Sketchtastic!

[Joce]

nice studies keepem commin

[Kungfoowiz]

Heya

For making scales, there isn't really a quick way to go about it, other than to set up a grid and then using it to guide how you make each scale. Hope that helps.

Keep those studies up.
Edward

[Ryan K]

This might be a stupid question but... How would i do that?

Gestures are quick sketches of poses and their rhythm. You drawn them anywhere between 15 and 120 seconds, I think 30-60 seconds is best to get into it. And they're great for loosening up before getting into more serious drawings.

Check out Glenn Vilppu anatomy books, he focuses foremost on gesture before getting into the figure.

ALSO: This is a great tool to start with, Pose Maniacs timed gestures.

[element1988]

thx for the help guys and man i didn't know pose maniacs had this tool lol imma have some fun with this tyty

[element1988]

Ok so ive been doing them 30 second poses for about an hour now, i still cant do anything but scribbles in that time lol. Is this what im suppose to do? will this help me if i keep doing it?

Anyway i did like 200 pages of sketches but im only gunna show these 4, 1. because im too lazy to scan them all lol and 2. because i don't see the point in scanning 200 pages of scribbles

[element1988]

Day 2 of the 30 sec poses and i really don't feel like im learning anything

Well here they are... nonsense scribbles

[Craz]

I have some advice about your scribbles.
Start with 1 minute poses until you get more comfortable with the idea, then move on to 30 second poses after a few sessions.
SLOW DOWN. Look at the pose, understand it, understand its planes and the way its form occupies space.
Draw your understanding of the reference, like what you were doing with the velociraptor. Don't just rush into copying. Make the poses as long as you need to start off with. Then push yourself with time.
This also relates to Bridgman. (I'm half-guessing that some of these studies you're doing are from Bridgman.) He's all about forms and blocks and planes. His writing is a bitch to understand, but if you realize that what he's doing is showing you the way that the human form is constructed on a basic level, then you can extract very valuable studies from him. To do gestures, you need to know the form that is gesturing. If you're gesturing a spine, a torso, a head, and a pelvis (as simple as you can get), you need to know how the forms of those body parts occupy space. The truth of how they are constructed is in the teachings of Bridgman. I strongly recommend Marshall Vandruff's streaming class for a full lesson on Bridgman and form vs. anatomy if CA still has it On Demand. It is invaluable. If they aren't offering it anymore, I suggest finding another teacher who can take you through Bridgman.

Now here's a challenge for you: once you build up your understanding of form (doesn't even have to be by much), do some Posemaniacs sketches, but rotate them in your head. Draw the same pose you see, but from a very different angle. That way, you force yourself to apply your knowledge and practice manipulating it.

Practice is fairly useless unless you are applying your knowledge. Study. Think while you draw every single time and your skills will improve much faster than if you just draw.

P.S.: The studies of anatomy and form should be learned in tandem.

Hope this all helps.

[element1988]

thx for the great advice. I will give your challenge a try at some point, it sounds really hard XD

[George Abraham]

I think it's important early on to flex your mental muscle on what gesture should mean for you. This is my personal approach but I think it's a neccecary angle to atleast think about.

Think of gesture first in terms of action, it's more about what you feel than about what you actually see.

If you have no experience with gesture scetches at all, spend some time looking at gestures and copying it with your own body, trying to express what they are, after a while look at gestures then mentally feel what those gestures could feel like, even what those people could be feeling having that gesture or moving like that, you might find your body slightly moving to relate, that's normal.

That should start something off in the way you draw gesture lines. The S curves of action, how you relate on paper to what you feel in what you see. Your abillity to grab character "threads" with your mind and work with them.

Seeing is more like a feedback loop to make sure you keep things true to appearance.

Gesture is about capturing essential action first, to have the communication of what you are looking at down on paper.

It's hard to get the idea behind gesture looking at posing models as they are all kinda dead poses regardless of what position they take on. To get the correct idea behind gesture it would have been better to start with freeze framed action shots of ballerina's, boxers, etc.. etc..

It's about the force of action and communicating that. If you understand that you can move onto studio type poses and capture gesture in terms of bodily positions of limbs etc. action poses ususally look at ellements of emotion, surprize, elegance, grace, aggression, motion, body language etc in the studio you might look at stuff like, squareness, roundness, rythm of the pose individual character most of them might have "dead weight poser feel to them though" usually what happens is the artist injects personal distortions of life into the drawings intentionally or accidentally because of the way they felt or the mind generating some dream distortion to escape the boredome and these end up looking great compared to a photo of a model posing drifting into a daydream while people draw.

As you advance with gesture it combines with the idea of capturing critical information, that's personal in that you prioritize what pieces of information is important to get.

What gesture are used for is to have a snap shot, or an artist recording of someting he saw that he or she can work from to create more completed scetches but having retained the original gesture/action/communication/feeling/idea/energy/memory.

[element1988]

zaorr: wow man, that actually made a lot of sense to me lol i think im starting to understand

[element1988]

60 sec sketches, a little better then the 30 secs ones lol, but i just started using painter 10, and i really like how i can hide the pallets and sketch while having the 30 second pose app running. its a lot of fun. oh and i think im starting to understand rhythms.

