Spartan Camp #234 - 50 gestures + Optional "Quick portraits study"

[Anthis]

Spartan Camp #234 - 50 gestures + Optional "Quick portraits study"

The aim is to produce 50 gestures by Sunday the 12nd of August.

- The gestures can be of anything, human, animal, cavorting capybaras.... You can draw full figures, but you can also go for heads, arms, eyes, or anything specific. All media can be used, both digital or traditional. Coloured or black/white. Quick scribbles or long studies. Imagination or referenced. Clothed or nude. Specifics are up to you!

- In addition to this, participants can choose to do an Optional "Quick Portraits study", in any medium.
Additional notes on this weeks’ Optional Study:


The exercise
Draw some gestures that are not of figures but of faces. You can treat them exactly the same as gesture drawing, except that you're drawing portraits. They can be quick and gestural, so no elaborate and refined detailing is needed. Focus on quickly getting a grasp of those heads, and try to capture the character of the portrait in your gesture.
You can do as many as you'd like. In addition, or instead of normal gestures. Have fun!

Possible Reference
I have not yet found a gesture drawing tool for portraits, but these galleries should get you going. There are plenty portraiture photographers around though! Be aware that many (if not most) photographers will edit their work, but natural photo's will most likely teach you the most.
Link 1 - Has a button to randomize portraits for you.
Link 2 - Just a few galleries
Link 3 - Has an interesting gallery setup. Zoom in first though.
Link 4 - Another gallery
Flickr also allows you to search image groups of a certain topic, pool them, and show them all. Zoom in and you have a big library. Examples: Here, Here, Here, and Here.


As always- reference advised, not obligatory. Colour, medium, time frame, any specifics are up to you! Good luck and have fun! And feel free to ask questions!


50 poses is a challenge, but don't hurry or stress yourself reaching it! Focus on drawing, as practising is the main goal of this exercise.

Criticizing each other is highly encouraged!! Share constructive criticism, reference images and resources!! Let's help each other get better!

Come on soldiers! Flex those muscles!!

HALL OF FAME - SPARTAN CAMP #233

Obstfelder
Zombie chinchilla
AdrianNagorski
littlebones
wla91
Animare
Guardian G.I.
Hamorhage
J8stine
NightmareFH
Guardian G.I.
Papaya Pig
Tim Murphy

[Tim Murphy]

Having trouble determining a good time limit for the portraits, anyone have any thoughts?

EDIT: I'm having a fair go with five minutes, but that doesn't allow me time to get any shading in.

[Zombie_chinchilla]

Also, you can choose to shuffle through portraits on the Drawing Script, which has a timer.

And I'm curious: what do the stars next to people's names mean?

[Hamorhage]

Also, you can choose to shuffle through portraits on the Drawing Script, which has a timer.

And I'm curious: what do the stars next to people's names mean?

The stars mean that you completed your assignment + the bonus assignment. Well done to those who did! I missed the bonus the last two weeks No excuses this week! I'll have to work extra hard!

[Papaya_Pig]

Awesome, I'll have to give this one a shot. I'm seriously lacking on the face front!

[Obstfelder]

Faces are hard. Challenge accepted

These faces are about five minutes each. Some of them got oddly distorted around the eyes, but I think it's mostly because I tend to draw eyes too big, and have to be constantly vigilant about that. But it might also be that I got the perspective wrong. I should probably do some head construction exercises

I also did some gestures focusing on values. I used a hard angular brush to get shapes down quickly. It makes the figures look a bit jagged but I like the noisy textural look it generates.

[Hamorhage]

Obstfelder, the portraits look really good, love the dark woman, really nice capture!
I did some quickies. Started from 30 sec to 60 sec.

[Serix]

Obs: loving the emotion that's being put through
Ham: You've got some really good stuff going there for just 30s and 60s!

Here's 48 gestures (30s, 60s, 120s), I'll take a shot at 16 faces tomorrow after I've read through Loomis a bit. I never realized how horrible I was at blocking faces in without being able to go into too much detail.

[Zombie_chinchilla]

I'm really liking this optional study. I'm horrid at faces, I really need this.

