My frumious newbious sketchery

[Frumious Me]

Hello! This'll be my first post here on CA, although I've been lurking for a while. Since there's no "Introduction" thread, I figured I'd just jump in and start a sketchbook. I've been drawing seriously (studying anatomy books and such) for about 3 years, although I'm pretty bad about committing time to it. I bought a Wacom after my first week checking this site out. These are the first three 'real' things I did on it.


This was the first serious drawing I attempted with the tablet. I have a couple hundred little animal cards with a picture on the front and facts on the back from when I was a kid. This is a tuatara and yeah, they're supposed to have scaly skin, but I got kind of lazy after his eye and ridges so he looks sort of amphibious.


I did this a couple days later. Used the cards for reference again. This is a European smooth snake. I tried to get more precise details which just kind of made it look pixelly and sharpened. Also, his color was killing me. It's still not right. I've used almost exclusively mechanical pencils before, so colors aren't one of my strengths.


It kind of looks like I'm smirking arrogently or something, doesn't it? I swear I'm not. Uhm, I didn't use a reference for this, but I did 2 or 3 pencil SPs in the preceding week, so I just did it at the same angle I did those. I couldn't get my lips to look right, and the whole thing has kind of a cartoon feel, although I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just the hard outline I used on the edges?

So! That's my introduction. Nice to meet those of you who stop by. Please critique, nitpick, or tear me down, as the situation warrants. I hope I can prove as worthwhile a member of this wonderful site as it deserves.

[Frumious Me]

Quickish big hand studies, small hand freehands, and a page full o' junk.

[Evxyza92]

some cool stuff here try working on some new stuff, such as the guy with the gas mask make a full body edpiction of him it would be pretty damn cool to see good job

[rmore]

very nice start, would love to see more.

[Frumious Me]

Thanks for the kind words rmore and Ev. I was messing around with body designs for gas mask dude, but they were all more SWAT(...ty?) than I wanted. Looked like a storm trooper if he worked for the NSA or something. Probably didn't help that I was referencing SS soldiers, holsters, utility belts, and kevlar vests.

Anyway, this is a Hellboy pic! It sometimes seems like some kind of requirement to do one Hellboy pic, but no more! It's not really a 'sketch' because I think I spent almost 5 hours on it overall the past few days. But 3/4 of that was trying to get his damn horns to curl correctly. I think the closer one is supposed to be more of a straight line, but I COULD NOT make that look like it was curving with shading. So I eventually just bent it back a bit and hoped it doesn't look like it's at too wonky an angle.

[Frumious Me]

Some crappy building sketches from a nearby church and La-Z-Boy. I really need to work on buildings and environmental stuff. Gonna force myself to suck it up and post some, no matter how bad they are, in the next week.

Figure practice from the picture used in FredFlickstone's tutorial. My mechanical pencil seems to have trouble laying in dark shades. I forget what the hardness of my current lead is... Actually, I don't even know if it's better to have harder or softer lead for darker lines. Used yellow 2h pencils for too many years.

Anyway, also this zebra. (I think putting it in thumbnail form will make it the thumbnail for the thread? Right?)(Edit: Turns out it's not a thumbnail. I have no idea why.)(Edit Edit: After editing, it showed up as a thumbnail, so now I'm just very confused. Whatever.)

Zebra's from a full-page pic in an old "Ranger Rick" of mine I found. Took about 3 hours, I think. About 1 for the base sketch, making sure I got all the stripes in the right place, although I was doing it while cruising the site, so it may have been less. I stayed away from pure white and black for his stripes, as I've heard people say you should do. I wonder if perhaps that rule applies quite as much to zebras? The blacks don't look too light though. I got lazy about making his fur look furrier.

[Mike Frank]

For pencils the lead goes 8h -> 2h, H, F, HB, B, 2B -> 8b .. hardest to softest.. the harder it is the lighter a mark it makes, softer is darker. Get your hands on something that can make dark marks.. I personally use an HB but it can be a little hard to make a black with it sometimes. Try them all out and use whatever you're comfortable with. Your thread is off to a good start though keep em coming!

[Lee W]

Nice work on the zebra head if you go edit the first post (and click on advance), use the image manager to upload the image and save changes. That will set the image to be the thread thumbnail.

I personally like using a b or 2b lead, it is light enough for sketching and can put in reasonably dark marks.

and welcome to our group

[Jska]

Welcome to the group! I like your digital stuff, you're handling colors pretty well! You're a fan of Hellboy too eh? My fave comic Keep posting!

