Brainfarts: the SoS (Sketchbook of Suck)

[Kuroyue]

[WARNING: OLD STUFF. See middle of second page for newer stuff, as of 2010.]

Hello, all! I'm a newbie to ConceptArt. I've spent most of my life looking at anime, and I've pretty much abandoned deviantArt because, well, that place is not really all that deviant.

I'm aiming to develop a style separate from anime and/or turn my anime into something a little more realistic. Or at least less generic and shallow. I have no knowledge about color theory and composition, but I'm hoping to pick up a bit of that here. And the anatomy, too--can't forget the anatomy.

Well, here goes...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Okay. Being new to this place, the first thing I wanted to do was get a cool avatar. I made a new one, seeing as the only ones I had were either anime or they sucked.

...And then I found out that I can't upload animations. But I'm still kind of proud.

[fuzzybluenuke]

anatomy is hard stuff man, very difficult. I'm also 16 years old and, not at all into the anime, but sorta the same general direction (illustrationist, concept artist) I have just recently started studying anatomy and even more recently color theory, so I'm not too much help there . But, if you want to look at my thread I'm open to help you as much as I can (may not be that much haha). Like I said, I'm not a big fan of anime, so I'm glad you want to develope a different style of it, I would ecourage you to make it a VERY different style as anime is far overrated and overused. I'm not sure if yo've posted anything and my computer just isn't showing it, or you haven't posted anything yet, but I look forward to seeing some of your stuff.

hope to hear from you soon

[Kuroyue]

Anime is still too much of an addiction to give up...I'm not gonna leave it completely, because it still provides some good eyecandy every now and then. But yes, I want to be able to draw in other styles because that's all anime is good for: eyecandy.

You're not seeing any images? How about the animation? Also, I just posted some more images, so if you check again you should be able to see it. Thank you!

[fuzzybluenuke]

haha ok now I see your stuff, for some reason my computer wasn't displaying them. Now that I see them, they aren't anything like i had pictured them to be like, what you're aiming for is cool and rather lifelike.
post more!

[fuzzybluenuke]

I noticed you're fairly decent with proportions and even better with hair, hair isn't on of my strong points. As for anatomy, I can't tell, as your pictures don't supply any detail. But I recomend lotttsss of referance, I found the best way to learn is to simply look at other threads on this forum. Some of these guys are crazy and you can learn so much stuff.

Good luck!

[Kuroyue]

I agree. I can manage with vague figures, but I can't do detailed anatomy with all the muscles and skin texture. The best way to learn is to watch real people, but often I don't get any opportunities to do that (and staring is rude...)...so yeah, I guess you're right.

On the contrary, I am actually struggling with hair. Being so used to anime, I consequently have to fight the urge to make every strand look like a spike. The shaded hair I posted up is the only other way I know how to shade, and I'm not very flexible with it, hahaha...

Yes, it seems that more refs are in order.

[Té-Can]

It's good that you want to branch out from anime. It's hard at first but you'll get used to it soon enough. :]
Keep on drawing a lot from life, and photos. Buy some anatomy books while you're at it and read/draw from them. Loomis is pretty good, but I think his books aren't in print anymore...you can still download them from the web though.

[Kuroyue]

Clothing practice...

Actually, I DO have a book by Gary Faigin called Facial Expressions. I haven't looked at it in a while, because it is really text-heavy. It tells you the structure, skeleton, and muscles of the head as well as the way muscles look when pulled into a variety of expressions. I think it's pretty usefull, but too bad it doesn't cover the rest of the body.

[Té-Can]

Sounds like a really great book. I'd love to see some studies from it.

Nice practice, her pose looks good, her head just looks a bit large.
The clothes look good, you probably could nail clothes by doing some clothing studies, drawing curtains, your clothes, anything made from fibers. XD
Keep drawing.

[Rafal Dorsz]

Hello, thanks for taking a look at my sketchbook

As for Your work, I think You're doing good so far. I'd suggest doing some still life drawings to improve your shading skills and better define forms in your drawings. And, like others said - study anatomy

Keep drawing and keep sharing

[Taven]

You can find Loomis online, as mentioned. I forget where exactly to go, but do a Google search and you'll find something. I have to say, I'm not very knowledgable in drawing anime; although I do watch some anime and read some manga.

On Manga Volume you can read mangas for free-- Which could be helpful in looking at anime styld art forposes, positions, etc.

I'd also recommend looking at Hayao Miyazaki's art/films/etc, which you've probably done already. But if you can get/rent a DVD and take some still pictures from the movie, or find them online, I think those would be good references too.

