first sketchbook in my life

[Polidactyl]

so, I saw some pretty amazing art the other day while browsing deviantart, and decided that I wanted to improve upon my horrible drawing skills. maybe after a year or two I'll start to see some improvement, but until then I'll just try to sketch a thing or two every day. Any advice or criticism would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I tried making the images smaller, but didn't know how :<

EDIT: nevermind, looks like the problem fixed itself.

[Kayshay]

Hey looks like we are in the same boat. These people here will give you some great advice, but my advice to you would be work on perspective, draw from life, get some books and do some anatomy studies. There are plenty of free ones online(books that is). Just draw as much as you can and don't get discouraged!

[wings of fantasy]

hey! keep practicing! i'd suggest you practice drawing more confidently and make a line in single confident stroke.

if you're getting what i mean


make construction lines lighter and then make the final dark lines. try to finalize one drawing

[wings of fantasy]

hey! keep practicing! i'd suggest you practice drawing more confidently and make a line in single confident stroke.

if you're getting what i mean


make construction lines lighter and then make the final dark lines. try to finalize one drawing

[Polidactyl]

thanks for the comments here's another sketch. I have to admit, it's pretty hard to do straight lines in a single stroke, so I tried doing what you said and used lighter construction lines.

[Polidactyl]

I tried my hand at drawing an apple, and realized that I have no idea how to shade. I resorted to scribbling lines, then smudging them a bit with my finger. also, illustrating the different grooves and curves and such are very hard for me to do. EX: the area around the stem where the apple curves inward.

[Polidactyl]

When it comes to drawing hands, I feel like I'm taking one step forward and two steps back. #2 turned out better than I thought it would - I realized that I can only draw closed hands. Drawing the spaces in between fingers throws me off, as you can see in #3-4. Any tips for drawing hands? Or is it just a matter of practice?

And also, an apple, because everybody loves apples :>

[Polidactyl]

So it feels like basic shapes are getting easier to draw. If you can guess what each object is, then at least I'll know that I'm heading in the right direction :p

Any tips, advice, criticism? I could really use some right about now.

Also, my scanner makes the shading lighter than it actually is. The downside of not having a tablet D: Is there a good, economic tablet out there that anyone can recommend to me?

[Kanda]

What kind of pencil are you using? Because if you want to try rendering you'll have an easier time using a softer pencil (2B to 4B), but you'll have to look out for smudging when using this kind of pencil, also softer pencils are darker and may help your sketches to show up more on a scanner.

There are many different ways to render and it's really just a matter of experimenting until you find a way that suits you best. In the apple sketch your shades are much too light, a lot of people make the mistake of shading too light and not making their shadows dark enough. Again, you'll have an easier time using a softer pencil for this. Also if you're going to smudge your pencil you should use a paper stump (a q-tip works as a cheap alternative) rather than hands. If you are going to use your hands to smudge cover them with tissue paper, this will keep your hands clean and avoid unwanted graphite fingerprints/smudges appearing around your sketches (this is just me speaking from personal experience).

As for construction lines, a hard pencil (2H-H) is good because they make a very light grey on the paper. Then you can use a darker grade pencil for the final lines and rendering.

Hope this helps you

[Polidactyl]

Hmm, I didn't think of that. This is the first I've heard of such pencils - I'll be sure to look around online to find a set to use for my sketches. And thanks for letting me know about the smudging tools - beats having to wipe off my hands after every drawing session :p

Many thanks for your help! :>

[Palespyder]

I would second the Perspective notes above. Your stuff is pretty good, but you could really step them up by applying the rules of perspective. The Game Cube above is a great example. All of the elements are there, but it appears flat. If you were to apply a bit of perspective to it, you could make even a line drawing feel more like a 3d object in space. That is one of the harder things for me is thinking about the object as a material item in a space and not as a line drawing.

[Cojac]

Do you know about Andrew Loomis and George Bridgman books, try studying from them it helped me a lot.

[Polidactyl]

Thanks for all the advice, guys. I found a website with most of the Loomis books in the form of PDF files, and will be studying from those from now on

I briefly tried some perspective in this one with the cubes and sphere, I might expand on this tomorrow.