[EKU_11]

Good digital stuff and welcome to the group.

[Frumious Me]

I did this last night after doodling for an hour or so. I'm going to work on it more, although I'm not sure where to take it. I just kinda like the attitude, or something. Figure I'll post it in stages, editing this post each time.

Side note: I've been uploading all my stuff as JPEGs because it seemed the hip thing to do, but is there any benefit to this? GIFs are so much smaller and I don't see any difference in quality.

Second side note: Jska, you use mechanical pencils. Do you know where to get a variety of lead hardnesses? The only place I've found anything besides HB is Staples, and all they had was 2B, 2H, and colored (red) lead. It also turns out they were all .5 and my pencils are .7, so they just fall out anyway.

My posts are so disorderly...

[Jska]

Hey Frumious!

To answer your question, probably through DickBlick.com. I work with them - we have a pretty good variety of lead that comes from Pentel. I think you can probably go to Pentel directly even for a fuller line - sometimes its hard to find anything softer than a 2b (it would probably break), but I think you can atleast get up to a 6H is hardness! /supplynerd

Last pic is good, I would have liked to see some lighter line weights on her soft frame. Maybe this is what you were going for. What the hell is she doing though haha - that's all I can think about when I look at it

[Lee W]

hmm I never see anything other than hb for .7 mechanical pencils, if you using lead that thick, try using lead holders. You can get leads in all grades from various brands. And they got little sharpeners that can get it to a really good point.

[Frumious Me]

Reply with no art. Woot! Her outlines are only so hard because she was a loose sketchy thing at first. Part of the work later would either be thinning them down or eliminating them entirely. As for what she's doing? Fingerpainting with menstrual blood! Isn't is obvious? Maybe I'll expand the bottom right to show what she's writing/drawing (I currently have no idea what it might be). I was curious about any C+C on the light at this point. I haven't been experimenting much with colored light, but the orange/blue on this I thought actually looked okay.

Looking online for stuff = genius. It never occurs to me to do it until someone else suggests it. As for lead holders, I have no idea what they are. Heh.

Also, thanks for the kind words guys. Seriously though, crit something. There's gotta be something wrong with something. I can take it!

[Lee W]

lead holders are similar to mechanical pencils except the thickness of the lead is about the same as those found in regular writing pencils. The advantages is that it can produces more line variety and easier to change the lead than with mechanical pencils. (though having multiple mechanical pencils can eliminate the second advantage). I actually use both, the lead holders for broad loose sketches and rendering while the mechanical pencils are used for the fine details/rendering.

[EKU_11]

I think her face looks a bit manish and I learnt what lead holder should get one of them.

[Frumious Me]

The manliness of her face is sort of intentional. Whenever I draw tough or bitchy girls, I tend to make them mannish in either face/body/or behavior just because I don't like girls always appearing so 'typically' feminine. I might change her face when I get to it though. It'll depend on what she's painting and what kinda background I throw in.

The update on bloody man girl is pretty straightforward. I tightened up her outline some, and darkened the shadows, although I need some darker shadows for outlines (hard to tell with the black outline on). Wasn't sure it was worth even posting this update, but whatever.

Thanks for the tips on leads and such. Haven't checked out any supply sites yet though.

What I DID do was go into New York yesterday and while I was there I picked up a watercolor pen from Kinonukiya for $6, having heard about them on the New York local artist group thread. Messed around with it some today using old watercolors (haven't touched them in about 12 years now, I think). The maroon/brown/mountain looking thing in the last pic is supposed to be an iris, which are purple. But blue+red did not equal purple for me. It was fun anyway though! Will definitely be doing more watercolor experimentation.

[Lee W]

watercolor is such a hard medium to control ... well actually, any medium what has to do with color is hard for me anyhow, waiting to see those experiments

[unknown_epiphany]

Am i the only one who uses drawing pencils? j/k... pretty good for watercolor doodles... I myself have never been good at controlling them. my car paintng was the best i ever did and that took like a month. good to see you expanding and experimenting.