[element1988]

I'm still messing around with painter and have no idea what im doing, but im having a lot of fun figuring it out lol. this is like some random pose that i thought i would shade but then realized i didn't know how in painter, so this is the end result lol

[Craz]

Something you may want to do in Painter is make a simple brush with a circle dab (a variant on the Flat Color brush, found in the pens section) and make its opacity pressure sensitive. I find that to be a good basic brush, and it's probably the brush I use most often. Keep in mind that opacity in Painter is different from opacity in Photoshop. Painter work with dabs. That one image that the engine just repeats. Opacity changes the transparency of each individual dab. Having a brush with opacity sensitive to pressure is going to help with rendering immensely.

In case you don't know, to make a variant on the Flat Color brush:

Open a new file and make an image of some kind. Anything. Make sure it's on the canvas layer.->
Select->
All->
Up in the top right, on the bush bar, there's a triangle. Click it.->
Capture brush category->
Name it.->
Pens Category->
Flat Color->
Triangle again.->
Copy variant->
Select your new category.->
Go to your new brush if it doesn't take you there.->
You can either triangle, then Show Brush Creator (this may cause Painter to spaz out), or->
Window->
Brush controls->
Show General.

Once there, change the Opacity expression to pressure.

Poses look a lot better. Keep at it. Keep thinking.

[element1988]

wow thx man this should really help out

[Ellijah Sakovsky]

Thanks 4 drop in your SB is cool too) hardwork is da best )

[element1988]

More 60 sec poses... I think im getting worse... That's not good

[Kungfoowiz]

Mmm, you could try doing a more detailed study of the torso on its own, and then go back to full body gestures again, that could help I think.

Edward

[element1988]

Yeah...Ive been away for many months haha i thought about giving up art and just doing anything to make money, but as time went on i was still doing doodles and little nonsense sketches then a modeler friend wanted a model sheet doing so i did that..so i guess im back. i just cant get away heh.



Man look at them chunky neck muscles heh, so you can see i haven't got a whole lot better

[element1988]

Just some head sketches today, im really trying to understand how to turn 3d objects in my mind. Ive always struggled with 3/4 view which is strange because a lot of people say its one of the easiest. i just dunno, but its something i have to push through, up to now all my 3/4 heads have look like a 3/4 with the features from a front view pasted on.

Im also trying to better understand light and shadow, there so many topics to learn i just have to pick my fights day by day

These are both from imagination..duh

[element1988]

umm another day.. trying to warm up with a bird gah

[element1988]

Someone save me from my own crappyness. For some reason i can get a grip on hair at all... i try and try and nothing? blah more study required i guess. anyway this is nasty...but maybe someone can help me fix whatever is wrong with me

[element1988]

WIP, meh suckage.

[element1988]

poses and stuff, gotta try something, im sucking. i look at somthing...draw it look back at my work and its totally screwed up.. i cant see things for what there really are? or my hand sucks? not sure..

[Asterisks]

working hard I see! You've got some pretty good animal drawings here. And I think your head studies are getting better along the way. Keep up the good work.

[element1988]

nose studies....

[element1988]

the small ones are fast studies i did from reference, then after getting the info i needed i did a more detailed version from memory. yea it looks like the other way around but its true.

[Captain Maelstrom]

I like your stuff so far. Somebody else mentioned and I agree, your animals are your strong point thus far.

Some of the studies you've done are really good, too. Like the back muscles and the arms. You're getting a good idea of where those bones and muscles are, and that's good.

How to do hair?
Hm. Blocks. Big shapes. Don't draw hairs, draw hair.

I did a mediocre paint-over, hopefully you can see what I'm talking about.


Draw the shapes of the main locks/tresses of hair. Then put medium values and highlights on the locks of hair.

If you did that from a photo, PM me the photo and I'll try to make a better paint-over.

I also want you to practice putting more contrast in your drawings/sketches. A full range of values: black/very dark/dark/medium dark/medium/medium light/light/very light/near white/white.

This makes them easier for the eye to determine the form of the subject being drawn.

Also, I really liked your digital still-lifes. Even the garlic was good I think.

Keep it up.

[element1988]

That head was just from memory, no photo.

"Don't draw hairs, draw hair" that's a great quote and i will remember it haha.

The thing about contrast for me is, that if i go really dark and really light everything just becomes a mess. Im not sure how to control it i feel like if i put a bit of near black here then i have to put it somewhere else and so on, then whatever im doing just becomes darker and darker. So i guess that's why ive started doing this thing where i only use light and dark gray tones...i am aware of it tho.

I think the reason why my animals seem to be a little better is because when i was a kid all i did was draw animals lol. i had tons of animal books i would draw from so... Yeah now im struggling with things that are a little more important

Thx for your paint over BTW, i do understand what you mean its just a little hard putting it into practice, finding the right shapes and so on.

[element1988]

Some lips...oddly i always thought i was ok at lips but these were a real struggle for me... it might just be that my copying skills are really bad tho.

[element1988]

and ears wraps it up, it was actually pretty hard finding pics of ears but w/e. that takes care of facial features for now.