Anna Rigby has an interesting style that's more a mix of real/anime; it's defidently worth a look. The link is to her Elfwood Gallery; there's some amazing stuff there.

As for further anatomy/composition/color, I'd recommend glancing in he mentoring areas. Even if they aren'tyour mentor, you can follow the class and do the assignments and see the advice. I haven't looked at these in-depth yet, but these seem to be interesting:

Anatomy Mentoring Class
Composition Thing

Hope that helps!

--Taven

[fuzzybluenuke]

I'm pretty impressed with you last post! the clothing is prety darn good! and I noticed your proportions are very spot on. Although I did notice, you need practice with hands and hair. With hair, don't draw each individual hair, instead try blocking first, and use reflections and highlights to your advantage. This allows you to make the hair not so eye catching and personally I think it just looks beter . And as far as hands go, there's no way to get better at something, especially anatomy, than to practice and practice that one atribute until you have it down. To completely master anatomy, you have to start with bone structure, then work on muscle structure and then the actual flesh. Then you will have a better understanding of how everything is put together.

alright best of luck to you

[Kuroyue]

Okay, I'll just make a to-do list for myself, since I check back everyday:

-cloth study
-still life
---define forms
---shading
-anatomy study
---real life drawing
---skeletal, muscular, and flesh study
-composition
-add blocking process to hair
-check out Loomis's stuff

[fuzzybluenuke]

hey bro, I made a quick "how-to" if you will, for the hair blocking process. Hope you find it helpful .

just remember hair should have alot of hightlights otherwise it will look flat.

[Kuroyue]

I tried some blocking here, it really helped! Some minimal reference also used for the angry expression.

[Kuroyue]

Not quite sure what I was doing here, but it felt good.

...Even if the lines are supposed to be going straight up, but they're not.

[burnbrightly]

You're doing real well. I'd like to suggest some compressed charcoal work to get used to blocking in. Just hit the black areas with the charcoal and then pull it into the areas you want with a kneaded eraser. I think once you get that going it will help with the hair and contrast.

[Kuroyue]

Thank you!

...But I don't have any access to charcoal, and I'm (sadly) not currently taking any art classes. When/if I do get my hands on some, I'll try it, but currently art is not my top priority since I don't plan to major in art anymore. And high school is not loosening up the workload...along with all the clubs and volunteer and whatnot.

(...That, and the fact that I've always disliked charcoal because it's too messy and smearable.)

But yes, I will try this next time I come across some charcoal.

[burnbrightly]

I'm the same way about charcoal. It's messy and smears badly without a fixative, but it's real easy to push darks with it. Another choice for getting blacks in graphite is ebony pencils. They take a soft touch but you can get just as black as charcoal without getting the shiny graphite look.

But again that's a trip to the art supply store.

[Kuroyue]

Photoshop may not be my forte, but it's still something I should get used to...


(WIP, no reference)

I know I should mix in more hues and mess with saturation, but I don't know how to do that. And it's my first time painting clouds, so that didn't really help. Maybe I'll stick in some tiny figure somewhere in there just for the sake of composition, but again, I don't really know what I'm doing. Oh well. Any tips?

[thek]

That last pencil sketch is really atmospheric! I didn't notice that the lines weren't exactly parallel, the mood of the piece came through regardless - I really like it a lot. The girl walking is another excellent drawing, the gesture really comes through, like the walk has personality. Keep sketching more and more, don't worry if they look good or not, the important thing is to keep drawing, lose your inhibitions and learn!

Good start on the digital painting too! As an exercise maybe you could colour some of your pencil sketches? I'm not the best authority on clouds by any stretch of the imagination, but one of the important things about clouds is that they have to convey the illusion of space and depth - one quick way is to create a custom brush, and then set the spacing in the brush settings to quite a distance (so you get some random formations when you paint. You can then add highlights and things using a smaller brush, and likewise, the darker areas too. I saw a tutorial somewhere hang on:

yep, here:
http://www.androidblues.com/cloudtut.html

Hope it helps!

[fuzzybluenuke]

hey man, good to see it's going well, i like you last photoshop post. Well done! keep it up, man!

[Kuroyue]

Okay, sorry for not posting for almost a month, but I've been really busy these past few weeks. I have lotsa major tests in next two weeks too, so I STILL gonna be busy for awhile...

Anyway. I can't help but feel as if I messed this up. Tried to make it a little darker to give some sorta illusion of depth and started trying to refine the clouds, but everything just looks really mushy and gross. I didn't want to use references because I didn't want to become reliant on them, but I guess I'll have to do that next time.

And I still don't know what I'm doing, so I'll just back off of this piece for now...

