactly what you see-it will train your eye and sharpen your perception.

[Beartankmaster]

lionheartGFX

thanks for the encouragement man that program looks pretty interesting. I don't know how long i'll be using the grid though. I eventually want to move to freehand. I've still got my goal of trying to do three times the homework also I've kept up with it on the quantifiable stuff I think, though I still have more mannikins to draw lol . But yeah I feel like I need to work harder all the time.

So far as art school experience goes I'm not really in an art school lol. I'm kind of just takin some art classes at my local community college. I think where I go to school will matter less than how hard I work though. But yeah it's been chill. My drawing teacher is having us move to negative space drawings and we're starting to get more geometric in figure drawing.

I had the craziest model yesterday. He was a retired airforce officer but looking at him you wouldn't guess it at all. He was probably in his late 40s, black and had a lot of tattoos and piercings. Also he had a purple goatee. He disrobed and he had body piercings like everywhere as well. He had what looked like wedding rings hanging from his penis lol. It made me wonder if that was all the times he'd been married or something and he kept them up there as some sort of trophy system.

But yeah he was actually a really good model and held some pretty difficult looking poses. I really appreciated the effort he put into it. I think I've spent too much time on the internet, I was too jaded to even blink when I saw his genital piercings but some other people gasped a bit. lol

Pierce

Thanks so much for the info dude! Kind of bummed to hear it's not very active but that's okay. Maybe it just needs new people or a spark of energy =D!

GrayPersona

YOU WANT A BARGUE STUDY!? YOU'RE GONNA GET A BARGUE STUDY! I'll probably have it up in the next couple of days =D thanks for droppin by and giving some advice man

In the meantime here's another mannikin still life.

[Beartankmaster]

I'm not happy with this one. I think I didn't push the values enough in graphite and it reads all blurry as a result. Compressed charcoal is Jesus also.

[Izene]

Awesome Perspective studies!!

[Beartankmaster]

Thanks Izene

quick update: my computer is being kind of retarded and not connected to my printer so I'm not able to scan anything right now. I've been trying to fix it the last couple of days. I could also take pictures I guess but I can't find my camera and the quality on my phone is pretty terrible.

I'll be posting soon though, just letting you guys know I haven't died.

[Beartankmaster]

more gestures from figure drawing. gonna post more today.

[Beartankmaster]

Some negative space drawings. That Bargue study is gonna be commin up in a bit

[Nusku]

Awesome sketch book man!

[Beartankmaster]

Thanks Nusku


some quick hands for class

[Nusku]

Thanks Nusku


some quick hands for class

Looks awesome! Good job!

[eroquii]

Nice to see that you're mixing your studies up! It's good that you're thinking about the hands in terms of construction too. Were these from life or photo?

[Beartankmaster]

hey eroquii these are from a hogarth handout my figure drawing teacher passed out lol. she wants us to draw those and a couple of others including the skeletal structure of the hand before drawing hands from life *shrug

[Beartankmaster]

I woke up from a nightmare a little bit ago. Probably like half an hour. I wanted to record it so that I'll remember it. I also want to paint some figures from it. The dream had started when I was in a hotel. There were mice in it and when I saw a couple of them they froze. I reached for a little airsoft pistol that, for some reason, was nearby and tried to shoot one. Before I pulled the trigger it started to negotiate about making a deal or something but I remember getting some sort of impression of insidious intent from it so I shot it anyway. The BB bounced off it's head and didn't really have any effect. The mouse had an oddly segmented tail, a little bit like a scorpion's though it didn't have a barb at the end. It's paws were bulbous and pale gray. The mouse said he was actually part of some guild or w/e and the next thing I remember about the dream was that I went to some party or gathering type thing where the mice were kind of bartering large TVs, video game consoles, dirtbikes, hookers, etc. to stay in people's houses. There were a lot of mice as well as people there and they had kind of set up a "demo house" which showed everything that would be offered in the homes of the humans who let the mice inhabit their houses. I think I had gone with a friend of mine, James; same guy I tried to draw sleeping. We were walking around and I remember feeling a vague sense of disgust at the people there who were laughing and having a good time. It struck me as odd that they were willing to live a life of filth and complacency for some shiny baubles that they could acquire themselves if they'd work a bit. I think we left the party after that.

The next part I remember is going to James' house but it wasn't his normal house. It was a pretty nice mansion. I showed up late and the weather was bad so he was a little peeved off. I don't remember why, but he had a machete on his back lol. I think we were going to play some prank on his dad or something because he to told me to be quiet so I wouldn't wake him up. I don't remember why I did this other than to be obnoxious but after that I ran around jumping on the furniture making as much noise as possible and then ran out the door making it would look like James had made all the noise to anyone who might come downstairs. While doing this I was checking behind the furniture I was jumping on for mice lol.