The first 3 are 5mins, I might do longer later. And then some sketches from reference, and some from imagination. I just now see I numbered them wrong, though.

[Tim Murphy]

Obst: Those value gestures came out very solid.
Ham: 30-60seconds? Damn impressive friend. I might need to try speeding mine up!
Serix: Have you tried some planar studies of the head? Might help with a quick block in.
Zombie: Pah, you're being too hard on yourself. Heads (and their attached faces) are just difficult, even for "masters".

My 30second gestures are refusing to be photographed right now, so I'll just upload my 3minute gestures and the faces (~5min) I've tried so far for now. I've gotta do more of those.

[DvrJeroen]

First time spartan camp here
And damn, 50 gestures were more work then expected But here they are..
I might do some portrait studies later this week

[Zombie_chinchilla]

I'd do critiques for everyone, but you're all so much better than me I really don't know what to say. ;A;

I did one more. 10 mins.

[cumquat]

obstfelder great job. I actually recognize some of those portraits from love castle.

Hamorhage nice gestures. You managed to capture the feel of the pose pretty nicely.

Tim Murphy I can tell you're trying to understand the structure of the body there. Keep going ! The bearded face is looking pretty nice. If I might make a suggestion, try drawing your eyes a little smaller. They'll actually help the realism in your faces. Really observe the eye-nose-mouth relationship. I find (at least with my stuff) it's what really gives faces their likeness.

zombie chinchilla don't be so hard on yourself. Faces take time. Just keep practicing. Don't worry too much about tones. Just concentrate on structure. Face number 7 in your sketches is looking pretty nice.

Okay. I personally needed this face practice. These are poses ranging from 30sec-5mins. I arranged them by pose. If I have time, I think I"d like to do one prolonged study. Any tips or critiques would be much appreciated. I have a tendancy to flatten faces out or mess up proportions sometimes.

Also, if you don't mind would someone please explain how a 'sketchbook' works here ? I'd really like to put all my spartan camp stuff in one.

[Tim Murphy]

Thanks for the tip cumquat, I'll try that out today! I always seem to draw them too small at first, then overcompensate.

The way the sketchbooks work is fairly simple, you just mosey on over to that section and make a thread. Title it whatever you want (generally your name) and start posting. A lot of people like to put little introductions in their first post, but if you're like me and uh...attention-averse... you don't have too. You can upload images using either the attachment tool (which is kind of a pain) or just an img link. Commenting on other people's sb's will generally bring traffic to yours.

Your heads/faces are crazy good man, I've no tips to give.

[Obstfelder]

Hamorhage: Great expressive faces! Some of them have a bit of skewing going on. Maybe you could try to establish perspective and the volume of the full head first and then the face. It helps me at least, even if it's only some simple lines.

Serix: Watch proportions more closely, some of your figures have a bit short arms and legs. I recommend practicing negative space and blind drawing to become more aware of those things. Try to put the hands and feet in there too. Don't let them intimidate you Good work!

Zombie_chinchilla: Try drawing the faces without looking at your canvas. It looks as if you are not observing your subject enough but looking too much at the page. Idealy you only want to look at the paper when you have to lift the pen. Use a vider range of values for the value studies. the number keys on the keyboard sets your brush to different opacities. I use this to quickly switch between different values. I set my color to black and then I find the darkest feature in the image and put that down really dark, and then I find the second darkest feature and so on. It also helps to have the canvas set to be grey or anything other than white. then you have a base value to work from. Good effort with the gestures!

Tim Murphy: The figures are looking good. You could be more mindfull of the shoulders. The shoulders are a double joint that lifts off from the ribcage when the arms lift up. So that means that the balljoints in the shoulder doesn't allways move with the ribcage the way it looks like in your examples. for example: In number 8 the shoulder would lift up closer to the chin I think.

Jarkuzy: Really good gestures. Your lines seem very confident and your proportions are very good. The outlines are maybe a little strict and stiff, but that's my personal preference for loose sketchy lines talking

cumquat: Haha, the sorting must have taken you ages very nice. So many and so clean. I can see you are using lovecastle as well. Nothing big to crit. Maybe you could mind the size of the eyes. They look a bit too large in some of them.

