rowe's sketchbook

[rowe]

I haven't picked up a pencil and drawn properly since I was about 16, and the other day I suddenly had this burning desire to start again. I just started drawing away with a cheap pencil and it was pretty bad, but reading random articles online has woken up a few of the old skills. I've been drawing random stuff for a couple of weeks now, my main goal is just trying to extrapolate real, three dimensional structure from things, and to get proportions right. Most things I do are horribly two-dimensional. Want to get a tablet at some point and really go wild but for now, I guess draw, draw draw

Any tips/links on the following would be appreciated:

* Taking good camera shots of sketches
* What kind of pencils / tools I should need!

Here's a better thumbnail and then my first two sketches

[Jmob]

hey man, as for tips on taking pictures and such just make sure you have a bright light centered on the thing you want a picture taken of. make sure the settings aren't too demanding so that the time when you click to take the picture to the time it actually takes the picture isn't too long. if it is too long of a wait then the image becomes blurry. as for adjustments (I'm assuming you have photoshop), go to image>adjustments>levels. once you click levels and you have the graph thing, click the white dropper and select the whitest part of your image. Your image should look much better. if the colors turn to a slight color go to image>adjustments>black and white. once you have converted to black and white you will have an image without color. Keep up the hard work man. a mark of a good draftsman is that he has economical lines (as few lines as possible) that suggest form. So my advice would be to limit your lines yet break the lines to suggest where the light is hitting and add lines where things are in front of others. gogogogo

[rowe]

Thanks, increasing the levels really helps! Thanks for the pointer on lines, it's probably why everything looks so flat because I don't break them up

[KateyParr]

As Jmob said about levels, it's exactly what I do and it seems to work quite well.

In terms of pencils, I alwayse use a 2B.Avoid H (hard) pencils and even just a B. Start very lightly, planning and mapping out the form, CONSTRUCTING the shapes. Always think in terms of shapes and don't concentrate on the details untill your sure your shapes are in the right proportion.

Then you can press down harder with your 2B or even get a darker pencil 3B-6B and blocking in shadows. There's a lot of resources out there so try to find more. For now concentrate on understanding the fundamentals of actually constructing your drawings. Understanding perspective and how the object is built and thus shown in the viewers perspective, is fundamental in order for your drawings to look realistic and therefore believable and therefore good! I think a nice expensive set of pencils from 2B - 6b ish is all that you need. I have a tendency to press down too hard when I am starting and therefore when I am trying to correct my lines, they just get darker and darker and it ends up as a smudged and scrappy mess. Do try to avoid this

You can get by well as an artist by drawing what you see and copying what you see however sitting down and truly understanding why something looks like it does, is the real secret when it comes to drawing. Unfortunately it's a hard lesson to learn in which studying studying and drawing drawing are the only ways in which to improve.

Hope this helps, post more studies and get cracking!

[rowe]

Thanks Katey, I picked up some 2B and 3B and started experimenting, I'm leaning towards the 3B, and will have to try a 4B at some point... did loads of gestures with it and its definitively tough controlling the pressure! Anyways here's something I just did, need to learn how to draw hair heh!

[rowe]

Always remember your P's and C's

[rowe]

Today's learning: The human head is essentially two basic intersecting shapes. Practice drawing this from lots of different angles

[rowe]

Well, another day, another ear butchered beyond recognition but at least the face has a bit of structure

[lionheartGFX]

i like the expression and aging lines you did in the neck i ALWAYS forget that do seriously a bunch of those, to so many faces that the features just become engraved in your brain and one day you will wake up and realize that you know how to do kick ass portraits from imagination i want MORE!

[rowe]

Today's learning: Perspective studies! They are like visiting some kind of lonely, vast de Chiricoan dreamscape...If the vanishing points for perpendicular lines are too close together, the composition looks unnatural. When the vanishing points converge, stuff runs into the horizon with obscene spatial distortion. Spreading out the vanishing points creates something more realistic. Why is this?

[rowe]

[magicpudding]

Hey there, welcome to Conceptart.org! Good to see you covering the basics here, all good stuff goin on here. Here are some links which may assist you in your quest. Good luck, and keep fighting the good fight. Glenn Vilippu Michael Hampton Mike Matessi Ctrl+Paint

SB

[karta tajba]

make sure you take your time observing. The ear is going to be on the same line path as the nose.

[rowe]

I shall need to get a decent camera & tripod in the new year, this looked so much better on paper, although it has revealed lots of problems I didn't see!

[rowe]

[rowe]

New year, bought a DSLR camera so the quality of the sketches should improve once I start using it. Just still drawing heads mostly.

[rowe]

I'm happy with this because it's one of the first drawings I've done where soft edges & values have worked. Having said that the perspective is wrong (the line near the top of the holed end is not parallel to the line at the other end), and the hole doesn't seem to have any real depth. I've noticed this is a problem for beginners looking at other studies, I supect the shadow running down in the hole needs to be parallel with the rest of the form. Drawing what you see is bloody hard

I really need to get the right USB cable for this DSLR so I can get sharper images. Must see what stores are open on a sunday

[rowe]

Well, using a better camera but still need to learn how to use it better and get these levels right too. I've started seriously with Dodson's "Keys To Drawing" (shoe and hand exercises) and also Norling "Perspective Made Easy" which I will start on tonight....

[rowe]

Made some notes about points of perspective for my scrapbook at lunch today. Quite curious to explore points of perspective > 4 if they even exist.

[rowe]

January has been a slow month, mostly working through Dodson and dicking around with Bridgman. I don't really know if I like Bridgman, the instruction feels vague and the drawings sketchy, like, I could be better off copying something a bit more precise. Anyway, starting to get a feel for shading + values...

[rowe]

Well, I finally got round to getting a tablet. Been crazy past few months, so little study being done but getting to grips with the tablet is a lot of fun. Drawing mostly from Bridgman and getting out and about when I can.

[rowe]