I ran over to the side of James' house after that and watched through his outside window as he appeared to be making frustrated gestures and trying to explain something to someone =D I assumed it was his dad and laughed a bit. Eventually he came outside and somehow found me. He told me I was an asshole, to which I didn't object, and then whipped out a grappling hook. We were near the same wall that his dad's bedroom window was on so I think he was going to throw it up or something and try to climb up.

On the side of the house there was a kind of window well. I don't remember how deep it was but all of it was visible above ground. Inside of it was a female moose who was just standing there and a girl with no mouth. The girl was young, she was hovering slightly above the ground, and she had no shoes. She wore a gray nightgown type garment that came down to her midshins with sleeves that came down to the middle of her forearms. Her hair was a very light, almost gray, shade of brown. It came down to the area in between her shoulder blades. She looked a little like something from a Tim Burton movie. There was a pretty prominent light red scratch mark where her mouth should have been and a few other tinier scratchmarks around it. I felt pity for her. The moose was just a moose but It was female and it's head was probably too big in proportion to the rest of it. These figures have shown up in my dreams in the past. Sometimes the moose has been a horse but it's always stuck at the bottom of this window well thing. I always wonder why no one bothers to rescue them. I had inspected the moose more closely because it had looked somewhat atrophied from standing all the time but then I looked at it's pose and realized it had developed what I thought to be a very efficient stance for posing and that the static tension of standing all the time had kept his muscles somewhat intact.

I looked at James and said "That moose kicks ass at standing." and kind of traced his gesture with my arm. James looked like he got it and laughed. Anyway it was raining and this window well thingy that they were in was filling up with water. It was about knee level with the moose. I had remembered from a previous dream that the moose never drowned or died. It just kind of sat there chewing it's twig in a cartoony fashion. I saw there were latches on the window that separated me from them and a screen door behind it so I figured if I cracked it I could drain the water and save them some sort of unpleasantness even if they could breathe underwater lol.

The girl with no mouth is a recurring figure also. There's kind of an urban legend about her(in my dreams, not in real life) that if you make eye contact with her she steals your eyes or something. I had already done this in a previous dream and when I had made eye contact with her she had glared at me pretty intensely and a set of vivid gray eyes manifested on my arm and stayed there. I don't remember what happened after that. I say this to note that I was a bit creeped out by this girl but told myself that she was lonely and I could understand growing to resent people a bit when you've been cut off from them.

I wasn't really afraid of the moose. I was cautious when I was opening the window, as I was going to cut a hole in the screen door material so that he could get out but that was because he was a large animal and he could trample me lol. I basically acted about as carefully as I would with a regular moose in that scenario.

As I was cutting the screen the girl had her back turned to me and I had called out for her to walk out and join us. She twisted backwards with a kind of unnatural speed like she was moving in stop motion(if you've seen The Ring you know what I mean) and glared at me with eyes that were no longer gray but an intense grayish blue. Her eyes would bleed sometimes and it frightened people but I tried to explain to her that she would find people who could understand and that she should come out. Before I could finish this she just started screaming(in my mind O_o) "SHUT UP MATT!" repeatedly. It unsettled me that she knew my name. I'd never spoken to her before; not even in my past dreams. I don't remember if she knew my name in them as well.

I had already made the slit in the screen door at this point and the girl was making jerky movements towards the opening. She started screaming "I HAVE YOUR EYES NOW!" and laughing maliciously. This didn't really bother me so much as the way she was moving; I felt like she was going to try and kill me so as she poked her head through the slit I had made I grabbed her by the throat and drug her out. I didn't really do this with any sort of hatred or anger, usually if I commit a violent act in my dreams I'm pretty detached from it emotionally, this kind of bothers me but I'll get to that later. Anyway so as I was holding her by the throat I reminded her that she'd already had my eyes for a while now(from a previous dream lol) in a matter of fact fashion but I kind of stopped midsentence when I realized this girl had a slightly different hairstyle than the last girl; also I hadn't realized her eyes were a different color until then. My reminder had ended with something like "Actually you already have my eyes. Unless you're a different..." then she cut in cackling that the last girl was her "friend"(she had said this with a kind of deranged glee) and that I too would take her place eventually just as she apparently had. She wasn't at all phased by my hand around her throat and the red slit she had for a mouth was twisted into a weird arc that vaguely looked like a smile. She looked happy and I remember thinking that it was nice to see her that way after she had been looking so sad but then recalling that her intent wasn't so great .__. lol.