Sketchbook works like any other thread. Just that you keep posting all your stuff there instead of starting new ones

Here are some 60 second gestures I did earlier with scribbled lines. And some cats to mix things up

[Zombie_chinchilla]

You guys are all being really helpful with your critiques, thanks all so much.

I'll definitely try to do that next time, Obstfelder. I tend to just copy the model instead of study and analyze it, maybe looking less at my paper will help. And although the hotkeys tip is helpful, I'm not using photoshop and I'm not sure if it'll work with the program I am using, MyPaint. I'll try nonetheless, thanks.

[AdrianNagorski]

Anthis: great links i love you so much for that!



cumquat: brilliant lots of great studying happening there with them heads!

my faces/heads still to come. . . . .

[Animare]

Quickie upload before work lol.
Here's what I have so far.

Posts are looking great everyone!

[cumquat]

thanks for the tip obstfelder. Haha, actually no. It didn't take that long. I used this as a template.

Head painting practice below. Skin and eyes don't look alive to me. I'm not happy with this one, but practice makes perfect. If anyone has a skintone tutorial, it would be really welcome.

[Hamorhage]

30 second poses from pose maniacs, on a tight deadline so not much time

[Zombie_chinchilla]

If anyone has a skintone tutorial, it would be really welcome.

This is my favorite skin tutorial. There's 3 parts, the third has some good color palettes for various skin colors.

Urgh, I don't know if I'll get all 50 this week. Good work so far, though, everyone.

[Obstfelder]

Zombie_chinchilla: That's a nice tutorial.

A few faces today. And a pirate.

[AdrianNagorski]

them faces. . . . . .

[cumquat]

thank you so much Zombie Chinchilla ! Great tutorial. Can't wait to try this again. Hopefully my second try will be more successful. I also spent a bit of time looking up tutorials and I thought I'd share a few with you guys. Links to Linda Bergkvist below.

hair and skin
http://referencesforartists.tumblr.c...s-how-to-paint

eyes
http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/C...realistic_eyes

[Animare]

Some heads.

[Tim Murphy]

@Obst: Thanks for that, trying to pay more attention to the shoulders now. I think I see what you mean.

@Cumquat: Don't forget the effect of the light itself on the skin, plays a large part in the colors you see in both lit and dark areas.

Focusing on upper body gestures for the time being. Head + neck (1min), torso (3min/6min). Faces (1-2min) need work, might need a different approach for them (or just more practice).

[wla91]

Heelllo there! been kind of busy but i managed to make it on time, great work guys!

[Tim Murphy]

Feelin' cruddy today, so I'll have to finish off with my 30second ones from the week...not what I wanted to do..

[J8stine]

Not sure if I'm too late this week, but here they are anyway. I was trying to do a few with colour to practice my tones a bit more mixed in with some looser sketches. Pencil, Pshop, pen and pastels. Mostly heads, the last few are from my cat (who is v.fluffy not v.fat).

Obst - great range of drawings this week. Quite inspirational.

Hamor - nice confident line making, I like the loose style, no. 22 and 12 especially.

Serix - good range of speeds and poses, one thing I notice is a lot of your poses seem cramped like you ran out of room - try measuring with your eye how much space the extremities will take up before drawing the torso, since I think it's making you draw some arms/legs shorter just because of space issues.

Zombie - Good start, I would use more ref and find some anatomy studies, break the head down in your mind by learning the general preportions - everyone has different proportions but knowing the basics does help.

Tim - Good progress throughout the week esp. shoulders and faces, I dont think I have any advice to give other than what has already been said.

wla91 - Your tonal faces are great,especially 36 and 39 for capturing expression.

[biro]

hi,
this is my first post here. i regularly read the boards and think these challenges are pretty interesting. i have found time to have a go at this one so see what you think.
everyone's posts look really good. my sketches averages between 1-3 mins each....still a bit too long.

thanks for the reference links everyone - they were very helpful!