Umbravita's Little Thread of Progress

[Umbravita]

Izene: Thanks!

Vritra: Haha, sorry about the shadows thing, I wasn't thinking about lighting, I was distinguishing the closest face from the others because seeing empty cubes was screwing with my head. I'll be sure to do it properly next time. Thanks!

---

At the four hour mark, probably got at least two to go. I'm doing at least an hour a day on this. The nose is frustrating as heck, but I think I'm getting it down.

[p sage]

Your edges and shapes are improving. Nice job.

[JFierce]

Recent studies are looking good.
Manga studio I grabbed off amazon for 5 bucks.
Figured why not it's cheap. It's an old version but hey 5 bucks why not.

[shiNIN]

The gal with the violin starts to look nice The salarian progresses nicely as well
So boxes helped... I wonder if I would be able to draw a lot of them, it's a lost case if I don't figure out how to make them more interesting. I know simple things are oh so interesting as well (at least real life objects, with reflected light and imperfectness) but sometimes I'm too lazy to do such studies still.

[Clur]

Thanks for stopping by my sketchbook!

Wow, lots of improvement in here, especially in your use of colour. The colours in that Skyrim study are so rich and well-balanced.

I'm excited to see your violinist painting finished! Are you going to add colour later, or leave it greyscale?

[Umbravita]

p sage: Thanks!

JFierce: So cheap? Sweet. I might get it sometime.

shiNIN: It's tedious. As hell. I was bored to tears. But I think it's a good skill, to be able to push through tedium, even though it's the worst skill ever to learn. XD But if you can learn to cope with tedium, you've pretty much got it made.

Thanks! I'm really stuck with the salarian's skin but I like how his armour's turning out, at least.

Clur: Thanks! I'm going to leave it greyscale. Focusing more on value than colour atm.



5 hour mark. God this is boring me to tears, but I'm learning a lot through it. Her right eye (that is, the one on our right) is bugging the shit out of me. I know what's wrong with it -- it's too small, for one -- but I don't know how to fix it without making her look like Derpy Hooves.

[JFierce]

The right eye it may be too long and possibly slightly too tall in comparison. Measure it against the other eye. I'd personally go look in the mirror and tilt your head at that angle and see the difference in eyes. Usually when I see a tilting head, while it depends on the angle usually the far eye on the more narrow side away from the viewer the eye is smaller. While it's the opposite here. Just take the eye. Copy it into a new layer. Use that layer to draw over top then if it's wrong revert to the previous one you have here.

But besides that just keep blocking things in and working up. Add details last. One thing I learned that helps a lot.

[shockowaffel]

A fun exercise to do that felt like it helped me a lot is to choose some pictures (fine nude photos would be good)
and than you reproduce them by only using black on a white background. No outlines, no shading, just black.
This forces you to concentrate hard on the light and the form of the shadow.
It's difficult but really good, imo.

[SMILEFACE]

AWESOME STUDIES Umbravita AN IM REALLY LIKE THE VIOLIN ONE I STARTED LEARN VIOLIN A FEW MONTHS AGO XDXDXD LOOKING FORWARD TO MMRRAAOOOORRRRRRR XDXDXD

[Viconia]

Hey Umbravita, great progress so far. I like that you are focusing on finishing stuff now.

Since her eye was bothering you, I did a little paintover. (hope you don't mind )

Basically just made the right eye bigger, moved the left eye ever so slightly to the right. Ignore the fact that I lightened
the area around her eyes, I just needed to be able to see what I was doing.

Have you been flipping your paintings in Photoshop while working on them? It's really helpful for identifying problems.

[Umbravita]

JFierce -- Thanks! The eyes on the ref seem to be the same size but I'll look closer.

shockowaffel -- Hey, that sounds fun. I should do that next.

SMILEFACE -- How do you find the violin? Been considering learning it.

Viconia: Hey, thanks so much for that. I took a good look at what you did and made some other changes to the eye as well. And yes, I've been flipping the painting as I go. Wondering if I should go so far as to flip it and the ref upside down as well just to get a sense for it! Lol.

---

7hrs. Beginning to think this damn thing will never end, but I'm less impatient now at least.

[Viconia]

Nice improvements on the painting! Imo, the eye on the right still looks a bit small (but if I were you I wouldn't fully
trust me because I tend to favor large eyes ) however, I do like the updates on this piece. That violin is looking
awesome, I love the shading on it! Her hand is looking good too - I can see you've refined it since your last update.

All I can really say is keep going. You're doing a fantastic job.

[shiNIN]

I agree with Viconia about the eye, well, I would say the eye should be a bit wider, not bigger in general. It's the eye that is turned more to us but the other one is definitely wider. Human faces aren't perfectly symmetrical but the difference is too much here I guess.

The painting is improving nicely, I can't wait to see it finished.

[clanlord]

Damn fine damn fine... progress kicks!

Keep up!

[SMILEFACE]

aHH THIS IS LOOKING GREAT !!! AN VIOLIN YOU CAN ORDER A CHEAP ONE MAYBE 100 TO PRACTICE AN SEE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED VS BUY AN EXPENSIVE ONE AN NEVER PLAY IT AGAIN JUS AN IDEA XDXDXD

[Duplicitious]

hey ! the study is looking great, stick with it! it'll be worth it in the end

the only thing that's bothering me about it is the right eye, the shape looks off compared to the left eye

keep it up!

[Izene]

Hey man!That violin girl really really turned out nice!I love the blockiness it has!

[tronrobot]

the last study looking aweesome ! i love the violin

[Umbravita]

So I went a certain distance with the violin lady and went fuck it, I'm sick of it, then didn't draw for two weeks.