The thought of having bleeding eyes and no mouth wasn't pleasant, but I figured that I'd eventually find people who understood my circumstance so I wasn't all that daunted. I tried to tell her that I had faith in human kindness but she started screaming "JUST LIKE ME! YOU'LL BE JUST LIKE ME!" she repeatedly screamed the "Just like me!" bit and she had interrupted me while I was making my statement so then I started screaming my message at her and we both kind of just screamed the same words at each other like two children arguing =D.

Here's the fucked up bit though. As I was screaming at her I got the intent that she was trying to kill me with her eyes again(this sounds so retarded typing it out but it made sense when I was in "dream logic" mode) so I pulled out a pocket knife my uncle had given me when I was a kid(it was odd that I had that knife because I lost it years ago) and stabbed her in one eye with the knife looped through to the other(kind of like a fucked up sewing needle scenario). I didn't really feel anything when I did this. It was kind of mechanical. It also didn't phase the girl, she just kept on smiling and screaming her message.

I woke up after that but I've noticed a few recurring patterns in my nightmares. One of which being that I've committed pretty gruesome acts of violence, usually involving the eyes, on things that have been trying to kill or harm me but to no effect. I'm actually relieved at this as I think it would have bothered me a lot if the girl had started screaming in pain or something. I hadn't really wanted to hurt her :/. I remember a lucid dream I had once(a dream where you realize you're dreaming) where a disembodied head on the ground was inching towards me and trying to eat my toes, kind of like those prank teeth that chatter. I kicked him back a few times but he kept coming towards me and when I looked for an exit to the room there was none so I picked up a hammer that was lying on the ground and slammed the claw end into one of his eyes. I remember hesitating a bit before doing it and thinking "Is it messed up that I'm dreaming about mutilating a person's eye?" then I decided that the head thing wasn't even a real person and that while this wasn't quite a nightmare yet, it might go that way if I didn't deal with the thing. It didn't have any effect of course the head just kept coming towards me with a hammer in his eye(lol =D) I saw a door shortly after this though and walked out annoyed.


I'm not usually able to kill any of the antagonists in my dreams. I used to just run away from things in my nightmares. They'd always find me though. It didn't matter if I'd run through some sort of convoluted labyrinth or if the odds of them taking the same path as me were astronomical; they'd always catch up somehow. I feel like I've grown more as a person lately and I'm quite a bit more confident. I don't run from things in my nightmares anymore but I can't ever seem to kill them. I can trap them or subdue them physically but they never show any signs of damage other than the obvious physiological wounds. Again though, I think I'm thankful for this. It would bother me more if I felt like my actions were actually causing them pain. What does bother me however is that I do these things with such a detached and matter of fact attitude. Usually the acts of violence I commit aren't even motivated by anger or fear they're just kind of an unfortunate necessity in my mind. Idk it just seems a bit sociopathic to me.

I think I'm a pretty sympathetic person in reality, I don't know that I'd ever be capable of killing someone or harming them to any serious degree but I'm pretty ruthless in my dreams; to the point of taking proactive measures to nip perceived threats in the bud before they evolve into nightmares.

I had read somewhere that if you have a recurring antagonist in your dreams you may be able to gain some insight into yourself by asking it what it wants. I don't know if that's pop psychology bullshit but I think if I see that girl again and realize I'm dreaming I'm going to ask her what she wants.

I think I'm going to paint her and the moose.




on a side note I haven't stopped drawing . it's been mostly schoolwork. I'll upload it soon.

[Beartankmaster]

Been a while since I updated. This isn't everything. There's been a bit of schoolwork as well that I haven't gotten around to photographing. It's a lot of negative space drawings and gestures from figure drawing. Pretty much the same stuff you've been seeing but a bit bigger.

I feel like I'm getting better at perspective but establishing the depth of the cube from the midline seems kind of arbitrary for me. I'm not sure if I'm doing it correctly. I know I'm not in the first few examples.

The method is on page 36 of Successful Drawing if anyone knows what I'm talking about and can explain it. That'd be awesome lol. also the full circle plan on page 33 O_O it's a bit of a mindbender.

I don't even know how clearly these read. I was trying to use differently colored pens to kind of help with it but it's still a bit convoluted. I think I want to try and be as efficient as I can with my construction lines now.

Drawing from 2d feels so weird now after drawing from life for a while. I don't really like it honestly. I feel like it's not challenging so much as tedious anymore. It's nice to see how other artists have represented things though.

That Bargue study is coming up. I know I said this already but I'm serial .__. lol