Also, here's something else I've started:



I want to include a lot of machinery or silk (or both) in the background, but sadly I have little to no grasp of how to render either of them. Especially the machinery part.

Does anyone have any tips on how to get acquainted with machinery and mecha stuff? Should I start looking at boiler rooms and pipes and cars or something?

[Kuroyue]

Well, I haven't done much lately, but here is a small sketch. Please excuse my horrible proportions, I didn't realize the body and shoulders were too small until later.

[Kuroyue]

I think I'm losing my motivation. It is more important than ever for me to learn how to use Photoshop, but I haven't used it in a long time, and I don't really know how to do anything other than make incomplete plans and sketches (because what little I know how to do amounts to little more than nOObish anime "cg"). It's really more like I have vivid scenes I want to paint, but I don't have the skills to show them the way I want it.

And also, I need to work on clothes very badly--I hardly know how to draw them (well) anymore, and most of my characters are just bare figures without clothes. I don't even need to mention the lack of anatomic details.

And to prove it, this is the only thing (remotely worth showing) that I've done this month:





Well, I tried to portray my vague plans for this picture...but unfortunately, rough work is all I can do, since I have no idea how to start the detailing...

[Kuroyue]

I've signed up on TegakiE, and it's addictive! ...But only in the animu sense. There are still a few things worth posting here, though. (At least it's not a pencil sketch.)


Because it's the first time I've done something compositionally different, and I think it looks pretty, but too bad it had to be animu.


Uh, I don't know.


Self-explanatory.

EDIT: And something that I just came up with. A little scary (in posture AND messiness), but I want to convey the sense of motion and I had to get it down quickly before it disappeared. I have two options: make him really twisted and leave him with eight limbs, or take half of the limbs and make two separate monsters. And also, I haven't decided what he'll look like. I feel like my imagination (bestiary of monsters) isn't big enough to do justice for this posture...

[Ohaeri]

Hey Kuroyue,

Looks like you're working pretty hard on anatomy and the like, so the best advice I can offer there is keep trying, keep drawing from life or photos, and eventually it will come to you. A pretty helpful resource for learning how to draw is "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain"--I recommend either picking up a copy (preferably) or looking at the site online (not so preferable), which has some exercises: http://www.drawright.com/ This will help you train your eye to really see all the details so you can start taking them down. Above all you've got to train yourself to really see everything and record it, not just record what you think you see.

All anime/manga type drawings involve taking the essence of a particular person or thing and transferring the lines as cleanly as possible. It's very minimal, which is why it's so important to start out drawing from reality--you have to learn which details are important and which ones you can let go. SO START DRAWING FROM REALITY!

Same with Photoshop and wanting to do clouds--get some reference pictures of clouds and try to paint EXACTLY what you see or (better still) take your sketchbook outside on a cloudy day and just sketch clouds, over and over again. You'll start getting a better feeling for how they work the more you do this and it'll be more intuitive. Always, always, always strive to see as many details as you can and take them all down as faithfully as you can. The more you work, the more details you'll see, and the faster you'll be able to take them down. (Seriously, look in my signature at the link "Conclusion: DRAW DRAW DRAW" and you'll get what I mean here . . . )

But like I said, "Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain" really helps with getting you to switch your mindset, so I really, really, VERY highly recommend it.

Try not to get discouraged, you have talent. You've got the drive to become a great artist. Just keep working and you'll do great.

[Kuroyue]

Thank you! I had the feeling that was what I needed to do all along...I really need to stop being lazy. I think that's probably what's really blocking my road. I guess I just hate having to strain my eyes for every single detail...but I swear I'll get it done one of these days...

[Ohaeri]

Hey, no doubt, it's rough. It really IS an eyestrain. But it's worth it.

If you want to start small, try buying a piece of fruit (orange, apple, whatever--though I don't recommend pineapples ) and a lamp if you don't have one, and set up a small still life with direct light from the lamp to help highlight the details. Then either draw or paint the orange as faithfully as you can. It's a bit less intimidating than an entire scene. You'd be surprised at how easy it can be once you set yourself to it.

The only thing is, if you paint, be sure and start big and then go to the small details. There's a really great thread on painting in PS by bumskee here: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...t=47859&page=1

You might find it a little less intimidating to work that way, I know I do. I always get intimidated when working with pencils and other traditional media because it's so hard to erase mistakes. So you might try digital and see if that can jumpstart you. All of these are only suggestions of course. Just do what makes you feel comfortable; drawing is tough enough without needlessly complicating things! lol

Good luck, I'll be keeping an eye on you if you don't mind.

[Kuroyue]

Thank you for all your advice, they've been really informative--I'll hop to it and scan them when I'm done.

But for now...schoolwork.