Oops.

So here's as far as I got. Back to doing doodles, but don't have anything else to share.

So much for consistency. Oh well, back on the ball!

[Umbravita]

Some of what I've been up to. Most of this is from within the last 12 hours because mostly, I've been doodling/doing blind contours.

Drew a lot of this while watching the Tour de France livestream. Alas, it's over for another year. Congrats to Wiggins and the Brits, they've done well this year!

References:

http://thedappergentleman.tumblr.com/
http://thedapperlady.tumblr.com/

[Umbravita]

Had class yesterday, during which I did a few still lifes.

Also doodles, some of which are from random stock photos I found on dA.

[Umbravita]

For some reason I didn't see the glaring anatomy fail until I was already "finished".

Stuff it, I'll do better next time.

[Umbravita]

Study from class.

[Umbravita]

WIP, fanart, Almalexia from Morrowind.

[Umbravita]

Painted with acrylics in class today! Sorry, I thought it was dry but apparently it wasn't when I stuck it in my sketchbook, so there's bits of white paper attached to some of the trees. Alas.

Also I'm pretty sure if my teacher wasn't as nice a person as she is (it's a beginner's class, so) she would have been breathing down my neck going WIPE YOUR BRUSH and MORE WATER. I kept putting the paint on too thickly and forgetting to wipe my brush.

It was really fun trying not to use black and white, though. Managed not to use black, but I ended up having to use white for the sky.

[Black Spot]

I think with the faces you're bunging down the features before working out where they go first. Throw some guide lines down first. Still, you're improving, knuckling down does that.

[p sage]

... adding to what Black Spot says... try to get the head shapes right first... work big to small. Even if eyes are misplaced on a well drawn head, it will look more correct than well placed eyes on a skewed shaped head.

Making your shapes (3D volumes) read is one of the most difficult things to do (I'm still learning it), but once you're there, everything else become immensely easier (light/value/color/detail/etc).

[Umbravita]

Black Spot & p sage: Thanks for the advice! I'll do some studies and work on my volume and so on.

---

Lolwhoops barely did anything the last month.

Here's stuff from class, as well as the WIP which is taking forever because I have the attention span of a gnat.

Barely done anything in weeks. I hate that; I feel like I'm busy, but I'm actually not, I just get exhausted when I've done everything I need to do so I slack off on everything else, because by the time I have free time to draw and stuff, I'm too tired to feel any motivation.

I hate that.

[Black Spot]

Nice tree. You should push that last one, it has promise.

[Umbravita]

OK, so this post is more personal than usual, sorry. Also it's a bit sickness-TMI.

After not drawing for weeks, class at the community college started again today so I have drawn! I really enjoy it. The focus is on having fun rather than improvement (although the teacher does often give crit on a one-to-one basis), but I'm really enjoying it. It's getting me drawing at least once a week, while term's on anyway, when my discipline lags.

And lagging it has been. I'm struggling a bit, I don't know why, I'm not depressed or anything. But I'm very stop-and-start with my schoolwork right now even though I've finally picked up speed (to the contrary, I know), and I had a lot of discipline when it came to learning my Spanish but that's lagging too, and I've stopped writing every day and then I stopped drawing for weeks on end. I don't know what's going on.

Maybe it's because I'm sick. I don't feel sick. It's weird -- last week I was sleeping 15-18 hours a day, all week, and every now and then after a meal I would randomly feel so goddamn nauseous I was sick. After only a few hours of being awake I'd have to go to bed again. I'd wonder if I'm developing some kind of food allergy but I don't know what the heck it would be to. I had some steak and bacon and vegetable soup, and I was sick as a dog until I, er, was actually sick. I had some steak and vegetable soup the next day, no bacon (and probably lacking some other ingredients -- it was canned stuff, you see), and I was fine. A few days later I had steak and onion soup and I was sick again. I've been eating chicken and capsicum and sour cream and spring onions lately, no reaction. Then I had a mug of hot chocolate last night and felt queasy (though not nearly as badly as before). Only ten minutes ago I had some bottled water from the store which tasted a bit weird (yay $1 water) and felt nauseous again -- tipped it out, had tap, it went away.

I don't know what's wrong. A couple of months ago I had an allergic reaction to nail polish and my entire body erupted in hives overnight, it took two weeks before I stopped itching and another couple of weeks before the marks faded.

... Gonna ask my mother if I can go to the doc. In this house you have to be bleeding out of the eyeballs to go to the doc and I can't go on my own 'cause I can't pay and don't have a medicare card of my own. When I was younger I woke up one morning unable to physically open my jaw much, and it hurt to eat, and my mother told me to stop whining and refused to take me to the doc. Because I was able to talk, she didn't think it was serious and got angry at me when I pushed it. Luckily, it faded on its own, but I have never forgiven her for that.

I don't know what's wrong but I'm starting to get a bit scared. Maybe it's nothing. My mother has gone so far as to suggest a possible doc visit so maybe it won't be as hard as I dread it to be.

Anyway... I feel guilty about posting because I am really not up to doing studies, and I don't want to feel that anyone who has gone out of their way to crit and comment is being ignored. But I think, for a bit, I might just do some stuff from imagination and share that, and leave the studies until later.

I'm not very well at the moment. The fatigue has gone but I just don't have the mental energy right now to do more than mess around with art.

ETA: Mother's response was to google the symptoms, decide it was the iron deficiency I've had my entire fucking life which a year on iron tablets made no improvement to (not to mention the fact I have practically lived on red meat the last few months) and gave me peppermint tea.

Was ready to strangle her, but she conceded that if I'm not better by the end of the week she'll take me up to the doc's this time next week. We'll see if she holds to it.