[Jska]

Hey Frumious! Watercolors are coming along. A thing you might want to consider - to *control* your water colors (just a tad) - do your line work, then wet a specific shape out of that linework. If you add watercolor pigment to this saturated section, the pigment will only spread as far as the border. (I hope that makes sense!) You can do a lot of different gradations in little areas with a bit more control this way. Also, don't forget - because watercolors are a transparent medium, they are meant to work in layers. Build up subtle layers of color and see how that works for you... all in all, its never a bad thing to just mess around

[Evxyza92]

i saw the girl you drew i see what you mean, you mean like butch dike lesbo types, yeah the face does work

[Frumious Me]

Uhm.. Some small cartoony pen stuff I did at Denny's that I gave a quick-like coloring in photoshop. I don't do stuff like it often but I thought they were cute. My original intention was to watercolor them, but I ended up liking the pictures too much to want to risk 'ruining' them. The empty space in both of them was originally overflowing with pictographic word bubbles, but I edited those out.

Naked dude. I censored him, since I'm not sure what the policy is on nudity warnings in thread names and I didn't want lots of people seeing a warning, expecting females, then leaving me lots of nasty comments!

Finally, not sure that "butch dike lesbo" was what I was going for with her, but close enough I guess. I gave her a setting and have decided I'm going to finish it; even if it takes till next Christmas. I keep calling it 'the birthing spell' in my head, so whatever. Basically, she's summoned a demon to insert it's soul into her infant daughter so that she too can become a witch. Yeah, it's still really really really rough. But I figured base concept would be a good time to get crits. Uhm, this is it at 8% of original size, which is why the purple brush strokes look so bad. My computer really can't handle a 10500 pixel wide image! I'll probably copy and paste out portions to work on them, then insert them back in or something.

[EKU_11]

Good to have some kind of story behind your work the idea sounds or to familiar, why not a dead former president giving her his soul to run the white house again. Naked dude is well done bar his fingers look to small.

[Frumious Me]

EKU, I wasn't really going for a super-creative idea in the first place, (although I didn't think it was THAT hackneyed). Didn't you see the design of the demon? Creativity isn't something I'm markedly good at. Maybe you're right and I'm shooting too low though. I'll try to think of something more unusual next time.

Anyway, a skull and a SP. I blew out my eye because I couldn't make it match the other one. So I said 'screw this!' and made it a bloody hole. My upper lip is too pronounced. Zoomed out it looks kind of like a chimp's.

[Fiergon]

This stuff looks freaking awesome. Ears are a little tiny, though. Especially on the Hellboy pic, which looked really creepy wit' 'dem teeny little ears.

I usually draw the ears from the eyebrow to the upper-lip. Like, that space between the upper lip and the nose, where mustaches usually are. I don't remember the technical name (if any) for it. You get what I mean. XD

[unknown_epiphany]

Your digital work is getting better each and every time you post. I wanna see some more watercolor studies.

[Frumious Me]

The ear thing: Thank you. I actually hadn't noticed that at all. I guess I thought Hellboy's ear was foreshortened or something. I might have a tendency to draw ears small because I've been told my ears are slightly small. I think it's just that my head is rather large (I usually need special hats), but whatever. I'll remember that eyebrow to nose rule. Hadn't seen it before. Anyway, I keep meaning to practice more with watercolors, but I'm so afraid of new mediums. I go for what's comfortable and pick up a pencil instead...

Which is why I have this sketch of an awesome lady from the paper! I saw her over someone else's shoulder and demanded they give me the page when they were done! It's not the greatest likeness, but still worth posting, I guess. Now with scanned in reference too! Isn't she cool? I invite you all to draw her! It is so. much. god. damn. fun.

Sorry for the gigantic post for 1 (3?) drawings.

[Frumious Me]

Intrigued by this week's chow, I decided I'd doodle a mermaid with the intention of watercoloring it. Inspired by some watercolorish mermaid stuff Mignola did, and part of the Thief of Always, a cool children's (sort of) book by Clive Barker. It came out alright, I guess. I fudged her body colors badly, and I liked her head more a couple layers of paint okay. I like the goldfish, although he's less saturated than I was trying for.

[EKU_11]

That one weird looking lady I have a picture of a guy that has that whole excentric thing going on have I’ll have to find, definitely something I would draw. The drawing of her doing that hand thing is the best on and the mermaid is looking good the right breast on your mermaid could go to come up a bit so it more inline with the left one.

[Jska]

Frumious! That lady is freaking SCARY! I kinda want to draw her too... and transform her into witch. Those wrinkles and hair are intense hehehe.

Nice work though - do you have the book "The Art of Hellboy"? If you don't I suggest you pick it up, some of his gouache pieces are fan-fucking-tastic. I'm a total fangirl for Mignola though, can't go wrong there

Good work! Like the sp, even with the bloody hole. Usually eyes DON'T exactly match though, so don't get too torn up about it